What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?

? By Milena Placentile for Mentoring Artists for Women's Art Presented Friday, December 2, 2011

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak this afternoon. I'm grateful to MAWA for inviting me, and to all of you for taking interest in this topic. I admit this is a massive issue to cover, especially since I'd really like to debate the pros and cons of various progressive and radical perspectives, but I'll do my best to be concise in the time allotted. I'm drawn to this topic because I'm always struggling to understand why the world is as it is, how it could be made better, and what prevents better from happening. There are many positive things these days such as, for example, a renewed interest in civil disobedience. However, there are some persistent problems, and they tend to dominate our consciousness. One such problem is greed or, to be even more specific, corporate greed with it's almighty competition for profit based on irrational quarterly growth targets, and with its tendency to consolidate wealth into fewer and fewer hands as bigger companies swallow smaller ones through takeovers, mergers, etc. Alternate forms of inter-personal activity and exchange would surely help society be more equitable than it is, but the strength and power of corporations is growing with the deliberate intention of eliminating these alternate possibilities from our very imagination. [slide] We can see this in the way public space has been reduced to little more than a forum for commercial transaction. Consumerism dictates our daily experience establishing everything from what we want, to how we work to get it, from housing and food, to leisure and self-expression, to everything else in between. And while the news is full of stories about the importance of economic growth and austerity measures in response to whatever latest banking crisis, we simultaneously hear about outrageous CEO bonuses, increased spending on militarization and prisons, and less and less resources available for the things that many of us really care about, including education and health care, and the other elements that build community... which, in my mind, includes arts and culture. [slide] Despite unprecedented quantities of wealth on this earth, the public purse is shrinking and at all levels of government we're being told cultural funding should be replaced with corporate sponsorship. No mention is made of the fact that the tax base is shrinking because corporations and wealthy individuals have successfully lobbied to pay less tax than most working people. But there's more to it than just tax collection and redistribution. This is a deliberate strategy in a much larger capitalist agenda. Corporations don't want people to decide things for themselves through arms length agencies or other community structures they want to control everything because to do so is far more profitable. Tax cuts and austerity measures have affected many public sectors, and a lot of new language has been created to distract us from connecting our struggles in the arts to other issues at hand. What I find most frustrating about this is the assumed consensus promoted by decision makers. Even the simple statement that times are tough and we all need to tighten our belts is an ideological statement when we consider the fact that there is more than enough wealth to go around, and those who created the problems should be the ones to pay for them. [slide]

1 - What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?

I propose to address some of this today using the following outline: 1. 2. 3. 4. [slide] Quickly described, Neoliberalism is the latest form of capitalism transformed from theory to practice in 1944 through the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In 1971 the US switched from gold standard to Fiat currency. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, folks such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (well funded by corporate elites) enacted policies that transformed the global economy into what we have today. [slide] From a cultural studies point of view, Neoliberalism is an all encompassing ideology that influences the totality of our lives because multinational corporationsthrough processes known as deregulation and privatizationhave come to shape how we think and behave through increasing control of media, education, health care, our food supply, and public policy. Neoliberal ideology sees no problem with this because it ultimately believes the market alone should frame all human action. As such, despite being considered an economic technique, it's actually more like a system of social control. It always puts capital before labour, and thus resists anything that might put people before profits. Deregulation is the elimination of rules governing how businesses operate, while privatization involves taking tax-payer funded infrastructure and resources away from citizens, and putting it in the hands of corporations by means of sale, usually to massive multinational corporations at undervalued rates. Both of these things established and further globalization, which promotes the unfair flow of capital and goods. [slide] I find French sociologist Pierre Bordieu described Neoliberalism particularly well when he identified it as a conservative movement that distorts progressive language to present itself as contemporary and self-evident, when it's really an ideological construct designed to reverse the rights workers earned after decades of struggle. [slide] For example, the idea of free or 'liberated' trade promises freedom from antiquated regulations that supposedly prevent abundance for all. In reality, this amounts to cheap goods made in free trade zone sweatshops providing unprecedented profitability to any corporation with enough vertical integration and brand clout to pull it off. Bordieu emphasizes that these constructs are validated through a limited scope of dialogue about economics and politics in the media and schools, and can only be deconstructed with intellectual arguments via the work of academics and artists. [slide] American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist and activist, Noam Chomsky, calls the control of dialogue in the media manufacturing consent because it is demonstrated that when people don't have access to alternate perspectives, they take the status quo for granted, and are less likely to resist, even when the status quo works against their best interests. [slide] What is neoliberalism? What is the neoliberalization of culture? What about art for art's sake? Now what?

