tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/arts-culture-foundation-essay-7586/articles
Arts + Culture foundation essay – The Conversation
2014-02-17T06:07:24Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22607
2014-02-17T06:07:24Z
2014-02-17T06:07:24Z
New technology could spell the end of the size zero model
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41579/original/9t8xyt8d-1392381493.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Futuristic fashion at London Fashion Week.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Brady/PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As I look out of the window of my office at <a href="http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/">Somerset House</a>, I can see the <a href="http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/">Fashion Week</a> tent dominating the courtyard. This temporary structure combines fashion’s ephemeral nature with a steely efficiency and organisation. Seeming chaos gradually coalesces into a structure that will sit within the 18th century courtyard for the duration of the shows. </p>
<p>It is apt that this historic venue is the setting for the media circus and streetstyle free-for-all that has developed around international fashion weeks. Somerset House has, with its own varied use, incorporated art, commerce, bureaucracy and, since the Courtauld arrived there in the late 1980s, the oldest <a href="https://www.courtauld.ac.uk/research/sections/historyofdress.shtml">History of Dress course</a> in the country. So how do these elements intertwine? And what does history tell us about the way the fashion industry has evolved?</p>
<p>It is hard to speak in terms of a single industry, since fashion spans everything from mass-produced fast fashion and atelier-based couture, to conglomerate-owned luxury brands and designer-makers working from home. </p>
<p>It has historically walked a path between art, craft and industry, a strange, often strained combination that is seen as professional yet creative, skilled yet amateur. Models perhaps sum up these tensions best – they are professional women, the most successful earning huge sums, who need to understand how to present clothes, embody an ideal, perform a dream. But this is a heavy burden, and since their bodies are their currency, they are also reviled and berated as beautiful fools.</p>
<h2>Fashion issues</h2>
<p>Many of the problems with fashion are problems with capitalism itself, from poor treatment of the labour force to unsustainable business practices. Others are specific to the nature of fashion, which is concerned with bodies, how they are shaped and how they are set off by clothing. Other industries are just as problematic in terms of sustainability and morality – we need look no further than banking in terms of the latter – but they don’t touch everyone in such a direct way. They don’t express attitudes to body, gender and sexuality so visibly.</p>
<p>Fashion is predicated on the relationship between fabric and body. So close to the skin, it is perhaps inevitable that it should prove so contentious. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41479/original/7crrxg2m-1392309968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41479/original/7crrxg2m-1392309968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41479/original/7crrxg2m-1392309968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41479/original/7crrxg2m-1392309968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41479/original/7crrxg2m-1392309968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41479/original/7crrxg2m-1392309968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41479/original/7crrxg2m-1392309968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 19th century advert for corsets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Boston Public Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Corsetry created the desired silhouettes for women from the 16th century onwards, with readymade versions becoming available in the 19th century. As designers grew in confidence in the early 20th century, they began to create clothes that expressed women’s equally enhanced status. </p>
<p>Women were negotiating public space – whether to shop, work, or simply to see and be seen – and the modern woman needed to be able to move. The rise in sport and exercise, the cult of the athletic body and increased interest in diet plans all contributed to the modernist, streamlined ideal. </p>
<p>The corset became internalised, and models, another late 19th century invention, were ever more machine-like and standardised. The size zero model is the apex of this decades-long worship of slimness and youth. This trend was not only influenced by internal fashion pressures for extremes, but also by wider cultural fears and desires that related to ageing populations, growing obesity and disease. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41483/original/7y9fgrp5-1392310984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41483/original/7y9fgrp5-1392310984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41483/original/7y9fgrp5-1392310984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41483/original/7y9fgrp5-1392310984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41483/original/7y9fgrp5-1392310984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41483/original/7y9fgrp5-1392310984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41483/original/7y9fgrp5-1392310984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1935 swimsuit ad.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Bees Knees Daily</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If the toned, classical body represented an idealised, impenetrable figure to signify strength, then the size zero model embodies cultural and social desires, but also fears. The “ideal” is now so thin that she’s tipped over the line from being fashionably athletic and healthy (the 1930s ideal) to an amalgam of anxieties about illness and death. </p>
<p>Photography can exaggerate these bodily ideals. This is certainly not something new; Cecil Beaton, for example, heavily retouched his work in the 1930s, but digital manipulation has become pervasive. The fact that it is young women whose bodies are being judged and scrutinised doesn’t stop media outrage from focusing on them, rather than the wider cultural problems of which the trend is symptomatic.</p>
<p>And this focus has radically increased in the past 20 years. Although fashion’s association with the famous has a long history – 18th century fashion magazines lovingly detail society beauties’ latest outfits – the rise of celebrity culture and social media means the fashion industry has never been more visible or pervasive. </p>
<p>So what has hampered progress towards a more ethical approach is complicated. A capitalist rush for the cheapest, quickest production methods, the shortest path from design to store, irrespective of human or environmental cost, is key here. As is the related and growing need to catch the attention of the flickering eyes of the consumer. </p>
<p>But there are other reasons: the educational changes that have pushed dressmaking off the curriculum, and therefore reduced understanding of how to mend clothes or adapt fashions to your own body, for example. Allied to the decline in local dressmakers, this means we feel the need to fit our bodies to clothes, rather than fit our clothes to our bodies.</p>
<h2>Changing attitudes</h2>
<p>If we want to stop thinness being the sole marker of desirability and success, further change has to occur within the fashion industry, but crucially also in wider culture. Fashion is the most obvious starting point, but we need to come to terms with long held and difficult attitudes to food, diet, exercise and health and the ways these connect to status and value more broadly than just on the fashion pages.</p>
<p>And this is before we even begin to tackle issues concerning diversity in terms of age, gender, sexuality and ethnicity. Since fashion is representative of wider cultural attitudes, it is an important way for us to learn how to view bodies and identities. </p>
<p>Once again, fashion’s inherently contradictory nature becomes apparent. On the one hand it has long been a tool in which to form alternative identities, and yet it can be the worst example of uniformity and restrictive ideas of acceptability. All too often, white, middle class notions of beauty still dominate.</p>
<p>But what of the future? Fashion continually balances between past and present – and perhaps this is the key. Will 3D printers develop to allow people to print their our clothes, in an updated version of dressmaking? Sizing is already being made more specific. Levi’s, for example, are using body scanners to fit jeans exactly. </p>
<p>While online shopping has grown, the feel of the magazine page and the touch of the fabric still retain their allure, and this combination of appeal to the touch, as well as the eye is central to fashion. Recycling and craftsmanship will remain central, with label like <a href="http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/18599/1/maison-martin-margiela-artisanal-couture-ss14">Maison Martin Margiela’s Artisanal Couture</a> line suggesting a means to rework existing clothes into unique pieces, which embrace difference rather than standardisation. </p>
<p>Perhaps then, emerging technologies, combined with these kind of couture-level initiatives will help to change the way we relate to our clothes, and in turn, our bodies. Fashion designers and retailers that respond to the need for adaptation and recognise the realities of women’s bodies – whether by using a wider range of sizes of catwalk models or in-store mannequins – may just turn the tide towards more realistic body images. </p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new UK Arts + Culture section.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Arnold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
As I look out of the window of my office at Somerset House, I can see the Fashion Week tent dominating the courtyard. This temporary structure combines fashion’s ephemeral nature with a steely efficiency…
Rebecca Arnold, Oak Foundation Lecturer in History of Dress and Textiles , Courtauld Institute of Art
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22422
2014-02-14T06:05:05Z
2014-02-14T06:05:05Z
While Elgin Marbles debate rages, there is still a market for looted antiquities
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41375/original/6rknpp72-1392214374.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sections of the Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles in London's British Museum</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matthew Fearn/PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Several members of the cast of the film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CreneTs7sGs">The Monuments Men</a> made headlines for <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/feb/11/george-clooney-bill-murray-matt-damon-elgin-marbles">expressing the view</a> that the British Museum should return the Elgin Marbles to Athens after their “very nice stay” of 200 years in London. </p>
<p>That reignited the debate around the ethics and intentions of <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1883142_1883129_1883001,00.html">their removal from the Parthenon</a> in the early 19th century, as well as the controversy around what to do with them now. But whether or not the removal of the sculptures should be considered “pillage or protection”, as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/feb/11/george-clooney-bill-murray-matt-damon-elgin-marbles">the Guardian put it</a>, we might take the opportunity to reflect on other more contemporary and unambiguous examples of international cultural heritage plunder.</p>
<h2>Demands of the art market</h2>
<p>The international art market that deals in ancient cultural objects casts a destructive shadow. Tombs are looted, statues broken from their pedestals, and facades chainsawed off temples, all to feed a booming economic demand among connoisseurs who prize the enjoyment of the artistic attributes of cultural objects, the thrill and investment value of collection, and the social status attributed to those associated with high culture. </p>
<p>The source countries for these collectible objects tend to be less economically developed than the market countries and so are usually not very well equipped to protect their heritage resources against plunder. London and New York are the two biggest centres for this trade in the world, and their active art markets have over the years exerted a strong demand for the archaeological riches underground in countries like Egypt, Greece and Turkey; or pieces of temple complexes like those found in South America and South East Asia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41376/original/c89yhh2v-1392214498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41376/original/c89yhh2v-1392214498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41376/original/c89yhh2v-1392214498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41376/original/c89yhh2v-1392214498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41376/original/c89yhh2v-1392214498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41376/original/c89yhh2v-1392214498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41376/original/c89yhh2v-1392214498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">West interior of The Parthenon, from where some of the Elgin Marbles were taken.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Estimates of the size of the illicit underworld of the international trade in art and antiquities are unreliable at present. Although figures as high as <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/news/videos/fbi-art-theft-program">US$6 billion</a> have been proposed, it is generally recognised that it is currently impossible to verify size estimates. Many looted antiquities are sold on the open market and their illicit origins will never be detected, let alone proved. And, as well as the public trade through auction houses and museum acquisitions which can be scrutinised to some extent, there is also a private trade between individuals, which is difficult to investigate. </p>
<p>Police statistics in most countries do not even have a separate category for art related thefts or seizures. They tend to lump them in with all other types of property theft. Looting in source countries happens at sites which are often remote, and in some cases undiscovered, and much looting activity is not detected or recorded by over-stretched local police forces. </p>
<p>All of these factors, and more, make it very difficult to know how much illicit market activity there really is. But <a href="http://traffickingculture.org/">a growing body of research</a> has established considerable evidence to show that looting and trafficking is still a sizeable and serious issue, and one involving significant sums of money.</p>
<h2>Cultural looting</h2>
<p>There was a relatively uncontested free and open dealing in looted cultural objects in Britain and elsewhere running through the colonial era, supported by imperialist values, and this continued. Then, in the 1960s a sustained critique of these practices began to take hold. </p>
<p>Archaeologists who had experienced first-hand the looting of sites they had been working on began to reflect on the rapacious nature of the market in cultural resources. In particular, they argued that looters destroyed sites as they dug out tombs and other underground heritage, depriving researchers of the historical knowledge which the context of buried objects could give up. </p>
<p>Criticism of the international trade in looted antiquities mounted, and in 1970 UNESCO brought countries together under <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/illicit-traffic-of-cultural-property/1970-convention/">an international convention</a> to protect the world’s cultural heritage from exploitation by market forces. This date of 1970 has over time come to be accepted as the norm for acquisition of antiquities, particularly among museums subscribing to a collective ethical code. </p>
<p>They now have to look for a “provenance” (ownership history) dating back to at least that date. This is obviously therefore a rule intended to reduce demand for artifacts looted in recent decades, rather than to right any perceived wrongs of a more historical nature. But not all types of buyers in the market subscribe to the 1970 norm – and our research evidence suggests the “1970 rule” is not greatly influencing aggregate buying decisions in public market settings.</p>
<h2>Repatriation</h2>
<p>Major dealing and collecting institutions have been implicated in the trade in illicit cultural objects, as one would expect, given that traffickers have inserted looted artifacts into the legitimate trade, where they have most value. And as the understanding of the reach of this increases, so does the trend towards “repatriation” of objects to their source countries from the world’s encyclopedic museums. </p>
<p>For example, in 2013 the Metropolitan Museum in New York <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/arts/design/the-met-to-return-statues-to-cambodia.html">returned two “Kneeling Attendants”</a> to the national museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, looted originally it seems from the temple complex at the ancient Khmer capital of <a href="http://www.visitcambodja.nl/kohkereng.htm">Koh Ker</a>, one of Cambodia’s great heritage sites. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41377/original/r7sptwsy-1392214825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41377/original/r7sptwsy-1392214825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41377/original/r7sptwsy-1392214825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41377/original/r7sptwsy-1392214825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41377/original/r7sptwsy-1392214825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41377/original/r7sptwsy-1392214825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41377/original/r7sptwsy-1392214825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prasat Pram, Koh Ker, Cambodia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Buzz Hoffman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the same time, another statue from Koh Ker has been the subject of litigation in the New York courts: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/arts/design/disputed-statue-to-be-returned-to-cambodia.html">the Duryodhana</a>, offered for sale by Sotheby’s for an estimated $2m-$3m. The statue in New York was broken off at the ankles and its feet were discovered still attached to their pedestal in the Prasat Chen temple at Koh Ker. </p>
<p>The US Department of Justice alleged that it was torn from its base in the 1970s during <a href="http://www.coldwar.org/articles/70s/KhmerRougeandCambodia.asp">the civil war which led to Khmer Rouge power</a> – and from our fieldwork in Cambodia, we have first-hand accounts of similar looting activity from traffickers active at that time. Subsequently, it was transported to London where it was sold to a Belgian collector through the auction house Spink. Late in 2013, Sotheby’s and Cambodia concluded a settlement to the case, and the statue will be returned. </p>
<p>The pressing question for the great museums of the world is what will happen to their repositories in a climate of greater attention to the ethics of acquisitions, present and past. This raises difficult value judgements around the wider issue of where ancient artifacts belong, the moral status of major museums in rich countries, and “who owns culture”, as the titles of several books in the field put it. </p>
<p>For some people, this question may invite different responses when applied to cases like the Elgin Marbles on one hand, or fresh loot on the other. For so-called “cultural internationalists”, the issue is the very moral legitimacy of countries declaring ownership of all cultural heritage. But the countries themselves would see the moral and legal elements of their title as being settled.</p>
<h2>Market victim or complicit?</h2>
<p>The extent to which museums, dealers, collectors and auction houses know about the illicit origins of objects they acquire – and whether they turn a blind eye or are genuinely duped by fraudulent sellers – is hotly contested. The New York dealer <a href="http://www2.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/projects/iarc/culturewithoutcontext/issue10/watson.htm">Frederick Schultz</a>, for example, once president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2040769.stm">was sentenced</a> in 2002 to nearly three years in jail and received a $50,000 fine for his part in receiving looted items from Egypt through a British smuggler named <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/egyptian-treasures-smuggler-is-jailed-1256685.html">Jonathan Tokeley-Parry</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41380/original/tjbdrhqn-1392215184.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41380/original/tjbdrhqn-1392215184.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41380/original/tjbdrhqn-1392215184.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41380/original/tjbdrhqn-1392215184.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41380/original/tjbdrhqn-1392215184.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41380/original/tjbdrhqn-1392215184.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41380/original/tjbdrhqn-1392215184.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police file of Jonathan Tokeley-Parry at his workshop in Devon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The smuggled objects had been <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1793300.stm">dipped in plastic</a> and painted to look like tourist souvenir items, thus evading Egyptian border control. The two dealers then fabricated provenance for the items in order to give them the appearance of having a legitimate ownership history, inventing a collector they called Thomas Alcock and attaching labels to the objects to suggest they were from his collection. </p>
<p>They even went so far as to artificially age the labels by dipping them in tea, to better support the illusion they were creating. The artifacts included a sculptural head of the 18th dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III, subsequently to be sold by Schultz for $1.2 million.</p>
<p>And in 1997, journalist Peter Watson published the results of his five-year investigation <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ebZeGwAACAAJ&dq=Sotheby%E2%80%99s:+the+Inside+Story&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GIj7UuXdJcOnhAfJ2oBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA">Sotheby’s: the Inside Story</a>, which alleged complicity among some of the auction house’s employees in knowingly receiving looted and trafficked artifacts. </p>
<p>Subsequently, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/23/arts/sotheby-s-moves-its-antiquities-sales-to-new-york.html">Sotheby’s closed</a> the London arm of its antiquities sales department, never to re-open, in a move which was “<a href="http://archive.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/sothebys.html">widely interpreted</a>” as a response to Watson’s book, and which prompted Boston University archaeology professor and long-time commentator on illicit trade issues Ricardo Elia to note that “<a href="http://archive.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/sothebys.html">London has been called the smuggling capital of the world</a>.”</p>
<p>Against these scandalous examples of malpractice, trade representatives tend to argue that they exercise appropriate levels of “due diligence”. Criminal offences for dealing in illicit cultural objects like the <a href="http://www.eui.eu/Projects/InternationalArtHeritageLaw/Documents/NationalLegislation/UnitedKingdom/dealingwithculturalobjectsact-explanatorymemo.pdf">up-to-seven year prison sentence</a> created in the UK in 2003 often require the prosecution to prove a buyer’s “knowledge or belief” of an object’s tainted history, which has proved very difficult to do. The UK law remains virtually unused. </p>
<p>And so the current debate raised by George Clooney, Matt Damon and Bill Murray’s thoughts on the repatriation of the Elgin Marbles is important, but for reasons which don’t tend to make their way into press reports of the controversy. The discussion around antiquities which were taken from Greece over two centuries ago is part of the context of a more immediate issue of global crime. Looting and trafficking of cultural objects is not only a problem of the past.</p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new UK Arts + Culture section.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon is involved in The Trafficking Culture project, which is funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC Grant agreement number 283873.</span></em></p>
Several members of the cast of the film The Monuments Men made headlines for expressing the view that the British Museum should return the Elgin Marbles to Athens after their “very nice stay” of 200 years…
Simon Mackenzie, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, University of Glasgow
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22201
2014-02-12T08:48:38Z
2014-02-12T08:48:38Z
Glory, farce and despair: the many stories of World War I
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40019/original/zzrcdknd-1390911992.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tomes of war stories.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">gfpeck</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anniversaries encourage reflection. Now, 100 years after the start of the Great War, anyone who follows current affairs or reads a newspaper is part of a cultural conversation, a widespread reassessment of how our views of the war have been shaped. This has happened through stories, of course, but of what kind? Family stories, perhaps, but also those found in fiction, or poetry, or crafted by researchers into their accounts of the war. Some last longer than others. Why?</p>
<p>In 2005, two historians set out to summarise their discipline’s contribution to World War I literature. Jay Winter and Antoine Prost’s <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Great_War_in_History.html?id=QRhcnK5rSP4C&redir_esc=y">book</a> opened with a head-count of relevant titles. There were more than 50,000 listed in the Paris library in which they had been working; a number they called “dizzying” then. And as the centenary approaches, bookshop tables are groaning under the weight of accumulated tomes, especially those published in recent months.</p>
<p>The versions keep on coming. New titles range from the acme of academic history, such as Winter’s own three-volume <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-regional-history/cambridge-history-first-world-war-volume-1">Cambridge History of the First World War</a>, to more popular books, such as Mark Bostridge’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/05/fateful-year-1914-mark-bostridge-review">The Fateful Year: England 1914</a> or Florian Illies’ <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/review-1913-the-year-before-the-storm-by-florian-illies-trs-by-shaun-whiteside-and-jamie-lee-searle-8744832.html">1913: The Year Before the Storm</a>, to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/historybookreviews/10382547/Catastrophe-by-Max-Hastings-review.html">Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914</a>, by prominent historian Max Hastings. </p>
<p>They are on display in every town in the country, and are being reviewed on a daily basis. Classic texts by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/31/featuresreviews.guardianreview10">Paul Fussell</a> and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/9447744/Sir-John-Keegan.html">John Keegan</a> join them on the tables, while poetry sections display multiple editions of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/sassoon_siegfried.shtml">Siegfried Sassoon</a>’s and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/owen_wilfred.shtml">Wilfred Owen’s</a> verse. </p>
<p>With an increase in books comes an increase in views. Max Hastings’ Catastrophe is marketed as a counter-attack to the “poets’ view” of the war, summarised on its dust-jacket as the argument that war “was not worth winning”. A related <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2339189/MAX-HASTINGS-Sucking-Germans-way-remember-Great-War-heroes-Mr-Cameron.html">article by Hastings</a> in the Daily Mail in the summer of 2013 unleashed a tidal wave of media interest in what has also become known as the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/german-historians-have-little-time-for-goves-blackadder-jibes-21826">Blackadder version</a>” of the history of the war, with its supposed emphasis on futility. The hold that this version of the war above all others has on the nation’s imagination is clear from the lengthy coverage of the row – one in which senior politicians as well as writers and educationalists have become involved.</p>
<p>Michael Gove’s accusation that “left-wing academics” are seeking to hijack the story of war with self-serving myths of futility points to the heart of the matter: it is the supposedly “true” or “correct” story of war that is felt to be at stake. But the concept of a single story of war is itself a myth, and one that needs consigning to history, even as the lived memory of that war also passes away.</p>
<h2>A very literary war</h2>
