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March 08, 2005
Packaging, Zeal and Varieties of Aesthetic ExperiencesIn his wonderful essay, “The Loss of the Creature,” Walker Percy raises the problem of symbolic packaging—he says we must learn how to wrest meaning from experiences that inevitably come to us prepackaged (and therefore lost to us) by our assumptions and expectations.
The smothering of artistic experience via symbolic packaging may be what we are up to when we seek ever-more persuasive arguments for the arts. Doug’s starting question could be restated: “what is the best—most effective or convincing--packaging for arts experiences?” The emerging answer in this discussion is that it may be extrinsic economic and civic benefits for some audiences, and intrinsic cognitive or emotional effects for other audiences, but with problems if we choose one over the other.
What I want to suggest here is that we simply stop wrapping up the arts in any benefits packaging whatsoever. In other words, maybe the packaging is causing the problems. As Adrian argues, it has fostered cultural expansion that ultimately weakens the non-profit sector. As Bill points out, it always makes us come off as missionaries trying to convert the great unwashed. By extrinsic and intrinsic logic, various arts experiences are defined as “good for you”—and by implication “better for you” than other kinds of popular or commercial cultural experiences. This instrumental logic is always insulting to the vast numbers of people who usually choose and enjoy non-art forms.
I want us, instead, to focus on aesthetic experience itself, and to acknowledge how aesthetic experiences are available in all levels and kinds of culture. As John Dewey pointed out long ago, the fine arts aren’t the only routes to aesthetic experiences. If what we want is to broaden and deepen the varieties of aesthetic experience for others, then our concerns should be with enhancing access across groups and styles and hierarchies.
I want us to become willing to call ourselves arts fans or arts enthusiasts, thereby recognizing that our zeal for our chosen forms is akin to the zeal other people have for their non-art forms of engagement. And then it becomes our job to demonstrate to non-arts types what is so delightful, engaging and wonderful about the stuff we love. It’s up to us to share our enthusiasms, rather than to keep offering potential customers an ever-shifting package of imagined benefits.
If we let go of the “benefits packaging” we let go of our role as self-appointed missionaries, and we are out of the business of offering social, civic, cognitive or emotional medicine--or snake oil. Instead, we are sharing our arts zeal with all the passion and energy we can muster. And that allows us to contribute much more honestly and directly to a rich, diverse and respectful cultural mix.
Posted by jjensen at March 8, 2005 11:05 AM
Comments
The effective case for the non-profit arts may not, in the end be made by what we say or even write, but by what we do---our actions toward our communities, and our behavior with our fellow cultural workers.
The latest study about outcomes and impact; the newest forms of audience enrichment; and the neatly packaged “vision 2010” are mere surrogates for one simple step.
To turn to one another and explore a few simple questions together…
1. Why are my ushers poorly informed and inconsiderate?
2. Why do my Board members abdicate the very responsibilities I need so desperately for them to accept?
3. Why do we spend more than we have, and then expect others to endorse the practice by giving even more?
4. How did ‘zany’ enter our vocabulary and creep onto the poster and the self mailer, and why must every drama we do have to ‘explore the human condition?’
5. Why should I expect my staff and artists to stay with the company…and become better and better at what they do… without my appropriating resources for their professional development and training?
6. How does being not-for-profit let me off the hook from being adaptive, nimble, and entrepreneurial?
7. Since when is thinking creatively relegated to the artists, and not an expectation of us all---artists, administrators, and trustees alike?
8. When will the doing of art return as our core purpose, and changing communities, fixing education, and altering the local and national economies be relegated to the periphery---or better yet, be assigned to others who are better equipped?
9. When will we learn that true leadership for the new century is found in the authority we give away, and not in the power we hoard?
10. How might we better understand and move through our internal conflicts together, as shutting everything down seems somehow beneath us both?
Whatever the cause, whatever the worth of that cause---and support for the arts is deemed by most to be worthy---it is action that ultimately persuades the fence sitter. We continually self-sabotage our organizational and field-wide credibility by ignoring these and other, even better, questions.
Posted by: Levi Bandanna at March 8, 2005 01:42 PM