2 - What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?

Realizing that the promises of neoliberal economic theoryinfinite growth and profitabilityare basically empty delusions, the Neoliberalization of culture is a last ditch effort to maintain the dominance of consumer capitalism by entrenching favourable policies and social behaviour. The goal to privatize everything has thus extended into the milieu of arts and culture through desire to control spaces for public engagement and eliminate potential for dissent. [slide] Instrumentalizing artists and art for economic purposes that unfairly benefit elites while simultaneously marginalizing critical cultural production is on the rise thanks to the narrow minded rhetoric of creativity, which is a product of neoliberal ideology and nearly inescapable these days. It pressures arts and culture to be framed as an industry like any other, and is thus only considered valuable insofar as it produces economic gain. There are many problems with this, but here are 10 of the most obvious. First, it lumps together of all types of cultural production under the same umbrella. For-profit film and music selected and owned by corporations based on potential financial returnplus the branding/marketing/advertising of that corporate cultureis jumbled into a system that prioritizes classical arts (ballet and symphony) versus contemporary and experimental practices and artist-led culture, never mind community practices and radical or transformative ones. [slide] Next, it prioritizes commercial entertainment reducing the spectrum of ways people engage with the arts, as well as the range of perspectives they could potentially encounter. It transforms the arts from a diverse public benefit to a fun thing people consume to fill the time. With less public support available, non-commercial practices are compelled to appeal to corporate values to find funding. This promotes work that tacitly supports corporate marketing objectives, while prioritizing work that will be popular because it's easy instead of thoughtful, critical, difficult, or challenging. In other words, this rhetoric fails to recognize the value of the arts as a way of cultivating dialogue, critical reflection, or deeper thinking as a necessary component of improving quality of social and intellectual life. By suggesting something is only good if people are willing to pay a ticket price, it furthermore limits access and entrenches class divisions. [slide] Third, When unethical companies try to cleanse their track-record of environmental damage through sponsorship, it's called greenwashing. When companies try to cleanse their carcinogenic or patriarchal products through sponsorship of breast cancer awareness, it's called pink washing. I'm not sure what the term is when this is done through culture, but let's go with the generic phrase, brandwashing. Some may argue that progressive corporations welcome social and political critique. Even when this appears true, we can't forget that the critique has been contained through a metaphorical pat on the head. For example, in the era of Occupy Wall Streetwhich is as much about ScotiaBank as it is about Chase Manhattanhow can the massive harm they've caused can be absolved through sponsorship of NuitBlanche, even if it involves a panel about protest art, as it did in Toronto this past October. [slide] Fourth, creative economy rhetoric champions language that adopts business norms while failing to acknowledge other perspectives. For example, why is it that we find ourselves using the words like investment with phrases such as capitalizing on cultural assets? Why do we use the word consume instead of experience? And why are we so focused on growing audience attendance instead of emphasizing quality of engagement?

3 - What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?

A particularly troublesome example is that we're increasingly citing economic impact as the primary means through which to validate the arts, as if a strong economy were the only thing a community needed to flourish. Some argue that we must use the language of business to justify ourselves because they're the ones with the money, but I don't see why we allow corporations to have so much power. Why don't they justify themselves to us? I know some will consider that irrational, but I want to know how we came to so readily accept their rule as the way things are. [slide] Fifth: The concept of professionalization emphasizing how things are done, instead of what is done. I'm all for transparent accountability, so professionalism defined by integrity and ethics is great, but what I find problematic is the extent to which overhead is mistaken for standards. When costs are high, stakes are high, and that means less risk-taking. This, in turn, means independent thinkers slowly lose opportunities to make decisions as artistled organizations scramble to keep everything nice n' pretty at the expense of enacting the values that prompted them in the first place. Being professional in the arts according to the standards set by other fields, or larger elite institutions, inevitably means spending time chasing money instead of realizing ideas. [slide] The sixth problem concerns economic development, which leads to competition between cities, often prioritizing spectacle and other tourism-focused projects above essentials for inhabitants. It takes many forms, including market-driven production and big names swallowing up opportunities for emerging voices. A particularly troubling side effect is gentrification: property values rising due to short term inflation caused by speculation and trading that makes it impossible for people excluded from the growth loop to continue living in that area. This is not about building or improving space for community exchange it's about profit and its both unfair and unsustainable. [slide] An example of gentrification resulting from economies built around cultural tourism includes Manifesta, the socalled roving European biennale that romanticizes and artfully arranged early industrial decay as if to thank the creative economy for making everything pretty again. These projects do little to support municipal infrastructure but hand out plenty of tax money to developers so they can turn less desirable land into premium property. This development scheme is evident in the Olympics, which has cost overruns every time, always shouldered by the public. [slide] And of course there's censorship. As we know, museums and galleries, libraries, universities, outdoor spaces, and even some online spaces, are becoming increasingly dependent on corporate sponsorship for financial survival. Some corporations fund programming that supports their objectives, so implied or not, strings are often attached. Other corporations compete with public institutions by starting their own foundations for culture and hiring staff to do as they wish without ever being accused of limiting discourse. My favourite example of censorship is one that backfired, big time. Tate Modern curators invited Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination to host a workshop on civil disobedience, but told them not to demonstrate against the museum's sponsors. The workshop participants refused, ended the workshop with an intervention about what happened, and then decided to keep working together. Liberate Tate -- a campaign opposing BP's greenwashing through culture -- was born the following spring and has since become internationally recognized. [slide] It's hard to give examples of more subtle forms of censorship because those involved are less likely to speak out for various reasons including fear of repercussion.