<p>From the available evidence, it is at first hard to see what is mythical about the story of war. The patterns in the narrative leap out from multiple media. There are important visual clues to the ways in which we approach the war, or the ways in which publishers think we should, among the books on those tables. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41038/original/9x5t48jn-1391792498.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Idyll in the fields in 1912.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/11491935746/sizes/l/">brizzle born and bred</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cover photographs of the Edwardian idyll are paired with those of dead soldiers, harshly dramatising before and after. Bostridge’s opening conceit, for example, is a camera shutter capturing a “carefree scene” on London’s Thames on Monday 3rd August, 1914. We note the doomed attempt at preservation and understand that all that is carefree is about to be lost: 1914 in this way becomes a watershed between the good old days and the horrors of the trenches. The starkness of this periodisation is undercut by the best history, but it’s the starkness that sells books, and it is as old as the war itself, as demonstrated <a href="Link%20to%20Mr%20Britling%20Sees%20it%20Through">by H. G. Wells in 1916</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The familiar scenery of life was drawn aside, and War stood unveiled. ‘I am the Fact’, said War, “and I stand astride the path of life. I am the threat of death and the extinction […] There can be nothing else and nothing more in human life until you have reckoned with me.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41040/original/3rk4zrnw-1391793417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers killed in retreat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Loss and trauma, of course, are the prominent themes, and the transformative effects of World War I on language have been repeatedly explored. Wilfred Owen’s disillusioned poetry is the familiar face of World War I in British schools: Jeremy Paxman rightly surmises in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/03/great-britain-war-jeremy-paxman-review">Great Britain Goes to War</a> that "we have all come to see the war through Wilfred Owen’s eyes”. Michael Gove might not like this story, but Owen’s poetic explosion of what he calls “the old Lie”, told by the establishment about the glory of sacrifice, is one that it is hard to overwrite.</p>
<p>And World War I was an intensely literary war. Education reform in Britain in the decades before the war extended literacy and therefore the ability to engage meaningfully with the ever-increasing amount of printed matter. This mass reading public, and the widespread participation of civilians in the war effort, meant that all parts of society were engaged in news about the conflict. The lack of competition from other media meant that it was a textually consumed war. </p>
<p>It was also textually mediated. One well-known literary critic, <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v12/n20/pn-furbank/condys-fluid">Sam Hynes</a>, describes the war as a “great imaginative event”. He means that it was thought about, and then copiously written about, as well as prosecuted militarily and politically. </p>
<p>The story of the war that gradually evolved – the one that coalesced around Wilfred Owen and others from the 1930s, and the one that Michael Gove does not like – proved very powerful, so powerful that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/13/long-shadow-great-war-david-reynolds-review">one historian</a> has recently claimed that by 2013 the war had become a literary war, “detached from its moorings in historical events”.</p>
<p>The war needs to be wrestled back from literature, restored to and anchored in history, one infers. But of course, this would be impossible. One of the reasons for this is that the single powerful story itself falls apart on interrogation. Hynes is right that the war was a great imaginative event, but we need to re-approach the nature of that imagination, and its results in print.</p>
<h2>Forgotten stories</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.dacorumheritage.org.uk/article/colonel-francis-brereton/">F S Brereton</a> might not be represented on school syllabi, but he wrote 48 novels, some of them about the 1914-1918 war, in which he served as a surgeon. Heroes, heroines, and evil spies populate his fiction, not war-ravaged trauma victims or alcoholics. Similarly, the reality of war encoded in <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15033/15033-h/15033-h.htm">Tell England</a>, by Ernest Raymond, can be almost summarised by the narrator’s exclamation greeting the likelihood of war: “what fun!”. </p>
<p>Sales of Ernst Jünger’s <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Storm_of_Steel.html?id=j3XNeuiucdoC&redir_esc=y">In Stahlgewittern</a> (published in English as Storm of Steel in 1929) went into six figures. Jünger’s version of war may have been more realistic about the experience of fighting than the tub-thumping adventure narratives of Brereton, but there’s no question of futility in his account. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41274/original/8tpkd6fb-1392134017.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Siegfried Sassoon, 1915.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What these examples demonstrate is that to an eager readership in the 1920s the story of war was very far removed from disillusionment. More than that, it was varied, and simply became more so once the now dominant novels and poetry found their way into print. And even these dominant examples reward scrutiny. Sassoon’s <a href="http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/siegfried-sassoon/the-kiss-7/">The Kiss</a> recounts a soldier’s “good fury” and pleasure in a successful kill: the kiss is the discharge of a weapon into a body already prone.</p>
<p>Historical narratives are no more singular. The idea of a <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/348402/Lost-Generation">“lost generation”</a> for example, central to many in the past, is now regularly challenged. And the routine and boredom of the frontlines are as integral to some accounts as the trauma is to others. Hastings admits “many alternative interpretations” of the war are possible – though one imagines the Blackadder version would not make it onto his list. A dominant narrative, once you train the gaze to look farther back, or wider afield, or explore the edges of the book tables, emerges as unattainable.</p>
<p>A dominant narrative should also be thought to be undesirable, whether or not it affirms what we think we know, or helps to sell books. It is only through acknowledgement of the multiplicity of stories, and the maintenance of an educational system that equips readers of all ages to interpret them, that World War I can come closer to being known and understood. Michael Gove is right to attempt to complicate the narrative, but not to try and produce for ideological reasons a new “story” of war.</p>
<p>The centenary cannot offer a complete picture of the Great War, but it does offer the opportunity to deepen and broaden our knowledge of the many stories that war tells.</p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new UK Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22201/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Haslam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Anniversaries encourage reflection. Now, 100 years after the start of the Great War, anyone who follows current affairs or reads a newspaper is part of a cultural conversation, a widespread reassessment…
Sara Haslam, Senior Lecturer in English, The Open University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22421
2014-02-07T14:34:57Z
2014-02-07T14:34:57Z
‘Racist Chair’ shows that when art goes viral it engages us all
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40907/original/h7x4krrg-1391687657.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Allen Jones,
Chair 1969
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate © Allen Jones</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The media frenzy recently aroused by the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/dasha-zhukova-black-woman-mannequin-chair-sparks-racism-row-9074915.html">“racist chair”</a>, as it has been dubbed, took off in a way that could only have been possible in a digital age. Once the infamous photograph – of wealthy gallerist Dasha Zhukova seated on a chair supported by the folded body of a black female model – went on view, there was no going back. It was out there. No amount of apologies or cropping or attempts to delete could send it to the recycle bin. Nothing could clip its flight round the world, or diminish its pristine appearance in the media.</p>
<p>The internet does not do redemption, but it is a brilliant arena in which to dawdle if you are interested in art. Whereas before the net we might have travelled far to see good things or stood patiently in long queues for blockbuster exhibitions, now it requires only a few taps on a keyboard or screen to bring up great treasures from past and present cultures, near or far away. </p>
<p>Never has such visual wealth been so easily accessible. And every year, as more museums and public art galleries put their collections online, the quality of images seems to get better. We see more and more clearly. <a href="http://www.artemisia-gentileschi.com/index.shtml">Artemisia Gentileschi</a>’s Judith and Holofernes – the c.1620 version – made a strong impression on me when first seen in a black-and-white reproduction. But when viewed online in colour, you see the leaping threads of blood emerging from Holofernes throat as Judith’s sword slices into his neck. No wonder its first owner Louisa de Medici thought it too horrifying to behold and hid it away. Another 380 years had to pass before it went on public display.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40929/original/2d7pdz8m-1391700423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40929/original/2d7pdz8m-1391700423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40929/original/2d7pdz8m-1391700423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40929/original/2d7pdz8m-1391700423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40929/original/2d7pdz8m-1391700423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40929/original/2d7pdz8m-1391700423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40929/original/2d7pdz8m-1391700423.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The earlier version of Judith Beheading Holofernes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is no doubt that the internet liberates and educates. And this capacity is ever growing. It has just been announced, for example, that the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26065504">Tate Britain</a> is to become host to after-hours robots that will allow people from around the globe to vicariously roam the gallery at night. </p>
<p>But this expanded visual field has also brought in its wake a paradoxical narrowing and art-world blindness. The filmic nature of these images, as they fly across the screen, can blind us to their material properties. </p>
<p>It is a woeful fact that this year, for the first time, a <a href="http://makingamark.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/ra-summer-exhibition-2014-goes-totally.html">panel of Royal Academicians</a> will arrive at its short-list for its Summer Exhibition not by the age-old tradition of vetting art while drinking mint tea out of a silver urn, but by watching the submissions march across a computer screen. </p>
<p>Our own easy promiscuity with online images may be one of the reasons why museums and public galleries seem unwilling to invest in research. The focus in recent years has been very much on access, social relevance and impact, rather than history and scholarship – and this change of emphasis is also reflected on the net. Instead of those fat biennial volumes published by the Tate, cataloguing in great detail every item acquired over the previous two years, we now get only a <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/31113">selected overview online</a>. And when we look up individual works in the Tate collection online, we find explanatory matter that is short, slight and unsatisfactory, and sometimes weirdly subjective.</p>
<p>In the absence of knowledge, opinion flourishes. In the brouhaha around the “racist chair” many points of view were offered, but facts were thin on the ground, as was the back history to this chair. It is worth revisiting, for it charts certain shifts in culture, as well as changes in the way art is viewed.</p>
<h2>The Chair</h2>
<p>“Confronted with an erotic statement, everyone is an expert.” So Allen Jones remarked in 1981, unaware of just how prescient this remark would prove to be. Although already twelve years old when it was acquired by Tate, Jones’s Chair (the original Chair) was still, at that time, regarded as Jones’ most radical work to date.</p>
<p>With the acquisition of Jones’s Chair, the Tate had gained a distinct expression of a point of view, concerning art and aesthetics, that had been prevalent in the late 1960s. This in itself justified the acquisition; and supporters of “Chair” continue to this day to reiterate that it is embedded in art history. </p>
<p>But there were already other perspectives. In 1973 Laura Mulvey published an article in <a href="http://www.grassrootsfeminism.net/cms/node/234">Spare Rib</a>, aptly titled “You Don’t Know What Is Happening Do You Mr Jones?”. If he didn’t in 1973, he certainly did in 1986 when Chair was included in the Tate exhibition Forty Years of Modern Art. It attracted a letter from a part-time lecturer in art and design who found it an offence to her sex: “The obscenity of the piece shows extreme insensitivity towards women and I would like to see it removed from the exhibition.” </p>
<p>Apparently unrelated to this letter was the <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-09/torn-velazquez-defaced-s-m-model-highlight-art-vandalism.html">subsequent act</a>, performed by two women, who poured paint stripper over the face, neck and shoulders of the model, causing extensive damage. </p>
<p>The idea of packaging a female form into the shape of chair is on one level teasing, playful, ironic and witty. But when <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/the-chair-man-meet-bjarne-melgaard-the-artist-behind-the-dasha-zhukova-seat-9079716.html">Bjarne Melgaard</a>, the Norwegian artist and provocateur living in New York, picked up the chair idea, the mannequin took on a different register. Now black instead of white, the figure gained greater edge.</p>
<h2>The Chair in 2014</h2>
<p>But this is not what really made the Chair go viral in January. It was the fact that someone was sitting on it. A young woman, wearing jeans and a freshly laundered white shirt. Everything about her seemed deliberately understated and yet perfectly pitched. She sits with one leg tucked up on the chair, her contained pose as neat as her pulled-back hair or the painted toenails on her bare foot. Behind her, three large moveable circular mirrors on stems ornament a long thin table and spin ambient light around her. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41014/original/f6kvz6y5-1391768082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41014/original/f6kvz6y5-1391768082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41014/original/f6kvz6y5-1391768082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41014/original/f6kvz6y5-1391768082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41014/original/f6kvz6y5-1391768082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41014/original/f6kvz6y5-1391768082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41014/original/f6kvz6y5-1391768082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Guardian tweets about the chair.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">d</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Originally taken as a shot for the fashion magazine <a href="http://buro247.ru/">Buro 24/7</a>, to promote Garage, the art gallery which Zhukova runs and the art magazine which she edits, the photograph looks effortlessly beautiful until, that is, the spikey heels on the upturned leather boots catch the eye, then the squished breast, the Afro shock of hair and the head which, as in Jones’s Chair, is raised from the floor, as if in pain.</p>
<p>And so the rage and debate about the “racist chair” began. How could it not, with a white woman seated on a black woman? Worse still, was the fact that the photo had appeared on the day that America had set aside as a national holiday in remembrance of Martin Luther King. The photo was hurriedly cropped online, but those angry offensive spike-heels remained visible. Zhukova apologised, but insisted that the photograph had been “published out of context” and is “of an art work intended specifically as a commentary on gender and racial politics”.</p>
<p>“I never intended the Chair to be sat on,” remarked Allen Jones of his own Chair. But, the moment its function is activated, its tongue-in-cheek eroticism and pop-art playfulness gives way to an ugly and unacceptable form of oppression. What shocks is Zhukova’s serenity, her seeming blindness to the Chair’s imagery and the messages encoded in it. </p>
<p>To the Russian photographer <a href="http://www.kargaltsev.com/">Alexander Kargaltsev</a> the “racist chair” seemed “an outrageous and tasteless act”. As a riposte, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/russian-artist-publishes-gay-chair-in-protest-against-dasha-zhukova-photograph-9093427.html">he photographed</a> a naked black man sitting on a white man, and this image further extends the narrative around the “racist chair”. Kargaltsev knows what it is like to be oppressed, for he was forced to leave Russia for New York, owing to discrimination against gay men. His protest photograph is a statement about racism, xenophobia and homophobia in Russia. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40936/original/z74f9579-1391708246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40936/original/z74f9579-1391708246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40936/original/z74f9579-1391708246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40936/original/z74f9579-1391708246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40936/original/z74f9579-1391708246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40936/original/z74f9579-1391708246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40936/original/z74f9579-1391708246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kargaltsev’s reaction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">d</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nobody, it seems, sat on Allen Jones’s chair 30 years ago when it was confined to a museum and remained solely a work of art. Or if they did, the world did not find out about it. But now revived, slightly altered and sold to private collector, it helps furnish a room, the boundary between art and utility blurred. </p>
<p>When sat on, it becomes interactive and more disturbing. And this particular aspect of the piece was quickly discerned in the photograph of Dasha Zhukova. Once it entered social media, it was instantly beamed around the world, gaining global scope. Out there on the net it triggered not just a snigger but waves of outrage. </p>
<p>Although the plethora of online images may have blunted our engagement with art in some ways, there is no doubt that art going viral is a good thing. It strips away art-world blindness, challenges received opinion and lets in views and opinions from all quarters. The debate may have courted extreme views and been thin on historical awareness. But as we sift through the various incarnations of this chair, then understanding of its perverse vitality is enriched. Time may indeed be swift-footed and the web page fleeting, but context continues to matter.</p>
<p>But above all, the episode shows the power of imagery to reach across age, race and class, and call – not just to our political antennae or sense of taste – but to our humanity. And with the development of projects such as Tate Britain’s after-dark robots, and <a href="https://devart.withgoogle.com/">Google’s DevArt</a>, art’s reach promises ever new horizons. </p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new UK Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frances Spalding does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The media frenzy recently aroused by the “racist chair”, as it has been dubbed, took off in a way that could only have been possible in a digital age. Once the infamous photograph – of wealthy gallerist…
Frances Spalding, Professor of Art History, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22203
2014-02-04T06:21:24Z
2014-02-04T06:21:24Z
How arts journalism can thrive in the age of PR
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40200/original/vy455xw5-1391080984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C2000%2C1047&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The hacks and flacks of old in Frith's 'A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Public relations and arts journalism are inextricable. And so, unlike in other areas of the media, the influence that PR has on the arts sections of newspapers and magazines is not so contentious. But the scope of its influence has frequently been declaimed in the context of cuts to newspaper arts budgets – what original thought can there be in myriad identical reviews, some say? </p>
<p>The influence of PR on news journalism has long been the subject of debate. In 2008, <a href="http://www.mediawise.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Quality-Independence-of-British-Journalism.pdfv">Cardiff University’s School of Journalism</a> found the content of domestic news stories in our quality media was heavily dependent on “pre-packaged news”. In 2011 a nameless News International employee told the Daily Mail that under the stewardship of Rebekah Brooks, the Sun and The News of the World were in thrall to the PR industry. “Scores, if not hundreds, of front-page stories were written by the PR men,” <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013046/Rebekah-Brooks-Sun-News-World-run-fictional-stories-insider-claims.html">he said</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They would think up a headline and story and The Sun and News of the World would run it, word for word. Some of them were complete fiction. Meanwhile, proper stories by proper journalists were buried deep inside the paper.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And as Nick Davies records in his 2008 book <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/oct/04/marketingandpr-pressandpublishing">Flat Earth News</a>, at the time of writing the UK government had 1,500 press officers, issued 20,000 press releases a year, and spent millions on PR firms. The foreign office alone spends £600m a year on “public diplomacy”.</p>
<h2>Access and enlightenment</h2>
<p>While such high profile stories are rare in the arts sector, the influence of PR on arts journalism is nonetheless a hot topic. In 2012, Rozalia Jovanovich wrote in the <a href="http://galleristny.com/2012/06/believe-the-hype-how-pr-took-the-art-world/">Washington Observer</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now more than ever, PR controls access (or at least tries to) in the art world – when journalists know things, how we know things, whether or not we get to know things in the first place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Just last month <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2014/jan/23/art-critics-matter-debate-education">Sarah Kent</a> wrote of art galleries in the UK: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Box office returns are of paramount importance, so to ensure a good press, galleries micro-manage media response. At press views, the curator will often take a hoard of hacks on a tour of the exhibition and tell them what to write – they traipse off to file obsequious reports scarcely having glanced at the show, and everyone is happy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it is obviously necessary that arts reviews rely on press viewings, screenings, and the like. On a basic level, a press officer will be responsible for sending press releases to journalists, inviting them to screenings or first nights and generally enlightening them to any activity that their client maybe involved in. Press officers “provide insight, quotes and access to spokespeople” that would otherwise be unavailable, as communications professional Amanda Guisband <a href="http://www.pr-squared.com/index.php/2012/08/relationships-between-pr-and-journalists-have-changed-forever">put it</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40642/original/gyrkdj7k-1391511777.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40642/original/gyrkdj7k-1391511777.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40642/original/gyrkdj7k-1391511777.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40642/original/gyrkdj7k-1391511777.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40642/original/gyrkdj7k-1391511777.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40642/original/gyrkdj7k-1391511777.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40642/original/gyrkdj7k-1391511777.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The paparazzi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/16339684@N00/2432539544/">internets dairy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is a key point. Where else would an arts correspondent get interview access to a leading actor, a trip to a film set, or information on a project yet to reach pre–production? The PR company strictly controls that access. Let us not imagine that this is an entirely new development either. The elite have always appeared on stage and screen because they have something to promote, they have always been booked through agents.</p>
<h2>Symbiosis</h2>
<p>So there are two ways of seeing modern PR and its relationship with culture. The relationship between arts journalists and press officers is of course mutually beneficial. But whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on the critic. One may view it in benign terms, as the <a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/65672">necessary process</a> of engagement with public opinion. Despite the <a href="http://www.stuffjournalistslike.com/2012/01/six-way-pr-flacks-piss-off-journalists.html">occasional reciprocated antipathy</a>, both parties are aware of their symbiotic connection. One cannot survive without the other.</p>
<p>Then there is the view, common among many journalists and defenders of the integrity of the arts, that PR has a corrosive and malign influence. Writing in 2003, journalist and commentator, <a href="http://bryanappleyard.com/pr-the-evil-art/%D5">Bryan Appleyard,</a> stated: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is a disease, a virus that has infected all show business, celebrity and sport reporting. It is now threatening to infect all journalism and, in the name of truth, it has to be stopped.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A balance of influence must be struck. PR officers are crucial to arts journalists, but the table must not turn to the extent that ready-made articles and identical reviews are the result. This is of course difficult in the light of the steadily reducing number of arts journalists working for the national papers – areas of expertise being spread thinner and thinner – here the “here’s one we made earlier” press release is likely to come very handy. </p>
<p>Add to that the way in which the press officer’s role is getting far more complicated in today’s digital landscape. Mastering social media is the key to success. This means that the days of critical reviews meaning the difference between success and failure of a play, a film, or an exhibition, are gradually drawing to an end.</p>
<h2>Reviewing isn’t dead</h2>
<p>The emergence of Twitter and Facebook has meant that reviewers and critics can be bypassed altogether as celebrities use social media to promote and communicate directly to audiences. So tweets, status changes and information about forthcoming events can be regularly imparted without recourse to traditional media channels.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40643/original/9pybmytb-1391512092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40643/original/9pybmytb-1391512092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40643/original/9pybmytb-1391512092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40643/original/9pybmytb-1391512092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40643/original/9pybmytb-1391512092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40643/original/9pybmytb-1391512092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40643/original/9pybmytb-1391512092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Press night is no longer the be all and end all.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">nattynattyboom</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s no wonder then that arts correspondents may feel so threatened and irritated by the influence of PR. There is now a multiplicity of voices, opinions, surrounding the arts – the reviewer no longer has the authority of old. This means that the nature of reviews has changed, as Siobhan Waterhouse <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2012/mar/21/top-tips-arts-culture-pr-press">explained</a> in The Guardian:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Arts publicists are starting to realise that rather than desperately crossing your fingers for a good review in the daily newspaper, reviews are now about creating dialogue, offering diverse standpoints, highlighting perspectives and giving people another reason to want to come to the theatre, performance or gig. Reviewing will never die out, it’s just evolving.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the way forward for arts journalism, surely. The stage can be opened for multiple voices. Journalists and PR people working together, checking the facts of releases and adding journalistic flair and realism to what may be pure puffery. The crossover between blogging and reviewing should also be increased.</p>
