If society considers studying creative arts a vanity project, then why does it value culture so much? Photo: Martin Ollman.
Our society seems to be incredibly confused about what it wants to be – being cultured is the aim, is to be admired, but in no way should we allow those lazy, self-indulgent creatives to learn their craft in order to provide us with such culture.
The outrage over the proposed changes to the ANU’s College of Arts and Social Sciences – and in particular the disestablishment of the School of Music – has seen emerge the old refrains of “get a job” and “they’re just vanity degrees” aimed at those who dare to try and become what many of us don’t have the talent or drive to be: an artist, a performer, a musician, a designer.
The refrain “that’s just a toilet paper degree” – the graduation certificate good for nothing but wiping your arse – is another common one.
You should give a damn about the demise of creative arts education, of our institutions valuing money over being there for the broader public purpose.
Former School of Music head Professor Peter Tregear summed up how he felt about the claims changes were being made to secure the university’s economic future.
“That’s bullshit.”
He told Region universities should be places about the pursuit of truth, of curiosity and inquiry.
“We’ve lost the conversation about higher education as a public good,” Prof Tregear said.
“The classic example is what happened during COVID-19 lockdowns, everyone retreated into music, into shows, into the arts. When the crunch came, that’s who we are.
“We are a living, breathing culture … what sort of country are we becoming that investment [in culture] is so hard to contemplate?”
Outside of that, what about equipping people with the tools to record our society, our history, as it is in a moment in time?
Has society devolved into worshipping the value of a buck so much that we have forgotten about the value of expression, about the importance of fostering a way of thinking different to the norm?
Where do we look when we want to remember a moment in time, to find out what it actually felt like to be there?
We turn to the arts. Poems, artworks, compositions.
The arts are an important mirror to society, both recording sentiment at the time and challenging it.
Different ways of thinking are what makes our society vibrant and helps deliver progress.
But we often ridicule what we fear, what we don’t understand and what causes jealousy.
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp seems silly, taking a urinal from a wall, turning it sideways, slapping a signature on it and submitting to an exhibition.
Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 sculpture Fountain. Photo: Marcel Duchamp/Alfred Stieglitz/Wikimedia Commons.
But he was testing assumptions about what made something “art”, a huge turning point in modern and conceptual art.
Or Rhythm 0 by innovative performance artist Marina Abramovic? In 1974, she laid out a variety of objects – honey, lipstick, a feather, a rose, a razor blade, a loaded gun – and invited the audience to do what they wanted to her.
It lasted six hours. It began softly, with the audience being passive, tickling with her with the feather or giving her a kiss.
Then it turned violent. The rose thorns were pushed into her stomach, her clothes were cut, the knife stuck between her legs.
It ended when an audience member held the loaded gun to her head.
@contemporary100 Would you let strangers do whatever the wanted to you in the name of art?C100 Spotlight: ‘Rhythm 0’ (1974) by Marina Abramović #art #contemporaryart #artinstallation #artist #marinaabramović #performance #performanceart
This was a feminist piece on how far people could be willing to go when someone is viewed as an “object” rather than a person.
A piece that arguably is still very relevant today.
What about when Banksy built a shredder into his Girl With Balloon piece and hit the self-destruct button as it was sold for $1.4 million in 2018?
Banksy’s Girl with Balloon. A framed copy of the work self-shredded just moments after the hammer came down. Photo: Dominic Robinson/Wikimedia Commons.
We revere these moments in art history but now we’re trying to stop new historical moments from being created.
Our cultural institutions and creative education need to be preserved and protected, not ridiculed and dismissed, especially in a place such as Canberra.
What are we saying to the rest of the world about our priorities when not even the university in the nation’s capital seems to place any value on the arts?
Besides, are you trying to tell me those studying sensible money-making degrees aren’t just as self-absorbed as any creative?
