Republished from yesterday’s Crikey with permission.
The Australia Council, an organisation in almost constant flux, has again spun the bingo barrel and pulled out a new round of surprises in its funding announcements — this time in the theatre sector. Eleven new companies have been granted triennial funding by the Council’s Theatre Board, while the same number have had their funding axed.
The announcement continues a recent history of wrenching change in the Commonwealth’s arts funding agency. In 2005, then-CEO Jeniffer Bott pushed through an organisation-wide restructure (labelled a “refocussing”) that led to two of the Australia Council’s funding boards being abolished. Out went specific Boards to support new media and digital arts, and community arts. In came some impressive-sounding “community partnerships” and a special department called the “Inter-Arts Agency”.
As respected ANU academic Jennifer Craik has argued in her book Re-Visioning Arts and Cultural Policy the Bott restructure was not really about addressing the major issues facing the Australia Council and its client organisations. Instead, “the restructure was more about bureau politics than policy reform.”
The current upheaval dates back to 2006, when the Australia Council’s Theatre Board announced a sweeping new policy reform called “Make It New”. “Make It New” was a comprehensive look at the Theatre Board’s funding arrangements in an environment where much of the most exciting work was being made by companies who couldn’t get a look in amongst the Board’s established clients. Theatre Board Director John Baylis acknowledged this problem, and sought to reshape the Board’s funding arrangements towards “contemporary performance” and to allow room for new organisations — “artistic explorers” in the Theatre Board’s jargon — to access three-year funding agreements.
Unfortunately, you have to throw out some babies when you change the bathwater. Take Polyglot Puppet Theatre, for instance, which was de-funded despite an apparently successful recent track record. Or Brisbane’s second theatre company, La Boite, which appears to have been punished for some safe programming in recent years. La Boite may or may not be artistically innovative, but it certainly performs a lot of contemporary Australian drama.
The Theatre Board’s John Baylis makes a good point when he argues that space needs to be made for fresh talent to enter the system. But in terms of the Australia Council’s overall operations, which remain dramatically skewed towards the support of the 29 so-called “major” performing arts organisations, there’s more than a little hypocrisy in the “Make It New” crusade. After all, how “contemporary” are the orchestras or opera companies?
The Major Performing Arts Board hasn’t kicked anyone off for decades and only allows new members on “by invitation.” Apparently, that doesn’t matter — the Major Performing Arts Board is a separate fiefdom of the Australia Council, where making it old is still quite acceptable.
The trouble is doing too much with too little money. No-one gets the funding they really need and the whole sector looks like seagulls squabbling over a chip.
Fine, the Theatre Board announcement was accompanied by a big increase in funding. It’s interesting that the Board decided to give a big increase in the average funding grant rather than spread it around more broadly.
I’m glad there’s a big increase in funding, but I’m talking in a more global way i.e. the per capita spend the Oz Council would have as compared to countries like France and Germany. Tremendous twisting and turning of funding decisions ensue. None of them end up making happy reading. And yes, the major opera and ballet companies appear to be untouchable. But, I’m sure they’d argue they don’t get enough money to do their work properly. Then it turns into an argument between old art/new art etc etc. None of which is very useful. But I’m glad Red Stitch got a guernsey.
Yes, it was a good thing to see Red Stitch get up.
In terms of per capita support, it’s worth remembering that a lot of the tax deductions that Australia bestows on arts non-profits also go to the big institutions.
Thanks for the report on the latest rearrangement of chairs at OZCo. I’m a bit annoyed however that the orchestra’s get mentioned in a kind “their so archaic they definitely shouldn’t exist” kind of way. The orchestras are bogged down in a museum role that is reinforced by arts “managers”, bean counters and ABCFM. But when the performers do get their teeth into contemporary work – like the MSO metropolis series stunning things happen. The really import role that orchestras play is providing musical context across hundreds of years right up until today. We should be campaigning to get them to play much, much more contemporary compositions (an not the shallow “lets make the orchestra sound like techno thing”) but really serious, sensuous and mature music for adults. Even if this didn’t happen, everyone should go to an orchestra and hear Beethoven at least once or twice in your life.
Fine – I’m glad there’s a big increase in funding, but I’m talking in a more global way i.e. the per capita spend the Oz Council would have as compared to countries like France and Germany.
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Comparison with European nations like that has limited utility. There’s simply more public support for the Arts there. When you can boast Moliere and Goethe, Rostand and Schiller you’ve got more leverage. We can’t. And those opposing Arts funding will always argue that Moliere and Shakespeare didn’t need funding. And they’d be right. About Shakespeare anyway.
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This looks like a consolidation of the ‘major’ theatre companies. I haven’t looked into it too deeply but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t simply a reward for various culti insiders. This is the trouble with the whole restructure-the-funding mantras that people chant. Essentially the power is invested in bureaucracies which will persist in playing favourites.
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De gustibus non est disputandum. How does one assess the value of this or that theatre company?
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The debate in general could use an injection perhaps from the Old School (Anarchist) Left. Herbert Read’s “The Collective Patron” in his To Hell With Culture come to mind.
Yes, the solid old tax deductible money tends to go to the big institutions. But, have you heard of the Documentary Australia Foundation? This is a mechanism which has been set up to tax deductability statues for some documentaries. And it’s starting to work pretty well now.
Peter Mc – my point was not that orchestras play an archaic repertoire (although it’s true that they don’t support very much new work), but rather that there is an element of hypocrisy in one board of the Australia Council de-funding organisations because they are not contemporary and innovative enough, while the largest share of the funding continues to flow to organisations whose mission is to perform old works.
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I agree, orchestras play an important role in providing access to live performance of classical music. However, the reality is that they serve a relatively narrow, wealthy demographic and do little to support Australian composers.
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Adrien has a good point in that this Theatre Board decision is made by insiders, with considerable input from the Australia Council bureaucracy. I think in this instance they are doing it in good faith, but any system of peer-review is going to provide a different basket of goods than a free market approach to providing cultural products. Of course, cultural markets are probably cursed with more types of market failure than nearly any other, in part because of “superstar economics” and in part because taste is such a contestable value.
Ben E – is it hypocrisy – or confusion? I agree that the decision to remove new media was bad, although people didn’t apply that much to it – mainly because OzCo hasn’t worked out what to do with new technology yet and how to frame it. Can’t say I blame them for this as there is SO much rubbish talked about in relation to new media. Always the focus in the discussions related to this revolves around delevery systems and not content – this was my problem with the recent Not Quite Art series.