<h2>Embrace the dark side</h2>
<p>It is pointless to continually decry PR as the “dark arts”. It’s not going to go away. <a href="http://courses.uwe.ac.uk/PP52/2013">Universities</a> run BA degrees in Journalism and Public Relations combined, and <a href="http://www.meltwater.com/public-relations-blog/pr-pros-outnumber-journalists-up-your-media-relations-game/">figures suggest</a> that PR professionals outnumber traditional journalists by 4:1. Ironic as it may be, this fact may actually strengthen the position of the correspondent. </p>
<p>As PR guru <a href="http://www.meltwater.com/public-relations-blog/pr-pros-outnumber-journalists-up-your-media-relations-game/">Marc Cowlin</a> has indicated, in this competitive environment, attracting the attention of a journalist is harder than ever. If you aren’t employing new tactics in targeting and engaging journalists in your media relations you may as well stop altogether.</p>
<p>These are perilous times for the arts generally. In June <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/jun/12/arts-groups-face-loss-funding">The Guardian</a> reported that more than four-fifths of English subsidised arts companies could lose their funding completely as a result of arts council cuts. This would decimate a number of arts organisations across the country and leave artistic and economically viable enterprises at the mercy of the market. <a href="http://www.roh.org.uk/news/help-us-make-the-case-for-the-arts">Sally O’Neill</a>, interim director of the Royal Opera House, has made a heartfelt call to for interested parties to lobby their local MP.</p>
<p>There is quality arts journalism out there – the problem is that it often occurs as a reaction to news about the arts, rather than arts events themselves.</p>
<h2>Arts at the vanguard</h2>
<p>It is not all doom and gloom. There is the <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%20http:/www.theguardian.com/culture/observer-anthony-burgess-prize-for-arts-journalism%20">Observer’s Anthony Burgess prize</a> for arts journalism, Sky Arts 1 and 2, the highly readable Sunday Times culture section and the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog">Culture Professionals Network</a> in The Guardian online. But in today’s fractured media world where conventional newspapers and the terrestrial broadcasters have limited time and space to focus on anything other than virtually identical reviews of the same highly publicised vehicles, arts journalism must promote through a variety of sites.</p>
<p>This, of course, is already the case. In these times of austerity where everything has its price, and culture too is commodified, we should celebrate arts journalism and explore the new horizons. We need commentators and critics to cut through the marketing and provide evaluation and elucidation. In the words of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/mar/04/anthony-burgess-observer-prize-arts-journalism">Robert McCrum</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The arts journalist is the correspondent from that alternative front line. Where some writers are herbivores or carnivores, hedgehogs or foxes, the arts journalist is an omnivore. In the English tradition, the great omnivores, from Dickens and Shaw to Peter Ackroyd and Will Self, have the kind of appetite for culture, in all its uplifting variety, that seems to push the world of the imagination to the limit and then some.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The usefulness of the arts cannot and never should be determined by its economic worth. Human expression in an age of technological dominance must fight to survive and prosper – and arts journalism must be at the vanguard of this struggle.</p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new UK Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22203/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Public relations and arts journalism are inextricable. And so, unlike in other areas of the media, the influence that PR has on the arts sections of newspapers and magazines is not so contentious. But…
John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22263
2014-02-03T00:17:38Z
2014-02-03T00:17:38Z
The arts don’t need more lobbying, but a radical new vision
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40326/original/m45z4fjq-1391192899.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Culture: not just contemporary dance in London.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Brady/PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pinning down definitions of the words “culture” and “arts” has always been notoriously difficult. But over the past 60 years, fast and profound social, economic, technological and cultural changes have blunted these terms even further, and significantly broadened the range of what is perceived as “legitimate culture” and labelled as “arts”. </p>
<p>In the age of the internet and digital TV on demand, we are all able to create culture as we consume it. John Carey’s declaration in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jun/11/highereducation.news">What Good Are the Arts?</a> that “a work of art is anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art, though it may be a work of art only for that one person”, hardly feels as incendiary as it once might have.</p>
<h2>A question of authority</h2>
<p>There is little doubt that challenging traditional forms of authority has resulted in the broadening of our cultural horizons. This has inevitably also meant that our understanding of culture has developed, becoming ever more complex and more democratic. </p>
<p>And yet, when it comes to allocating the fast diminishing public resources to some forms of arts and culture and not others, judgements of quality and value are unavoidable. Those who make all these important funding decisions will inevitably exercise some form of cultural authority: every pound spent on one arts organisation or project is a pound denied to another. Yet, this cultural authority and the values that it embodies are hardly ever questioned or scrutinised.</p>
<p>Arts funding is a great testing ground for answers to some fascinating questions: what is the value of the arts? And what arts are of value? Who has the authority and power to decide what the answers to these questions might be?</p>
<p>Arts funding in Britain started in an informal way with <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/who-we-are/history-arts-council/">CEMA</a>, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, during World War II. Its function was formalised after the war with the establishment of the then Arts Council of Great Britain, since devolved into different councils for each of the United Kingdom’s nations. </p>
<p>So, state support for arts and culture was part of the broader process of post-war reconstruction, which saw the establishment of the welfare system. But unlike the areas of concern of state welfare provision – health, education, housing and social security – the provision of access to opportunities to appreciate and enjoy the arts has never gained the kind of wide popular (and indeed political) support that, say, the NHS enjoys. It is hard to imagine an arts subsidy equivalent of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01b7461">spectacular paean</a> that Danny Boyle put together for the national health system in the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony.</p>
<p>It is hardly surprising then, that the arts and cultural sector should suffer from justification anxiety. This becomes especially intense in times of austerity and cuts in welfare provision.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40345/original/wpmv44v4-1391364005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40345/original/wpmv44v4-1391364005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40345/original/wpmv44v4-1391364005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40345/original/wpmv44v4-1391364005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40345/original/wpmv44v4-1391364005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40345/original/wpmv44v4-1391364005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40345/original/wpmv44v4-1391364005.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The NHS has its own cultural value.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shimelle/7656538630/sizes/l/">shimelle</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Who benefits from arts funding?</h2>
<p>One longstanding justification strategy has centred around the importance of widening access to the kind of art forms that, without state support, would either (allegedly) not survive in the market, or become too expensive, and therefore only accessible to the privileged few. </p>
<p>We know from data <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/taking-part">collated</a> by the Department of Culture Media and Sport that general levels of cultural engagement are rising, with more people taking part as audiences or participants in a wider range of cultural activities, whether publicly funded or provided by the commercial cultural industries. </p>
<p>But arts participation and attendance are still clearly socially stratified, especially where the more heavily subsidised cultural forms are concerned. Having a degree and being in a professional occupation are still pretty accurate predictors of more frequent engagement in those arts forms that account for a greater proportion of arts subsidy (theatre, opera, ballet).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40324/original/gvpcyvfd-1391191252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40324/original/gvpcyvfd-1391191252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40324/original/gvpcyvfd-1391191252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40324/original/gvpcyvfd-1391191252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40324/original/gvpcyvfd-1391191252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40324/original/gvpcyvfd-1391191252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40324/original/gvpcyvfd-1391191252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">DCMS Taking Part 2011-12 Annual Report</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Interestingly, the data emerging from the Taking Part survey tallies with the findings from another large-scale research project on <a href="http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue?sn=5832">Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion</a>. The project included a large-scale survey in the form of a questionnaire that gathered information on the respondents’ cultural activities, tastes and preferences and considered them in relation to their class status, educational qualifications, ethnicity, gender, occupations, and so forth. </p>
<p><a href="http://bit.ly/1dWlUaA">Writing in 2005</a>, Tony Bennett, one of the research leads on the project concluded that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well-educated middle-class professionals and managers are the most likely to be heavily involved in those parts of the cultural sector that are dependent on public funding whereas less well educated unskilled and semi-skilled workers are more exclusively involved in the commercial cultural sector.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Add to this picture the persistent imbalance in funding, which is severely skewed towards London and urban areas more generally. Whose arts engagement does the funding system really support? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40325/original/t5tjcwz7-1391191299.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40325/original/t5tjcwz7-1391191299.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40325/original/t5tjcwz7-1391191299.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40325/original/t5tjcwz7-1391191299.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40325/original/t5tjcwz7-1391191299.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40325/original/t5tjcwz7-1391191299.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40325/original/t5tjcwz7-1391191299.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">DCMS Taking Part 2011-12 Annual Report</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Austerity bites</h2>
<p>While British cultural organisations are world-renowned for both the quality of their work and their ability to find new ways to generate revenue, there is little doubt that recent cuts in funding at both central and local government level are having a real impact, and causing real damage to the national cultural ecosystem. For instance, Fin Kennedy, via his campaign <a href="http://finkennedy.co.uk/In-Battalions">In Battalions</a>, has documented how arts funding cuts have reduced the ability of English theatre to support new theatre writing. </p>
<p>In times of austerity, then, how should “the case for culture” be made? </p>
<p>One strategy has been to focus on the economic value that arts and culture can generate. Much has been made of the data, recently released by Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), according to which the creative industries are now worth <a href="https://theconversation.com/overlooked-creative-industries-are-recession-proof-22205">£71.4 billion per year</a> to the UK economy. With a growth rate of almost 10% in 2012, the creative industries are said to have outperformed all other sectors of UK industry. </p>
<p>The DCMS’ definition of what constitutes the creative industries is quite broad, including, for instance, computer software, advertising, architecture and design. But this hasn’t stopped the more traditional arts organisations from using these arguments as ammunition for their justification strategies. For instance, director of the National Portrait Gallery Sandy Nairne quite imaginatively referred to the DCMS data and <a href="http://www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=413&codeid=308035">suggested</a> it demonstrates that “museums and galleries are one of the engine rooms of the cultural industries”, since they “offer crucial source material for artists, designers and innovators of all kinds”. And yet, the precise connection between the arts and the creative industries remains largely uncharted.</p>
<p>The reality is that no increase in funding is a realistic prospect in the coming years. Arguably, then, the conversation around cultural policy might more productively focus on asking how current modes of cultural funding, production and consumption can create cultural value for the public, and how new policies and strategies can help this.</p>
<h2>Culture change</h2>
<p>Now is the time for a sector whose essence lies in creativity, invention and a questioning spirit to put those skills to use to develop a new cultural vision for the new era of financial instability that we are presently living. What are urgently needed are measures – beyond funding – that can be put in place to ensure that cultural value is generated for the largest possible number of people, across class, gender, ethnicities, and secured for future generations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40366/original/5rk7rkgb-1391383110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40366/original/5rk7rkgb-1391383110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40366/original/5rk7rkgb-1391383110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40366/original/5rk7rkgb-1391383110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40366/original/5rk7rkgb-1391383110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40366/original/5rk7rkgb-1391383110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40366/original/5rk7rkgb-1391383110.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Value for money?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://images.pressassociation.com/meta/2.18339025.html"> John Walton/PA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The current focus on lobbying and advocacy is not likely to deliver the arts to a place of safety and riches, so now is the time for a fresh, less defensive approach to the justification problem. New thinking is needed. Connections between strategies for the arts and other areas of policy need to be made, such as education, skills training and a coherent industrial policy for the creative industries. </p>
<p>Debates around justifications for state support of the arts have tended to remain, so far, rather insular and a matter for cultural professionals. Now is the time to link these arguments to broader societal aspirations, such as equality of opportunities and fairness, and to get the wider public on board. This will mean the arts sector will have to listen and open itself to uncomfortable scrutiny and criticism. </p>
<p>Arguably, what is needed in these challenging times is a genuine attempt to figure out what role the arts can play in the quest for the good and just society. This is a quest that has a long and illustrious tradition that goes back to Classical Greece, and to <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237814">Plato’s attempts</a> to articulate the role of poetry and the arts in the education of the young, and the flourishing of the ideal polity. </p>
<p><a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/research/warwickcommission/futureculture/">We need to recreate</a> powerful and contemporary visions of the role that the arts play, now and in the education of the future generations. This is no easy task, and it is one that calls for a partnership of intent across society. Artists, arts administrators, cultural policy makers, politicians, intellectuals and, most crucially, the general public need to participate in a national conversation on the value, role and effects of culture. A new vision for culture is needed, one that both preserves traditions, encourages innovation and facilitates equal access to creative experiences. </p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new UK Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleonora Belfiore receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>
Pinning down definitions of the words “culture” and “arts” has always been notoriously difficult. But over the past 60 years, fast and profound social, economic, technological and cultural changes have…
Eleonora Belfiore, Associate Professor of Cultural Policy, University of Warwick
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22461
2014-02-03T00:17:35Z
2014-02-03T00:17:35Z
What art can learn from science about awarding greatness
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40206/original/yv6s2csr-1391083988.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stars in our eyes </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben Terrett</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s that season, and the award shows have begun, culminating for many in the Oscars. There are, as always, heavy favourites, films nominated numerous times, shows, musicians and actors. But one has to wonder: what does being a winner mean?</p>
<p>If art were a discipline like science, would we have any less of a problem sorting the wheat from the chaff? Over time, perhaps, but in the short-term: no. The subjective nature of value, a problem noticed among economists (and philosophers) in the mid-nineteenth century, is at the heart of the problem of measurement in anything other than the hard sciences. </p>
<p>Simply put: if we try to measure how anyone values something by their external behaviour, we can never hope to understand the highly complex chain of relations leading to their decision. Thus, in economics, we will never have what we’d hope for in a science: an exact theory that describes what’s going on in an economy at any scale. We cannot account for taste, let alone make an accounting <em>of</em> taste, or tastes, or the sum of tastes.</p>
<p>I used to watch awards shows, especially the Oscars, because I am a <em>bona fide</em> movie junkie, I’d watch anything on a large enough screen. Like everyone else, I entered with my favourites, and rooted for them like thoroughbreds at the track. Like many of you, I found some of the picks puzzling, and disappointment was a frequent emotion. What the hell were they thinking, I’d muse as the clear best picture, most years, was overlooked for some other, lesser work. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40321/original/khwq99yv-1391188701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40321/original/khwq99yv-1391188701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40321/original/khwq99yv-1391188701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40321/original/khwq99yv-1391188701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40321/original/khwq99yv-1391188701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40321/original/khwq99yv-1391188701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40321/original/khwq99yv-1391188701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40321/original/khwq99yv-1391188701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robbed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:There_Will_Be_Blood_Poster.jpg">Miramax Pixtures</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The phenomenon began decades ago for me in music, so I sloughed off the <a href="https://theconversation.com/grammys-remain-out-of-touch-with-the-modern-music-industry-22370">Grammys</a> long ago. I left the Oscars behind about five years ago, soon after <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOohAwZOSGo">No Country for Old Men</a> beat out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3THVbr4hlY">There Will be Blood</a> for nearly everything. I suppose then I finally lost my faith. I’m not going to argue the merits of the pick, I’ve expended too much energy over too many debates with friends and family about that damnable, insane rout. That travesty. And I never once changed someone’s mind. That’s the point.</p>
<p>In science, we have an informal institution that measures value, and it isn’t the Nobel Prize. It’s science. The body that comprises science isn’t made of gold or handed out by tuxedoed or sequined presenters. The sum of science is its publications, bad or good, groundbreaking or incremental. Out of this great enterprise, a picture of nature as it is emerges, replacing notions of how nature isn’t. </p>
<p>Newton and all the rest stand on the shoulders of giants, and we, all of us, benefit from the result. Sometimes important scientists are justly recognised for their contributions, sometimes unjustly, by the Nobel committee. But the real work, the hard work, the good work, sometimes isn’t appreciated until long after the scientists who did it have died. Often, it’s never recognised or attributed to any one or number of scientists, it’s just there in the body of data that grounds some new, successful hypothesis, or old successful theory. Could art be like that? Should it?</p>
<p>I think it could be, and ponder if we wouldn’t all be better off taking the horse out of the race and watching it graze a bit, amble around, and play. See how it survives the seasons. In science, as in art, too much competition can undermine the truth. Too often we see people cheat to get recognition, grants, publications, rather than letting the institution work as it should, slowly over time, separating through experience and experiment the good from the bad. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40318/original/ws58yf4r-1391188166.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40318/original/ws58yf4r-1391188166.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40318/original/ws58yf4r-1391188166.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40318/original/ws58yf4r-1391188166.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40318/original/ws58yf4r-1391188166.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40318/original/ws58yf4r-1391188166.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40318/original/ws58yf4r-1391188166.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Higgs: 40 years for one Boson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://images.pressassociation.com/meta/2.18179497.html">Sean Dempsey/PA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Add to this the way in which art is even more complex, since our tastes vary so greatly, and are often incommensurable. Perhaps we shouldn’t give awards until decades after a piece of art has been out, take a lesson even from the Nobel prize in the sciences, which may wait a while since a paper’s been published or a theory’s been confirmed (as with the <a>Higgs boson</a>, whose namesake devised the concept 40 years before winning the prize). Or maybe, we could just watch and enjoy what we like, let the market decide what’s worth it, over time, and stop getting suckered into watching actors congratulating themselves in overly long, barely bearable Hollywood extravaganzas.</p>
<p>John-Paul Sartre, in <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1964/press.html">refusing the Nobel prize in literature</a>, explained it well, and it applies in art as in science:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The writer must therefore refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution, even if this occurs under the most honourable circumstances, as in the present case.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The institutions that must exist cannot be people, they can only be art and science, or whatever the field is in itself. When we laud people, as we are apt to do, then we lose the soul of the enterprise: the quest to create, to discover, and to revel in truth and beauty.</p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new UK Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Koepsell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It’s that season, and the award shows have begun, culminating for many in the Oscars. There are, as always, heavy favourites, films nominated numerous times, shows, musicians and actors. But one has to…
David Koepsell, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Delft University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/19071
2013-11-11T19:43:22Z
2013-11-11T19:43:22Z
What is a book in the digital age?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34675/original/hcr86yrh-1383815787.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Left: Girl Reading, by Franz Eybl. Oil on canvas, 1850. Right: Woman Reading, by Andrew Stevovich. Oil painting, 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr, Plum Leaves; Wiki Commons, Andr.V.S.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a professional <a href="http://zoesadokierski.com/">book designer</a>, I’ve spent a decade observing electronic books from a cagey distance. A couple of years ago, I reluctantly recognised the need to engage with these alien book forms, both as a reader and <a href="http://www.pagescreenstudio.com/">a designer</a>. It is the 21st century.</p>
<p>What I have come to realise is this: electronic books can do certain things that print books cannot, and therein lies their value. Enhanced electronic books are changing our definition and expectations of books. </p>
<p>My office, home and handbag are still stuffed with print books; eBooks (e for electronic) have not replaced pBooks (p for print) in my life. I find myself toggling between the two. </p>
<p>I consider the relationships between print and electronic books from the perspective of a reader and designer. What are these different formats, and how do they affect the way we produce and consume content? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33657/original/hndmgdk3-1382581612.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33657/original/hndmgdk3-1382581612.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33657/original/hndmgdk3-1382581612.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33657/original/hndmgdk3-1382581612.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33657/original/hndmgdk3-1382581612.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33657/original/hndmgdk3-1382581612.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33657/original/hndmgdk3-1382581612.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Print book versus electronic book: a visual overview.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zoe Sadokierski</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The smell and feel of paper</h2>
<p>Let’s get nostalgia out of the way quickly. Print books have a material quality that electronic books do not. For many of us, the intimacy of cradling a book close to our chest, hanging our head over it and shutting out the real world is a sacred ritual. The smell and feel of paper can never be replicated by a cold, hard screen.</p>
<p>Although it’s possible to read an electronic book in a bath, it’s less relaxing and more dangerous (not in a fun way). Browsing a bookstore or library and flicking through books is a social, embodied experience. Clicking on a screen is not.</p>
