(transcript) The Role of Arts and Culture in an Open Society

What it is we’re communicating, how are we communicating, how do we actually realize

our human potential? That is cognitive and emotional and that’s where the arts and culture
come in. What is freedom for?
Art represents a form of individual expression that is a sort of bulwark for any democratic
society.
Art is representative of human engagement with ideas.
To have our autonomy, to be able to be or become ourselves. Arts provide the opportunity
to have the experience that we are independent human beings.
A song or a painting may have been created for a purpose of a kind: recreation, entertainment,
or for social justice. Freedom of expression of all kinds but certainly
artistic freedom of expression is absolutely fundamental.
When you find that people can’t just say and do and express what they feel, you already
know you’re in deep trouble. We should protect artists by not defining
their role, by giving him the margin he defines for himself for his creativity.
If you look at the history of authoritarian societies, it’s often underground cultural
producers that are at the vanguard of thinking about how to oppose the regime and sometimes
quite innovative and alternative ways. Anything that was an alternative, an expression
of civil society we were ready to support. It is the forces outside of government, from
journalism to artists to human rights advocates, who help a society hear others, see others,
and recognize claims of justice as legitimate. God Loves Uganda is the story of the damage
that American evangelicals are doing in Uganda. We’ve screened at well over a thousand
churches
throughout the country. We’re having a discussion and a conversation, and I think it is making a
difference.
When I take photographs, I’m not just out
taking photographs. And I’m not just producing art. I don’t
look at people that I photograph as subjects. I look at people that I photograph as participants.
These are the people that we make history together.
I’m basically trying to create a family album, and it says that you are not alone.
And it basically says that you won’t die alone because you have family members everywhere.
I was approached by the director. It seemed like a very interesting project. Romeo and
Juliet, where each ethnic group will be playing one family, and parts of the play that were
spoken in Albanian won’t be translated and vice versa.
That’s the whole message of the production: that you have to understand each other if
you want. This border between the actors sort of disappears.
We make ethnographic comic books. It’s about giving them voice to tell their stories of
which we are the producers. We did a comic called Almaz about an Ethiopian woman who
went to Saudi Arabia and was sexually and physically abused.
And when I went back to Ethiopia, I saw the comic being used in schools to talk to young
girls about the dangers of being a domestic worker.
The educational and the advocacy impact is huge.
Art has this impact on changing minds and perceptions. We do conduct yearly field visits
to places of military conflict. Places like Iraq where artists are trying
to document quickly before it disappears what is happening around them.
This is actually the place where artists need our support the most.
Imagination is creativity, and without that, nothing moves. In struggles, artistic expressions
are indeed the essence of fighting for an open society.
My work is focused more on a reaction of the situation that I live.
The installation in the interests of Albanian parliament was about showing the visibility
of Romani people. When people ignore us, we have to show that we are here.
And I build these works in places that have witnessed trauma, that have conflicting narratives.
And particularly of the story of migration from Africa to Italy.
And it’s going to be the first Arab opera that’s going to play at the Royal Opera House.
And I think when people come to the exhibit, they have an immediate sense
of what the foundation cared about. The illumination of these significant human rights issues.
And many of us saw terrible things. No one
person could tell that collective story. So we’re looking at visual storytellers,
people who make a series of frames, which contextualize each other. So they tell the
story through a set of images. Communicating with youths through rap, hip-hop,
and other means, bringing the marginalized groups into the mainstream.
The hope is in the collective. It’s in the fact that there are these women who are doing
these struggles and who are withstanding this incredible threat against them on a daily basis.
Discovering ourselves and projecting ourselves in the future.
Art will completely change the moment, enable
action where there was fear, many things can happen from a piece of art.
We realize that when we bring people together in dialogue that actually change can happen.
Through the eyes of an artist, we can actually aspire to the reality that doesn’t exist
today. We can picture that, and it allows us to move forward.