By the way given that the music academy is getting the axe I’m not sure that the OzCo decisions are hypocrisy.
As for serving a wealthy demographic – its much cheaper to go to the orchestra than a pop concert!
A lot of it’s due to the pervasiveness of idiotic pop culture. This decade (IMHO) has been a cultural catastrophe. Somewhere in the order of 90% of movies, music etc (don’t mention clothes) are manufactured twaddle mimed by brain-dead showroom dummies whose only extraordinary attribute seems to be the lengths they will go to to trade their dignity for space in a gossip magazine. Have any of us ever thought that maybe there’s something wrong with a culture which is able to make the exposed genitalia of a talentless heiress an issue of global conversation?
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But the Underground is enthralled to this. Few weeks back I went to a party populated by Fitzroyalty (f)Arts types I used to know. The conversation was all about so and so being the New Britney Spears!!! There’s a certain lack of vitality to the culture at the minute. Everything seems to be a photocopy of a photocopy. I note with profound ennui bands who’re obviously trying to be the Velvet Underground or the Rolling Stones c. Aftermath but the new Britney Spears?
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WHO THE FUCK CARES!!!!!!
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How exactly is the cultural underground s’posed to generate new and challenging stuff if they’re all into the new Britney Spears? There’s no counter culture anymore. No art for art’s sake. No sense of adventure or challenge or confrontation. From the street to the boardroom culture is something that is pretty much indistinguishable from a can of beans.
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Except that a can of beans has nutritional value.
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There is, however good stuff. But it’s ignored because we’re all idiots with shit for brains and no taste.
Hi Peter
Well, depends on the pop concert I suppose. Certainly the prices for top international artists are pretty pricey. They would be less expensive if ther was a level of government subsidy equivalent to the classical music sector.
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But my point was not so much that classical music is expensive, but rather that, according to the ABS statistics on cultural attendance, relatively few people go to see it, and those that do are better-educated, wealthier, whiter and older than botht he general population and those that attend other types of cultural events.
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Ther may or may not be anything wrong with that. But, to me, it suggests that cultural policy priorities have been captured by a small group of relatively unrepresentative arts companies who base their arguments on the merit of their artform without reference to the full diversity of other artworks.
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Adrien – I care. I love pop music. And some of Britney’s early songs are masterpieces of popular R’n'B.
Wot Ben said. Oh, and is that my Huski parka you’re wearing?
“There’s no counter culture anymore. No art for art’s sake. No sense of adventure or challenge or confrontation.”
Yeah there is. It just doesn’t chart anymore, like it did back in the day.
Ben – And some of Britney’s early songs are masterpieces of popular R’n’B.
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Egad. You want a masterpiece of R and B try this. Hint that lady does more than look pretty and possess a vagina.
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FDB – Yeah there is. It just doesn’t chart anymore
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Given that you guys come to the rescue of Britney bloody Spears you’re making my case for me. I’m not saying she’s particularly bad, it’s just that if the underground is concerned with her and her lineage its not going to be generating any fresh sounds any time soon is it? That said: I wish her loneliness would kill her. And take Paris Hilton down at the same time.
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Sometimes counter-culture bubbles up and becomes mainstream culture for a bit. The 60s are an obvious example, so to the late 70s early 80s and ten years later. But there was always an underground.
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You go underground these days and everyone’s either simply polishing their act in furtherance of a record contract or trying to imitate their favourite retro period. Shite.
“You go underground these days and everyone’s either simply polishing their act in furtherance of a record contract or trying to imitate their favourite retro period”
Perhaps you don’t know where the underground are doing their thing.
The problem is the awful homogenisation and pappiness of Big Fluff, which swallows all regardless of genre, and calls some of it edgy, some of it pop, some of it punk, and basically sells it all to the same demographic. This bloated tick is ripe for the popping, but for now it prevails.
What it leaves is a huge middle-range of serious musicians (both the in-it-for-the-money and the art-for-art’s-sake kinds) who consider themselves underground, merely because they aren’t making any money. That leaves the really experimental stuff genuinely underground. You really got to dig to find it, not show up at some party in Fitzroy and expect to have it handed to you.
Adrien wrote:
Geez Adrien, get a subscription to emusic for starters before you start jumping up and down. It’s not about poo for brains, it’s about being able to sample music quickly and cheaply enough to make you adventurous.
The idea that the physical social scene is distributing the underground is finished old son. It’s gone. It’s on the net, hiding in backwaters on Youtube, not the back rooms of pubs.
(besides which, it’s been true since the 1960s that the greatest band ever in the world broke up five minutes before their first gig and nobody heard them except for a distant wailing from behind a garage door once when they stumbled upon the devils groove, only to never get it back).
Come to one of my parties and you’ll get this on repeat, with the occasional one of these thrown in.
Now that’s some underground shit.
Adrien, first I defended Britney, now I’ll defend the underground.
All of the reports I’ve read at this year’s CMJ Music Marathon have said that School of Seven Bells ripped it up. Anyone who liked Lush in the 90s or M83 now will, I suggest, love this act:
http://www.myspace.com/schoolofsevenbells
Ben and FDB – Good points chaps.
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Like the banter. Tis class.
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Sorry but I’m being provocational. And I don’t expect stuff to be handed to me. And Fitzroy no longer a bohemian neighborhood. Brunswick’s the new Fitzroy. With culture you dig for gold and try and dodge the shit that rains down on you.
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At the minute I ain’t interested in any music that happed after 1960. Or even 1860. But I did like Lush in the ’90s and I look forward to a time in the future where the times fill your eyes.
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But still when I interviewed the French actor Pascal Greggory years ago he said something that’s always stuck: If you want to be an artist, it’s not enough to want to write, to paint, to make a movie: you must be angry! I don’t think you need to be angry but passionate somehow – yes. And I don’t feel that.
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I’m looking for a vehicle, I’m looking for a ride
I’m looking for a party, I’m looking for a side
I’m looking for the treason that I knew in ’65
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Or ’89 anyway.
Used to be underground. Then went mainstream and then shite.
