DEMOS

I spoke at a debate for Resonance Fm at the Pumphouse Gallery last night.

Here's a text of what I said.


I’m going to take a bit of a liberty and talk about the arts and culture in general, of which I see contemporary artistic production as being an integral part

I’m also going talk about politics a little more widely too

What I hope to do is give an idea of why I see art and culture as being so important in relation to politics

*****
By and large, this would seem to go against conventional opinion

Artists can often be seen as oppositional, even disruptive figures

The same is the case for other cultural disciplines …

The American writer, Philip Roth said that …

‘Politics is the great generaliser and literature the great particulariser, and not only are they in an inverse relationship to each other, they are in an antagonistic relationship…

‘How can you possibly be an artist and renounce the nuance?  How can you be a politician and allow the nuance?

Well, the relationship between the two is not so clear cut

And there’s one very good and recent example of this…

The film 300 generated an international response very different to the way that its promoters might have intended 

It tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in which the Spartans - the heroes of the film - fought the Persians – in conventional terms, the baddies

Not surprisingly, the depiction in an American film of Persians as a blend of the barbarian and the sybarite aggravated an already tense relationship with Iran …

…And Iranian bloggers and politicians around the world responded angrily

The whole story underlines just how important culture and cultural forms now are. 

More interesting still is the action taken by some protesters who created what is called a ‘Google bomb’

Google aggregates the number of times a given word or phrase is linked to on the Internet

…And you can rig search results, pushing given sites down the list, damaging their business

So, protestors were able to divert searches for ‘300’ away from the film itself, and towards a website that displayed pictures of Iranian objects, heritage and art   

The story of 300 and people’s responses to it demonstrates not only how sensitive culture can be, but also how powerful a force it is, and how people look to cultural forms to manage differences

*****
Like I said, I’m taking a very broad approach to this discussion (and will admit that, for the sake o fitting into 5 minutes, I'm cutting a few corners)

Not least because art can be a very difficult word to define

I’m going to talk about art as a means of expression and a means of articulating opinion

In other words, it’s a form of public discourse … and this is where art and politics come together

At Demos, we see politics in its widest sense …

Put simply, it’s not so much about the headlines on the news, or the debates in Westminster as it is about the public’s concern with how society is managed and how it goes along and how that is enabled and reflected

Of course, specific issues are often discussed or protested about in specific contexts … often, these are artistic or creative

Brian Haw’s protests in Parliament Square are an example … so too is Mark Wallinger’s recreation of them in a totally different space down the road at Millbank

From a very different end of the spectrum, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes on Good Government, in Siena are political too … as is Marc Quinn’s Alison Lapper

Well, politics can encompass all of these things…

That’s because they are all about expressing different outlooks and generating opinion

*****
To think about how art and politics relate, we need to get a picture of what’s going on in politics generally

Recently, there’s been a bit of concern that we aren’t so bothered about politics any more

In the UK, as in most western democracies, we don’t seem to be voting as much as we used

In the 2005 General Election, for example, 2 out of every 5 people decided not to vote for who would govern us for the next 5 years

This has set people worrying … are people really that apathetic?

Brian Haw isn’t … and nor were the millions demonstrating against war in Iraq.

Neither, too, are the many who still wear wristbands, representing their own very individual concerns

These are all individual actions that amount to initiatives in political expression

******
So, how does art fit in?

Well, while the number of us that vote has declined, the numbers of us visiting galleries like Tate Modern has rocketed

Last year, The China Power Station drew vast crowds … which reflects not only an interest an art, but also the booming interest in China – in effect, the image of China was mediated through contemporary art

Also last year, Channel 4 gave people the opportunity to vote for their favourite Turner Prize artist … and they welcomed it

Generally, people are finding more meaning in cultural engagement … in other words, they are seeking to connect it more to their everyday and individual lives

The cultural products and activities that we see, hear, watch and taste are important because they reflect our sense who we are and how we fit in

We go to see a given exhibition because we like the work – and on that level, it’s about personal preference

We eat a given kind of food at a given time because we want to partake in the culture that it represents

Similarly, we listen to a type of music because we like it … and we like the associations that it has and the groups that form around them

We have long known that cultural consumption can operate in these ways

And, by extension, we grasp culture as a means of getting to know what other people are about

****
This is so important right here and right now because several things are coming together all at once

In general, this convergence can be characterised as the changing nature of the way that we approach culture and the arts, and our changing attitude to politics

Within this, however, there are some specifics

The first of these I’ve mentioned: we’re looking for different ways of expressing our opinion … and artforms have for a long time provided this

Banksy is a good example … so too is the National Theatre’s collaboration with La Scala to produce a contemporary slant on Candide, complete with Blair, Berlusconi, Bush and Putin

The second is that we’re becoming more assertive about the kind of culture and art we consume

We like to vote on Turner Prize winners and we pretty much expect the chance to contribute our opinions

At MoMA and other galleries, we can download a podcast telling us about Les Desmoiselles D’Avignon … and then we can upload a podcast of our own telling everybody what we think

Generally, we are also less reliant on critics in forming our opinions

Writing for the Guardian, Mark Lawson recalls slating a book only to see it go on to sell millions worldwide and spawn a Hollywood film

The book – The Da Vinci Code – wasn’t so great in critical terms, but met with approval from the people who bought it, read it and loved it anyway

Irrespective of some of the debate it has generated, Dan Brown’s blockbuster demonstrates just how powerful and appealing a force culture now is

The third convergence is perhaps the most important one

It’s the reason why culture and the arts are becoming ever more important

New technology means that we can access different art and different cultures very quickly, very easily and very widely from all over the world

MoMA’s Podcasts are an example of this … but it also goes on in far less structured ways

It’s not just that we can seek out different artistic or cultural experiences … it’s also that we encounter many more - either by intent or otherwise

Now, I am as likely to talk to people I met last year in Beijing as I am my next door neighbour

As we do so, culture is coming to the fore as a space in which we relate to others and make sense of the very different perspectives that we encounter

I’ve got a feel for the buzz of Beijing not so much through the leader columns of the papers as through the art of Fang Lijun and the Youtube videos of The BackDorm Boys – two students who created an international phenomenon by spoofing … and, incidentally, pretty much regenerating …. an abandoned 1990s boyband

Culture is shaping how we see the world, just as we are losing faith in the ways in which we have conventionally expressed our opinions

As the Backdorm Boys demonstrate, we can now shape the very means by which we can come to grips with the world around us and this has created a very different climate …

And the point is that wider changes … and changes to culture itself … have all come together in such a way that culture and the arts should be pushed right up the political agenda

*****
Very simply, politicians have to come to terms with the fact that the arts matter

At the same time, there’s a vast new potential in seeing art as being a vital space in which politics – politics in their new, wider form – are conducted

This requires changes right through from Whitehall to the way that art figures in the classroom …

In general, we need to take advantage of the potential that art offers

In a speech to Demos last year, David Lammy spoke of cultural democracy …

From where I stand, the time has come really to think about what this might look like