Ludwig
Laher
Art for sale?
Ladies and gentlemen,
my name is Ludwig Laher, I am a novelist and a poet. I
come from Austria that still resorts to its long and rich cultural tradition,
when it comes to presenting the country abroad, be it as a tourist destination,
be it in order to camouflage the loss of its political weight. My national
council of artists asked me in 1998 to represent Austria in the European
Council of Artists. ECA is the European umbrella organization of
interdisciplinary artists’ councils and similar associations in 24 European
countries. As an ECA board member I have tried to establish a close
co-operation between the INCD and ECA.
I stand here with mixed feelings. On the one hand I am
very happy that the INCD, being an NGO with limited resources and completely
dependent on the devotion of its members, has achieved so much: Cultural
diversity is a well known term, our contribution is considerable, meanwhile
even the need for an international instrument on cultural diversity is widely
accepted. On the other hand I believe that the INCD is standing at the
cross-roads, because we have reached a different stage. It was a huge task to
elaborate a convention on cultural diversity, it was equally demanding to bring
it before the public. Now everything is in a state of flux, we can witness a
dynamic development, and the INCD cannot but comment on the temporary results
of this discussion concerning cultural diversity, on position papers and
drafts, among others on UNESCO and European Commission documents.
At the same time the INCD must not lose contact with
its member organizations and reflect on their internal formation of opinion,
which depends a lot on the degree of involvement of as many individuals as
possible working in the cultural sector.
That is why I want to tell you something about the
artists’ perspectives both on individual and organizational levels. Some of my
remarks will apply to the situation of my colleagues around the globe, others
have a specific European background that I would like to outline, because they
characterize the problems we are confronted with in the European Council of
Artists.
I want to analyze the gap between the advanced level
of the global discussion on cultural diversity, its intimidating complexity and
the artistic process. So please accept my invitation to pay a visit to an
individual professional artist living somewhere in Europe, painting in his/her
studio, or maybe rehearsing on the stage, or maybe with the proverbial blank
page on the screen of his/her computer to turn into a novel, or maybe
voluntarily deconstructing his/her own traditional artistic identity by
deliberately making no name for oneself.
And then let me introduce a second protagonist to you,
strangely enough, a dozen pages full of bureaucratic wording under the title
“Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament:
Towards an international instrument on cultural diversity.”
The two have never met. Moreover, the artist has never
heard of the existence of such a document as he does not know what INCD stands
for. The Commission document on the other hand seems to believe that an
artist’s freedom to create or perform according to nothing but his/her talents
can be guaranteed without mentioning cultural trade. In other words this
document does not know anything about the artist or, even worse, does not want
to know anything about him/her.
In the next couple of minutes I want to talk about
difficulties, the difficulty to convince the individual artist that it makes a
difference whether one takes care of one’s professional environment or does not
give a damn. I want to talk about the difficulty for artists’ associations and
networks not to lag behind European and global challenges, I want to talk about
the difficulty to find influential politicians - not only in my own country - who
understand or are willing to understand the core of the related problems, I
want to talk about the difficulty to defend the concept of cultural diversity
as a vehicle for promoting a new trade instrument on cultural goods and
services in the light of recent documents that make use of the current broad
discussion without any concessions in the most decisive questions, and finally
I want to talk about certain reservations in the artistic community about the
total absorption of art in the vague concept of culture.
Everybody with some experience knows that it is a long
way from the personal reasons why a certain person decides to become a
professional artist to the issues that ECA or the INCD deal with. In other
words: Neither GATS negotiations nor EU directives inspire my novels.
Maybe I should start my remarks with a cursory
investigation how diverse the term artist in itself is at the beginning of the
21st century?
Individual artists: Generation gap, single combatants, resignation
Generally speaking, we have to cope with the fact that a significant
portion of younger artists or individuals related to artistic production
abstain from any involvement in traditional artists’ association contexts. They
do not even participate in initiatives defending the remains of social security
or, as in the case of the INCD, fighting for cultural diversity and fair
cultural trade according to the specific quality of cultural goods and
services. The reasons for this development are manifold:
In the first place there is no doubt that all kinds of organized groups
like political parties, trade unions, churches and so on seem to attract less
and less interest among the younger generation in Europe.