4 - What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?

In their publication, Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression, Robert Atkins and Svetlana Mintcheva note that artists engage in a form of self-censorship even when they produce what they think corporations or institutions want instead of what they want for themselves. Censorship and self-censorship also happen when it is assumed work should explore ideas rather than assert a position because it conveniently fosters politically non-confrontational work less likely offending those with the money to buy it. [slide] Problem number eight is the promotion of celebrity culture as a way to normalize income disparity. The idea that some should have a lot (for reasons as petty as beauty or sports ability) while others go without is positioned as a matter of skill, luck, or worse, the way things are. Applied to the art world, artists seeking success and glamour adopt entrepreneurial attitudes and curtail challenging ideas in their work to appear market friendly. Celebrity has other side effects, as well. For celebrities in other fields, merely picking up a paintbrush can be enough to garner attention and sales, critical discourse being circumvented entirely. Which brings us to reason nine... [slide] The neoliberalization of culture makes the art market the primary forum for artists to show their work, maybe hoping it will lead to exhibitions in public spaces. Directing their efforts through this narrow channel, sometimes compromising what it is they truly wish to contribute to the world, many artists become complicit with efforts to devalue and eradicate rigorous conversation in public realm. This illustration, taken from a 2004 report commissioned by Arts Council England called Taste Buds: How to cultivate the Art Market was drawn up by private consultants to demonstrate how it is in fact the commercial dealer at the center of the art world with everyone else feeding their interests. [slide] Problem number 10 is the capacity of neoliberalism to co-opt all culture into a consumer product, no matter how traditional or radical it may be. [slide] But corporations aren't the only problem. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group based in Washington, recently issued a report indicating the extent to which foundations are failing to serve the increasingly diverse demographics of the United States. They point out that the largest share of funding goes to traditional institutions such as major museums, operas, and symphonies despite the fact that attendance at those institutions is declining and more people are looking to community-based arts groups (such as smaller artist run centres) to fill their needs and desires. More specifically, of the $2.3 billion given to American arts and culture organizations, less and 2% was given to organizations with annual budgets under $5 million. A comprehensive publication called The Revolution Will Not Be Funded explains this is because foundations are created by elites seeking to shelter profits from taxation by giving to causes of their choice instead of allowing money to be distributed by citizens through elected representation or arms length agencies. When we think about it that way, why would foundations engage in anything genuinely transformative? What's to gain from establishing true equality if it could mean limiting their own wealth? Whether it's corporate or individual donors, being told to seek private patronage fails to recognize arts practice as a critical public exercise, and that's a liability to our creative and intellectual freedom. [slide]

5 - What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?