<p>Amazon.com has a complex algorithm to suggest books I may like based on previous purchases, but I’d rather have a librarian or bookseller make suggestions based on their expertise and a conversation, and walk out holding the book object. The tactile differences between page and screen will always be an issue for those of us raised on ink and paper.</p>
<p>But watch how a toddler tapping stubbornly at a magazine becomes annoyed that the image isn’t changing. That child is unlikely to feel the same nostalgia for print as her parents, because her understanding of “book” will be significantly different to theirs.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aXV-yaFmQNk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A magazine is an iPad that doesn’t work.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The technology we use to present and consume information has changed. The toddler who understands that tapping a glassy surface should make an image change demonstrates that technology is developing at an unprecedented rate, and unless we are constantly attentive we risk being left behind.</p>
<h2>New tech, new challenges</h2>
<p>Although often linked, anxiety about the new is different than nostalgia for the old.</p>
<p>A print book is a beautifully simple technology to use. Pick the thing up, turn each leaf in sequence until finished. If literate, anyone can pick up and read any print book.</p>
<p>An electronic book is a more complex technology. An eBook requires a computer, eReader or tablet, and a power source to keep the device charged. It requires computer access to a website or digital catalogue where files can be downloaded, and an understanding of how to use it.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34665/original/dkjqp786-1383804186.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34665/original/dkjqp786-1383804186.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34665/original/dkjqp786-1383804186.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34665/original/dkjqp786-1383804186.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34665/original/dkjqp786-1383804186.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34665/original/dkjqp786-1383804186.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34665/original/dkjqp786-1383804186.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gestures: pinch; pan; two-hand rotate; two finger scroll.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GRPH3B18</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pages aren’t just turned, they are clicked and pinched and swiped – movements that need to be learned, and vary between different devices and brands.</p>
<p>In other words, you need new kinds of literacy to even get to the text. Moreover, you need to keep up with constant development and updating of these devices and programs, and understand the value and limitations of different devices, formats and suppliers.</p>
<p>This market-driven mess is the major issue with current eBooks. Different eReaders are made by different companies – Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and the Sony Reader, to name a few. Then there are tablets, such as Apple’s iPad, which perform a range of functions similar to a computer, one of which is enabling users to read eBooks through an app (short for “application”, or computer program). </p>
<p>These different devices run on different software, and require different file types. An eBook that works on a Kindle may not work on an iPad. There is no single file type that allows an eBook to be published all devices.</p>
<p>So although cutting out the printing and binding process of traditional book production may seem to reduce production time and costs, the confusion of designing for different platforms and devices means an entirely new and more complicated production process has been introduced.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34661/original/8sf8grwq-1383803267.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34661/original/8sf8grwq-1383803267.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34661/original/8sf8grwq-1383803267.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34661/original/8sf8grwq-1383803267.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34661/original/8sf8grwq-1383803267.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34661/original/8sf8grwq-1383803267.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34661/original/8sf8grwq-1383803267.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34661/original/8sf8grwq-1383803267.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Content has to be designed ‘responsively’ – to flow into the different formats of different devices.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">jiraisurfer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Urgency to capture the market means many of these devices and the software/programs on them are released before they have been properly tested, and have faults that need to be addressed by constantly updating to newer versions of the software.</p>
<p>Amazon’s Kindle Fire eReader, released just before Christmas 2011, was riddled with <a href="http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/kindle-fire-hd-problems/">bugs and problems</a>: volume-control glitches, an off-switch that was easily hit by accident, slow loading time and an unresponsive touch screen. Hundreds of articles and forums are dedicated to problems associated with iPads: overheating devices, Wi-Fi connectivity issues, slow charging, apps and eBooks refusing to sync or download. </p>
<p>This can seem overwhelming when you could just pick up a print book and begin reading immediately.</p>
<p>Yet the complexity of the digital system is what allows eBooks to do astounding things, and offers versatility and accessibility impossible in print.</p>
<h2>More pros than cons</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34659/original/wjxxj8xd-1383802176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34659/original/wjxxj8xd-1383802176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34659/original/wjxxj8xd-1383802176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34659/original/wjxxj8xd-1383802176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34659/original/wjxxj8xd-1383802176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34659/original/wjxxj8xd-1383802176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34659/original/wjxxj8xd-1383802176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34659/original/wjxxj8xd-1383802176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Martouf</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most immediate appeal of eBooks for digitally-reluctant readers is the efficiency afforded by an eReader. Packing for a vacation, a single device the width of a novella that contains hundreds of books is incredibly convenient and offers a previously unimagined variety of instantaneous choice.</p>
<p>Travelling on the Trans-Mongolian Rail a few years ago, I constantly cursed the bulk of Anna Karenina. With an eReader, I could have slipped Tolstoy’s entire oeuvre into my jacket pocket, with some Dostoyevsky for good measure. Then again, finding a power source in a yurt would have proved problematic.</p>
<p>Other appealing aspects of eBooks are immediacy and variety. Incredible numbers of eBooks, including many that are difficult to find in print, are available instantly from repositories, with no delivery time, and with many at a lower cost than print books. </p>
<p>The US-based online literary archive <a href="http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/kindle-fire-hd-problems/">Project Gutenberg</a> has more than 42,000 free eBooks – digitised books that have fallen out of copyright.</p>
<p>Most publishers offer new releases in both print and electronic editions simultaneously. These eBooks are direct translations of print books; the same text is scanned in, or typeset for an eReader, exactly as it would appear in the print edition. For those direct translations, the difference between a print and electronic edition is a matter of the reader’s preference. The content of the book is the same, only the format differs.</p>
<h2>A richer reading experience</h2>
<p>A more curious breed are “enhanced eBooks”, which include audio-visual and interactive elements such as short videos and animations.</p>
<p>UK company <a href="http://www.touchpress.com">Touch Press</a> are leading that field. Their titles include <a href="https://theconversation.com/master-craftsman-how-ts-eliot-led-the-way-in-the-digital-publishing-revolution-19689">an edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land</a> that contains a scanned draft of the manuscript hand-edited by Ezra Pound, an original video performance of the poem, and a suite of video interviews with poets, theatre directors and scholars discussing the cultural significance of the poem.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ek9aodZE1q4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">T.S. Eliot’s classic poem, The Waste Land, for iPad.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They have also produced an edition of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings that allows users to zoom at extraordinary resolution and compare Leonardo’s theories against modern knowledge with 3D models of human anatomy, as well as interactive demonstrations.</p>
<p>Touch Press is also behind an animated, annotated <a href="http://www.touchpress.com/titles/theelements/">periodic table of elements</a> that has to be seen to be believed. Their highly interactive release, Gems and Jewels, allows users to rotate the pictures within the books to see the other side.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6LX2Bz6xC4s?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Touch Press’ website manifesto reads: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Books are one of the defining inventions of civilisation. Today publishing is being transformed by digital technologies. The aim of Touch Press is to create new kinds of books that re-invent the reading experience by offering information that is enhanced with rich media and that adapts dynamically to the interests and experience of the reader.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These kinds of publications are different than the eBooks that are straight translations from print to digital. They include audio-visual and interactive elements that cannot be reproduced on the page.</p>
<p>These are the eBooks that are changing the way we consider what a book is, and could be.</p>
<p><br>
<em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoe Sadokierski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
As a professional book designer, I’ve spent a decade observing electronic books from a cagey distance. A couple of years ago, I reluctantly recognised the need to engage with these alien book forms, both…
Zoe Sadokierski, Lecturer, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18910
2013-11-07T19:36:32Z
2013-11-07T19:36:32Z
Youth vs truth: how box sets beat the box office
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34616/original/vycqx77b-1383788191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Let's be honest: the sofa's often better than the cinema. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/HBO</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The northern summer of 2013 was a bad one for Hollywood. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1815862/">After Earth</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210819/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Lone Ranger</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2334879/?ref_=nv_sr_1">White House Down</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/?ref_=nv_sr_1">World War Z</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Pacific Rim</a> were among the million-dollar turkeys. And you may have noticed the DVD shelves feature more TV series than ever before. </p>
<p>So what’s going on?</p>
<p>Cinema has been in crisis for 70 years. In the 1950s, it responded to the challenge of television with bigger, brighter and brasher spectacles. But the problem with big-budget spectacle is obvious: when you bet the bank, it’s easy to lose your shirt. </p>
<p>A few massive flops such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056937/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Cleopatra</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061584/?ref_=fn_al_tt_7">Dr Dolittle</a> in the 1960s were enough to frighten investors and producers off the strategy. </p>
<p>In the place of that approach, Hollywood discovered low-budget movies with the kind of adult themes television of the 1960s and 1970s couldn’t or wouldn’t handle. From <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Easy Rider</a> (1969) to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Taxi Driver</a> (1976), the strategy worked, but a handful of expensive bombs such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080855/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Heaven’s Gate</a> (1980) changed LA executives’ minds again.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33548/original/26hv8vq7-1382500244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33548/original/26hv8vq7-1382500244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33548/original/26hv8vq7-1382500244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33548/original/26hv8vq7-1382500244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33548/original/26hv8vq7-1382500244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33548/original/26hv8vq7-1382500244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33548/original/26hv8vq7-1382500244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33548/original/26hv8vq7-1382500244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">sanberdoo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the TV problem persisted. How could you get your would-be audience to leave the sofa (and the proximity of the refrigerator) to go down town to the movie theatre? In 1975 and 1976, two films set the model for the future: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Jaws</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Star Wars</a>. Spielberg’s shark story was more than a film: it was an event. </p>
<p>George Lucas’s first installment of his sci-fi epic went one better by opening up a new market for spin-offs: toys, clothes, games, theme-park rides and merchandise of every kind. </p>
<p>Best of all, both films created the opportunity to tell more stories with the same basic set up: what Hollywood would come to call a <em>franchise</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33557/original/py37csyg-1382502069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33557/original/py37csyg-1382502069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33557/original/py37csyg-1382502069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33557/original/py37csyg-1382502069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33557/original/py37csyg-1382502069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33557/original/py37csyg-1382502069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33557/original/py37csyg-1382502069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33557/original/py37csyg-1382502069.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Viktor hertz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The lesson was clear: parents might not be persuaded to get up off the couch, but teens everywhere could be persuaded to evade the watchful eye of Mom and Dad. For nearly 40 years, that wisdom has framed the way Hollywood has made movies. </p>
<p>Reducing drastically the number of films they make each year, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_film_studio#Today.27s_Big_Six">the six major studios</a>, who together control more than 80% of global box office, concentrate on the 12-to-25 age range. </p>
<p>The major target is boys, especially younger teens who tend to visit the cinema in groups, with a significant subsidiary market for slightly older teens on dates, and girls heading out for an evening together.</p>
<p>Older film fans talk about genres such as westerns and science fiction. The industry talks about blockbusters for boys and date movies and rom-coms for girls.</p>
<h2>Distraction</h2>
<p>The rise of computer games in the 1980s and the internet in the 1990s increased competition for young audiences’ attention, already distracted by rock music, the revitalisation of the comic book industry in the 1980s, and a massive boom in consumer magazines in the same decade. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33671/original/djfypbck-1382587259.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33671/original/djfypbck-1382587259.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33671/original/djfypbck-1382587259.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33671/original/djfypbck-1382587259.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33671/original/djfypbck-1382587259.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33671/original/djfypbck-1382587259.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33671/original/djfypbck-1382587259.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33671/original/djfypbck-1382587259.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">myrrh ahn</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1980s, video piracy rattled the business: in the 2000s <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-battle-has-been-won-but-the-war-on-piracy-is-far-from-over-16211">the problem of piracy</a> exploded, as an increasingly internet-savvy generation used file-sharing to access the movies the studios lavished so much money and care on. </p>
<p>The first strategic response by Hollywood was architectural. Loosening implementation of laws on cross-ownership starting in the 2000s allowed the majors to return to the theatrical end of the business, where they invested huge sums on new multiplexes, luxurious seating and state-of-the-art sound systems. </p>
<p>The second strategic response was marketing. Today, at least a third of the budget for a new release is spent on “P&A”, prints and advertising. Increasingly sophisticated teasers and trailers, reports from the set, leaks to the press and huge advertising campaigns jockey for the biggest possible success.</p>
<p>The focus of the campaign is the opening weekend. Top-budget movies not only have to open to big crowds; the opening weekend establishes the brand of the film, which will be essential for its long-term success. </p>
<p>Once the title, the logo, the specially-commissioned typeface and the carefully selected images have saturated television, billboards, websites, social media, newsprint and magazines, the stage is set for the longer haul of DVD sales and rentals, video-on-demand streaming, cable, satellite and free-to-air TV. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33580/original/f3v3hyqh-1382508343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33580/original/f3v3hyqh-1382508343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33580/original/f3v3hyqh-1382508343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33580/original/f3v3hyqh-1382508343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33580/original/f3v3hyqh-1382508343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33580/original/f3v3hyqh-1382508343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33580/original/f3v3hyqh-1382508343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33580/original/f3v3hyqh-1382508343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nice shades … but World War Z underperformed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hannibal Hanschke/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to top industry scholar <a href="http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_26228.html">Tino Balio</a>, that is where, in the 2010s, well over 60% of movie revenues are generated.</p>
<p>Films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Lord of the Rings</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Avatar</a> (whose second and third installments are in preparation for 2016 and 2017 release) are typical franchises in at least three senses:</p>
<p>1) Each film in the series remains open to a sequel.<br></p>
<p>2) Because of the gap between release dates, fans are likely to buy a previous instalment to get in the mood in advance of the latest episode. <br></p>
<p>3) The films are made with a lavish attention to detail that invites multiple viewings.</p>
<p>Franchises are good for studios. A one-off film is a prototype: as scriptwriting guru <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Goldman">William Goldman</a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/457097-nobody-knows-anything-not-one-person-in-the-entire-motion">famously said</a> of Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.”</p>
<p>If we could predict success, there would never be such a thing as a box office bomb. </p>
<p>But if your <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258463/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4">first Bourne movie</a> is a hit, the chances its sequel will crash and burn are significantly lowered. </p>
<p>Add to this the fact that all the majors are now parts of multimedia conglomerates, and that a franchise based on an already-successful product has a much better chance of success itself. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33685/original/nmwyd764-1382589706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33685/original/nmwyd764-1382589706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33685/original/nmwyd764-1382589706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33685/original/nmwyd764-1382589706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33685/original/nmwyd764-1382589706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33685/original/nmwyd764-1382589706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33685/original/nmwyd764-1382589706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33685/original/nmwyd764-1382589706.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pirates of the Caribbean.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Disney Enterprises</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whether it’s a theme-park ride (Disney’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325980/?ref_=tt_rec_tt">Pirates of the Caribbean</a>) or a comic book family (Warner’s <a href="http://www.dccomics.com/">DC Comics</a>, Disney’s <a href="http://marvel.com/">Marvel</a>), franchises build on synergies with other branches of their parent companies.</p>
<h2>Curiosity</h2>
<p>In the mid-20th century, some major film companies shunned TV. </p>
<p>Others started making television, among them the wildly successful <a href="http://www.disney.com.au/">Disney</a>, which brokered its music hits, theme parks and TV shows to expand into grown-up films and computer animation, and to acquire the US’s <a href="http://www.disneyabctv.com/web/index.aspx">ABC television network</a> in 1995. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33675/original/3t4grtkr-1382588666.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33675/original/3t4grtkr-1382588666.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33675/original/3t4grtkr-1382588666.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33675/original/3t4grtkr-1382588666.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33675/original/3t4grtkr-1382588666.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33675/original/3t4grtkr-1382588666.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33675/original/3t4grtkr-1382588666.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33675/original/3t4grtkr-1382588666.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steve Mohundro</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This pattern was repeated through the relationship of Paramount with CBS, NBC’s with Universal, Newscorp’s ownership of both Fox Studios and the Fox TV network. Time Warner own HBO and the Turner network among other TV properties, and Sony, owners of Columbia, has also moved into television. </p>
<p>Television is no longer the upstart challenger, it seems, but another wing of the same industry. And that’s without factoring in the studios’ involvement in online, mobile and games media. </p>
<p>The youth market looks pretty much locked in. So why was the northern summer of 2013 such a tough one for youth-oriented blockbuster movies following a tried and tested formula?</p>
<p>The secret may just be that older audience that was left behind in the blockbuster boom of the 1970s, sitting cheerfully at home minding the store. </p>
<p>When the cable and satellite TV markets began to mature in the late 1970s, they were still dependent on advertising. But soon enough, execs began to notice the audience left behind by cinema. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33673/original/fjcj2zpf-1382588018.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33673/original/fjcj2zpf-1382588018.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33673/original/fjcj2zpf-1382588018.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33673/original/fjcj2zpf-1382588018.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33673/original/fjcj2zpf-1382588018.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33673/original/fjcj2zpf-1382588018.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33673/original/fjcj2zpf-1382588018.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33673/original/fjcj2zpf-1382588018.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arnaud H</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those people were happy to pay a subscription to see premium product, especially without the interruptions of commercial breaks. Back catalogues of classic movies and premium runs of new films were early entrants. </p>
<p>In 1997, HBO changed the game by launching its prison drama <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118421/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Oz</a>, followed in 1999 by the first season of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141842/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Sopranos</a>. </p>
<p>Suddenly, we had television that wasn’t dumbed down to meet the requirements of advertisers, that used the serial form to develop complex characters, and that addressed grown-up themes in an adult form.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33676/original/vqn2vjwg-1382588977.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33676/original/vqn2vjwg-1382588977.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33676/original/vqn2vjwg-1382588977.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33676/original/vqn2vjwg-1382588977.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33676/original/vqn2vjwg-1382588977.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33676/original/vqn2vjwg-1382588977.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33676/original/vqn2vjwg-1382588977.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33676/original/vqn2vjwg-1382588977.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Breaking Bad.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lydia Fizz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the 2000s, shows such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185906/">Band of Brothers</a>, <a href="http://www.hbo.com/#/deadwood">Deadwood</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318997/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Angels in America</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0248654/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Six Feet Under</a> had not only demonstrated the unfed demand for adult programming; they had staked a claim, with series such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306414/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Wire</a>, to the role once occupied by the popular social novels of Charles Dickens or Upton Sinclair. </p>
<p>As the top shows garnered awards and critical praise in the serious as well as the popular press, the shows became collectable items, much like great novels, to be viewed and savoured more than once.</p>
<p>Despite his success with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118276/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Buffy the Vampire Slayer</a>, Joss Whedon’s sci-fi series <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303461/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Firefly</a> was dropped after only one season, and as wily a judge of popular taste as Spielberg has consistently failed to ignite a TV franchise. </p>
<p>Is TV unsuited to spectacular fantasy? The success of the BBC’s revamped <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006q2x0">Dr Who</a> and <a href="http://www.hbo.com/#/game-of-thrones">HBO’s Game of Thrones</a> might suggest otherwise. </p>
<p>Is TV likely to go the same way as the “new Hollywood” of the 1970s, overwhelmed by teen action and superhero spectacle? Unlikely at present given the critical and commercial success of <a href="http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad">AMC’s Breaking Bad</a>. </p>
<p>The reliable, comfortably-off audience for serious TV drama may yet trump that fickle youth demographic who stayed away in the summer of 2013.</p>
<p><br>