Ben E
so you do want the orchestras to die! I looked at Jennifer Craik’s text, but I have to say its a bit narrow minded. Almost every second paragraph bangs on about “elite arts” with no other characterisation (that I could see at least). Neither does she seem to have real understanding of what would happen if we removed these so called elite organisations from the cultural landscape. It smells a bit to much like right wing social Darwinism for my liking (at least when it comes to the arts).
Look I’m sure you have given your ideas much though and I don’t want to insult you but this is to serious for niceties. What you are proposing is naive and destructive. If we remove support for professional orchestras (as opposed to amateur – a distinction neither Craik, Marcus Westbury or yourself never seem to discuss) we loose a base of skills, training, theory, maturity and artisty that has taken many generations to build up. You really can’t understand how much damage you would do unless you spent many years and in many different aspects of the profession in music (I don’t want this to sound “you don’t know what your taking about so shut up” – but its true). At the heart of music practice is a body of work and ideas that span and is actually linked, person to person, across hundreds of years. The skills and knowledge that have been amassed take great dedication, years of training, practice and sacrifice (often very significant sacrifice).
What I am concerned about is the lack of inclusiveness in the kinds of arguments that I hear people like yourself making. Just because you happen to like, what you claim, is what everybody else likes, you are prepared to destroy a cultural system that is the most inclusive in musical practice we have. Orchestral traditions include ideas and practice from almost all areas of musical practice that I know of. Composers across the centuries have constantly brought in new ideas and ways of working. As an example in the last few decades we have had musical ideas from, but not limited to, Japan, China, Africa, Indonesia and not just the imperialistic postcard music that is world music (pop music with ethnic instruments) but a respectful synthesis. An example of what I’m talking about that many would know, but in another field, is Rolf de Heer’s magnificent film Ten Canoes. If you really like, dance music, digital cross media fusion, bands or whatever it is, you should, if you want to help art flourish, promote a link with these things and orchestral music. Why? Because the so called “new” forms will have a much wider perspective and they will be much richer for it. The musical world I’m talking about here has existed across all manner of social structures and still exists today. The current popular trend in music making today is fine if that’s what you want (although I worried about how limited peoples knowledge of music has become) but it won’t last. If we maintain a ongoing practice like the orchestras (which is where musical skills and theory converge), we can keep that wealth of ideas alive and give new ones context and help all music develop.
And what would you have instead? A permanently amateur musical practice that is dominated by the need to be popular. I see the results of this thinking diminishing art practice. There is really interesting vibrant practice going on in the broader community, like computer music for example. Its modern day folk music. The problem is that mostly it is unconsciously driven by the youth culture aesthetics, like “you don’t need training just get out and feel”. Oh and you have to claim that its new even when 99% clearly isn’t. How “new” can millions of bands around the planet, all with the same instrumentation and set of 20 chords or so, be. The format is even more restricted in electronic dance music. This aside, there is some wonderful stuff going on, but as Kim Cascone said a few years ago, we are living in a eternal now. The youth culture aesthetic means that people are constantly starting from an artistic ground zero. We need a resource that can give us the wider perspective. It is often the case that those that have had training can and do make some very interesting stuff but you don’t hear about it. You can make great DnB by studying Bartok or Stravinsky. Likewise, I’ve noticed that jazz pianists are starting to realise that they can learn a lot from Messiaen. The breath of exposure to musical ideas that I see younger people getting is for me really concerning. They actually can’t hear, often times, really basic musical structures anymore whereas once they did (this is more than opinion by the way). Why? Because they have been brought up on a diet of music that is constrained to the song form (a great and wonderful form of music but inherently limited because it serves the needs of lyrics first and musical invention second). People now commonly refer to any kind of music as a song and are actually unable to hear, let alone appreciate, ideas that fall outside of this framework. We desprieately need programs in schools that give children a diverse exposure to music instead of stuff like the tacky rock eistedford thing. Anyway the best way to kill rock in my view is to make it a part of school.
There is music, that is being written today, for adults (not constrained by the limits of youth culture) that is powerful, deep and informed by the kind of perspective that I was talking about. This music can teach you about the world and yourself. Take the recent performance by the Schoenburg ensemble – a sophisticated and poetic review is given by Alison Croggon. I have heard and played music from around the world, across many cultures and times (from punk to Central Australian tribal singing), and their performance of Jan van de Putte’s recent work Umo Só Divina Linha was one of the best experiences I’ve had. I actually had real shivers down my spine and I learnt something about sound that I didn’t know before. I’m the first to criticise the Australian orchestras because they are stuck playing bums on seats music when they should be concentrating on much more new work (like the Schoenburg ensemble). They have been in a siege state for a while now and this only makes the situation worse. People like yourself aren’t helping. What we should look at is how we can fix this rather than the dismissive attacks that seem to be happening at present.
Peter, I haven’t had a chance to reply to your post yet, but it’s a long and thoughtful one.
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No, I don’t want orchestras to die. But there’s no doubt that classical music receives a preferential slice of the funding pie. That’s just a fact. Let me try and answer some of your assertions one by one.
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Let’s take the argument “you can’t understand classical music unless you’ve spent a life-time working in it.” It’s true, I’m not, as they say, “classically trained.” I’ve been working in electronic music for only about the last 7 years, and have released three albums, so yeah, I don’t have a first-person stake in the continued state support of professional orchestras and operas. But does this mean I can’t understand classical music? To take this line would mean a radical narrowing of the audience base for classical music, most of whom are similarly not professional engaged in the artform (let’s posit that a large number simply turn up and buy tickets, for instance).
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Your second assertion is that professional classical musicians represent “a body of work and ideas that span and is actually linked, person to person, across hundreds of years.” I agree. But so what? There are plenty of arts that share that distinction – take sculpture, or ceramics for instance. The Australia Council does not pay large bodies of professional plastic artists. It doesn’t pay large numbers of professional musicians in non-Western classical music. So while I’m completely prepared to agree that classical music has great merit, what people like me and Marcus are pointing out is the current system places the merits of a certain number of artforms above nearly every other artform, at least in terms of funding priorities. That’s a form of elitism, as well as a form of artistic prejudice. I think you seem to share this prejudice (with a few generational prejudices thrown in)- as your comments about electronic music suggest.
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Thirdly, your point about the inclusiveness of classical music as an artform. This I simply can’t agree with. I’m currently undertaking a quantitative analysis of the repertoire of Australian operas and orchestras for my PhD studies, and it’s narrow. It’s historically narrow, spanning a period roughly from 1600-1900, and it’s geographically narrow, being drawn almost exclusively from a relatively small number of European countries. You seem to tacitly acknowledge this point later in your post.
