Speech by Alastair Carruthers, Creative NZ Arts Council Chair
E nga iwi, e nga mana, e nga reo, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.
Honourable Judith Tizard, Diane Ragsdale, fellow speakers, committed arts professionals, colleagues and friends. May I add my very warm welcome to you all. I would like to thank my Creative New Zealand colleagues for having the vision to put on this conference.
As New Zealand's principal investor and development agency for the arts, we are deeply committed to helping the arts and those who work in them to grow ever stronger.Meetings such as this are wonderful opportunities to share best practice and build networks in an environment that, while competitive in some respects, has always struck me as having immensely strong and positive features of co-operation.
I encourage you to pick each other's brains and be as open as possible about ways to keep and attract audiences in a market that has never been so supplied by choices to entertain, enrich, delight and distract.
The world of arts and culture is constantly unstable. And so it should be. For at the heart of creativity and artistic expression lie novelty, risk, expansion and invention. But as Diane has reminded us, the audience for the arts has probably never been in such a state of flux.
I wonder what lessons can be learned from comparing arts at the start of the 20th Century with those we experience today. In some respects, not a lot has changed.
Concert halls then held audiences that wanted to listen to the same works we hear today. Programmers worried then - like those today - about presenting unfamiliar work by new composers. They sandwiched them between classics so as to not turn off an audience.
Theatres offered a two or three hour live human narrative with a dramatic heart somewhere just after interval.
Public galleries quietly gathered collections dating back as far as they could afford, while also presenting a contemporary visual record of the local culture's social, environmental, artistic and intellectual interests.
Commercial gallerists were trading the hot new things - impressionists - and prospering in major European and US centres.
And the Venice Biennale - to which New Zealand first came almost a century later - had just begun presenting each participating country's finest contemporary art.
What can we say about the Arts today?
Historians of the future will write of a glowing environment for New Zealand Arts at the start of the 21st Century.
The government has taken Arts, Culture and Heritage so seriously that the Prime Minister has made it her personal portfolio for nine years and appointed two Associate Ministers to assist.
Nearly a decade of increased public investment has stabilised and developed artists and art forms that were barely surviving.
And in research conducted two years ago, CNZ found that around 75% of New Zealanders now have very high levels of support for the arts. They believe that:
· the arts should receive public funding
· the arts help define who we are as New Zealanders
· the arts contribute positively to our economy, and
· their communities would be poorer without the arts.
But for all that the environment is positive, I contend that your jobs remain tougher than ever, and that your own courage and creativity will be essential for the arts to survive and to thrive in the future.
For the art forms described earlier now seem like heritage experiences to many. Generally speaking, their audiences are static or declining, and potential audiences are not fully engaged.
· Three out of four New Zealanders say that the arts interest them, but they still don't go much.
And around one in five who don't experience the arts say they would attend if they were encouraged by their social network to do so.
We have a big mission. Collectively, it is our responsibility to ensure the audience for the arts keeps growing, and that new generations come to them.
I can't help but feel that several western art forms are at a tipping point and that artists, arts marketers and audiences need to find a new meeting place, centred on rigorous excellence and engagement. And that's where you'll need to compete as hard as you can.
I will not list the many pressures that you face, for you know them better than me. But there are some obvious forces that are unique to this century.
The digital age in particular both threatens the arts and magnifies the chances to reach audiences and create new work.
If you were a defeatist, you'd say that an individual's current ability to absorb, create, appropriate and disseminate art and entertainment through their favourite life-style device is seriously endangering the traditional live arts experience.
But I'm an optimist and a believer in the power of art to move a human in ways that nothing else can.
And while I hesitate to offer tactical advice on how you can reach new audiences, I will comment on what seems to lie at the heart of many of the world's and this country's most flourishing arts companies and art forms.
Most critical, in my opinion, is the relentless pursuit of artistic excellence coupled with the ability to relate that excellence to an audience. As Diane would say, you are the modern brokers between artists and their audience.
And you should not be afraid to talk about artistic quality in order to do your jobs.
While many of you are outstanding marketers with sophisticated techniques to communicate, any marketer knows that the easiest way to sell product to is to have simply the best product within the market you are serving. Artistic mediocrity will destroy your marketing efforts quicker than anything.