Let us accept the following characteristics as representative of an open society. An open society is
marked by the rule of law that protects individuals and minorities. It safeguards freedom of expression
and movement. Governments of open societies are placed into power and removed through democratic
means. They maintain an independent judiciary and most often a legal separation from sectarian
religious doctrine. The open society is therefore a place in which dissent flourishes, skepticism and
criticism thrive, where speech and not violence is the primary instrument of politics, and where there is
no such thing as heresy; a high degree of transparency about government also exists, as does a
protection of privacy and individual rights. Whether an open society requires a certain minimum
measure of social justice in economic terms---the absence of extreme poverty and grotesque wealth—
on the assumption that radical economic inequality threatens the stability of a just and open politics, is
an awkward but open question. It is clear that in an open society radical inequality can flourish. In short,
market capitalism—regulated, to be sure—is compatible with the open society.

But crucial to the open society is the role of language and public space in politics. The state does not
possess a monopoly in the formation of civil society or in the creation and control of education or civic
entertainment, from sports and the circus to institutions of learning, research and preservation.
Dissenting opinions and a pluralism of thought ought to thrive.

In this context, the phrase “arts and culture” refers to those activities that have long traditions, quite
variable followings (in terms of numbers), public activities and public outcomes that are not
commercially viable in market terms. They are minority phenomena and merit protection and support,
from the state, from majorities and from markets. Often the activities of the arts and culture—from
poetry to performance art---are linked to so-called “high” cultural traditions that date back to antiquity
(to the invention of writing) or to endangered forms of so-called “folk” (and often oral and rural) culture
as opposed to popular commercial culture.

It should be understood that the distinction between “high” or genuine “folk” art and popular culture is
not one of aesthetic judgment, but sociological. By “arts and culture”, one is therefore not speaking of
Bono, Beyoncé or the films that come out of Disney, Warner or Bollywood. These boundaries are as a
matter of course blurred. Jazz was once commercially viable, but is no longer. Light opera, operetta and
Broadway have bifurcated histories. Gilbert and Sullivan, Offenbach, Emmerich Kalman and Oklahoma
have migrated from the commercial to the realm of culture that requires patronage and subsidy, and
they no longer have a politically significant audience. Yet how is one to regard Les Miserables (the
musical) or Andrew Lloyd Webber?

The very distinction between high culture and popular culture creates the main problem. The “high”
culture practices—from art making and collecting, poetry writing, dance, independent filmmaking,
electronic arts and theater to composing and playing acoustic instruments—are particularly in Europe
derived from a history that includes aristocratic and imperial patronage and therefore habits from the
era of absolutist monarchy. It is only in imitation of the English aristocracy, learned at Queen Victoria’s
wedding, that the continental aristocracy turned away from culture to sports and hunting as the primary
markers of their social class.

Just as the aristocracy was abandoning culture during the first half of the nineteenth century, the middle
classes stepped in the breach. They were extremely eager to emulate the time-honored habits of the
ancien regime. By the advent of fascism, it was clear that the traditions of aesthetic and cultural
practice—Bildung and Kultur—had become defining but de-politicized hallmarks of social distinction and
self-worth among the middle classes. The middle class civility presumed to derive from the arts and
culture turned out to be bankrupt, corrupt or irrelevant; it was entirely compatible with collaboration
with radical evil and barbarism in modern times. The education and cultivated sensibilities of the
bourgeois not only represented no obstacle to the worst horrors of modern “closed” societies, but they
also became prestige emblems within one party dictatorships, particularly in the Soviet Union (and later
in the Soviet Empire) first under Stalin and subsequently for the succeeding four decades.

The behavior of cultured and educated elites under Hitler and Stalin stripped all plausibility from the
18th-century conviction that there is must be some connection between the good and the beautiful, and
therefore between a humanistic and aesthetic education (as argued by Schiller) and the allegiance to
freedom, individual autonomy and the notion of rights and tolerance. In the wake of World War II, an
understandable prejudice about high culture surfaced in a sophisticated neo-Marxist form in the West
that in turn stimulated a radical modernist avant-garde. The cultural commitments and proclivities of an
elite, not an elite of birth or wealth, but an elite of merit, wealth and learning were scorned as marginal
phenomena in an unjust world and irrelevant to politics, particularly in the 1960s.