But let's say you consider yourself an apolitical artist and couldn't care less about radical or transformative creation. What about art's for art's sake? In the 1920s, German Jewish philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist, Herbert Marcuse, reflected on the revolution in the arts that occurred in 1830 when the aesthetic principles of the Enlightenment shifted to Romanticism. He identified two types of artists working at that time: those alienated by the harsh reality of society who escaped into what they called art for art's sake; versus those alienated by society who created with a desire to transform. Escape, he argued, ultimately led to inactivity because the time and energy spent rejecting the everyday isolates people in fantasy. On the other hand, Marcuse celebrated the tendencies of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German polymath and Romantic poet who suggested art was best used in service of humanity. Marcuse began writing on these topics while Cubism, Futurism, Dada and related movements directly addressed the mechanization and militarization of contemporary life, including the never before seen destruction of World War I. During the Depression, American artists produced detailed accounts of poverty and hardship, while New Deal programs to employ artists and beautify public spaces carried themes also found in Soviet Realism such as depictions of labour in factories and fields. [slide] As World War II ended and the cold war started, American art critics preferred the heroic individualism of abstract expressionism, which eventually gave way to Colour Field painting and other material-focused movements, the theory around which ignored social motivation in art while justifying the marginalization of practices that demonstrated any type of difference, including sexual, racial or gender. Championing the work of free isolated genius also strategically opposed the collectivity of socialism and communism. [slide] It was in this era that art for arts sake was rehashed to the point where it became asserted as the singular discourse for any serious artist. I say rehash because it was no different than art critic Henri Frantz arguing in 1900 that Jules Adler's La grve au Creusot (1899) (The Strike at Creusot) was un peu trop raliste (a little too realistic) because the painting depicted real people struggling against real poverty. Where's the fun in that? [slide] Eugne Delacroix's La Libert guidant le peuple (1830) (Liberty Guiding the People), on the other hand, is always a prized example of revolutionary art because, well, let's face it: what we see here clearly didn't happen. And oh look, boobs. Nice touch. [slide] The fact that work concerning lived experience is art, and not propaganda or social work, is still hard for some critics to swallow. Art education emphasizing White Western art history leads students to imagine political art emerged in the 1970s and is still a novel concept only recently tolerated. When politically engaged art is addressed, it's often as a matter of use. Real art, according to aesthetes such as Claire Bishop, is strictly art; anything that might apply to real life something other than art. In their freely circulated publication Demanding the Impossible, Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination discuss how art is valued when it's useless, but stripped of the grand title art if it truly affects the world. Yet, as they explain, art is very useful to those who profit from it. This includes dealers getting a cut for brokering private and public collections. It also includes dealers chipping into otherwise publicly funded commissions for biennales and then claiming ownership over that work before its even made because they know how much they can sell it for once it has gained the necessary provenance.

6 - What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?

Political art kept a safe distance from the movements that fuelled them seems to be considered okay. Take for example the many recent exhibitions of feminist work from the 1970s because they're seen as quaint relics from a time popular consciousness no longer recalls. Why isn't contemporary work by feminist artists being shown to the same degree, and with the same budgets? [slide] With all of this said, Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe's point becomes clear: there is no such thing as political art because all is political. Work either challenges the status quo, or accepts it and participates within the parameters it defines. This means that when we practice, we either choose to address that which is around us, or we don't, but in doing so we make a statement and declare a position. Our statement may be that we don't want to participate in the political circumstances of our art. Fine... if we can accept that the position carries on with our without us, and it might be used for or against us, without our consent. [slide] American activist and academic Angela Davis points out that it is the mere potential for art by marginalized people to empower others that challenges the dominance of the bourgeois, prompting them to establish rules about art and aesthetics as something above and beyond reality, ideology, andmost of allbeyond class struggle. Davis notes that art is a special form of social consciousness that can potentially awaken people to seek radical change. But, as mentioned earlier, this is not the sort of thing corporations thriving on carefully maintained herd mentality want to see. So they play different angles when it suits them. They support and co-brand with certain artistsoften dead so they don't have to worry about managing personalities or scandalswhile living artists are marginalized unless they make clear they're more than happy to let their cultural capital rub off onto the highest bidder. In short, I don't believe art for arts sake has ever existed except to distract people from the reality of their lives. Therefore, if we want to engage in this this, we have to acknowledge that it is not apolitical it is supporting the desires of the class that wants us disengaged so they can continue to profit from us while decreasing our quality of life by repealing wage gains, leisure, health and safety standards, food and water security, housing, education, etc. [slide] So now what? This is where differences of opinion really kick in depending on whether people believe in complete self-organization or the hope of a better realized state that fairly shares wealth and resources to bridge social and economic gaps. But the questions remains the same. If theorists Luc Boltanski and ve Chiapello are correct and the new spirit of capitalismneoliberalism consumes all creativity and turns everything into an emerging market no matter how obscure or seemingly uncommodifiable, does that mean all creative action will be bastardized as capitalism and it's too late to resist? Should we forget about what motivates us as human beings and resist by doing nothing because our work might be circulated via capitalism's tools, providing profit for someone other than ourselves and our communities? Tough question. If the act of doing still holds potential to inspire, motivate, and transform, why stop? Instead, we could question our motivations for doing and act with integrity. If we want our work to be embraced by the elite to become famous, then we should make work friendly to them. But if we want to make work because it's our basic compulsion and we know it's the primary means through which we think out loud and build relationships with others, then we should consider how protecting public infrastructure and opportunity can support that. And we should press for a wider range of discourses by rejecting corporate logic as the only option.