Secondly the traditional profile of the artist is in retreat: On the one
hand the radical changes of the working world are responsible for a climate, in
which people must make a living from two or three mac jobs without any social
security. Some of them consider their writing, their staging, their netbased
artistic concepts part of this neoliberal reality they have arranged with. On
the other hand traditional concepts of the creator including intellectual
property rights are questioned by many young people who consider all human artefacts
of the recent past including music, visual art, literature part of the common
heritage they simply want to make use of, be it in the form of a new creation,
for example sampling a music remix, be it in the way of distribution via
internet. A logical consequence or, if you prefer, a logical premise in this
context is the abandonment of the aura of the individual artist and his/her
creative potential by the audience as perfectly embodied by names like Picasso
or Warhol. I must admit, from time to time it fascinates me, how rigorously
many young colleagues want to get rid of the “disease of conceit”, to quote Bob
Dylan. Perhaps they do not even want to get rid of it, because they have never
been affected.
Walking through the exhibitions of this year’s Venice Biennial for
example, you have to get used to concept groups instead of names as artistic
creators. By the way, hardly anyone of the visitors of Venice I asked
afterwards could tell me anything about the people even behind the exhibits
that impressed them most. And I am ashamed to say, I myself have to consult the
catalogue if I should tell you who in the world presented their marvellous
installation in the Czech and Slovak pavilion combining symbols of christianity
with a sports event: “The artists behind the SUPERSTART project, which is
representing Czech and Slovak art at the 50th Venice Biennial, comprise two art
entities working on an anonymous basis. The Czech group Kamera skura and the
Slovak open art structure Kunst-Fu have temporarily merged for this purpose and
have created for the pure architecture of the Czech-Slovak pavilion an
installation full of absurd humour and transcendental banality.”
Have
the artists’ associations thorougly dealt with the consequences of the
tendencies I have simply tried to describe here without any judgement? I fear, they
have not, at least not in my country.
A further reason for the distance both young and established artists
keep from associations and even from networks lies in their established
structures with little inclination to adjust to the speedy development of
society. Instead of convincing well known colleagues to devote some of their
time and energy for, let’s say, two or four years to bring in their expertise,
work for common goals and hand over to fresh forces, there is a tendency of
self-satisfaction with a comparatively small number of colleagues in an inner
circle deciding the fate of the whole organization for decades.
In some countries there is very little information flow to the
individual artists, who consider the people on the board of their association
more functionaries than artists. The board members, on the other hand, deplore
the unwillingness of many colleagues to support their activities. There are, of
course, exceptions to these rules, but I dare say that quite a few of you know
the problems I address.
Finally I have got the impression that many artists who started their
career in the sixties and seventies in a totally different climate of social
rising and cultural optimism, who contributed a lot to the positive changes in
our occupational group over the last
decades, have become resigned. They concentrate on their artistic work, some in
the glaring spotlight of fame and wealth, some unrecognized living in rather
modest conditions. Or they are already gone altogether.
Against this background we, the artists who feel the need and the
responsibility to articulate ourselves, have to find strategies to communicate
what’s at stake. And we must reconsider whether our organizational structures
are still appropriate to fulfill this task.
Lagging behind European and global challenges
Both national “umbrellas” and the associations of the artistic branches in
Europe were founded in a period, when art and culture were clearly attributed
to the responsibilities of the state (or, as e.g. in the case of federalist
Germany, to regions). In former western countries demands concerning the
improvement of intellectual property rights, the constitutional freedom of art,
tax regulations, public subsidies, arts programmes and education, foreign
culture and so on had to be addressed to parliament and the government, in
former eastern countries state responsibility for almost all walks of life was
part of the system anyway. Things were arduous at times, but clear.
Meanwhile things have changed dramatically. All member or future member
countries of the European Union have to accept that many decisions are taken in
Brussels now: Soon we will have a European constitution that comments on art
and culture and their place in society, within the last few months we have
experienced new European directives concerning intellectual property rights,
free mobility, TV without frontiers, the fate of cultural services is currently
negotiated by the European Commission on behalf of the member states in the
GATS round, the national governments merely delivered their positions.
Theoretically the European Union guarantees national sovereignty in the
fields of culture and art. The principle of subsidiarity is meant to protect
diverse cultural traditions and foci concerning both contents and
administration. But meanwhile culture and art are almost synonymous with
cultural and artistic goods and services, in other words: European competition
regulations and the angle of big business managers reduce the possibilities of
national governments to a large extent, even if they should be willing to keep
up a positive structural environment for a flourishing cultural climate.