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Finally, it’s worth discussing the amateur/professional divide. I think you make a couple of category errors here. The first is to argue that non-classical musicians are mainly non-professionals, and that this is a bad thing. This is only partly true – nearly all artists are non-professionals, in the sense of not gaining their primary source of income from their artistic pursuits. But there are more professional musicians working in popular artforms than in classical artforms.
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Secondly, what’s wrong with amateur and folk art? Is being a non-professional really that bad? Many famous artists maintained day jobs or created their work in their spare time – do we decry Jane Austen today because she wasn’t a “professional writer”? (her books sold poorly in her lifetime and she was supported by her family throughout).
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Finally – the argument that orchestras are under siege so need support, not “dismissive attacks.” Well, people like myself have very little influence. If orchestras can’t survive some well-meaning policy scrutiny, they truly are in big trouble. If you think people like myself and Marcus are dismissive, go and attend some noise or experimental music events like Liquid Architecture and ask their audiences what they think of the orchestras. You’ll find plenty of musicians who despise the current orchestra system, its hierarchies and prejudices, narrow repertoires, ageing audiences and archaic industrial relations practices.
Interesting Ben. The politics of it tho’ might be worth considering. Arts funding is granted in a bipartisan fashion partially because of the Toff Arts. The Tories know they couldn’t fall asleep a the Opera without the funding of same.
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For myself, whatever these hierarchies you speak of are, I think classical music has a certain unparalleled sophistication and beauty. I’m not saying it’s better than, say, Jazz, But it’s special. Considering the number of Asian virtuosi that’ve emerged I, likewise, don’t think it’s a European art form anymore. Your assertions of narrowness btw would apply even more to the avant-garde than they would to classical music.
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And there’s a false dichotomy (imho) at play. It’s entirely possible to love Beethoven, Bessie Smith, Ligeti, Run-DMC and the Rolling Stones as well. I do.
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It’s just that producing the skills to put on Fidelio takes more time and effort than playing Gimme Shelter or Walk This Way.
Adrien – I want to stress that I’m actually not arguing against the merits of classical music (though I am observing that there are a lot of management problems at many of our operas and orchestras). I’m arguing for the merits of everything else.
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Let me put it this way: as Marcus Westbury has observed, the federal funding pool for music in Australia is around $55 million. Of this, just under $50 million goes to the operas and orchestras, while every other form of music has to compete for approx. $4.8 million.
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As Marcus writes:
I totally agree with you that there is often a false dichotomy presented in discussions of arts and cultural policy (as in so many areas of policy). We need not attack the merits of orchestral music to point out that the current policy arrangements are radically skewed in their favour.
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In terms of the narrowness of classical music, it depends how you measure it. If you measure it against avant-garde electronica, sure, it’s comparitively rich and broad . If you measure it against the musical treasures of the world throughout millennia, it’s narrow.
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The problem becomes, when people like myself or Marcus make these arguments, we are often accused of being ignorant – just as Peter has argued in this thread. This is disingenuous, I argue. If you look at the programs of festivals Marcus has curated, they are actually extremely diverse.
“We need not attack the merits of orchestral music to point out that the current policy arrangements are radically skewed in their favour.”
Ah, but there’s the rub. When you make those criticisms of funding, the return-fire argument is that orchestral music is inherently more meritorious (with the built-in assumption that anyone who disagrees is musically ignorant). This basically forces someone like me go floor-jaw for a split second, then send a volley back.
You’re right of course, that the simple arithmetic of the matter should be sufficient to give pause. But unfortunately it ain’t.
Ben – In terms of the narrowness of classical music, it depends how you measure it. If you measure it against avant-garde electronica, sure, it’s comparitively rich and broad . If you measure it against the musical treasures of the world throughout millennia, it’s narrow.
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Compared to this last indice of breadth everything’s narrow
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I have no idea but I’d suppose that the Classical music scene, populated as it would be by aspirants to Bourgeois elegance, would probably consist of the self same charcaters that run the charity racket. I’d be most surprised if this wasn’t the case. The underground art scene runs a bohemian racket – why should we have all the fun. Ample necks encased in pearls and club ties enjoy swilling publically funded plonk as much as the rest of us.
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The problem of the Arts has to do with the market economy and the system of public patronage that’s sprung up to support artists whose craft is too esoteric to sustain itself commercially. Classical music, for obvious reasons, could well be argued to fall into that category. Other kinds of music could as well.
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You mention avant-garde electronica, for example. But what occurs to me is that electronica requires a much smaller investment in time acquiring the skills, in equipment, in performance than an opera; a certain argument could be made that the classical music scene eats most of the funding because it costs more to produce.
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Other arguments that follow would rest on the status of classical music: its importance to cultural history. It’s narrowness notwithstanding, it’s Eurocentricy likewise, it has a certain status worldwide. there’s a reason for this. Nothing stimulates the higher lobes more than a Mozart symphony. That said of course a lot of this poncy orchestral stuff is, well, shite.
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Still classical music has no entitlement to this status. It maintains it so long as it maintains it. And it’s right and proper that it should be questioned and often.
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I think the question of public patronage involves finally all sorts of imperfections. The culture generally, this cannot be avoided, ultimately values things that make money. The counter-culture, and this can be avoided, questions this, ridicules it even. I have sympathies. However when one depends on public patronage, when its very existence is a matter of constant criticism (and this is perfectly legitimate) then certain distortions and compromises are in order.
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One such is that the Cultural ‘right’ (corresponding not exactly to the political Right) needs must be broken off some. Naturally you’d say: “Sure. But 97%?!”
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And a very good point. Still there are classically trained musicians who struggle. Many don’t of course, and I imagine some of the divide is due to ‘court favour’ as it were. This kind of nepotism is a feature of the Arts generally – sadly. I think those who talk of restructuring the funding so often quite often fight windmills. My personal point of view is that I’d rather just avoid the government arts bureaucracies altogether. They are crammed with the terminally middle-brow under the frustrating delusion that they’re possessed of remarkable taste and sensistivity.
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Ultimately they’re simply of a type. The corporate sector are of another, altogther more bland type, perhaps a new way is in order. This new way will not be forged so long as artists, musicians and the like rely on official sanction to take the first step.
