Archive for maj, 2012

Yesterday Göteborgs Dans & Teater Festival (dance and theater festival) opened in a grand opening at the large Opera house, GöteborgsOperan. Two dance performances were showed; Falter by Johan Inger and Your Passion is Pure You to Me by Stijn Celis. The dance continued in big hall during the break with live music, loosing up the distance between dancers and audience in a wonderful way.

Three speakers introduced; Adophe Binder, Ballet Director at the Göteborg Opera; Thomas Martinsson, Head of Cultural Committee at Municipality of Göteborg; and Gunilla Heilborn, Choreographer. All spoke about the role of a festival like this with local and international guest and with complete focus on the performing arts both for the art scene and for the city of Göteborg.

And Gunilla Heilborn, the last speaker, but her attention to what dance can express in all its quietness.

”When you have a microphone people, artists, tend to think you have to scream in it. But with an amplifier close to your mouth it’s enough to whisper.” Gunilla Heilborn said and whispered the last words. And sometimes you don’t need not speak at all. Just listen to the movement and the quietness, she said in a low voice and officially opened the festival.

In the freshly published anthology Artists and the Arts Industries, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee puts the artistic perspective in centre of the discussion on cultural and creative industries (CCI).

Five people; researchers, independent analysts, professors, and an artist, were asked to contribute a text reflecting on the artistic practice and CCI and the result has become an interesting anthology putting the light on different and perhaps unexpected aspects of the discussion.

Yudhishthir Raj Isar, independent cultural analyst and Professor of Cultural Policy Studies at The American University of Paris, puts a critical view on the whole paradigm with the conclusion that economy is not everything and that it’s necessary to include reflection on cultural economy and non-market forms of cultural activity.

Kate Oakley, writer and political analyst specializing in the fields of culture and creativity (UK), is focussing her text on innovation, which is as she calls it ”not the New, New thing”. The arts have a complex relationship to innovation, being both on one hand avant-garde and cutting-edge, and on the other saver of tradition. Talk of innovation within culture and art needs to be nuanced, reflected, and with a critical perspective.

Angela McRobbie, Professor of Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London, is discussing key concepts of urban development and gentrification in the light of the policy-development of CCI in the UK since middle of 90s and onward, and comparing development in three different cities: Glasgow, Berlin, and London. Her reasoning is around employability, livelihood and how artists and young people within the field will be able to earn a living and sustain life within these fields.

Ylva Gislén, Visiting Professor at Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts and cultural writer, also put a focus on the artistic livelihood and puts this in relation to Hannah Arendt’s reasoning putting a qualitative distinction between different types of human activity in the book The Human Condition; the distinction between labour, work, and action.

Klas Östergren, author with his first book published in 1975, writes an insightful and personal story of his daily work and artistic practice of writing books, his relation to audience, and how he at one point when things were going well decided to write the complete opposite of what the market expected.

Perhaps common for all of these reflections are how pessimistic they are in their views of the role of the artist in CCI. It should be understood in the light of the economic crisis, but it’s more than that. It’s a disappointment. A question shining through is the somewhat disillusioned question of: Who today believes in art as something other than contributing to economic growth, innovation, and job creation?

The anthology can be ordered from The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and is written in both Swedish and English.

Also read related post on work here, here, and here.

Three days of intense working on future ideas, new now, skills, hinder, challenges and mentorship with a group of wonderful creatives in an almost 30 degree warm Belgrade.