Cultural lobbying in Brussels, on the other hand, costs a lot of money,
consequently the artists experience their role in respective discourses as
marginal.
Let me give you a recent example: As vice president of ECA I attended
the first hearing of the European parliament on cultural industries earlier
this year. On this occasion Mr Reinhard
Büscher, the representative of the European Commission, gave an outline of what
the positions of the Commission on art and culture are. Cultural industries are
a sector of economy just like all the other ones, Mr Büscher said. They are no
longer of marginal importance, but big business with 100 billion Euros turnover
per year. Mr Büscher regretted productivity deficiencies as one big obstacle
for even more success in the field of cultural industries. In Scandinavia for
example the productivity of the book market is very low, he deplored. This
results from too many books for too small markets. Competitiveness is the key
to economic success that need not contradict cultural development, because the
taste of the majority of the general public is the main criterium for the free
market. Mr. Büscher was convinced that a flourishing culture goes hand in hand
with a flourishing economy. The label “culture”, he concluded, is frequently
just an excuse for new subsidies these days. If one wants to resort on public
subsidies, please tell it bluntly. But this is not the position of the European
commission.
For this hearing the
European Council of Artists produced a position paper, in which we, among
others, pointed out that the development of cultural industries over the past
decades had unproportionally favoured big cultural events.
“Artistic content tends to
be treated like any other good in a world of free trade and competition
regulations. At the same time the conditions, under which most of the artists
create their works or perform, have been gradually worsening.
Europe is known for a long tradition of public and
private support for culture and art. As a matter of fact creativity is
associated with a space granted to the artists that enables them to concentrate
on the quality of their work.
The European Council of Artists (...) believes that
cultural industries and private sponsorship cannot fully replace the
obligations of the public and the state to encourage a flourishing cultural
climate. Both public and state involvement are under all circumstances highly
essential. Any discussion concerning cultural industries in Europe ought to
reflect on the manifold interdependences between political institutions,
cultural industries and the artists.
ECA refers to its involvement in the world campaign
for a new instrument securing cultural diversity by means of an international
treaty that should once and for all guarantee, that cultural goods and services
must not automatically be dealt with in accordance with general trade
regulations. To that effect ECA also refers to what it considers the obligation
of the European governments, which is to defend the “cultural exemption” in any
and every world trade negotiation.”
This position paper was well received by the members
of the cultural committee of the European parliament and speakers representing
the cultural world on the panel, mostly producers, university teachers and one
representative of UNESCO, who stressed the priority of human creativity over
cultural industries.
Four months later the official document of the
European Commission on cultural diversity was published. It is as outspoken as
Mr Büscher’s speech in Brussels. I will come back to it.
Of course ECA, within its limited resources, does
everything to distribute such information to the member countries and urge them
to react, but only very rarely the national umbrella organizations take pains
in effective lobbying among their MEPs or the responsible members of
government.
To some degree the associations in many countries know
very well that cultural policies pay little attention to the artists. Provided
that they are dead and at least regionally famous, they can be made use of for
tourism, reutilized in case of anniversaries. Living artists, however, are a
constant threat, and it is amusing how irritatedly politicians react, if - as
in my country - some of the most admired actors of daily and weekly soaps on TV
speak out against GATS publicly and prove an existence beyond the characters of
smiling alpine doctors and forest wardens.
Witnessing such a hearing on cultural industries in
Brussels one gets the impression that representatives of the European
Commission know very well and decidedly, what they want, namely free trade of
cultural goods and services, competitiveness and productivity, whereas many
members of the cultural committee of the European parliament induldge in exalted
phrases or irrelevant particularities. Under these circumstances it was a much
acclaimed highlight when one MEP, in this case briefed by ECA, raised the issue
that the Commission had very clear, though disputed perspectives for cultural goods and services, but hardly any for
the artists. Given the state of European integration it is a shame, she
insisted, that we still lack e.g. European job profiles for performers,
comparable structures of artists’ education or harmonized tax systems for
artists.
I do not want to go into details, but in Europe
artists face all kinds of classification, depending on where you live. They are
employees and self-employed, organized in trade unions and chambers of culture,
in Germany the lawgiver even created a new term for most of the artists, they
are called “arbeitnehmerähnliche Personen”, “persons similar to the status of
an employee.”