7 - What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?

[slide] The income gap these days is unprecedented and it's no accident, but I don't have time to address this in detail. So I will say this: last time such a thing happened, union rights raised and protected income of working people, and corporations were taxed with understanding that their profit is a result of labour. Trade and banking regulations also protected people. Education, health care and culture were considered cornerstones of civilization (whatever that's supposed to mean). Beginning in the 70s, these benefits started to be rolled back. Social programs were cut, banks and other industries were allowed to monitor themselves, and the well-to-do got away with paying less tax because of that kooky trickle down theory. Meanwhile, wages for the average Canadian has stagnated, and well paying jobs have been off-shored. In the 1980s, the richest one per cent of Canadians captured 11 per cent of total income growth. In the 1990s and 2000s, they grabbed 32 per cent and that number is climbing. [slide] As cultural producers as people of this world we need to figure out what is the best use of our time. We can either: A) Chase corporate sponsorship, subjecting ourselves to censorship while simultaneously affirming the dominance of corporate ideology, recognizing there will be more hoops to jump through in the future, as they determine on their terms OR B) We can assert the essential character of the public good and fight for what's ours. Instead of playing the game their way, we can demand intellectual and creative freedom, and the right to practice without "profit" as a central tenant. [slide] I would happily talk about how taxpayer money has been used to encourage private sponsorship with organizations such as Business for the Arts in Canada receiving funds from Canadian Heritage and the Trillium Foundation in Ontario, and how it offers striking parallel to the British Department of Marketing and Resources affiliated with Arts Council of England as launched by Thatcher in 1987, which was in turn inspired by Reagan's Presidential Task Force on the Arts and Humanities of 1981. I could also talk about the funnelling of money for the arts into consulting to shape the arts into the image of business, or to make artists more market and media friendly. I could also talk about differences between these types of consultancies versus grassroots arts advocacy groups... but I want to make sure we have time for discussion. [slide] Again, we can either transform ourselves to fit a one-sided paradigm disregarding the fact that the game can be changed at any time leaving us voiceless and without traction, or we could recognize that our practices are increasingly being used in ways that don't serve our best interest. We can thus organize ourselves to protect our communities by asserting our values and demonstrate resistance to these conditions. We can communicate directly with others in our community and align ourselves on own terms. Why should we accept austerity measures when we know they are a deliberate attack? Corporations and the wealthy are paying less tax than ever, and what's left is being squandered on militarization, failed approaches to prisons, and corporate welfare in the form of subsidies and bail outs. Corporations and the wealthy have pushed for this, so why should we try to win their favour?

8 - What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?

We have arms length peer-review systems in place that may not be perfect, but can be adjusted with effort, because these systems belong to us and they are our right. [slide] Just as corporate sponsorships of the arts doesn't clean the reputation of the companies involved, I realize taking our fair share back into the public realm doesn't clean that money, but it does mean that the public itself defines what happens to that money within the public realm. Corporations don't promote experimental investigations of society, discourses, practices, aesthetics or materials in ways that will help us build a more inclusive society. And if they appear to be doing this, its to control the message and increase their profit. The social and cultural capital they gain from supporting us (on their terms) lets them get away with it. [slide] Some argue the disappearance of public funding is positive because the arts will go back to being driven by passion. But isn't that what we're always told? That starving artists work the hardest, and recognition after death is just the nature of the game? Some argue good art floats to the top, but competing against what, and according to whom, and to what end? [slide] Some argue the concept of an autonomous artist was just a blip in history, and corporate sponsorship is no different than being commissioned by churches and aristocrats. So what are we supposed to with everything we've gained knowing the social and intellectual value of artists as forecasters, interpreters, visionaries, idea makers, experimental explorers, and more? If we forget about that, why not forget about universal literacy, too? Whether we value the arts for their empowering and transformative capacity, or whether we value the arts because they look good over a sofa, surely we can all agree that rolling back the spectrum of possibility does more harm than good. Decisions are being made for us by corporations, foundations, lobby groups, governments pressured by corporate lobby groups, and then some. We need to be aware so we can position ourselves according to our beliefs and values, instead of being framed unwillingly. [slide] [slide]

9 - What's up with the neoliberalization of culture? And why does it matter even if you consider your practice apolitical?