To use such terms as product sometimes creates offence in the arts. I do not apologise. But in using that word I don't mean a tangible, substitutable commodity. Quite the reverse.
For I believe that truly excellent art transcends the tangible effortlessly and sets new boundaries of possibility while remaining essentially human.
And I believe also that the most elite and wondrous artistic achievements can be simultaneously humble, accessible and immediately etched in a wide audience's subconscious.
The key lies not in dumbing down the arts but in demystifying access to them while retaining their sense of wonder. We must drop impenetrable artistic pretension and help new audiences realise that they don't need classical training or a secret code before they can "get it".
Having helped invest public and commercial money in the arts for many years, I have been personally vexed by the question of how to define excellence in terms that don't limit the creative possibilities of artists and their need to keep exploring and take risks.
Sometimes artistic endeavours shock and confound an audience before becoming accepted as a new language or benchmark. Consider Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which a century ago was about to cause a riot, redefine tonality and give birth to modern dance.
While Chairing the Arts Board, my colleagues and I developed a long definition of excellence that was purely qualitative. It had words like creative, provocative, arresting, innovative, exquisite, disturbing, inspiring, energetic, cutting edge, experimental or paradigm shifting.
But such definitions lack rigour and substance.
So more recently, helped by CNZ staff who researched how other arts funding agencies assess quality, and particularly our Arts Council colleagues in England, we have begun to rethink what quality might mean.
Our current thinking is that excellence may best be described as a tripod. As you may know from engineering, a tripod with every leg balanced and equally strong can support a massive weight on its centre. The same is true of great artistic endeavours, as long as the legs are strong.
The three limbs of artistic excellence may be described as:
· the idea or concept
· the execution, and
· the human impact or ability to engage or move an audience.
Each element must be excellent for the work to capture an audience and survive. The most brilliant original idea will fail if badly delivered. The emotional impact of a work - however well presented - will fade quickly if the idea was unoriginal. The most well executed concept will irritate or be forgotten if an audience can't find a way in or is left unmoved.
Let me illustrate these ideas of excellence with three examples that have caught my imagination: an institutional arts installation, a baroque concert, and a public, technologically superb participative local arts event.
Even these choices possibly reflect my own last century view of art forms. Don't we all wish we'd discovered €œThe Flight of the Conchords € before HBO? The definition applies to them too. We must always be vigilant about the freshest possibilities.
First, let's consider Tate Modern's famous 2007 conceptual art installation Shibboleth.
I quote from the Guardian Newspaper:
"After years of vast, architectural sculptures - towers, walls, horns, boxes, even a model of the sun - the eighth installation to occupy Tate Modern's Turbine Hall is somewhat starker. It is a crack in the floor.
The work by Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo, entitled Shibboleth, runs the full 167 metres (548 feet) of the cavernous hall. It begins as a hairline crack in the concrete floor of the building, then widens and deepens as it snakes across the room.
Quite how it got there, however, is a mystery. €
According to the artist, the piece is a statement about racism, with the crack representing the gap between white Europeans and the rest of humanity.
"What is important is the meaning of the piece. The making of it is not important," she said. Asked how deep the fissure goes, she replied: "It's bottomless. It's as deep as humanity."
Great. So that's the idea. (If you can get it.)
On one view, a publicly funded massive crack that represents an idea sounds like the height of elite pretension.
Yet the combination of this particular work's audacious scale and flawless execution created enormous public mystery and debate, and ultimately respect that amplified its conceptual rigour.
Newspapers reported arguments between architects and builders who gathered at Shibboleth.
One reporter wrote:
€œWe are examining the crack from a wide variety of angles and sticking our fingers inside and giving it a damn good poke and generally trying very hard indeed to work a few things out. The first is: how on earth did it get here? The second is: could it be dangerous? This being The Tate, we also feel obliged, finally, to consider the possibility that it might be art.
No one, in short, has the slightest clue."
Finally, a certain Mr E - a builder who was working at Tate Modern on another project while Shibboleth was being installed - was happy to recount what he witnessed.
"They dug a dirty great trench about a yard wide and a yard deep," says Mr E, still lost in wonderment.
"Then they brought in lorry-load after lorry-load of cement and poured it in, using 10-foot sections of what looked like carved polystyrene moulding to form the sides. Then a whole bunch of people lay down on their stomachs for about a week and finished it off with brushes. Looked bloody uncomfortable, I can tell you. It's about racism? Can't see it myself, but I'm not much of a one for modern art. It was a pretty good trench, though. And one hell of a lot of cement. Good luck to 'em."