<em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18910/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Cubitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The northern summer of 2013 was a bad one for Hollywood. After Earth, The Lone Ranger, White House Down, World War Z and Pacific Rim were among the million-dollar turkeys. And you may have noticed the…
Sean Cubitt, Professor of Film and Television, Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18749
2013-11-06T19:33:27Z
2013-11-06T19:33:27Z
Don’t stop believing: religion has a place in Australia’s future
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34311/original/pq67cqg8-1383527303.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An unprecedented 22% of Australians have declared themselves to be of "no religion".</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jetuma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently the Prime Minister <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-15/abbott-draft-carbon-tax-repeal/5023826">called upon</a> the Labor Party to “repent” of its introduction of the carbon tax. His comments were ridiculed by some critics, not for the substance of what he said, but for the language he used. </p>
<p>Concepts such as “repentance”, “sin”, even “forgiveness”, are seen as being at odds with objective, scientific analysis, and out of step with 21st-century Australia.</p>
<p>Like much of the developed world, in the last 50 years Australia has seen an extraordinary decline in the proportion of the population that claims religious affiliation. Historians have questioned the extent to which Australians have ever been particularly religious.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, religious language, religious culture and religious issues permeate contemporary Australian life.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/">Royal Commission</a> is underway investigating institutional responses to child sexual abuse, with a major focus on sexual abuse in the churches. The debate about same-sex marriage is frequently portrayed in the media as a contest between conservative Christian and enlightened liberal values. </p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of Australian children attend schools run by religious organisations. Australian religious leaders are frequently in the news, attempting to hold governments to public account, or being criticised themselves for failing to meet their own standards.</p>
<p>So what is religion? How does it manifest in contemporary Australia? And why does anyone bother with it any more?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33681/original/44vyfxtn-1382589289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33681/original/44vyfxtn-1382589289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33681/original/44vyfxtn-1382589289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33681/original/44vyfxtn-1382589289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33681/original/44vyfxtn-1382589289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33681/original/44vyfxtn-1382589289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33681/original/44vyfxtn-1382589289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hindu Australians celebrate the Ganesh Festival at the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Helensburgh, NSW.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Celeste33/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/2071.0main+features902012-2013">2011 census</a>, 68.3% of Australia’s population identified a religious affiliation, while an unprecedented 22% – 4,800,000 people – declared themselves to be of “no religion”. </p>
<p>The Christian Research Association <a href="http://www.cra.org.au/the-persistence-of-religion-what-the-census-tells-us/">argues</a> that the 2011 data shows the surprising durability of religious identity in a secular context: although religious affiliation dropped by 1.2 percentage points between 2006 and 2011, this was slower than the decline of 3.3 percentage points between 2001 and 2006. </p>
<p>The rate of decline in religious belief has slowed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34306/original/xf4hgs7b-1383526657.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34306/original/xf4hgs7b-1383526657.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34306/original/xf4hgs7b-1383526657.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34306/original/xf4hgs7b-1383526657.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34306/original/xf4hgs7b-1383526657.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34306/original/xf4hgs7b-1383526657.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34306/original/xf4hgs7b-1383526657.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34306/original/xf4hgs7b-1383526657.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Leonard John Matthews</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As religious demographers note, the declaration of affiliation on the census does not translate into visible participation in religious rituals such as church attendance. There is no straightforward way to measure how many people attend religious services weekly, monthly or annually. And, as <a href="http://tudorhistory.org/elizabeth/">Elizabeth I</a> would have said, it is impossible to make “windows into men’s souls”.</p>
<p>But it is possible to measure religious activity in ways other than church attendance or census affiliation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33679/original/sz7swqh8-1382589174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33679/original/sz7swqh8-1382589174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33679/original/sz7swqh8-1382589174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33679/original/sz7swqh8-1382589174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33679/original/sz7swqh8-1382589174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33679/original/sz7swqh8-1382589174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33679/original/sz7swqh8-1382589174.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Easter Sunday service at St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Miller</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sociologists and anthropologists have used analysis of believing, behaving and belonging to detect religious practices in human societies. These categories – the “three Bs” – stem from the work of French sociologist <a href="http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Biography.html">Emile Durkheim</a>, who attempted to define religion a century ago.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34307/original/hpc5t8hx-1383526988.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34307/original/hpc5t8hx-1383526988.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34307/original/hpc5t8hx-1383526988.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34307/original/hpc5t8hx-1383526988.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34307/original/hpc5t8hx-1383526988.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34307/original/hpc5t8hx-1383526988.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34307/original/hpc5t8hx-1383526988.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34307/original/hpc5t8hx-1383526988.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Leonard John Matthews</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Durkheim’s major work, <a href="http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/forms.html">Elementary Forms of the Religious Life</a> (1912), was based on early ethnographic accounts of Australian Aboriginal culture, specifically the <a href="http://aboriginalart.com.au/culture/arrernte.html">Arrernte people</a>. Durkheim’s thesis has been contested and modified, not least because of his flawed, second-hand approach to understanding Arrernte country and language. </p>
<p>It is nevertheless striking that Indigenous Australians stand at the heart of the study of religion as a social phenomena despite historic marginalisation in what has been seen as one of the most secular nations on Earth.</p>
<p>Moreover, Indigenous Australian cultures continue to challenge the modern European tendency to separate the sacred from the secular, the supernatural from the social, the physical from the spiritual.</p>
<h2>Belonging</h2>
<p>It seems clear that Australians still believe. Two-thirds of us tick a religious identity box on the census. Australians are also well imbued with non-institutional beliefs: the fair-go, mateship, the dream of owning home and land, the belief that “our golden soil has wealth for toil”.</p>
<p>Australians engage in a wide range of ritual behaviours. </p>
<p>Some of us go to church, mosque, synagogue, temple. But what about daily visits to the gym, weekly football matches, Saturday morning grocery shopping, marathons and bike rides, the annual ANZAC commemoration, the sacred opportunity for pilgrimage to the Somme, Kokoda, Gallipoli? It is rare for a death to go entirely unmarked by even the most basic of funeral rituals.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33677/original/tbg5w9qf-1382589004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33677/original/tbg5w9qf-1382589004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33677/original/tbg5w9qf-1382589004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33677/original/tbg5w9qf-1382589004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33677/original/tbg5w9qf-1382589004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33677/original/tbg5w9qf-1382589004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33677/original/tbg5w9qf-1382589004.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hawthorn supporters celebrate the club’s 2013 AFL Grand Final win.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dale Cumming</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is the category of belonging that is most difficult to assess in Australia. The membership of many churches has declined, and where power and influence is overtly exerted, it is viewed with suspicion. Yet community clubs and workers’ unions have also lost members, perhaps at a faster rate than the churches.</p>
<p>Do we live, then, in a secular society? </p>
<p>Yes, in the sense religious beliefs are able to be as critically interrogated and assessed as any other viewpoint. No, in that Australia is host to a bewildering variety of religious identities and ritual behaviours, now firmly including “no-religionism”.</p>
<p>A more useful concept than secularisation is detraditionalisation, as developed by Belgian theologian <a href="https://theo.kuleuven.be/apps/researchers/8/">Lieven Boeve</a> in a western-European context. Detraditionalisation describes the loss of connection, a break in transmission, the fracturing of identity throughout western society, whereby tradition is interrupted.</p>
<p>This phenomenon applies not only to religion but also to a whole range of cultural and artistic arenas – music, literature, fine arts, philosophy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33686/original/qb4psh3j-1382589877.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33686/original/qb4psh3j-1382589877.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33686/original/qb4psh3j-1382589877.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33686/original/qb4psh3j-1382589877.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33686/original/qb4psh3j-1382589877.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33686/original/qb4psh3j-1382589877.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33686/original/qb4psh3j-1382589877.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra plays an outdoor concert.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/David Crosling</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A loss of institutional attachment to what were the dominant religious groups a century ago, the growth of “no religion”, and the pluralisation of religious participation across a wide range of faiths can therefore be seen as parallel to the decline in political-party membership, the rise of minor parties, and the alienation of many voters from politics.</p>
<p>It is the stress of detraditionalisation that helps to provoke culture wars, such as those fought out over the shape of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/national-curriculum">national history curriculum</a>. For traditions help us to answer the ultimate questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Are we alone?</p>
<p>The loss of tradition, of an elite canon of key truths, documents, rituals, can separate us from each other, leaving us bereft of identity, or it can allow new traditions and truths to emerge. The experience of loss, however, is traumatic, as the ultimate questions still remain.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33689/original/4hhfjhz5-1382591127.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33689/original/4hhfjhz5-1382591127.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33689/original/4hhfjhz5-1382591127.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33689/original/4hhfjhz5-1382591127.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33689/original/4hhfjhz5-1382591127.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33689/original/4hhfjhz5-1382591127.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33689/original/4hhfjhz5-1382591127.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Gallipoli Mosque in Auburn, Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Threthny/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is part of the nature of humanity to strive to answer these questions. This is a mission that religion shares with the sciences. Although different tools may be used where religion is predicated on faith and science on doubt, both require imagination.</p>
<p>It is a mission religion also shares with politics. It’s no wonder politicians elicit support from voters through the appeal to values, for it is an appeal to beliefs that can change behaviours.</p>
<p>It is a mission religion shares with the arts, including sport. All represent the attempt to give expression to our beliefs through beauty, performance, physical achievement.</p>
<p>Whether based on dogma and superstition, irrational fears and dreams, bonds of affection and hatred, located in institutional frameworks or private piety, religion is part of the ways in which humans try to answer our biggest questions.</p>
<p>Religion undoubtedly has a place in Australia’s future. It is nothing more and nothing less than a body of beliefs, behaviours, and identities through which we attempt to answer, or even just live with, our deepest questions.</p>
<p><br>
<em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Sherlock is a member of the Anglican Church of Australia.</span></em></p>
Recently the Prime Minister called upon the Labor Party to “repent” of its introduction of the carbon tax. His comments were ridiculed by some critics, not for the substance of what he said, but for the…
Peter Sherlock, Vice-Chancellor, University of Divinity
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/19237
2013-11-05T19:35:33Z
2013-11-05T19:35:33Z
Global shift: Australian fashion’s coming of age
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34337/original/xb223mpy-1383536620.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">RMIT Graduate Sharlee Young's Collection, Melbourne Spring Fashion Week 2012.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monty Coles</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, the notion of Australian fashion may have been regarded as an oxymoron. This is not a critique of Australians’ capacity to be intrinsically stylish, as there is plenty of evidence to reflect the contrary.</p>
<p>Rather, the Australian fashion industry, historically, was based on adopting and adapting the looks that evolved internationally, predominantly from Europe. The contemporary fashion industry in Australia has really only developed an individual identity in the past 20 years.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33639/original/ykfjvgth-1382578518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33639/original/ykfjvgth-1382578518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33639/original/ykfjvgth-1382578518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33639/original/ykfjvgth-1382578518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33639/original/ykfjvgth-1382578518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33639/original/ykfjvgth-1382578518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33639/original/ykfjvgth-1382578518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33639/original/ykfjvgth-1382578518.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maggi Tabberer modelling a classic 1950s Phillipa Gowns dress in a photograph taken in Melbourne in 1958.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Powerhouse Museum, Bruno Benini</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To put this into some context is to also understand the evolution and shifts in the Australian fashion system over the past four decades.</p>
<p>My early memories of the Australian fashion industry in the 1970s are clustered in two key geographical locations: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flinders_Lane,_Melbourne">Flinders Lane</a> in Melbourne and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surry_Hills,_New_South_Wales">Surry Hills</a> in Sydney. These two locales housed industrial spaces in multi-floor buildings where the heart and soul of the fashion industry thrived. </p>
<p>Fast track to the 2000s and the industry had dispersed. With the rising costs of inner-city locations, fashion houses moved their bases out across suburbs and designers and brands spread across Australia. Local manufacturing has now shrunk to a level of being minute or bespoke and most production now takes place in offshore factories with no connection to the local scene.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33511/original/n3jy6qs3-1382487705.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33511/original/n3jy6qs3-1382487705.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33511/original/n3jy6qs3-1382487705.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33511/original/n3jy6qs3-1382487705.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33511/original/n3jy6qs3-1382487705.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33511/original/n3jy6qs3-1382487705.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33511/original/n3jy6qs3-1382487705.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian model Maggi Eckardt modelling Ninette fashion in a photograph taken in Melbourne in 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Powerhouse Museum, Bruno Benini</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The geographical displacement of the fashion industry and the shift in manufacturing practices has resulted in a move from an Australian large-scale manufacturing hub to the development of fashion clusters across major cities in which creative collaborations thrive and emerging designers prosper.</p>
<p>Australian fashion is in a unique position, with approximately 85% of its industry representation being small to medium businesses. As a cohort of enterprises, they are spread across the nation, often working in isolated pockets.</p>
<p>Across Australia, many smaller practitioners are flourishing, despite the efforts of mainstream media to create alarmist commentary on the industry going into a downhill slide and no future for our creative designers.</p>
<p>Commercial viability has been in the headlines recently, with a number of mid-sized businesses going into voluntary or forced administration. At the moment, we are working through a period of major shifts in the fashion system globally.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33697/original/8pcxv5h2-1382607243.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33697/original/8pcxv5h2-1382607243.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33697/original/8pcxv5h2-1382607243.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33697/original/8pcxv5h2-1382607243.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33697/original/8pcxv5h2-1382607243.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33697/original/8pcxv5h2-1382607243.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33697/original/8pcxv5h2-1382607243.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Models on the runway for the Christina Exie show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Sydney this year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>New challenges</h2>
<p>As more designer labels struggle (<a href="http://www.news.com.au/business/companies/lisa-ho-to-close-its-doors-forever/story-fnda1bsz-1226665617195">Lisa Ho</a>, <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/10/1/retail/bettina-liano-administration-report">Bettina Liano</a> and <a href="http://www.news.com.au/business/companies/kirrily-johnson-in-voluntary-administration/story-fnda1bsz-1226673885996">Kirrily Johnston</a> to name a few), they often do not have the infrastructure and resources to deal with higher overheads such as increased shop rents, volatile global supply chains and shifts in purchasing patterns of major retailers. </p>
<p>It only needs one thing to go wrong for a business to be destroyed.</p>
<p>One of the key issues for many fashion labels is that they have continued to work within a system that worked ten years ago but is less successful today. Designers who rely on wholesaling are finding it increasingly difficult to survive in a world where long lead times requiring investment in production and materials are no longer offset by retailers with a fat cheque.</p>
<p>Retailers now commonly demand payment terms of 90 days or more (meaning the designer gets paid 90 days or more after the invoice is issued) and all the risk sits with the designer supplying the product. If merchandise doesn’t sell then, the retailer demands a discount – or worse, returns all the goods within the 90-day period.</p>
<p>In the case where goods may be faulty, the designers are finding it increasingly difficult to make a claim against suppliers in other countries with different trade rules and retailers equally refusing to accept the goods.</p>
<h2>Cautious optimism</h2>
<p>There is light at the end of the tunnel with two areas of specialisation having the capacity to strengthen businesses.</p>
<p>The first concept is: “keep it small, keep it special.” Emerging designers are opening engaged and experiential retail spaces, offering informed and positive service (by staff who know and love the product). These are often pop-up stores that encourage the consumer to buy now, before it disappears. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33325/original/s4rx3yw9-1382323490.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33325/original/s4rx3yw9-1382323490.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33325/original/s4rx3yw9-1382323490.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33325/original/s4rx3yw9-1382323490.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33325/original/s4rx3yw9-1382323490.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33325/original/s4rx3yw9-1382323490.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33325/original/s4rx3yw9-1382323490.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lulamae Pop Up Shop in central Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Wuttke and Breathe Architecture.;</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A second commercial proposition and an incredible growth area is the world of online retail. Online shopping has become the new norm and allows designers to be in control of their own supply chain.</p>
<p>Engaging websites enable smaller scale enterprises to test the retail market, react to consumer demand and offer merchandise globally, without the constraints of potentially expensive and volatile international expansion. </p>
<p>The online world is providing Australian designers with a fertile interface with global fashion advocates, without the constraints of trying to make it big overseas. But this does require shifting the processes and systems embedded with the fashion industry – something not easily done.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33344/original/5754phpz-1382324989.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33344/original/5754phpz-1382324989.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33344/original/5754phpz-1382324989.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33344/original/5754phpz-1382324989.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33344/original/5754phpz-1382324989.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33344/original/5754phpz-1382324989.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33344/original/5754phpz-1382324989.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The online shop of Melbourne brand Alpha60.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">http://www.alpha60.com.au/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Northern exposure</h2>
<p>There is also the sometimes-unrealistic benchmark placed on designers to expand into international markets; a difficult burden to endure.</p>
<p>I often get asked who are Australia’s most successful designers? The global guide for fashion success has historically been embedded in the concept that a designer needs to make it in one of “the big four”: New York, London, Paris or Milan. They also need to attract the attention of the global press.</p>
<p>To do this requires significant investment and often minimal return. My advice, using Australian vernacular, is to focus on your own backyard first. The shining light of global expansion is not so rosy when you are chasing creditors in foreign lands, dealing with multitudes of different customs requirements and hit with overwhelming freight bills.</p>
<p>The global fashion scene is shifting and we are on the brink of a new era. The assumption that Australia is a season behind is no longer relevant. In fact, the concept of a “fashion season” is an unrealistic construct altogether. </p>
<p>Global fashion has not followed weather patterns for years (which is why, for some obscure reason, sweaters are delivered into stores as we swelter through January and swimwear adorns shelves in July as the temperatures hit their lowest of the year and snow falls in surrounding mountains).</p>
<p>The concept of trans-seasonal fashion – clothing that is adaptable for many climates – has become quite the norm across the globe. This has been predominantly fuelled by the need for large scale fashion conglomerates to attract some of the lucrative share of the Middle East and Asian markets, where climates are often distinctly different to Europe and the USA.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33513/original/cn9m98r7-1382493417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33513/original/cn9m98r7-1382493417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33513/original/cn9m98r7-1382493417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33513/original/cn9m98r7-1382493417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33513/original/cn9m98r7-1382493417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33513/original/cn9m98r7-1382493417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33513/original/cn9m98r7-1382493417.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian designers Nicky Zimmermann (left), Simone Zimmermann (far right) with Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales from Sydney label Romance Was Born.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australian designers benefit from this shift, as they create collections adaptable to varying temperatures – a criterion that works across Australia as it does for global market penetration.</p>
<p>The way we wear clothes has also changed, as we move from our air-conditioned houses to our air-conditioned cars and then to our air-conditioned offices. The need for weather-specific wear has fallen significantly and this opens opportunities to develop designs of varying weights and fibres that are adaptable to many environments.</p>
<p>All of this is, of course, only relevant if an Australian designer sees the need to pursue the dream of global expansion. To be an Antipodean designer in an industry that is run on Northern Hemisphere seasons is only a problem in a Northern Hemisphere-focused industry or if a designer perceives being aligned to the big four fashion cities as a priority. Many do not.</p>
<h2>Goodbye New York, hello Melbourne</h2>
<p>The world balance is shifting and markets are changing. “Same old, same old” – a phrase that equals devastation in the world of fashion – has been heard on the streets of Milan, London, New York and Paris recently. Not referring to specific collections but rather to the painfully exhausting Fashion Week system that grinds through each season, with the endless runway shows at enormous expense, promoting many of the same big name brands in an incessant cycle to sell more lipsticks, sunglasses and perfumes.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://racked.com/archives/2013/09/04/before-it-starts-nytimes-declares-fashion-week-is-over.php">proposed</a> in the New York Times during that city’s recent Fashion Week in September this year: “New York Fashion Week officially starts tomorrow, but according to the Times, it’s already passé. </p>
