The ends of art

I have an oddly ambiguous reaction to the cuts in public funding for culture
currently proposed in the Netherlands. On the one hand, I deplore the tone
and the actions of the recent neo-liberal governments that trade vision and
ambition for consensus and austerity. One the other hand, I can't help but
see the cuts as part of the necessary displacement of Europe and eventually
the United States and NATO from their dominant world position, so that
another kind of global balance can be found. The years of European plenty
from the late 18th century onwards were based far more on colonial
exploitation than is usually admitted. The strength of especially northern
European innovation and statecraft has much to do with the room to
manoeuvre and the lack of desperation that such exploitation allowed.
So it is less the fact of the cuts than the rhetorical nature with which they
have been introduced that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Amongst
government ministers there seems little or no understanding of arts relation
to society, its role as a measure of the space of democratic deviance, its
capacity to imagine the world (and not just itself) otherwise. While all
European states are hacking back their public budgets in favour of
maintaining the superrich in the styles to which they have become
accustomed under neo-liberalism, their ministers do so with expressions of
regret, sometimes even with genuine sadness. In some states, most notably
Germany, the cultural budgets actually grow, in part as a result of
understanding that lifes possibilities are not only defined by the size of your
wallet. In the Netherlands, it has been very different. Cuts have been targeted
at contemporary cultural production, discourse and international exchange.
The big museums are defended while almost 50% is taken from the smaller
R&D sector. The new thus makes space for the familiar, while expecting the
private sector to pick up the tab for the experimental, the challenging and
the minority. If ever there was upside down thinking in terms of simple
market economics, this is it. And through it all there is an accusatory tone,
an attempt to lay the blame on the victims and never on economic weakness.
The news media must shoulder much responsibility. They are largely the
mouthpiece of power in this country. Together with the politicians, I sense
they have succeeded in manufacturing majority support for the arts cuts
amongst the Dutch population. Many citizens see them as a way to strike
back at the so-called cultural elites (often just enthusiasts and art lovers)
who promote their "emperor's new clothes", as post-1989 art is often
described here. "Let them survive in the real world" is the cry, as though the
richly subsidised mortgages and tax breaks of the Dutch middle-class are
somehow natural phenomena. For others, theres much more a feeling of
resigned inevitability about the cuts. From a position that might consider
itself Dutch leftist, in the vague sense of being concerned about
opportunity, fairness and tolerance, there hasnt been much effective critique
of the economic and social policy of the neoliberal governments. I suspect
that is because, speaking from their position, there isnt much to say. The
kind of well-meaning social democracy that wanted to make the world

better and could do it from a safe European home is simply not sustainable.
Its core beliefs - in a united western Europe, in a homogenous national
society of engaged citizens, in cultural toleration and political consensus
just dont press anyones buttons anymore. However nostalgic we may be for
these once ambitious aims, they are no longer on the political table. The
wellsprings of wealth stockpiled in the glory days of empire; of the post1945 openness, grounded on the idea of never again to National Socialism;
of the principle of hosting without hospitality that permitted non-Dutch to
live here in peace these are all running dry. To be meaningful, even useful
in the current situation, art has to occupy a different role than one grounded
in subsidy and a claim to autonomy based on the right to do what it liked at
public expense. That autonomy was itself one of the reasons that art could
be accused of elitism, however unfairly, because it was linked to a lack of
concern with social and political events the right to autonomy slowly
evolved into a right to subsidised irrelevanceand then the subsidy stopped.
In our present atomised society, many basic notions such as autonomy need
to be redefined and given force and relevance in these new circumstances.
That is the task before us in the years ahead.
Yet from the mainstream left the response to this situation is more akin to a
rabbit staring in the headlights than a political programme. Keep as much of
the old system as we can, while we can. Thats about all I can discern behind
the empty rhetoric of opposition. There is a deeper European-wide malaise
underlying this leftist anxiety about change. We know that the post-1945
'natural' order that infused all economic debate and the post-1968 order that
did the same for social values have fallen apart in general. Yet no-one in a
position of responsibility seems able to admit the profound stress this puts
upon the state we are in. The gap that then emerges between expectation
and experience quite reasonably scares many native Europeans. Words lose
their meaning and sense falls apart, and we are left clinging to the remains
of old paradigms while waiting for some new patterns to emerge.
As a cultural agent, I feel this condition at many different levels. From
discussion with local politicians to the conversations with artists and thinkers
that start so much of our programme and activities. Its effects can be seen in
a national and continental culture that is increasingly retrospective, often in
wonderfully poetic ways. It is a culture concerned with repetition and analysis
of what once was; one more attracted to effect and diversion than
speculation; at its worst, one grounded in cynicism and opportunism. And
this is, in my understanding, also the emotional foundation upon which
acceptance of these cuts is built. Yet, despite the justified decay of European
hegemony, I do not embrace these cuts. Rather, I would wish to see them as
a rallying call to another way of asking the old questions about liberty,
equality and solidarity. If I could wish for the world, I would wish that we
abandoned the left as an historic category born in the French Revolution and
began the task of building a planet-wide political movement through the
institutions of culture, or at least those with ambitions to endanger
themselves in the process of finding new energy and new relevance. That
movement would need to discipline and control global capital but not
destroy it; it would need to express a desire for global cultural institutions
and find ways to construct them with public money across the continents; it
would need to encourage the transfer of wealth from rich to poor to raise
world educational standards at levels from primary to university; it would
need to keep the nation state in check and encourage super-diverse and

hybrid cultural identities. In that process, the autonomy of art becomes

useful again, significant as a means to an ethically defensible end. It may be
that it also represents an end to art as we have known it for 100 or so years.
I am not sure yet if this end is really necessary or even possible, but I want to
find out by testing contemporary arts propositions to their limits.