“rely on official sanction”
Poppycock. Nobody’s relying on funding but those who are actually getting it. The subsistence of the old is being given precedence over the vibrancy of the new. The argument need hardly be made that this represents a major departure from the stated goals of public support for the arts. Only one of which (and I’d argue a marginal one) should be preservation.
The subsistence of the old is being given precedence over the vibrancy of the new.
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Really?
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Sure if we’re talking about music. But cinema in Australia way outstrips music in terms of funding. Yet it’s a commercial medium that has a market. Why should we support it with our taxes?
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Likewise some kind of electronica. Man the world is flooded with boutique labels and undergrounds to the underground under the ground of this stuff. Someone’d say well if you can’t find a market you must be shite.
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Back and forth, back and forth.
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The support of public patronage relies on a certain base many of whom are motivated by the need to ensure that the classical music scene persists. A certain steady minority dig it the most. As someone who likes Schubert and Kraftwerk I ain’t taking sides. I’m just saying there’s a political reality. There’s an economic one as well. If I write music electronically I can do it cheap on my computer. If I’m putting on Carmen that’s another matter.
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But the official sanction riff ain’t poppycock old son. It’s a malaise that drags this country’s artists down. I’m not talking about the funding of opera. I’m talking about a pervasive mentality across the board.
Adrien – I think your point about cinema is a really interesting one. Cinema policy in this country is increasingly dominated by an “instrumentalist” or “creative industries” policy perspective. It’s not framed around artistic perspectives but rather a form of industry policy. In many ways it is really no different to agricultural subsidies or hand-outs for the domestic auto industry.
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One statistic recently published in the AFR bears this out: in the 20 year history of the Film Finance Corporation (the FFC), which was specifically set up as a commercial co-investor for (hopefully) profitable films, the FFC invested around $2 billion and made back about $200 million – a Return On Investment of around 0.1. Which, to me, demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of government attempts to run creative subsidies on a for-profit model. Now, clearly some films do make money and some Hollywood studios so make profits, occasionally, in a good year, etc etc.
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I’m intrigued by the possibility that by abandoning the current “industry” approach to film subsidies, we might actually have produced more original, stimulating and perhaps profitable films than the current approach has yielded.
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One aspect of film policy that this immediately suggests is copyright. Is it right that films that are in some cases 90% publicly funded should remain locked up in copyright restrictions for 70+ years? (The same goes for ABC productions, obviously). If the taxpayers is essentially paying for these works, shouldn’t they placed into the public domain so the public can access them freely? Nick Gruen has already done some important work in this area.
Ben Eltham, you might want to look at the new Screen Australia guidelines, which are out for comment. They’re signal a huge change in the industry and, I’d argue, an even more corporatist worldview.
As for the copyright provisions, I see your point, but it’s also important to note that filmmakers make their money as copyright holders as well. Often ABC or SBS doesn’t hold any copyright in a program and just pay a license fee to screen it.
Hi Fine, thanks for the tip. I was hoping you’d have some comment on this stuff. Perhaps it’s time for a guest post by yourself on film policy?
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You’re right about the licensing issue. Of course, it’s a complex egg to unscramble. Still it’s a shame when legitimate documentary makers are being charged prohibitive rates for access to ABC archives for 40-year old ABC news footage – as Media Watch recently detailed
Further reading on the prejudices of classical musicians: here is a terrific article by Mark-Anthony Turnage in The Guardian on Why so few classical musicians take jazz seriously
“Why so few classical musicians take jazz seriously”
Lemme guess: because they can’t play it?
There was a really good position paper on the state of jazz in Australia and cultural policy released earlier this year – haven’t time to search it out right now, but I meant to write something about it at the time – I think from memory it was released at the same time as the Henson debacle, and the cultural policy debate got kinda swamped/pushed aside.
Ben, I think it’s much better if someone a bit more disinterested such as yourself write something. Basically, Screen Oz are pulling out of any responsibility to develop the industry and are outsourcing it to ‘experienced producers’. There’s a great response to this on the Screen Oz website by Richard Lowenstein in which he illustrates how his career would have been stuffed with such a policy. Whatever anyone’s opinion of it, it’s a major change and deserves a great deal of scrutiny.
Fine, have you got a link for that post? I couldn’t find it …
Ben,
here’s the link to Richard’s submission.
http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/new_directions/DPG/DPG_081103.asp
I should add, just scroll down to the bottom of that page and you’ll find it as a Word file. The new draft guidelines can be found on Screen Oz’s homepage.
FDB – Lemme guess: because they can’t play it?
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Ha ha ha. A jazz virtuoso can beat the shit out of a classical one any day of the week.
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Ben – the FFC invested around $2 billion and made back about $200 million – a Return On Investment of around 0.1. Which, to me, demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of government attempts to run creative subsidies on a for-profit model.
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I think the current set up is the proverbial worst of both worlds option that seems to be in vogue currently in government and corporate worlds.
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One the one hand it’s supposed to be ‘for profit’ – an entertainment industry. On the other hand the approval for films scripts and production appears to be the very clique-based rubber stamp by cultural apparatchnik stuff you’d get in the Germand Democratic Republic.
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Add to that the fact that, unlike a Hollywood studio, the people who approve unprofitable films do not face any penalty. The same names drift around no matter how sloppy or inept they are. They’re entrenched in the system. In a Hollywood studio they’re out on their arse if they slip up.
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Not that I’m suggesting Oz film emulates the studios.
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But if you’ve got a publicly funded film industry which is tailored to profit but where those selecting the projects are not subject to the fortunes of merchants you get mediocre schlock. We combine some vague notion of crowd-pleasing with the slow malaise of bureaucracy. What passes for industry press in this country is tied in with funding bodies so they refuse to criticize with any gusto the obvious.
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Add to that that those who do criticize public funding tend to remain silent on anti-competative practice in the private sector.
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My views on the subject were expressed a while back.
Speaking of jazz and things jazzy, there’s a new publication out that proves to be interesting. I hope to see a bit of my fiction in it some time next year.
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But don’t let that put you off.
Adrien, thanks for the heads-upon ‘extempore’. John Clare, wow. That’s one cool dude, a deliciously good writer as well as a serious hunk. I haven’t read his work or heard of him for yonks. What a waste.
Adrien, you’re by far the most lively, wide-ranging, thought-provoking writer on this blog, omitting negatives.