<p>The newspaper of record spoke to a group of fashion folks and heard essentially the same message from everyone – "we’re tired and we don’t feel like doing this”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33509/original/nkdt6d9b-1382486536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33509/original/nkdt6d9b-1382486536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33509/original/nkdt6d9b-1382486536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33509/original/nkdt6d9b-1382486536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33509/original/nkdt6d9b-1382486536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33509/original/nkdt6d9b-1382486536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33509/original/nkdt6d9b-1382486536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Front-row at New York Fashion Week.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Peter Foley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fashion is an industry that prides itself on quick response, change, innovation and creativity, yet is perpetuating a cycle of boredom for many involved. The time is ripe for change as the world embraces innovative digital interfaces and newly emerging fashion cities such as Melbourne challenge the “big four” for fresh experiences and stimulating style.</p>
<p>An up-and-coming tier of creative cities are becoming hot spots for fashion innovation clusters. Around the globe, cities such as Amsterdam, Shanghai, Istanbul, Seoul, Berlin and Melbourne are being touted as incubators of inspiration.</p>
<p>In part, the evolution of an Australian fashion identity is constrained by the geographical dislocation of our country. Rather than discuss Australian fashion style, it is more pertinent to address the ethos of major cities.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33642/original/mhvhmtr3-1382579631.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33642/original/mhvhmtr3-1382579631.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33642/original/mhvhmtr3-1382579631.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33642/original/mhvhmtr3-1382579631.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33642/original/mhvhmtr3-1382579631.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33642/original/mhvhmtr3-1382579631.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33642/original/mhvhmtr3-1382579631.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Melbourne street style: relaxed, stylish and wearable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Julian Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Living in Melbourne and as an advocate for that city’s creative energy, I am most expert to address how, in this city, fashion flourishes under the auspices of what I have termed “fusion fashion”.</p>
<p>In fusion food, a mix of different culinary references combine to create a new palate. In fashion, the term relates to the synthesis of fashion references such as English bespoke tailoring mixed with the quirkiness of Asian style with a referential nod to Australian casualness – all blended together into a genre that Melbourne holds as uniquely its own. Fusion fashion provides for a one-of-a-kind wardrobe that is relaxed, stylish and wearable.</p>
<p>This style ethos is well suited to inspire global fashion advocates. It might just be what puts Antipodean fashion on the map.</p>
<p><br>
<em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen Webster is affiliated with the Council of Fashion and Textiles Industries of Australia (the fashion industry - peak body) as Director and
Chair: The Australian Fashion Council
</span></em></p>
Fifty years ago, the notion of Australian fashion may have been regarded as an oxymoron. This is not a critique of Australians’ capacity to be intrinsically stylish, as there is plenty of evidence to reflect…
Karen Webster, Associate Professor - Deputy Head of Fashion and Textiles, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18839
2013-11-03T19:34:08Z
2013-11-03T19:34:08Z
You’ve got $7 billion – so how will you fund the arts?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33525/original/h5mjrsy3-1382497036.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Public funding should promote unintended consequences.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abode of Chaos</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last year the Australian Bureau of Statistics did the maths – government spends about <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4172.0main+features82012">A$7 billion</a> annually in Australia on arts and culture. The exact dollar figure varies depending on what we count, but it includes heritage, broadcasting and botanical gardens, along with all the usual suspects: performing arts, literature, film, visual arts, and so on.</p>
<p>For the sake of argument, let’s assume A$7 billion is exactly the right amount of public funding for the arts. </p>
<p>To make this exercise fun, let’s suppose that no political horse-trading was involved in reaching this figure. Let’s assume this figure is the result of disinterested economic calculation of the size of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externalities">positive externality</a> in the production of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good">public good</a>, all wrapped in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay">willingness-to-pay</a> studies, and tied with a big bright <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis">cost-benefit</a> ribbon.</p>
<p>So what’s next? </p>
<p>Do we put away our box of shiny economic tools and turn to grubby political compromise to allocate the exact <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure">market-failure</a> correcting amount of public funding?</p>
<p>In Australia, as in Europe, this is more or less what we do. Economics to justify an economically efficient level of spending – and politics to implement it. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33538/original/57rt2vxr-1382499020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33538/original/57rt2vxr-1382499020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33538/original/57rt2vxr-1382499020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33538/original/57rt2vxr-1382499020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33538/original/57rt2vxr-1382499020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33538/original/57rt2vxr-1382499020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33538/original/57rt2vxr-1382499020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33538/original/57rt2vxr-1382499020.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">°]°</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Estimate market failure, then politically intervene in direct proportion. This is the standard 20th-century model of applied <a href="http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Public_goods">public goods</a>. </p>
<p>Observe this in action in science (CSIRO), academic research (Australian Research Council), and sports (Australian Institute of Sport), among others.</p>
<p>Yet modern economics suggests that it would be better if we turned the process upside down. Let politicians determine the level of funding in a given area – and let economists determine the allocation.</p>
<p>Why? The political model of funding allocation is very bad at creating – or even recognising – new knowledge. In fact, political allocation mechanisms cause incentives that reward lobbying and punish experimental or innovative thinking. </p>
<p>Only by weakening those incentives can arts and cultural funding seek to be more than a rearguard preservation exercise or sinecure for vested interests. </p>
<p>There are four principles we should consider:</p>
<h2>One: favour indirect over direct funding</h2>
<p>Direct funding takes small amounts from many taxpayers and pools it in a few large granting bodies for dispersal to many recipients. The indirect funding model eliminates those big pools – incidentally the places where all the layers of necessary accountability, governance, expert-committees, lobbying and rent-seeking accumulate. </p>
<p>The indirect model offers tax credits to anyone – private citizen, corporation, foundation or NGO alike – for spending on arts and culture. This approach has at least three great strengths:</p>
<p>1) It does not require government approval of arts and cultural activities. Philanthropists can be great patrons. They can be far more edgy and engaging than government – just look at David Walsh’s <a href="http://www.mona.net.au/">Museum Of Old and New Art</a> in Hobart and the art collections of advertising tycoon <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saatchi_Gallery">Charles Saatchi</a>. Tax breaks allow for public support of the arts - without the public judgment of funding criteria (which eventually, inevitably collapses into the politicisation of art and culture).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33527/original/63tt2nqy-1382497473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33527/original/63tt2nqy-1382497473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33527/original/63tt2nqy-1382497473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33527/original/63tt2nqy-1382497473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33527/original/63tt2nqy-1382497473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33527/original/63tt2nqy-1382497473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33527/original/63tt2nqy-1382497473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33527/original/63tt2nqy-1382497473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the Pavilions at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) near Hobart.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>2) Indirect funding sets up a diversity of funding options: private and public, philanthropic and corporate, big and small. This is messy, and it certainly makes arts management more difficult – but such diversity promotes the spread of ideas. It also serves to protect the quirky idea from being catastrophically overlooked by one dominant funding source. A diverse funding mix will be a more robust and resilient funding ecology that is actually more likely to find the crazy genius.</p>
<p>3) Indirect funding weakens incentives to capture by lobbyists and bureaucrats. In other words, less time and resources need be devoted to political organisation and lobbying. This mitigates the arts and cultural grants “support industry”. The cost of this support industry, as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/fragile-picture-of-future/story-e6frg8n6-1226693768389">Nicholas Rothwell</a> reported recently, can be observed in Australia’s Indigenous arts sector.</p>
<h2>Two: fund outputs, not inputs</h2>
<p>We tend to fund inputs for political reasons, specifically as ways of tying funding to particular jobs, groups or regions. The political reasons may be good – but they always add up to bad economic reasons, otherwise known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss">deadweight losses</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33531/original/h5gctxqp-1382497856.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33531/original/h5gctxqp-1382497856.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33531/original/h5gctxqp-1382497856.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33531/original/h5gctxqp-1382497856.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33531/original/h5gctxqp-1382497856.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33531/original/h5gctxqp-1382497856.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33531/original/h5gctxqp-1382497856.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33531/original/h5gctxqp-1382497856.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">So you think you can … fund the arts?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Channel Ten/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A practical example of the difference is to fund <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/business/31leonhardt.html?ex=1327899600&en=4aca8bec1f9a18d3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&_r=0">prizes</a> – which are awarded for achieving some specified output – rather than grants. Grants often promise some output but they only contractually fund the input.</p>
<p>Prizes have long been part of art and culture, just as they have in sports, science, <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/16740639">innovation</a>, and other fields of human endeavour. The enormous popularity of the various “So you think you can dance/sing/debate …” franchises illustrates the creative energy and diversity that such prizes stimulate. We should probably make more use of prizes in public arts and cultural funding than we do.</p>
<p>Funding outputs can also depoliticise arts funding by focusing attention on what we actually want to achieve rather than how we want to achieve it. Applicants are evaluated purely on their ability to be the best at what has been sought. There tends to be a lower bullshit component to prizes than to grants.</p>
<h2>Three: fund demand, not supply</h2>
<p>Demand-side funding is often superior to supply-side funding because it better aligns producer incentives and it more effectively aggregates consumer preferences. In both cases you’re seeking to fund those who receive the output – in this case, audiences – who therefore are in the best position to evaluate and monitor quality.</p>
<p>Supply-side funding involves a lot of trust and often expensive monitoring. This is why economists tend to favour demand side funding: it economises on information and the need for human perfection. Again, it’s a more robust institutional solution.</p>
<p>A useful example is to compare vouchers, where the funding amount is gifted to the consumer, to grants, where the funding amount goes to the producer. Vouchers are used to allocate money to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_vouchers">schools</a>, <a href="http://www.business.vic.gov.au/industries/science-technology-and-innovation/programs/innovation-voucher-program">business innovation</a>, and numerous <a href="http://www.oecd.org/gov/budgeting/43515545.pdf">other public services</a>; this is a model that could be adapted to arts and culture.</p>
<h2>Four: be more like venture capital</h2>
<p>Some of the lessons of venture capital – which is also in the creativity business – have not been learned by public sector arts and cultural bureaucrats. (I’m not being ironic: really – there are actual lessons to learn.)</p>
<p>What does this mean in practice? </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33533/original/hz2vc379-1382498239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33533/original/hz2vc379-1382498239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33533/original/hz2vc379-1382498239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33533/original/hz2vc379-1382498239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33533/original/hz2vc379-1382498239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33533/original/hz2vc379-1382498239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33533/original/hz2vc379-1382498239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33533/original/hz2vc379-1382498239.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Peled/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Adopt a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory">portfolio</a> approach which explicity recognises probabilities of success and failure. This will inform a funding model that incorporates variance endogenously, rather than getting all upset when things don’t work out. </p>
<p>This will often mean aggressively pursing difference – and supporting it not as a sop to the weird, but as a rational risk-management strategy.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/blogs/Economic%20growth/crowdfunding_public_services_big_opportunity_big_challenge">Crowdfunding</a> arts and cultural public goods should be considered.</p>
<p>Rather than gift, or what is these days mostly debt funding, take <a href="http://humancapitalproject.com.au/">equity stakes</a> in artists to fund training and development. If we must persist with direct/input/supply funding, this will enable us to at least create a more liquid public asset.</p>
<p>Fund experiments and <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/provocations/assets/features/state_of_uncertainty">demand discovery</a>. Experiments are a public good because they provide new information to others.</p>
<p>Seek voluntary funding models such as <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10286639509357990#.UlM2NmSMFJE">lotteries</a>. Lotteries may even be effective for allocation of funds as well as for raising them – and this would also limit the conformity and conservatism that expert panels tend to exhibit.</p>
<h2>Let’s encourage unintended consequences</h2>
<p>Arts and cultural funding could be improved if we could just agree on a level of funding – and then use economic analysis to design the models of funding delivery. In short, give the tax system a bigger role – and the expert panels a smaller one. Make differences at the margins by funding skewed toward outputs and the demand side. </p>
<p>Public funding of arts and culture should concern itself with producing <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConsequences.html">unintended consequences</a>. The problem with the existing direct, input focused model is that it at best only produces intended consequences, and at worst collapses to a kind of welfare. </p>
<p>We really should be more ambitious than this. </p>
<p><br>
<em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Potts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Last year the Australian Bureau of Statistics did the maths – government spends about A$7 billion annually in Australia on arts and culture. The exact dollar figure varies depending on what we count, but…
Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/19308
2013-10-31T19:40:23Z
2013-10-31T19:40:23Z
Building a nation: the state of play in Australian architecture
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34151/original/prytwdyq-1383189112.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Architects such as Glenn Murcutt tailor their designs to the Australian landscape. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Browell/AAP Image</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Sydney Opera House celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. This Australian icon was, of course, designed by Danish architect <a href="http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/about/the_architect.aspx">Jørn Utzon</a>, as a result of an international design competition held at a time when many Australians still looked to the northern hemisphere for stylistic guidance and direction; a time when we imported European or American culture.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33554/original/szqp33h2-1382501438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33554/original/szqp33h2-1382501438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33554/original/szqp33h2-1382501438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33554/original/szqp33h2-1382501438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33554/original/szqp33h2-1382501438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33554/original/szqp33h2-1382501438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33554/original/szqp33h2-1382501438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1076&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Have we moved beyond importing overseas architects for our national icons?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some 40 years on, we are now exporting culture and Australian architects are designing iconic buildings in other parts of the world, such as the <a href="http://populous.com/profile/rsheard/#">2012 London Olympic Park and Stadium</a>, and the <a href="http://www.ptw.com.au/ptw_project/watercube-national-swimming-centre/">Beijing National Aquatics Centre (the Water Cube)</a>.</p>
<p>So is there a unique Australian “style” and, if so, where did it come from?</p>
<h2>A backwards glance</h2>
<p>In 1788, when British settlers first started arriving in Australia, <a href="http://www.vernaculararchitecture.com/">vernacular</a> Australian architecture (based on localised needs and construction materials) consisted of nomadic shelters, designed and built by indigenous Australians. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33655/original/7s324jhv-1382581252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33655/original/7s324jhv-1382581252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33655/original/7s324jhv-1382581252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33655/original/7s324jhv-1382581252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33655/original/7s324jhv-1382581252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33655/original/7s324jhv-1382581252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33655/original/7s324jhv-1382581252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Due to the significant numbers of architects who subsequently moved from England to Australia to join the British colonies, 19th-century Australian architecture quickly changed to be largely Eurocentric in focus.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33656/original/7qcgvtf2-1382581516.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33656/original/7qcgvtf2-1382581516.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33656/original/7qcgvtf2-1382581516.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33656/original/7qcgvtf2-1382581516.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33656/original/7qcgvtf2-1382581516.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33656/original/7qcgvtf2-1382581516.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33656/original/7qcgvtf2-1382581516.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition building, built between 1878 and 1880.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Museum Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the 20th century, however, buildings started to adapt to respond to Australia’s unique climatic conditions, which offer year-round access to the outdoors. The influence of America saw families seeking to own freestanding houses with backyards, to satisfy their increasing desire to fulfil the “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Dream">Australian Dream</a>”.</p>
<p>In the late 20th century, as Australia started to become more multicultural, derivative designs began to be replaced with imported exotic styles, especially those of South-East Asian influence. Freestanding houses started to be replaced with semi-detached and <a href="http://architectureau.com/articles/residential-architecture-multiple/">high density housing</a>, as urban precincts started to develop.</p>
<h2>Challenge accepted</h2>
<p>Australian architects are now responding to the unprecedented 21st-century challenges of population growth, preservation of the environment and the threats of climate change.</p>
<p>As architects continue to shape urban precincts and their supporting infrastructure, the design of public space has now importantly changed focus to preserving the quality of both the built and natural environments. The sensitive relationship between buildings and the Australian landscape that hosts them is of critical importance, and something for which we are becoming internationally recognised.</p>
<p>While much of the industrialised world has been in recession for the past few years, Australia’s economy has grown, as have neighbouring Asian economies.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33560/original/y2s75psy-1382502198.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33560/original/y2s75psy-1382502198.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33560/original/y2s75psy-1382502198.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33560/original/y2s75psy-1382502198.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33560/original/y2s75psy-1382502198.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33560/original/y2s75psy-1382502198.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33560/original/y2s75psy-1382502198.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">China’s National Aquatics Centre, also known as the ‘Water Cube’, was designed by Australian architects.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Currently, Australia has seven of the <a href="http://www.archdaily.com/330759/">largest 100 architecture practices</a> in the world: <a href="http://www.woodsbagot.com/">Woods Bagot</a>, <a href="http://www.hassellstudio.com/">Hassell</a>, <a href="http://www.coxarchitecture.com.au/">Cox Architecture</a>, <a href="http://www.hboemtb.com/">HBO + EMTB</a>, <a href="http://www.ghd.com/australia/">GHD</a>, <a href="http://www.hamessharley.com.au/">Hames Sharley</a>, and <a href="http://thomsonadsett.com/">Thomson Adsett Architects</a>.</p>
<p>For most of these large practices, income from international projects is actually more than the income generated by domestic projects. Across the whole architectural sector the figure for international income is nearer to 10%, but it is clear that we are now exporting much of our talent, skill and cultural expertise rather than importing it.</p>
<h2>The architectural Oscars</h2>
<p>So how does Australia compare, architecturally, with the rest of the world? How have we fared in international awards, prizes and festivals such as the prestigious <a href="http://goo.gl/lUrd9f">Pritzker Architecture Prize</a>, the <a href="http://goo.gl/usu9Kk">World Architecture Festival</a>, and the <a href="http://goo.gl/fgP3Fh">Venice Architecture Biennale</a>?</p>
<p>There is just one Pritzker Architecture Prize <a href="http://www.pritzkerprize.com/about/purpose">awarded annually</a> to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>honour a living architect/s whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33545/original/y3smts2m-1382499636.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33545/original/y3smts2m-1382499636.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33545/original/y3smts2m-1382499636.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33545/original/y3smts2m-1382499636.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33545/original/y3smts2m-1382499636.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33545/original/y3smts2m-1382499636.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33545/original/y3smts2m-1382499636.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Magney House at Bingie Bingie on the NSW South Coast, designed by Australian architect Glenn Murcutt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Anthony Browell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There has been one Australian recipient of the Pritzker prize in its 35-year existence: <a href="http://www.ozetecture.org/2012/glenn-murcutt/">Glenn Murcutt AO</a> in 2002. His award was based on a career that focused largely on designing houses that responded directly to unique Australian conditions. </p>
<p>Indeed, the period of Murcutt’s foundational work in the latter part of last century coincided with growing international recognition of Australian architecture.</p>
<p>Glenn Murcutt grew up in Papua New Guinea, where he developed an appreciation for simple vernacular architecture and a relationship with nature. He practised sustainability long before it became an architectural buzzword. His design philosophy, <a href="http://www.be.unsw.edu.au/profile/glenn_murcutt-ao">“touch the earth lightly”</a>, motivates him to design in response to environmental factors, using locally-sourced materials and to sensitively fit into the Australian landscape.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33653/original/m2bzs4j3-1382580888.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33653/original/m2bzs4j3-1382580888.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33653/original/m2bzs4j3-1382580888.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33653/original/m2bzs4j3-1382580888.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33653/original/m2bzs4j3-1382580888.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33653/original/m2bzs4j3-1382580888.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33653/original/m2bzs4j3-1382580888.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Short House in Kempsey, NSW, designed by Australian architect Glenn Murcutt, whose motto is “touch the earth lightly”.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Glenn Murcutt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This sensitive attitude to the environment and our tin and timber tradition – a history of functional sheds and beach houses – gained Australia international attention.</p>
<p>Now Australian architects are bringing that same sensitive attitude to larger projects in many parts of the world. </p>
<h2>International attention</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.worldarchitecturefestival.com/">World Architecture Festival</a> is an annual program of awards, jury critiques, and international speakers, all celebrating the best architecture of the past year. It was first held in 2008 in Barcelona but for the past two years has been in <a href="http://goo.gl/Yu1gLY">Singapore</a>.</p>
<p>This annual get-together brings more than 2,000 architects from all over the globe, and exhibits short-listed projects from more than 40 nations to compete for awards in 16 built project categories and 11 future project categories.</p>
