COMMENT | Arts policy (in progress)
by Linda Carroli
I'm in a bit of writing, perhaps catching up, mode having been otherwise occupied for a few months. During this time, I have had the strange experience of being engaged in various aspects of policy/strategy development. Subsequently, I am trying to think around an idea of policy as a type of writing about art or culture, as part of the written framing of cultural practices.
Because I enjoy the nth degree of things - the frames within frames within frames - it seems somehow vaguely displacing to be reading a policy (or strategy or whatever governmentalism) that stresses the need for critical writing initiatives. I do, of course, applaud any initiative that will result in a more open, multipled and flexible critical environment, rather than the privileging of some voices or styles or tropes over others but something ... else. My previous post touched ever so slightly on this via Lee Weng Choy's recent essay in Eyeline.
Much to my chagrin, I hear, quite regularly, about the 'crisis in criticism'. This intrigues me as I have not quite been able to get my head around this, wondering what fronts this crisis is unravelling and whether those events are perhaps more of an indication of crisis of things other than criticism. There are many strangely disparate examples that somehow indicate that this environment is almost unreadable: unnavigable. Recently I heard of regional artists' despondency about not having their work reviewed ie perhaps that criticism is not evenly distributed geographically. Then I heard that an artist applying for a grant application would probably have received her grant had her work been critically reviewed ie artists need criticism to be taken seriously or be legimated. There were also the comments in my post about the editorial in a local art zine Machine - comments that I believe have been refuted elsewhere either for their purported roughshod inadequacy, or for my own purported roughshod inadequacy as a critic/media maker. Then there is the situation where, in a funding round decided by a panel of artists as peer assessors, that someone who is not a professional writer or critic received a grant to undertake an art writing project.
Then there's the various scoping studies and strategy documents that have statements in them pointing to a need for 'more critical writing' while simulataneously rendering the writers invisible, as critical writing just happens. Fund publications rather than writers; fund publishing houses rather than writers; fund critical writing initiatives rather than writers; fund school students rather than writers; publish more writing rather than develop the practice of writers; etc. Do we hear the same kind of things about artists or fiction writers? No. In most policy the development of artistic practice is predicated on the development or funding of artists. Somehow, this is absent when addressing critical writing. Does it have something to do with a strange binary of critical/creative or imaginary/real?
As isolated events I am not sure they really tell us anything and that's why I think some kind of mapping exercise might be useful rather than an ad hoc approach to funding this or that publication or publishing those monographs. Are these indicators of a crisis? Or are they indicators of something ... else. I love that word - else. The imposing threat of an 'or else' ... Of an unknown otherness that supposedly shifts the power relations or regimes. An other writing. An other criticism. An other way. Other than what is ...
So to return to the cause of my bafflement, and this is really just a personal musing, I wonder why I so often read in various documents that government will be pursuing various kinds of critical writing initiatives which have absolutely nothing to do with writers. I never get very far in my thinking about this and always catch myself in a tail-chasing exercise. However, it remains unclear as to why - to what end, who will do it, who it's for and what it's meant to do and how, most importantly, writers can and will benefit from these ventures.
I'm in a bit of writing, perhaps catching up, mode having been otherwise occupied for a few months. During this time, I have had the strange experience of being engaged in various aspects of policy/strategy development. Subsequently, I am trying to think around an idea of policy as a type of writing about art or culture, as part of the written framing of cultural practices.
Because I enjoy the nth degree of things - the frames within frames within frames - it seems somehow vaguely displacing to be reading a policy (or strategy or whatever governmentalism) that stresses the need for critical writing initiatives. I do, of course, applaud any initiative that will result in a more open, multipled and flexible critical environment, rather than the privileging of some voices or styles or tropes over others but something ... else. My previous post touched ever so slightly on this via Lee Weng Choy's recent essay in Eyeline.
Much to my chagrin, I hear, quite regularly, about the 'crisis in criticism'. This intrigues me as I have not quite been able to get my head around this, wondering what fronts this crisis is unravelling and whether those events are perhaps more of an indication of crisis of things other than criticism. There are many strangely disparate examples that somehow indicate that this environment is almost unreadable: unnavigable. Recently I heard of regional artists' despondency about not having their work reviewed ie perhaps that criticism is not evenly distributed geographically. Then I heard that an artist applying for a grant application would probably have received her grant had her work been critically reviewed ie artists need criticism to be taken seriously or be legimated. There were also the comments in my post about the editorial in a local art zine Machine - comments that I believe have been refuted elsewhere either for their purported roughshod inadequacy, or for my own purported roughshod inadequacy as a critic/media maker. Then there is the situation where, in a funding round decided by a panel of artists as peer assessors, that someone who is not a professional writer or critic received a grant to undertake an art writing project.
Then there's the various scoping studies and strategy documents that have statements in them pointing to a need for 'more critical writing' while simulataneously rendering the writers invisible, as critical writing just happens. Fund publications rather than writers; fund publishing houses rather than writers; fund critical writing initiatives rather than writers; fund school students rather than writers; publish more writing rather than develop the practice of writers; etc. Do we hear the same kind of things about artists or fiction writers? No. In most policy the development of artistic practice is predicated on the development or funding of artists. Somehow, this is absent when addressing critical writing. Does it have something to do with a strange binary of critical/creative or imaginary/real?
As isolated events I am not sure they really tell us anything and that's why I think some kind of mapping exercise might be useful rather than an ad hoc approach to funding this or that publication or publishing those monographs. Are these indicators of a crisis? Or are they indicators of something ... else. I love that word - else. The imposing threat of an 'or else' ... Of an unknown otherness that supposedly shifts the power relations or regimes. An other writing. An other criticism. An other way. Other than what is ...
So to return to the cause of my bafflement, and this is really just a personal musing, I wonder why I so often read in various documents that government will be pursuing various kinds of critical writing initiatives which have absolutely nothing to do with writers. I never get very far in my thinking about this and always catch myself in a tail-chasing exercise. However, it remains unclear as to why - to what end, who will do it, who it's for and what it's meant to do and how, most importantly, writers can and will benefit from these ventures.
Labels: Arts policy, Comment
posted by linda at
1:27 pm
