Yet more compelling and inspiring words from Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation during his recent talk at TEDxYCC in Calgary. Well worth a watching.
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
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WOW. he highlights almost all the points which have saddened me about my art -classical music. The arts used to be a language, a way to speak about ourselves and our world. Maybe our hearts and souls got punched out after two world wars and after the manslaughter of millions who were so central to the arts community. Practical, real arts practice for kids in schools has been replaced by arts education, abstract and elitist. None of the great composers would recognize themselves put inside this polished container.
For those who want to use the arts as a self or group expression to make themselves clearer to themselves or to others are more free than ever to use the mythical “mirror function” of the arts. It shows the image of what is True held up so that others can see or “breathe it in”, but also allowing the person to stay partially behind the mirror so that she won’t be destroyed by the pain or ecstasy of the process. It’s hard in other ways.
Manipulating technology is easier than the physical arts and doesn’t demand the necessary “10,000 hours” of body labor. Yes, even amateurs need to put in those hours *if* they want to present an art with clear passionate skill.
Technology will pose a problem not only for arts supporters. I do not see anyone hooked, Avatar-like, on sucking up technology/nature as though it were a drug, able to live easily with babies to nurture and parent, the requirements of job, our environment, good health, and all their relationships in the world. It’s not just supporting the arts they won’t get. All the exciting activities of the formal arts he described (not the personal ones) involve bodies in time being with other bodies who listen in time. None of what he says applies to online addicts. It’s for the social and physical world including real arts that everyone is massively starved and longs to share within it again, as we have done over a million years of evolution. So I felt a disconnect between the first part of his speech and the main section. I’ll have to listen again to see if I missed something.
I just saw Mr. Cameron speak this past weekend at the Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium at American University in Washington, D.C. This symposium was a kick-off events of sorts for Arts Advocacy Day, sponsored by Americans for the Arts.
Mr. Cameron’s speech this past weekend caused me to have several “aha” moments. He spoke of many issues related to the future of the arts, many of them depressive and bleak, but he spoke of them in ways I’d never heard and with new unique analogies.
With all the debbie-downer talk, Mr. Cameron was still able to leave us on an up-note. He presented the daunting challenge ahead for future art leaders, but he also said that it is a task we are up to because we are coming from the perspective of a different generation facing new generational issues.
I left speech feeling elated and hopeful about the future of arts in America, mainly because I think a new generation of leaders will bring an attitude towards the arts and arts administration yet to be seen.