And so for Mr E - excellence in execution equals artistic wonder. And he will never forget it.
Closer to home, I had the privilege recently of hearing the region's finest Baroque Orchestra conclude a series of sell out concerts in Sydney. The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra performs fascinating period music with zest and brilliance. Those who consider early music to be unpresentable to new audiences today should wake up their ideas. This band rocks and its marketing is superb.
The June programme had interesting and weighty content. Handel's notoriously difficult Dixit Dominus was preceded by a first half that began with a rare but minor work promoted shamelessly for its novelty and wit. Battallia by Biber features period instruments being beaten and mistuned to simulate sounds of battle. Much was made of this in the plain speaking but enthusiastic marketing material. Its exotic promise and effect were beguiling.
Then a chorus of 50 drilled and terrified boy trebles drawn from two grammar schools sang the sweetest Bach before bolstering an elite adult chorus assembled from the city's best choirs to perform a rarely heard Cantata by Buxtehude.
The Brandenburg's Orchestra's reputation for excellence and its loyal and varied fan base is already strong. But adding such diverse and excellent choirs ensured that a new audience of supporters and family augmented normal subscribers. Such amateur/professional amalgamations are fraught with artistic risk.
But the Brandenburg's Artistic Director Paul Dyer is committed to flawless execution and exquisite, soulful musicianship. He also added some joyful on-stage theatrical tricks, such as the 50 boys suddenly appearing from behind the organ rail and bursting into song.
This arresting and unconventional way of performing reinvented the traditional concert experience for me. But at its heart was excellence: innovative programming (the concept); outstanding promotion and performance (execution) and wonderful human impact: thrilling music, and 7 year olds participating with professionals in a seminal arts experience that not only drew crowds, but had us spellbound by their courage. The experience will doubtless turn many of them into life long lovers of the arts.
Finally, let me shine a light on the International Arts Festival's wonderful street work - Body Movies - presented in Wellington earlier this year. Watching it was one of the best ways to spend those beautiful long summer evenings.
The Dominion Post headlined the concept: "You're more than a shadow of yourself"
The artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was more lyrical: "Each one of us has memories of doing shadow puppets in our bedroom and many world cultures have some sort of shadow play tradition or shadow puppetry".
As for execution, Body Movies only happens when the public is involved. As it got dark each evening, passers-by could have their portrait photographs taken by a digital camera. A computer then projected them on Te Papa's massive outside walls, only to be washed out by bright white light from lamps placed at ground level.
As people walked past the wall their shadows blocked out the white light and revealed the portraits. And then the fun began. Total strangers interacted with their images, with each other and with an imposing public institution, thanks to the digital age.
I watched people young and old squeal with delight and play with groups they'd never met. It was astonishing to see such spontaneous disinhibition.
As for the human impact of this work as it has travelled the world, I quote from the artist:
"We had ad hoc break dancers, or people who would bring their umbrellas and do an umbrella dance. Just completely unexpected things. We got a man in a wheelchair who projected his image 23 metres high and crushed everybody with his wheels. He derived a lot pleasure from that."
In conclusion, let none of us forget what we're here for. We work in the arts because we know that they matter. But they won't matter to anyone unless we keep pursuing original excellence and relevance to today's audience.
Don't just look to present and promote work. Whatever your art form, ensure that it's rigorous and fresh in its content; brilliantly delivered; and engaging and affective across the fullest range of human emotion and thought.
If it's not, work with your artists to help fix the bits that fail. And if you can't do that, and if you can't identify your audience and what you're trying to say to them, then perhaps it's time to bravely reconsider your mission.
Thank you for your commitment to the Arts in New Zealand. They wouldn't be as strong as they are today without your work.
Best wishes for a wonderful conference.
EXCELLENCE AND ENGAGEMENT:
SPEECH TO THE 21ST CENTURY ARTS CONFERENCE
AOTEA CENTRE, AUCKLAND
10 15 am, THURSDAY 26 JUNE 2008
by Alastair Carruthers, Arts Council Chair, Creative New Zealand
21st Century Arts Conference - Presentations and Resources
23/07/08