It is little wonder that the small group of
professional artists, heterogeneous and traditionally reluctant to join forces,
seems to be a marginal factor in the calculations of the European Commission and
the WTO. Therefore it is so important for us to co-operate with broad alliances
like the International Network for Cultural Diversity. Within the INCD
framework we can make our voices heard. Please allow me a few critical remarks
as a committed ambassador of the European Council of Artists in the INCD.
Cultural Diversity: Everybody’s darling?
As I mentioned earlier, I am convinced that we have
reached a new stage in the campaign for cultural diversity. When I tried to
popularize the idea of a convention for cultural diversity among the Austrian
artists, I was frequently confronted with the objections of colleagues who
warned us not to give way to segregationist or racist tendencies. They referred
to the modernized terminology of right wing movements that sounded strikingly
similar. In the discussions that followed such interventions I conceded that it
would be fatal if WTO, European Commission, certain culture ministers, certain national
governments etc. succeeded in making use of the term cultural diversity by
advocating a merely sociological judgement, an inprecise philosophical concept
and at the same time neglecting the correlations between the survival of
diverse cultures and international trade relations.
Now we have to cope with this worst case scenario.
Recent documents, especially the official position of the European Commission
concerning the international instrument on cultural diversity, clearly indicate
that some of our partners in the political institutions want to extinguish our
movement by embracing us. To be pointed: An instrument on cultural diversity
that gives me, being a writer, the mere right to buy a pen and write a novel in
any language I choose is as satisfying as an instrument on equal rights that
gives me, being male, the right to bear a child.
I have already received bitter letters from Austrian
artists who had been critical of the concept of cultural diversity altogether.
I do hope that our meeting here in Opatija will help me find good answers to
their central questions: Why is everybody so fond of cultural diversity these
days? What are the strategies of the International Network for Cultural
Diversity in the foreseeable event of the implementation of a nearly toothless
instrument that does not affect trade regulations, but may be used as an excuse
for “boosting the exchanges of cultural goods and services” (quotation from
“the guiding principles for a future instrument” as developed by the European
Commission) under the reckless rule of the World Trade Organization? Is there a
balance guaranteed in the INCD between the interests of the artists and e.g.
the interests of the audiovisual industry? And – important enough – how long
will the INCD be represented by a steering committee without a democratic
representation of the members, now that the network has reached a new stage? It
is no longer mainly a body of cultural experts developing the draft of a
convention on cultural diversity, but an international network in the midst of
political processes.
Culture versus art: New aspects of an old discussion
Cut. Let me lead you back to the individual
professional artist living somewhere in Europe, painting in his/her studio, or
maybe rehearsing on the stage, or maybe with the proverbial blank page on the
screen of his/her computer to turn into a novel, or maybe voluntarily
deconstructing his/her own traditional artistic identity by deliberately making
no name for oneself.
Many of these artists strongly advocated democratic
concepts of cultural development some thirty years ago. They considered
themselves part of a cultural movement, avoided the term art because of its
élitist connotations. Meanwhile – and I am sorry to repeat the phrase again and
again – meanwhile things have changed. Culture is a commonplace term now that
is not in the first place applied to a broad variety of cultural activities and
achievements of numerous people involved, but labelled on all sorts of leisure
events, quite many of them designed and organised by advertising agencies, by
the tourist industry, by multinational companies and the like.
Only last month I attended the presentation event of an
international metal sculptors’ symposium close to where I live. A good friend
of mine, a sculptor himself, invited me to go there. Everything happened under
the patronage of an electric power company. Cranes, supported by artificial
smoke, a colour organ and sound tracks of movies like “Braveheart”, lifted the -
by the way remarkable -achievements of the symposium on an improvised stage in
a former factory building, escorted by young ladies dressed like belly-dancers
and young men in costumes of Arabian sheiks. I was still speechless when the
chairman of the company gave a short embarrassing speech revealing his stunning
ignorance. The only thing I remember is his reference to the phantastic
presentation, which cost the company a lot of money. Despite the pressure of
costs in our industry, he said, we will always be committed heart and soul to
culture.