This point of view may now, however, be misplaced and obsolete. Arts and culture may turn out to be
more than decorative, more than arbitrary matters of taste and routes to fame and wealth. They may
now have a political relevance and utility. Europe and North America are places in which there is a vital
life of arts and culture that is inherently dissenting with respect to the dominant politics and mores of
the day.

The contemporary engagement with arts and culture, particularly among the young, is in the first
instance a reaction to the undeniable fact that the world of mass culture, dominated by massive
commercial enterprises of entertainment and communication threatens the values of open society. The
threat of tyranny and closed regimes has never been exclusively from above, but also from below, from
intolerant majorities. This sympathetic acknowledgment of the validity of pessimistic warnings from a
“conservative” intellectual tradition—which includes Plato, Burke, Tocqueville and Burckhardt—seems
indispensable if we are to confront the failures of contemporary politics in Europe, the dissatisfaction
with liberal democracy in the post-Cold War era and the ease with which not only prejudices but
falsehoods dominate and achieve popularity, particularly in American politics.

Truth, however provisional in the natural sciences, is often counter-intuitive, and capable of being
understood only by a comparatively narrow segment of society. Its capacity to win the hearts and minds
of all citizens, no matter their education, has proven weak. Education through the extension of literacy
has not made the body politic more immune from the politics of fear or inspired more critical reflection
on matters of national identity and the notion of the “other” and therefore immigration. Some other
persuasive means of galvanizing the body politic on behalf of the values of an open society is needed.
Just as a way must be found to communicate the consequences of science, might we not explore a way
to influence popular sentiment and culture using the extensive traditions and contemporary existence of
arts and culture that inherently underscore cosmopolitan sentiments, curiosity, and the embrace of
novelty? Do the arts and culture not offer an alternative to a quite uniform diet of entertainment and
commercial culture whose political impact is rather to secure the status quo?

It may be then (by analogy to science) that although the activities of artists, writers, musicians and
scholars are not viable in a commercial sense and reach only small segments of society, they
nonetheless have the potential (as in the past) to develop a symbolic and influence in politics and
society. Do they not then deserve patronage in the name of “open society”, not merely from the state
but also from non-governmental sources? One of the singular ironies of Europe today is that it has a
continuing tradition of high art creation and consumption, albeit every more under siege in terms of
funding, that represents a counterweight to national frameworks. A high percentage of the makers of
that art and culture, and their audiences represent those who are among the most determined and loyal
citizens of an international order, and of the idea of Europe. They represent a powerful antidote to
nationalism.

Consider the subversive potential in the quite valid claim that the tradition of art and culture has been
crucial to the development of national identity. Consider Hungary, for example. The musical tradition of
Hungary as represented by Haydn, Liszt, Bartok, Kodaly, Dohnanyi, Ligeti and Kurtag—for all its self-
conscious appropriations of emblems of national identity—has been at the same time a disruptive
source of cosmopolitan allegiance in direct conflict with xenophobic chauvinism.

The vital presence of a literary, visual and musical art and cultural community becomes inevitably a fact
of dissonance to the “illiberal” in a nation. Bartók fled Hungary in response to the fascist misuse of his
research into folk music and the attempt to co-opt his compositional debt to Hungarian materials. The
ostentatious re-interment of the remains of Hungary’s most celebrated composer from New York to
Budapest during the last days of communism indicates the lingering prestige and fear of the potentially
destabilizing influence of the high art and culture tradition. For all the official effort to appropriate
Bartók (and his recalcitrant modernism) in Hungary, even today, on behalf of an illiberal definition of the
Hungarian—(and comparable efforts regarding Shostakovich in Putin’s Russia)—as well younger
composers in the Bartók tradition, the end result, as in the Soviet case (consider the career of Schnittke)
is failure. Bartók and Ligeti represent today a resistant and dissenting element of national pride that can
and is made to work against intolerant populism.