Adrien – while there is an element of the revolving door and hieracrhical power structures you talk about, it’s not all like that. You might be interested in the various manifestos of Richard Wolstonecraft at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival for a different take on Australian film.
I’m afraid Richard Wolstonecraft lost me a few years ago when he decided to hitch his star to David Irving and brought out a manifesto in praise of fascism.
Ah I remember, that was ill-considered
I would be really very grateful for a few clues about the jazz policy paper Mark mentioned a while back, if anyone knows where it can be found (I’ve had a bit of a search but not apparently in the right places.)
And I know it was a throwaway line, but this comment of Ben’s: ‘do we decry Jane Austen today because she wasn’t a “professional writer”? ‘ – Ben, she certainly was a professional writer! She made deliberate commercial decisions about her career, she invested her own money in her publications, and she was delighted when she profited from her novels. Part of the attraction of writing for her was that it was possible for a gentlewoman to make money from it. She didn’t earn enough to live independently on, but this would have changed if she’d lived past the age of forty-two.
Ben, I’d use rather stronger language that ill-considered.
Laura – I’m not an Austen expert, and I certainly don’t want to attack Austen’s commitment to her craft. However she wasn’t as well-off as the truly profitable writers of her era, like say Victor Hugo.
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My point was made in response to Peter’s remark about professionalism in classical music. I was using Austen as an example in trying to distinguish between the orchestral model of salaried musicians in a state-funded company, and the more typical model that most artists work within, which is much more uncertain, entrepreneurial, and (to use a term that Prof. Garnaut has been making much of) “trade exposed.” Far from attacking Austen’s professionalism, I was trying to point out that great art can emerge from artists living in circumstances where they are not able to primarily support themselves from the proceeds of their art. Indeed, it is very common.
Laura, no probs. I’ve dug it out. It’s Peter Rechniewski’s The Permanent Underground: Australian Contemporary Jazz in the New Millennium. It’s one of the essays published in the Currency House Platform Papers series. I’m not sure if it’d still be available in bookshops, but it can be ordered over the web from here for $13.95:
http://www.currencyhouse.org.au/pages/pp_issue_16.html
Ben, perhaps it’s the use of the word ‘amateur’ and ‘non-professional’ that muddies the water here. As you’ve said, it’s common in Australia for art not to be the main money earner for artists. Thank god for teaching gigs, which is one of the more common ways of making a living. The divide between amateur and professional is more to do with where someone puts the bulk of their time, energy and commitment.
One topical example is Christos Tsiolkas whose lastest novel has just been published by Allen and Unwin. Yet, he still works as a veterinary nurse.
Great Mark, thanks.
No probs, Laura – hope you find it valuable.
Jinmaro – Adrien, you’re by far the most lively, wide-ranging, thought-provoking writer on this blog, omitting negatives.
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Gee thanks. Seriously.
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Ben – You might be interested in the various manifestos of Richard Wolstonecraft at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival for a different take on Australian film.
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Funny you should say that. I was reading one of his manifestos a few weeks back and thought “‘S my kinda guy.”. Especially like the bit where he says he’s the evil anti-Philip Adams.
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I’ve long thought his idea about cheap funding for genre films was a goer. I’ve said it often enough – Australia needs its own Roger Corman. I guess the difference is that he’s advocating a change in funding priorities and I’m looking to the private sector. It’s not a substantial disagreement. I think the private sector’s part of the problem Oz business is famously myopic and timid. If one only remembers that the inventors of sampling/sequencing technology were Australian and couldn’t get local backing private or public that says heaps about our lack of entrepreneurial spirit.
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At the end of the day I don’t think we can wait for the governmentality of this country to change, likewise the big end of town. The shift will have to come from artists themselves.
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He’s wrong about being the evil anti-Philip Adams tho’, I’m the evil anti-Philip Adams.
Laura – Ben, she certainly was a professional writer! She made deliberate commercial decisions about her career, she invested her own money in her publications, and she was delighted when she profited from her novels.
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There’s a tendency to think of writing a career and to judge writers as being legitimately such if they make money. There’s an older and (I think) more valuable was of conceiving this: writing is a vocation. If one takes the career criteria then Emily Dickinson, who barely even published in her lifetime, is an ‘amateur’ and Tom Clancy is a real writer.
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If you think this then you’re a dickhead.
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Tom Clancy writes the longest advertising copy ever. His clients are the US military recruitment departments, arm dealers and Lockheed. Emily Dickinson is a canonical genius. As for Ms Austen – hah! Along with Shakespeare she’s probably the single most influential writer in the language.
Dear Ben
firstly thankyou for taking my points seriously and dedicating time to addressing them. I’m not accusing you or Marcus or anyone else of ignorance. What I was saying was that the arguments that I have been hearing are exclusive rather than inclusive. Marcus often did this in the recent Not Quiet Art series. I have no problem at all with investigating trends in electronic arts (I’m involved in this myself) but to go on to say that these things are a replacement for such things as orchestras is what I have a problem with. The simplistic old/new dichotomy is easy to trot out but what substance does it really have? I did say that many people do not seem to realise what would happen to musical practice if we don’t have orchestras and this from a professional perspective is true. Large chucks of musical practice would not be possible without them. You choose to represent as me saying “you can’t understand classical music unless you’ve spent a life-time working in it” this was not my point at all. I’m not pretending to know what people “understand” about any music, I am saying that we need to focus on improving what orchestras currently do.
I do think its time that people stopped this “us” and “them” mentality. For example you posted:
“Further reading on the prejudices of classical musicians: here is a terrific article by Mark-Anthony Turnage in The Guardian on Why so few classical musicians take jazz seriously”
A multitude of counter claims could be made here just as easily. The point is to try to avoid these divides. Yes funding for orchestras is expensive. Can you run them without it? No. If you don’t want them to be funded then you want them to disappear. If thats what you want be honest about it instead of insinuating that what they do is worthless or narrow.