The next thing I remember are the curses of my friend,
the sculptor, when we had left the show. Why do I tell you this story? As a reaction
to the threatening committment of many contemporaries to culture there is a
renaissance of the word art and its implications of serious artistic work among
artists, even if the results that they aim at should be purely entertaining. In
many cases the individual artist experiences the economical dogma that artistic
goods and services must be treated in the same way as tooth-pastes and train
services not so much through his/her involvement in associations and networks,
but by experiencing the packaging material of his/her own artistic aspiration.
Endless commercialization is definitely a cultural phenomenon, but not
necessarily an artistic one.
On the board of the European Council of Artists we
recently had a characteristic debate concerning the draft of the EU directive
“Television without frontiers”. The two positions were represented by the
Spanish actor Jorge Bosso and the Icelandic actress Tinna Gunnlaugsdottir, both
chairpersons of their national associations. Mrs. Gunnlaugsdottir commented on
the wording of the proposed ECA statement in the following way:
“In Jorge Bosso's proposal
on TELEVISION WITHOUT FRONTIERS I find the comment on the use of
commercial breaks in the broadcasting of feature films or of films made for
television too weak. The term "significantly limit" is not
sufficient.
In article 11.1 in the current EU TV-Directive it is stated as a principle rule
that advertisements shall be inserted between programmes. However the
effect of this very clear regulation is undermined by the paragraph, which says
that; under certain conditions advertisement interruptions are permitted
during programmes in such a way that the integrity and the value of the
programme and the rights of the rights holders are not prejudiced.
This loop-hole is in
conflict with the moral rights granted to authors in the Berne Convention. The
artistic authors and performers of films shall have the right to have their
work exhibited in the form in which it was originally created, which assures
that the author shall have the right to object to any distortion, mutilation or
other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the work,
which would be prejudicial to his honour or reputation.”
The reason for the difference of opinion between Bosso
and Gunnlaugsdottir, between Spain and Iceland, between the Mediterranean
countries and Scandinavia is founded on the different status of the art and the
artists in the northern and southern parts of Europe. Spanish film directors and
actors fear that laws protecting the integrity of artistic programmes on TV
would result in the disappearance of the artistic film on Spanish screens,
whereas Icelandic film directors and actors, whose work is broadcast without
commercial breaks, fear that insufficient protection would result in the severe
damage of a work of art on TV.
Commercial breaks in artistic films on TV, fake sheiks
dancing around metal sculptures in the artificial smoke are cultural phenomena,
but they affect the single work of art and its presentation in a way that many artists
ask themselves and e.g. me, whether too much solidarity within cultural
networks that – per definition – must go beyond the scope of art and artists
could result in an indirect acknowledgement of the perception that we create
and perform in a cultural and economical environment entitled to use the work
of art as a kind of raw material for all kinds of purposes.
At all events international organizations and networks
like ECA or the INCD must investigate best practices and avoid reducing their
positions to a minimal common denominator.
In summary one can say that the renaissance of the
term art in clear distinction from culture as such is not caused by a new
élitism of the artists, by a return of the genius and his/her aura, but by the
impending danger that all results of artistic ambition will be swallowed as
ingredients of a sauce labelled culture. The dialogue between the work of art
and an audience tends to be more and more replaced by the monologue of
marketing strategies selling art to customers, if necessary with no
consideration for the integrity of the artistic product.
Conclusions
I tried to give you an outline of considerations
within the European artistic community consisting of very diverse individuals
concerning definitions and roles of the artist in the society of this new
century. I talked about artists’ associations, I mentioned the problems of
involvement and how to keep pace with the dynamic developments of globalization
and European integration. I reflected on the new instrument for cultural
diversity as defined by the European Commission and raised some questions
related to the consequences for the work of the INCD that I had been asked by
artists back home. And I wanted to describe some reservations of many artists
about the absorption of specific demands and positions of the artists in
general cultural discourses. I referred to the very different traditions of the
status of the artist and the work of art within Europe that make it so
difficult for international organizations like the European Council of Artists
to elaborate positions that can be approved by all members.
There are not a lot of clear proposals I can convey,
but let me close my speech with this quote from an ECA position paper released
for the occasion of this conference: “Only an instrument on cultural diversity
that includes the economical side of the problem can find the support of the
European Council of Artists.” A new international instrument on cultural
diversity without prejudice to the international legal framework of trade
relations is not the second best solution, but a serious set-back for our
movement. Everything must be done to avoid that.