The Hungarian example of long traditions of high art and culture that possess the potential of resisting
provincialism, uniformity, conformism and reductive nationalism and also invite a cosmopolitan and
international sensibility on behalf of the individual, freedom of expression, unpopular causes and
unconventional views, has a parallel in each of the European nations, primarily in their major cities. Why
is that potential on behalf of a post-nationalist international politics and a truly non-trivial cosmopolitan
civic spirit not being cultivated? Would it not be proper, on behalf of an open society, to attempt to
connect the art and culture traditions to the dynamics of mass democracy, and seek to use the
traditions to broaden, within a populist framework, the values of dissent and rebellion against imitation
and conformism? It is time to revisit, perhaps not in a normative philosophical manner (i.e. asserting an
ideal of beauty) but in an instrumental sense, the possibility of forging a connection between art and
culture on the one hand, and public life on the other in a manner that influences positively conceptions
of national identity, attitudes to minorities, respect for dissent, the beauty of nature and the sanctity of
the human. Let us abandon the vulgar Marxist contempt for art and culture as little more than
superficial emblems that grace the façade of exploitative individualism. Let us not let the failures of the
twentieth century blind us to the power of art and culture in the twenty-first, especially within younger
generations. Part of the task, particularly in the visual arts is to counteract the influence of the buying
and selling of art, at the very high end, through the act of collecting of art as financial assets, as well as
the power of centralization in the production of film and popular music.

Therefore, artists and society must forge a link between aesthetic freedom and ambition to political
freedom and dissent. Social foundations and agencies must utilize the exceptional power of the
imagination and the imaginative within communities and thereby underscore the sanctity, through the
broadened encounter with arts and culture, of the life of the individual life and the importance of
civility. This will create new constituencies for the use of language (written and spoken) in more than
routine and journalistic patterns, thereby exposing the limits of the current political discourse,
particularly on the question of identity
PAULA: An open society does not determine the role of art and culture in it, instead it allows and
accepts what artists have to offer – in whatever form and whatever genre. Art and culture strive to
express individuality and at the same time connect every people through different interpretations. Art
enables people to understand and change or influence other people’s minds and perceptions by
introducing them with artworks of other people.

Art was also referred to as bulwark of a democratic society for even though it suggests freedom of
expression, it doesn't violate and step on other people's rights. In fact, it can help awaken society with
issues that people fear to talk about. It opens the eye of those blinded with truth through making them
see the hidden reality about the society. It serves as words for those who are afraid to speak and an ear
for those who choose not to listen.

Art is not defined through its surface. It’s not just a white canvas, a scattered paint, or a photograph –
there's more to all of these and the truth behind these lie on the artists. We have different opinions and
interpretations, beliefs and context and that's where the role of the art comes in – it tends to empower
people; to seek to be understood; to understand; to communicate; to allow the society to reach out;
and to move forward.

LOURELYN: Arts and culture play very important roles in every aspect of human life. These are the
products of human imagination and creativity. Arts help people express themselves, communicate,
harness their creativity, and to have recreational activities or for entertainment. It is very well known to
us that art is one way of how we can show our true selves, or in some way, help us become ourselves.
Arts may have different themes that the artists want to portray and may be in different forms. Some use
symbolism for better expression and hiding what they truly mean. With this, since not all people can
understand the arts the same way the artists can, one must be eager to learn and understand what
these arts try to imply. With the help of artistic expressions, misunderstanding and conflict between
people may be eliminated since there is common understanding. Art is an effective way of
communicating feelings, emotions, state or status, and most especially, ideas and would be helpful for
one who finds it difficult in expressing himself. Arts also have the capability to affect the minds and
perceptions of people. Some have positive and negative themes. Artists find arts to be their way to
awaken and influence people on how they perceive things. Some arts show the sad happenings and
reality in our world with the goal of encouraging people to make a change.