<p>In 2013, Australian architects achieved unprecedented levels of success in the World Architecture Festival <a href="http://goo.gl/sN7fJ1">awards program</a>, winning the categories of Culture, House, Transport, Future Infrastructure and Competition Entries. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33561/original/jxwyssk5-1382502465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33561/original/jxwyssk5-1382502465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33561/original/jxwyssk5-1382502465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33561/original/jxwyssk5-1382502465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33561/original/jxwyssk5-1382502465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33561/original/jxwyssk5-1382502465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33561/original/jxwyssk5-1382502465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Toi o Tamaki in Auckland, New Zealand won the 2012 RIBA International Award for architectural excellence and the 2013 World Architecture Festival Building of the Year Award.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Supplied by the Royal Institute of British Architects</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australian architects also won three of the highest awards. It is also worth noting that two of the three winning projects are outside of Australia:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>World building of the year: Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, New Zealand by Francis-Jones Morehen Thorpe with New Zealand architects Archimedia.</p></li>
<li><p>Future project of the year: the <a href="http://www.archichannel.com/project/national-maritime-museum-of-china/#link">National Maritime Museum of China</a>, by Cox Architecture</p></li>
<li><p>Landscape category: The Australian Garden, Australia, by Taylor Cullity Lethlean and Paul Thompson.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33565/original/qw3rp4px-1382503093.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33565/original/qw3rp4px-1382503093.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33565/original/qw3rp4px-1382503093.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33565/original/qw3rp4px-1382503093.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33565/original/qw3rp4px-1382503093.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33565/original/qw3rp4px-1382503093.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33565/original/qw3rp4px-1382503093.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Australian Garden, Australia, by Taylor Cullity Lethlean and Paul Thompson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of the <a href="http://www.tcl.net.au/projects/cultural-interpretative/australian-garden">Landscape category winner</a>, the judges noted that the project “stood out with its originality and strong evocation of Australian identity”.</p>
<p>Of the <a href="http://www.archdaily.com/439260/the-left-over-space-house-cox-rayner-architects/">House</a> category winner, a delightful little timber home in Brisbane, they noted “a realness and authenticity to the spirit of the house”.</p>
<p>It seems, then, that there is definitely an identifiable Australian design identity, something for which we can be recognised and rewarded.</p>
<p>Australian architecture has also been recognised at the <a href="http://goo.gl/aeBVHP">Venice Architecture Biennale</a>. The Biennale is a showcase of cutting-edge contemporary architecture and architectural thinking, through the exhibitions by invited architects, and through the self-curated <a href="http://goo.gl/L8dYjL">national pavilions</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33476/original/22tbqmqp-1382441475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33476/original/22tbqmqp-1382441475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33476/original/22tbqmqp-1382441475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33476/original/22tbqmqp-1382441475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33476/original/22tbqmqp-1382441475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33476/original/22tbqmqp-1382441475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33476/original/22tbqmqp-1382441475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33476/original/22tbqmqp-1382441475.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Entrance to the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dr. Philip Crowther</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australia is one of only 30 nations to exhibit in its own pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. We have done so in a temporary pavilion since 1988, but a new permanent pavilion has been designed by Australian firm <a href="http://www.dentoncorkermarshall.com/">Denton Corker Marshall</a> and will be built soon. The pavilion typically attracts around 90,000 visitors during the Venice Architecture Biennale.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33478/original/m6nq3qqp-1382441721.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33478/original/m6nq3qqp-1382441721.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33478/original/m6nq3qqp-1382441721.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33478/original/m6nq3qqp-1382441721.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33478/original/m6nq3qqp-1382441721.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33478/original/m6nq3qqp-1382441721.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33478/original/m6nq3qqp-1382441721.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33478/original/m6nq3qqp-1382441721.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Interior of the Australian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dr. Philip Crowther</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33480/original/vsjjhqzq-1382441779.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33480/original/vsjjhqzq-1382441779.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33480/original/vsjjhqzq-1382441779.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33480/original/vsjjhqzq-1382441779.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33480/original/vsjjhqzq-1382441779.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33480/original/vsjjhqzq-1382441779.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33480/original/vsjjhqzq-1382441779.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33480/original/vsjjhqzq-1382441779.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Facade of the Australian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dr. Philip Crowther</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Global shifts</h2>
<p>Perhaps our rough-and-tumble early colonial heritage has served us well in developing a resilient approach to the rapidly changing global environment.</p>
<p>Free of the European notion of heritage and the constraints of ancient cities filled with historic buildings, we have engaged with a greater diversity of perspectives, from Australia’s 40,000 year indigenous history, through a sensitivity to the environment, to the realisation that we are part of a 21st-century Asia.</p>
<p>We are no longer operating on the distant fringes of Europe or America, but now firmly at the centre of a global shift in both economic and cultural perspectives.</p>
<p><br>
<em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Sydney Opera House celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. This Australian icon was, of course, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, as a result of an international design competition held at…
Philip Crowther, Associate Professor, Head of Discipline of Architecture, Queensland University of Technology
Lindy Osborne, Senior Lecturer in Architecture, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/19108
2013-10-30T19:41:06Z
2013-10-30T19:41:06Z
The creative economy could fuel Australia’s next boom
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34102/original/kbwrzh6h-1383110760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With the right policy levers, Australia's next big boom could be creative by design.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sebastiaan ter Burg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia is richly blessed with an abundance of resources which, along with robust legal, business and political infrastructure, has allowed it to pull through tough times on several occasions.</p>
<p>As we face a slowing of the current boom in resources terms of trade, there is now much casting around for alternative sources of economic growth potential.</p>
<p>Among the options are alternative energy sources, contributing to the food security of south-east Asian countries, education, tourism and high value services exports such as financial products and architecture.</p>
<p>But what about looking to our creative economy to fuel our next big boom?</p>
<h2>The creative economy</h2>
<p>The concept of the creative economy has been developed with greatest rigour in countries not as well endowed with natural assets as Australia is. The UK has been a leader, with <a href="http://www.cebr.com/reports/flat-white-economy-driving-london/">creative employment surpassing financial services in London in the wake of the global financial crisis</a>. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/A-Manifesto-for-the-Creative-Economy-April13.pdf">creative economy manifesto</a> released by the UK charity Nesta, declares that country’s creative economy to be “one of its great national strengths, historically deeply rooted and accounting for around one–tenth of the whole economy”. It provides jobs for 2.5 million people.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33950/original/fc8m6mvh-1383003726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33950/original/fc8m6mvh-1383003726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33950/original/fc8m6mvh-1383003726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33950/original/fc8m6mvh-1383003726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33950/original/fc8m6mvh-1383003726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33950/original/fc8m6mvh-1383003726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33950/original/fc8m6mvh-1383003726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Warren Clarke</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the UK government <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_industries#CITEREFDCMS2001">defined</a> creative industries as “those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”, it included sectors such as the arts, media and new media, design and architecture.</p>
<p>The concept of the creative economy takes the original idea of creative industries and broadens the focus to include the contributions that people in creative occupations, and creative industries as enterprises, make to the economy as a whole.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33920/original/j2xxgf2x-1382938964.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33920/original/j2xxgf2x-1382938964.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33920/original/j2xxgf2x-1382938964.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33920/original/j2xxgf2x-1382938964.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33920/original/j2xxgf2x-1382938964.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33920/original/j2xxgf2x-1382938964.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33920/original/j2xxgf2x-1382938964.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">jepoycamboy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New Zealand has a sharply-honed focus on value-adding in niche manufacture through design and strategies that artfully integrate creative with environmental tourism. Just look at the link between their world-leading cinema technology and the numbers of overseas visitors lining up to see the landscape that starred as Middle Earth in the Tolkien film adaptations.</p>
<p>Several European countries and cities trade heavily on cultural heritage at one demographic end and contemporary artistic scenes at the other. Berlin springs to mind, where one can spend the morning in the <a href="http://www.dhm.de/">Deutsche Historisches Museum</a> and the afternoon at a gritty artist-run gallery in a former warehouse squat.</p>
<p>Serious attention to the concept in our region is seen in <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-04/25/content_6645161.htm">China</a>, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/08/08/south-korea-sees-creativity-as-key-to-growth/">South Korea</a> and <a href="http://www.mci.gov.sg/content/dam/mica_corp/Publications/MasterPlan/Download/Download1/ERCdesignsingapore.pdf">Singapore</a>.</p>
<h2>Australian story</h2>
<p>In earlier <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stuart-cunningham-301/articles">articles</a> for The Conversation, I have outlined the shape of the creative economy in Australia. I have stressed creative services – business-to-business activities such as design, architecture, digital content, software development, advertising and marketing – as high-growth, highly innovative economic activity.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cci.edu.au/node/1457">latest evidence from the 2011 census</a> tells a compelling story of the growing role creative services play in the mainstream Australian economy.</p>
<p>Examples include digital interface designers who have helped revolutionise the finance industry, technical writers in online education export, or simulation and games experts who make training environments for mining companies or defence operations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33958/original/qv5rm92x-1383010010.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33958/original/qv5rm92x-1383010010.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33958/original/qv5rm92x-1383010010.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33958/original/qv5rm92x-1383010010.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33958/original/qv5rm92x-1383010010.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33958/original/qv5rm92x-1383010010.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33958/original/qv5rm92x-1383010010.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SETUP Utrecht</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s not hard to see why there should be such relatively high growth patterns in creative services and creative occupations embedded in other industries.</p>
<p>The progressive embedding of the internet and associated digital applications into the general economy has seen rapid rises in demand for website design and online visual communication, as well as online advertising, database design and development and automation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33917/original/cpkvrxvm-1382938724.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33917/original/cpkvrxvm-1382938724.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33917/original/cpkvrxvm-1382938724.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33917/original/cpkvrxvm-1382938724.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33917/original/cpkvrxvm-1382938724.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33917/original/cpkvrxvm-1382938724.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33917/original/cpkvrxvm-1382938724.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Technology has fuelled job creation in creative industries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fernando de Sousa</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Video and audio content can now be created, consumed and shared online by almost anyone with access to a smartphone and the internet, fuelling increasingly sophisticated consumer demand for creative content. In the viral marketing era, much of the content is co-produced and disseminated by the consumers themselves.</p>
<h2>A role for government</h2>
<p>A new government brings new priorities. Contemplating the prospects of the creative economy as a focus for policy attention, I would suggest three options going forwards.</p>
<p>First, the intensity and ambition of the Abbott government’s early priority engagement with Asia has been a surprise to some but is deeply heartening, as there is so much to do. Senior journalist Paul Kelly, among many others, has <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/tony-abbotts-toughest-test-will-be-at-home-on-china/story-e6frg74x-1226738590589#">urged in The Australian</a> that “Australia’s attitude towards China cannot remain frozen in the resource-trade mindset”.</p>
<p>Nowhere is digital culture transforming economies as rapidly as in Asia. Australia’s competitiveness in our region depends on our ability to engage with Asian and especially Chinese digital capital.</p>
<p>Pan-Asian digital distribution platforms are expanding, consolidating, and professionalising. For the first time in Australia, China’s major online mega-corporations including e-commerce firm <a href="http://www.alibaba.com/">Alibaba</a>, internet company <a href="http://www.tencent.com/en-us/index.shtml">Tencent</a> and Chinese search engine <a href="http://www.baidu.com/">Baidu</a> are presenting their wares at an inaugural China Digital Conference in Sydney and Melbourne in November.</p>
<p>Do Australian creative-digital entrepreneurs possess the requisite business, language and programming skills to take advantage of Asian digital markets and the deep export opportunities they may offer? This is a major challenge for the future.</p>
<p>In terms of the second potential option for Australia’s new government, Federal Arts Minister <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Parliamentarian?MPID=008W7">George Brandis</a> achieved a very significant advance in the short time he had in his previous role as Arts Minister in the Howard government in 2007. </p>
<p>That was the successful introduction of the Coalition’s model for supporting the screen industry, the <a href="http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/getmedia/8e503f3d-f49f-4d78-a3d5-4568f51e5f3c/Offset_guidelines_july08.pdf">generous producer offset</a>, a refundable tax offset for producers of Australian films for up to 40% of feature film costs. This policy, updated in 2011, has had a very positive, stabilising influence.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33922/original/7tw4qg8p-1382939074.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33922/original/7tw4qg8p-1382939074.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33922/original/7tw4qg8p-1382939074.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33922/original/7tw4qg8p-1382939074.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33922/original/7tw4qg8p-1382939074.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33922/original/7tw4qg8p-1382939074.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33922/original/7tw4qg8p-1382939074.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Senator George Brandis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/opinion/taking-arts-to-the-next-level/story-fn9n9z9n-1226710602311">major speech</a> during the election campaign, Senator Brandis articulated “six core principles” that will guide Coalition arts policy: excellence, integrity, artistic freedom, self-confidence, sustainability and accessibility. He emphasised that, “wherever possible, funding should be structured so as to encourage commercial success”.</p>
<p>Some of the best creative industries and digital economy policy thinking in this country was developed ten years ago under Howard-era Minister <a href="http://www.monash.edu.au/alumni/find/profiles/prominent-alumni/richard-alston.html">Richard Alston</a>, whose portfolio brought together communications, IT and the arts in a productive synergy.</p>
<p>There is still much unfinished business from that fertile period of policy thinking. It was chipped away at with the creation of the <a href="http://www.enterpriseconnect.gov.au/industrysupport/creativeindustries/Pages/default.aspx">Creative Industries Innovation Centre</a>, which offers business reviews and other services to people working in creative industries and is a part of advisory agency <a href="http://www.enterpriseconnect.gov.au/Pages/Home.aspx">Enterprise Connect</a>. </p>
<p>Several aspects of the previous government’s cultural policy, <a href="http://creativeaustralia.arts.gov.au/executive-summary/">Creative Australia</a>, helped chip away at this question too.</p>
<p>The current pressure point is whether the new government will retain the <a href="http://www.aussiejobs.innovation.gov.au/programs/industry-innovation-precincts/Pages/default.aspx">Industry Innovation Precincts</a> program (or a version of it).</p>
<p>One of the 11 “partnerships” <a href="http://newsroom.uts.edu.au/news/2013/08/uts-supports-plans-for-jobs-explosion-in-digital-industries">announced</a> by the previous Industry Minister <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Parliamentarian?MPID=AW5">Kim Carr</a> was the <a href="http://www.katelundy.com.au/2013/09/19/creative-digital-innovation-partnership/">Creative Digital Innovation Partnership</a>, which aims to drive economic growth and job creation through partnerships between educators, employers and entrepreneurs working in creative and digital industries. This partnership is key if we are to grow beyond the a resources-focused mind set.</p>
<h2>Think: design</h2>
<p>The third current area of opportunity is design and “design thinking”, a buzz term that refers to the way design is being mainstreamed into much industry, workforce and policy thinking.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.agda.com.au/news/national/1083/uk-design-policy-expert-sir-george-cox-to-visit-australia">Sir George Cox’s</a> influential <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/cox_review/coxreview_index.cfm">Review of Creativity in Business</a> in 2005 for the UK government positioned design, when it is thought of as a distinct sector, as a bridge between the arts and engineering sciences.</p>
<p>It saw design as a link between research and enterprise in the innovation chain when design is thought of as method or mindset that links research into new ideas on the one hand, and the development of practical applications on the other.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33960/original/8x6dfhcb-1383010558.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33960/original/8x6dfhcb-1383010558.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33960/original/8x6dfhcb-1383010558.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33960/original/8x6dfhcb-1383010558.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33960/original/8x6dfhcb-1383010558.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33960/original/8x6dfhcb-1383010558.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33960/original/8x6dfhcb-1383010558.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Design thinking has business applications, among others.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ixdaseattle</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Business applications of design thinking, or design integration, have been developed at a state level in Australia, but we lag our OECD confreres conspicuously in design research, development and policy.</p>
<p>Design activity is notoriously underestimated in official national statistics, and employed designers are so broadly embedded throughout industry sectors that their contributions can be significantly under-counted.</p>
<p>Design has been conspicuously absent from national policy attention since its excision from the purview of the Australia Council in the 1980s.</p>
<p>It must now come back into focus, if Australia is to turn to the creative economy as part of its next big boom. </p>
<p><br>
<em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Cunningham’s research related to this article receives support from the Australian Research Council. He is involved in the bid for a Creative Digital Innovation Partnership.</span></em></p>
Australia is richly blessed with an abundance of resources which, along with robust legal, business and political infrastructure, has allowed it to pull through tough times on several occasions. As we…
Stuart Cunningham, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18951
2013-10-29T19:41:22Z
2013-10-29T19:41:22Z
What is Indigenous Australia in 2013?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33983/original/6ysnbxym-1383020276.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Of course, there is no singular Indigenous Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Angelo Soulas/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What is Indigenous Australia in 2013? To begin to answer this question, I believe it is important to proceed with a few key caveats:</p>
<p>1) There is no singular Indigenous Australia. Thus, anything written at the level of broadness reflected in the question will tend towards generalisations that risk eliding the diversity and richness of the Indigenous experiences in Australia.</p>
<p>2) Indigeneity is an open question in and of itself. It is a matter of personal and community identification that has significant ramifications for social justice and the allocation of resources.</p>
<p>3) It is probably not appropriate for an outsider such as myself to speak on these issues. In fact the ideal form of this essay would be a series of testimonials from various Australians of Indigenous heritage from different regions, classes, communities, genders, and ages. I have asked a few of my friends to provide some testimonials, and a few of these are included in this essay, but in no way should what I discuss be considered representative or even comprehensive.</p>
<p>With these caveats, I believe it is important to write this essay for two reasons. </p>
<p>First, in the four and a half years that I have spent as a Design Anthropologist in Melbourne I have been deeply moved by my everyday experiences of the diversity, vibrancy, and resiliency in Australia’s Indigenous communities. Second, as an African-American migrant to Australia who works with people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage in design and the arts, I possess a unique “outsider’s” perspective on what the phenomenon of Indigenous Australia(s) might be. </p>
<p>This perspective is based on similar histories of colonisation, dispossession, the criminalisation and sexualisation of “black bodies,” attempted genocide, and discrimination. It is based on continued disparities in the physical health, incarceration rates, education rates, social and emotional well-being in Indigenous Australian and African-American communities. But most importantly, it is based on a shared capacity to continue in the struggle for social, economic, and environmental justice with a sense of righteous anger, hope and joy.</p>
<p>This essay is divided into three themes (“diverse”, “hybrid” and “resilient”) that I have heard repetitively in conversations, presentations, and discussions with Australians of Indigenous heritage. </p>
<p>As a specialist in design and the arts, I will often describe how these themes are made tangible through the visual cultures of Indigenous Australia in 2013.</p>
<h2>Diverse</h2>
<p>Indigenous Australia in 2013 is diverse. The Australian <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/cashome.nsf/4a256353001af3ed4b2562bb00121564/7464946b3f41b282ca25759f00202502!OpenDocument">Commonwealth definition</a> of Indigenous refers specifically to someone who is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a person of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, who identifies as being from Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage, and who is accepted as such by the community in which the person associates.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This definition does not address the diversity of Indigenous communities if one includes migrants of Indigenous heritage from their respective nations. Yet, they are also part of Indigenous Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33835/original/nxttmcg9-1382858219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33835/original/nxttmcg9-1382858219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33835/original/nxttmcg9-1382858219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33835/original/nxttmcg9-1382858219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33835/original/nxttmcg9-1382858219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33835/original/nxttmcg9-1382858219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33835/original/nxttmcg9-1382858219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33835/original/nxttmcg9-1382858219.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maree Clarke’s 2012 Ritual and Ceremony Exhibition at Swinburne University included rediscovered cultural practices of possum skin cloaks, kopi mourning caps, and male mourning scarification.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elizabeth Tunstall</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But even working within the Commonwealth definition of Indigenous, the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is represented through each one’s different “home” country or island; history of European encounter; location in urban, regional, or urban setting; class, gender and age; and language and customs. </p>
<p>It is estimated by <a href="http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/lryb/PDFs/walshyallop_ch1.pdf">Australian linguists</a> that at the time of European contact, there were more than 250 Indigenous languages spoken, with more than 500 dialects. According to the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/2076.0main+features902011">2011 Australian Census</a>, more than 100 Indigenous languages including creoles are spoken in Indigenous Australia.</p>