I really should sleep so I won’t answer your arguments point by point but the key issue is not that I’m saying that everyone into pop music forms are ignorant but rather that the general exposure to a range of musical ideas is very limited at present and without without orchestras even more so. For example, how many people who read this blog know that the oldest form of continuous musical practice on the planet is probably, in this coming decade, about to disappear all together? I’m referring to Central Australian tribal singing. What people hear generally is pop music made by Aboriginal people and this is the general level of representation given to Aboriginal music via the kind of pop music dissemination channels. This is not a value judgment, I’m talking about the range and extent of perspective that is available. We can of course say that the “songs” (which is a european concept) are recorded and therefore not lost. But this is like pinning butterflies in a display board. The knowledge and history the songs contain carry layers that can only be transmitted person to person. Similarly, orchestral music contains knowledge that is gone if we don’t practice it. What I do say is ignorant is destroying this music without knowing about it, at a deep level. Don’t bulldoze the rainforest until you know whats in it and what you might loose.
FDB
“Ah, but there’s the rub. When you make those criticisms of funding, the return-fire argument is that orchestral music is inherently more meritorious (with the built-in assumption that anyone who disagrees is musically ignorant)…”
This is not the point at all! Its not about merit but diversity. What I find really frustrating is that classical musicians actually know pop stuff (and often play it for money and/or fun) but get painted as stuck up biased prigs. Where is the evidence that the pop music world actually knows about Bartok or Cage or Ligeti or Lutoslawki? If you want to practice folk music (without reference to a broader world or time) then fine. You shouldn’t have to go to university to play spontaneous guitar band music – and please don’t study it, do it. But if you want to have a go at classical music please learn about it first.
Peter – a terrific point about central Australian traditional music. Ther is a need to move beyond the “us” and “them” divide. As I have said repeatedly, I don’t want to defund the orchestras. I do want to see a more diverse, inclusive and coherent funding system. By the way, is it necessarily true that the orchestras would fold without funding? Some perhaps, but certainly not all. ACO, for instance, I believe would be quite profitable in its own right.
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And orchestral music is a different thing to practising orchestras. There are cities all over Australia that don’t have practising orchestras, yet are still full of classically trained musicians. It’s like saying a city without a professional sports team will lose touch with that sport. Sure, you may not be able to aspire to play at he highest level, but you will still be able to play and enjoy classical music.
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Her’s the nub of the argument we often hear about orchestral funding: “If you don’t want them to be funded then you want them to disappear.” I don’t think it’s as simple as this.
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Does tremendous expense justify tremendous funding? I argue it doesn’t. On this argument we should only fund the most ambitious, expensive, wildly un-commercial artforms …. which is not so far from the current paradigm. Plenty of artforms are expensive, but unfunded (regional arts) or commercially viable, but well-funded (commercial TV production). What I’m arguing for a coherent funding model across the Australia Council that doesn’t automatically validate classical music as somehow 9 times more worthy of support than every other form of music.
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Oh, and the ignorance argument. Sure, classical musicians know about pop. Likewise, pop musicians know about classical music. Surely this kind of argument about which form of art is more worthy is the cause of the current funding imbalance in the first place. Or do we need to go back to F.R. Leavis’ canon and the University of Chicago’s list of Great Books?
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Finally – the rainforest metaphor. I think this is a good illustration of the problem actually. Rainforest = classical, pop = desert? Ask an arid-zone ecologist if they think the desert is somehow less worthy of research funding than the rainforest.
“If you want to practice folk music (without reference to a broader world or time) then fine. You shouldn’t have to go to university to play spontaneous guitar band music – and please don’t study it, do it. But if you want to have a go at classical music please learn about it first.”
I got the disturbing feeling as these sentences progressed that ‘you’ started out referring to ‘one’, then progressed to referring to me. I know a fair bit about lots of forms of music actually, and feel quite comfortable on the ground I’m on in this conversation. Which by the way, is not at all intended as ‘having a go’ at any form of music.
Nor in fact the practitioners of any form of music. I’m good mates with a few classically trained musicians, a couple of conductors and classical music producers. I managed, by merely humming it, to get Jive Talkin’ by the Bee Gees stuck in one colleague’s head as he prepared his lecture on Shoenberg & Webern. And he thanked me.
What bugs me is the attitude of certain sneering soi-disant music afficionados, whose routine decrying of anything with a backbeat – anything in fact that young or poor people like – results in me responding with a knee-jerk of my own. I suspect such people don’t really like classical music as much as they think they should, and resent the visceral pleasure rock/pop music gives to those who don’t share their pretentions. Y’know, the “you only like it because it’s easy to understand” argument.
Interesting that you invoke Bartok, by the way. Further from today’s dominant forms of well-funded music you couldn’t possibly get. As you know he was all about the folk music, and “western classical music tradition” be damned.
Where is the evidence that the pop music world actually knows about Bartok or Cage or Ligeti or Lutoslawki?
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There are a lot of hip-hop breakbeats based on composers’ riff. These guys in particular don;t ring a bell in that respect however. Still that’s a good point. Classical music player are a lot less inclined to snobbery than players of other forms. Especially jazz jerks.
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Further from today’s dominant forms of well-funded music you couldn’t possibly get. As you know he was all about the folk music, and “western classical music tradition” be damned.
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I wonder where the idea that Western classical music and folk music are mutually incompatible come from? I’ve always thought they were intertwined at least as far back as Byrd. And in the classical tradition that’s pretty far.
FDB
“What bugs me is the attitude of certain sneering soi-disant music afficionados, whose routine decrying of anything with a backbeat – anything in fact that young or poor people like – results in me responding with a knee-jerk of my own. I suspect such people don’t really like classical music as much as they think they should, and resent the visceral pleasure rock/pop music gives to those who don’t share their pretentions. Y’know, the “you only like it because it’s easy to understand” argument.”
I agree, its a phony attitude and it is exactly what get me too. Sorry I didn’t mean to sound like I was attacking you but there has been a number of comments suggesting that if you take up the defense of the orchestral tradition you are being a snob and I wanted to point out that actually it goes the other way just as often. In fact I think it tends to happen more often because the cultural parameters of pop music don’t require a broad perspective of music and music theory. It more “get a guitar and go twang, and you’ve got music” to quote Sid Vicious. This is not a criticism of that approach, as I said if the Sex Pistols studied integral serialism at university before writing “Pretty Vacant” it wouldn’t work. The aesthetic is inherently about a narrow vernacular approach, which is what folk music is. The down side here is that the aesthetic tends to encourage ignorant perspectives on areas that fall outside of it. I guess this is why I concerned that the pop inspired culture that Marcus has been promoting has a tendency to need to define itself by saying “we are new, hip and relevant and you are not” as summed up in the song “Roll Over Beethoven”. Its a standard marketing approach, if you want to be current you need to get into this. The underlying emphasis is on youthful revolution and the definition of identity via a group./
Ben
Firstly I thank you for the tone in which you are having this discussion – I think this is valuable. I can’t see orchestras working without funding. Its one thing to play Mozart at a semi-professional level but another thing entirely to play Stravinsky or the kind of music that they should be playing (eg Stockhausen, Berio, Reich etc). The skills base for high quality contemporary orchestral music would be devastated. There could of course be models that are more fluid than the fixed orchestra approach eg: Ensemble Modern in France (which are strongly associated with Boulez and IRCAM), Schoenberg ensemble in Holland or even Bang on a Can in New York. The thing that I really care about here is that highly skilled acoustic performance is funded and is actually contemporary (and the use of this word here I intend to be free of immediate association with youth culture).
I actually suspect that our objectives may not be that different but my initial impetus for leaping into this topic was that this blog (of which I’m a keen reader) focuses so much on pop music and there have been many dismissive (sorry to use this word again) comments about “classical” (a term that is actually incorrect) music. The discussion regarding Professor Walker comes to mind here.
Also pop music is not a desert (you really mangled my metaphor!) but it has removed cultural diversity around the globe. To explain this I would need to write an essay which I can’t do right now but the reason the Arunda and Pitjatjantjara people in central Australia are loosing their traditional musical culture is because all the young people want to play pop (maybe they should but we should recognise what gets lost). This is happening in all kinds of ways in cultures everywhere. Another quick example, where previously there have been a multitude of different tuning systems (with inherently different sounds) now the equal tempered system has taken over so that people can play “world” music. Listen to the old Lomax recording of African American in chain gangs in the 30′s or Son House playing blues for that matter. It has a wildness to the sound. This quality comes in no small measure from the fact that they are not singing or playing equal tempered tuning. Listening to blues performers today singing the old songs I always felt that something was missing until I realised this point.
I think that serious criticism of pop aesthetics and its impact is long over due (and please I’m not lobbing a bomb here, as I have said I would like to criticise the orchestral world also). Why is it that many forms of art have systems for analysis and criticism but the kinds of art that Mr Westbury has been championing
(which he claims is now established) don’t? I sometimes feel like its a sacred cow.
Have to work now….
Interesting chat Peter.
Oddly enough, I’m just waiting for a disk of Lomax field recordings to finish burning before I go and take the second half of today’s class on the roots of Afroamerican music (!), so I’ll come back and comment more substantively later.
In relation to some og the things that I’ve been raising this blog by Squarepusher at the Guardian is interesting.
What bugs me is the attitude of certain sneering soi-disant music afficionados, whose routine decrying of anything with a backbeat
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Eric Hobsbawm’s articles on jazz are good for this. He’s of the generation that were into Ellington and Basie. So he’d remember when jazz was dismissed as jungle music. He also bemoans the fact that Bop’s now the staple measure of jazz. Bop is more musically sophisticated than Swing. However he also declares that Rock is barely music and Hip-Hop ain;t music at all.
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Don’t laugh when we’re 90 we’ll be shaking our fists at the ‘noise’ and reminiscing about the sweet sophisticated times when “Pump Up The Volume” was the in thing. I do shudder a bit when I think of what’ll have to produced to shock people who grew up listening to Eminem.
The act of changing the bathwater is good. But unfortunately, they have to throw out some babies when you change the bathwater.
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Adam
Sunshine Coast
I don’t see the links between ‘multiculturalism’ (which in Australia is a policy position with its origins in state responses to wildcat strikes initiated by migrant workers in the 1970s) and ‘postmodern philosophy’ (by which I assume is meant French ‘poststructuralist’ philosophy.
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I regurgitated a quote well above.
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The essays entitled Multiculturalism, Difference and Postmodernism are a collection of pieces. Some from left-wing technocrats, probably influenced by, but not quoting, Derrida, Foucault et al. Some are from persons concerned with applying postmodern concepts to geography (the eds are geographers). Some are pure theorists. One is a classic liberal.
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That’s useful if only because you can cite it as an example of a ‘lefty’ book that includes right-wing perspectives hence demonstrating the so-called totalitarianism of this sort of discourse is, at least, exaggerated. Here it’s democratic.
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Funnily enough I’ve had conversations where a group will argue vehemently that poststructuralism is not postmodernism or does not apply to Foucault, whatever. One of the theorists in the book, writes:
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This blockhead doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That sentence is a photocopy of a photocopy.
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A much better writer opens the book by acknowledging that, by then (1993), Postmodernism had made its way from a new and widely rejected theoretical movement to a phase of consolidation. Poststructuralist authors, says the writer, have produced ideas which are in general circulation and influence various fields including: ethnography, geography and archeology. Himmlefarb makes the same point from the critical point of view.
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Across the book where the subject is discussed, postmodernism is conceptualized by the notion that culture is dominated by by an epistemological hierarchy that pervades the imagery, discourse and subconscious social techniques of that culture. The movement seeks to expose these wires and challenge their architects. There is a certain denial of the existence of ‘architects’ and yet it is recognized that there are, at least, active agents.
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Multiculturalism is different to postmodernism. It is a policy and a fact of life. The policy usually follows the fact of life. The Right accuses the policy of seeking to render all cultural practices equivalent. This is neither entirely untrue nor entirely fair.
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There are numerous anecdotes of left-liberals particularly in the UK who have trouble pronouncing judgement on other peoples’ cultures no matter how severe or bigoted. I think, in Australia, we’ve avoided these extremes mostly. (But not the accusations). The story of a young woman, feminist, independent, educated, successful who thinks that a culture where she would be married off to some 80-year old rapist at the age of 13 is as good as the one that created her is… well irony doesn’t cut it.
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Postmodernism challenges the idea of hegemony of the one point of view, of the strict roles, of the rule and privilege of White Men. Multiculturalism feeds into this because it’s a policy designed to facilitate inter-ethnic cordiality and to take advantage of the Mosaic’s resources. Melbourne was a very boring place ’til the wogs came here
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Feminism, likewise, links in for obvious reasons and feminist revisionists like Griselda Pollock find postmodernism useful. Theorists of multiculturalism may find it useful. Cultural Studies, which is only partially postmodern, has applied it (unfortunately creating the school of obfuscatory poetics along the way.)
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As the eds of the book say the common thread is difference.