<p>Nicholas Rothwell, in a recent article in <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/opinion/dilemma-of-difference-in-indigenous-art-awards/story-fn9n9z9n-1226695723611#sthash.W9qjOuzl.dpuf">The Australian</a>, discusses the implications of this diversity for judging the 77 works presented in the 2013 <a href="http://artsandmuseums.nt.gov.au/museums/natsiaa">Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award</a>. While recognising the “sensitivities that surround the discussion of indigenous identities,” he states that the show displayed the “dilemma of difference” in which Indigenous traditional arts are evaluated against contemporary arts.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33837/original/7hxz8mzd-1382860505.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33837/original/7hxz8mzd-1382860505.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33837/original/7hxz8mzd-1382860505.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=287&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33837/original/7hxz8mzd-1382860505.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=287&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33837/original/7hxz8mzd-1382860505.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=287&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33837/original/7hxz8mzd-1382860505.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33837/original/7hxz8mzd-1382860505.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33837/original/7hxz8mzd-1382860505.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ray Thomas’s painting See, Hear, and Say No Evil from his 2012 Swinburne Exhibition, Contemporary Gunnai Style, features recovered Gunnai language and background patterns from Gunnai shields.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elizabeth Tunstall</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet, from the perspective of Indigenous Australia, art and design, my Indigenous artist friends and colleagues approach diversity as being less of a dilemma than a point of celebration. In Victoria, where I work, artists such as <a href="http://museumvictoria.com.au/bunjilaka/visiting/birrarung-gallery/artist-profiles/maree-clarke/">Maree Clarke</a>, <a href="http://www.daao.org.au/bio/treahna-hamm/">Treahna Hamm</a>, <a href="http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/indigenous-design-dialogues/">Ray Thomas</a>, <a href="http://www.cv.vic.gov.au/stories/possum-skin-cloaks/12103/on-country-baraparapa-elder-esther-kirby/">Aunty Esther Kirby</a>, and <a href="http://museumvictoria.com.au/bunjilaka/videos/speaking-about-booruns-canoe/">Steaphan Paton</a> actively seek to recapture traditional knowledge and practices in order to give them contemporary forms.</p>
<h2>Hybrid</h2>
<p>As part of this diversity, Indigenous Australia 2013 recognises its hybridity both in its racial heritage but also in its history. One of my doctoral students, Myles Russell Cook, articulates this growing perspective in his email response to me for this essay:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am a descendant of the Wotjobaluk people on my mother’s side and I am white. As a young white man with Aboriginal heritage living in inner-city Melbourne this means that I, like many others, identify within a discourse of hybridity. </p>
<p>That is, I openly embrace all of my cultural heritages, including my Aboriginality. I have always felt the need to justify my skin colour by explaining that I have grown up within contemporary urban Aboriginal communities. I have endeavoured to, wherever possible and practical, learn Aboriginal languages and customs. </p>
<p>I both self-recognise my Aboriginality and am recognised by many elders and custodians of the land. However, I still find my identity is dependent on my social context. It is fluid and shifting, unstable and constantly being redefined.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As an African-American, which itself is both a racial and cultural mix of African, European, and Native American heritages, I resonate with this emergent aspect of Indigenous Australia. I celebrate it as a manifestation of shift in the cultural and political oppression that Indigenous Australians have faced. Perhaps tied to the Commonwealth’s Apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples in 2008, there is now room in Australia to be both Indigenous and Australian.</p>
<p>Nowhere in the art and design world has this been made more apparent than in the recently opened <a href="http://museumvictoria.com.au/bunjilaka/whatson/current-exhibitions/first-peoples/">First Peoples</a> exhibition on permanent display at the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Melbourne Museum. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33972/original/2xvdhm5c-1383017893.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33972/original/2xvdhm5c-1383017893.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33972/original/2xvdhm5c-1383017893.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33972/original/2xvdhm5c-1383017893.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33972/original/2xvdhm5c-1383017893.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33972/original/2xvdhm5c-1383017893.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33972/original/2xvdhm5c-1383017893.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33972/original/2xvdhm5c-1383017893.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Display panels at the First Peoples exhibition at Bunjilaka, Melbourne Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museum Victoria/ John Broomfield </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the last sections of the exhibition is entitled Our Shared History. As a Design Anthropologist, I have visited many colonial and Indigenous museums all over the world. Bunjilaka is the first I have attended that tells the story of Indigenous peoples in a voice that says, “This is your history as well, so let’s explore our shared history together”.</p>
<h2>Resilient</h2>
<p>The fact Indigenous Australia in 2013 can claim its diversity, hybrid histories, and identities speaks to the most enduring aspect of Indigenous peoples—resilience. Here I respectfully leave the last word to my Swinburne colleague Andrew Peters (Wurundjeri/ Yorta Yorta descendant):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In many respects, an answer to this question remains largely unchanged from the same question in 1967. Chronic disparities in health, welfare and education statistics paint a bleak picture of greater recognition of problems, but little actions of remedy. Racism continues to haunt many sectors of Indigenous Australia despite the many claims of its demise in this country. </p>
<p>However, the future is not bleak. The knowledge of the culture from non-Indigenous people is slowly growing, and more and more sections of our society are embracing Indigenous culture. And fundamental to the continuation of these positive steps is the ever-resilient, always present pride that we, as Indigenous Australians, have in our culture, our ancestors, our history, and our people. Enduring cultural pride, above all, describes Indigenous Australia in 2013.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
<br>
<br>
<em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Dori Tunstall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
What is Indigenous Australia in 2013? To begin to answer this question, I believe it is important to proceed with a few key caveats: 1) There is no singular Indigenous Australia. Thus, anything written…
Elizabeth Dori Tunstall, Associate Professor, Design Anthropology, Swinburne University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18958
2013-10-28T19:26:52Z
2013-10-28T19:26:52Z
Go on then … what are the creative industries?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33790/original/6f79xr8z-1382678612.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matthew Hutchinson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Creativity is the X factor of modern industry. When it slumps, our economy splutters.</p>
<p>Creativity is the source of the unprecedented wealth of the last two centuries. Yet we still understand very little about it.</p>
<p>Ideas create the industries and societies that generate the capital and income that lifts the world up. That is simple to say but difficult to achieve.</p>
<p>In the 1990s we began to talk about creative industries. We bundled fashion, design, advertising, architecture, publishing, software, movies, television and similar enterprises into their own sector. They became a lobby. In major economies, creative industries make up about 3%-5% of employment. As poorer economies develop, the size of their creative industries grows.</p>
<p>The term “creative industries sector”, though, is a bit of misnomer. For any industry can be creative. Conversely, fashion and design industries and their ilk often are lame. Little is creative or even interesting about today’s consumer computer companies.</p>
<p>In 2000, creative industries evangelists promised us a brilliant future. Some 30% of the population would belong to the creative class. The baton of creativity would pass from computing to bio-technology. Broadband networks would revolutionise business. Yet none of this happened. </p>
<p>Instead we ended up with prolonged global stagnation. We are in this pickle because we are less creative today than we were 50 years ago.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33789/original/gpkxn823-1382676916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33789/original/gpkxn823-1382676916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33789/original/gpkxn823-1382676916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33789/original/gpkxn823-1382676916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33789/original/gpkxn823-1382676916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33789/original/gpkxn823-1382676916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33789/original/gpkxn823-1382676916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33789/original/gpkxn823-1382676916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">LucyPB2urJelly</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Any industry can be creative. Agriculture is just as important as media. Creativity should not be confused with glamour. Movies are glitzy but today they are also mostly banal. The days of Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford are long behind us. </p>
<p>The same is true of technology. If we compare the period 1930-1969 to 1970-2009, the per-capita number of significant Australian inventions declined.</p>
<p>More lobbies, more policies and more government money won’t fix this. Bio-medical research is a cautionary example. After 1970, research money <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Great-American-University-Preeminence-Indispensable/dp/1610390970/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382676560&sr=1-1&keywords=great+american+university">in real terms</a> exploded. Yet the number of new molecular entities approved for drug use in the United States in the 2000s was barely more than in the 1950s.</p>
<p>The arts are equally miserable. In the 1950s, discussion raged about the relative merits of figurative and abstract art. Tradition was pitched against modernity, ornament against smooth surfaces. Then along came arts council funding. </p>
<p>This was followed by obsequious hyper-ventilating discourses and finally the “neo” and “post” movements. The result was tedium. We can barely recollect the names of the practitioners of this anaemic era, let alone compare them with the monuments of Cubism, De Stijl or Abstract Expressionism. </p>
<p>In the past 40 years, the most interesting work in the arts has been in commercially-minded design and architecture. Works like Rem Koolhaas and OMA’s 2008 <a href="http://www.oma.eu/news/2012/cctv-completed">China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters</a> in Beijing are impressive. But these remain the exception.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33783/original/f4gz8n9s-1382676011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33783/original/f4gz8n9s-1382676011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33783/original/f4gz8n9s-1382676011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33783/original/f4gz8n9s-1382676011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33783/original/f4gz8n9s-1382676011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33783/original/f4gz8n9s-1382676011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33783/original/f4gz8n9s-1382676011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33783/original/f4gz8n9s-1382676011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The China Central Television (CCTV) tower under construction in Beijing, 2007.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Reynolds/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This suggests that, for all our rhetoric, we still do not understand how creativity works. We try to institutionalise something that defies institutionalisation. There is no document-driven procedure for creativity. It is very hard to nail down. This is because what lies at its heart is very odd.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33788/original/yfy2q3xy-1382676480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33788/original/yfy2q3xy-1382676480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33788/original/yfy2q3xy-1382676480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33788/original/yfy2q3xy-1382676480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33788/original/yfy2q3xy-1382676480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33788/original/yfy2q3xy-1382676480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33788/original/yfy2q3xy-1382676480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33788/original/yfy2q3xy-1382676480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Harvey</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Creative people do what most people including most clever people do not do. They take what others normally think of as being unrelated and put them together. That is what it means to be creative. It is a very off-putting thought process, not unlike that of an acerbic comedian.</p>
<p>Someone at AT&T <a href="http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/17air.html">had the idea</a> of putting together the concepts of (wired) telephony and (wireless) radio in 1917. Almost a century later we carry in our pockets the fruits of that original thought meld. Very few people think like that. </p>
<p>Creative societies allow those who <em>do</em> the freedom to muse and the room to convince others that their outlier idea will soon enter the mainstream and define the norm.</p>
<p>Creative people look at the exception and see it as the rule. They are not being difficult or outlandish. While often witty, they are not self-consciously wacky. They just see X as Y. That is their gift and their curse. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33782/original/4v49thck-1382675827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33782/original/4v49thck-1382675827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33782/original/4v49thck-1382675827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33782/original/4v49thck-1382675827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33782/original/4v49thck-1382675827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33782/original/4v49thck-1382675827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33782/original/4v49thck-1382675827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33782/original/4v49thck-1382675827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tyler</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They see change as continuity not novelty. Creators are innate conservatives born with a wicked sense of irony.</p>
<p>Some societies and some eras go along with this. Some don’t. We pay lots of lip-service to the creative economy. But our time is not very creative. The arts and the sciences are dull. Technology and industry are not very innovative. No new industry sectors are emerging. This is a big problem. </p>
<p>The French economist <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Say.html">Jean-Baptiste Say</a> rightly observed in the early 19th century that in a modern dynamic economy supply creates demand. This means that without interesting and exciting products people save their money, and sluggish economies stagnate. That’s where we find ourselves in 2013.</p>
<p>Our larger problem is that we mistake glamour for creation. We think that working in the air-conditioned pastel offices of a designated creative industry makes us creative. It does not. We need to stop mistaking pretty labels for real entities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33785/original/hb2qy45w-1382676223.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33785/original/hb2qy45w-1382676223.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33785/original/hb2qy45w-1382676223.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33785/original/hb2qy45w-1382676223.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33785/original/hb2qy45w-1382676223.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33785/original/hb2qy45w-1382676223.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33785/original/hb2qy45w-1382676223.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33785/original/hb2qy45w-1382676223.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Moses M</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We now have to go back to scratch. We need a hard re-think about what creativity is and how we encourage it. We need to de-regulate creativity and let it off the leash. Since the 1970s we have forged a society fixated on petty rules and stern processes. Universities are among the worst offenders. </p>
<p>The result is not creation but enervation. We call our research and development creative but mostly it is not. We are risk-averse and shy of discovery.</p>
<p>One of the few exceptions to this in the past 40 years was Silicon Valley in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. It was truly free-wheeling. It was a place where a young man like Steve Jobs could combine his love of modernist aesthetics and electronic technologies. But that’s long gone.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33787/original/rg3234vm-1382676335.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33787/original/rg3234vm-1382676335.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33787/original/rg3234vm-1382676335.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33787/original/rg3234vm-1382676335.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33787/original/rg3234vm-1382676335.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33787/original/rg3234vm-1382676335.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33787/original/rg3234vm-1382676335.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33787/original/rg3234vm-1382676335.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Steve Jobs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monica M. Davey/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Silicon Valley in its brief hey-day was philosophically libertarian. Today it is wearisomely left-liberal. Sanctimony has replaced discovery. Moralism has supplanted gusto. The fire of excitement has given way to the same ideology of correctness that haunts the universities today. Big ideas have been replaced by minute rules.</p>
<p>PayPal’s <a href="http://www.foundersfund.com/team/peter-thiel">Peter Thiel</a> is right when he observes that the technology and economics of our other key industries such as air travel and energy are stuck <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX07zPupNdc">in the 1960s and 1970s</a>. American critic and scholar <a href="http://www.uarts.edu/users/cpaglia">Camille Paglia</a> is right when she observes that, since the early 1970s, the arts <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444223104578034480670026450">have been a wasteland</a>. </p>
<p>And I can’t see much monumental in the sciences since the structure of DNA was discovered in the 1950s. The incidence of classic science papers declines sharply after 1970.</p>
<p>We are not like Germany in the 1890s or California in the 1950s. One produced a stream of great philosophy and science; the other a stream of great technology. Until the tap was switched off – in one case by totalitarianism; in the other case by big government liberalism. </p>
<p>Little of our era will enter the history of ideas. Twittering on about creative industries makes no difference if our industries are not creative.</p>
<p>Our biggest problem today is that we lack ambition, energy and imagination. Our problem is us. Only we can fix that problem.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Murphy receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a project on creativity.</span></em></p>
Creativity is the X factor of modern industry. When it slumps, our economy splutters. Creativity is the source of the unprecedented wealth of the last two centuries. Yet we still understand very little…
Peter Murphy, Head of School of Creative Arts, James Cook University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18327
2013-10-27T10:30:25Z
2013-10-27T10:30:25Z
Does Australia ‘get’ culture?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33843/original/vwpsw2yt-1382871206.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australia does not lack art, artists or audiences, but ...</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Why doesn’t Australia <em>get</em> culture? What is it about culture that defeats our perception to the point where, like an unwelcome magic trick, it vanishes as an object of collective concern? </p>
<p>For a country so settled it has no dialects and doesn’t bother with a national bill of rights, what is it about culture – the normal accompaniment of national cohesion – we fail to discern and value? Why does the nasally satire of Monty Python’s “Bruces” sketch still bite, 43 years after it was first broadcast? </p>
<p>Why, after all the attention, achievement and acclamation our cultural sector has garnered, when it has ballooned in size and financial contribution, when it is part of every moment of our complex waking lives, is it often regarded as little better, in the inimitable words of Barry Humphries’ character Sandy Stone, than a very nice night’s entertainment?</p>
<p>Reading some of the responses to my Conversation article <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-a-super-culture-ministry-heres-why-16993">on a proposed “super ministry for culture”</a> published in August this year, I wondered from what inexhaustible well of ignorance Australia’s educated class draws its elixir of cultural deafness.</p>
<h2>All Australians</h2>
<p>Today, culture matters more than ever. The 19th century was the age of mass military mobilisation, the 20th of mass economic mobilisation. The 21st century is the age of mass cultural mobilisation, and beyond the immersive hedonism of our shopping malls and the art-free minds of many of our politicians, collisions rage between whole ways of life in which culture is the content, framework and bloody inspiration.</p>
<p>However dysfunctional such polities may be, they are aware in a way that we are not of the centrality of culture, its capacity to be both limitlessly diverse and powerfully binding. We are not all rich. We are not all white. But we are all Australians, of one kind or another. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33426/original/v259qqq3-1382406274.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33426/original/v259qqq3-1382406274.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33426/original/v259qqq3-1382406274.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33426/original/v259qqq3-1382406274.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33426/original/v259qqq3-1382406274.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33426/original/v259qqq3-1382406274.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33426/original/v259qqq3-1382406274.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33426/original/v259qqq3-1382406274.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indigenous artist Lena Nyadbi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Porritt/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That should mean more than footy loyalties and welling up with tears on Anzac Day. It should mean an internal order of value that allows us to articulate who we are and engage with those who are not as we are. </p>
<p>A national culture is not the opposite of cosmopolitan awareness. It is its ground and guarantee. Without a grasp of the importance of our own culture how can we appreciate anyone else’s?</p>
<h2>The accident of English</h2>
<p>There are two reasons why Australia’s sense of a national culture is weak and intermittent. The first is to do with language. The accident of English allows us to free-ride the cultural goods and services of the two international powers that have so far dominated our fate, Britain and the US. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33504/original/z2gx84rz-1382480383.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33504/original/z2gx84rz-1382480383.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33504/original/z2gx84rz-1382480383.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33504/original/z2gx84rz-1382480383.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33504/original/z2gx84rz-1382480383.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33504/original/z2gx84rz-1382480383.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33504/original/z2gx84rz-1382480383.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33504/original/z2gx84rz-1382480383.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mrs Edna Everage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image from Neftali / Shutterstock.com </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our quest for independence did not involve the assertion of a separate linguistic identity, as with Israel, or a contested one, such as bilingual Canada. Uniquely among post-colonial countries we do not have a national theatre. Instead, we are a net cultural importer, soaking up the art developed for other people and sensibilities.</p>
<p>I grew up the son of a (very) English father and a (trenchantly) Australian mother, the recipient of two different ways of looking at culture that don’t meet on equal terms. The Anglo-Saxon countries cast a long shadow, supplying us not only with cultural objects and experiences but with expectations too. </p>
<p>As Australian writer <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/phillips-angell-arthur-15438">AA Phillips</a> <a href="http://misonou.livejournal.com/530016.html">famously put it</a> in 1950:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the back of the Australian mind, there sits a minatory Englishman … Subconsciously the educated Australian feels a guilty need to placate this shadowy figure. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This ascendancy has lessened over the years but has it gone away? Watching the Australian film industry wither on the vine, our television drama go from worse to worser, and our theatre gorge itself on foreign classics, it’s tempting to think not.</p>
<p>The second reason has to do with our peaceful history. No major wars have been fought on Australian soil (or none that we openly acknowledge, at any rate). Our cultural consciousness has never been pushed into sharp awareness by invasion or forced colonisation. </p>
<p>Geoffrey Blainey’s <a href="http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/display_title.asp?ISBN=9780732911171&Author=Blainey,%20Geoffrey">The Tyranny of Distance</a> has allowed a feeling of unthreatened relaxation that has bordered on inertia. Culture touches everyone’s life. But because no-one has ever tried to take ours away, it remains under-served. </p>
<p>Unless you are Indigenous, of course, in which case you will be acutely aware that in the modern, mobilised world, politics and culture are the same side of the one coin.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_f_p0CgPeyA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Warning: cringe may immediately occur.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Turning away</h2>
<p>“When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver,” is the threatening quote <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_G%C3%B6ring">often misattributed</a> to Hermann Göring, Nazi founder of the Gestapo. Yet the Nazis became the greatest patrons of the arts since <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero">Emperor Nero</a> went into the music business. </p>
<p>Obsessed with projecting German supremacy in every sphere, the second world war was fought on the cultural front as well, with artists drawn into a savage struggle for hearts and minds. After 1945, Europe and America started promoting their own culture, getting serious about it once they realised that’s where most people live their lives.</p>
<p>Increased leisure time, the egalitarianism war’s sacrifices brought, and a new interest in cultural activities of all kinds, led to arts councils, touring programs, cultural exchange. </p>
<p>Looking at the sorry mess of the Middle East and Afghanistan today you feel that’s a lesson the West needs to learn all over again.</p>
<p>Australia never learnt it. We took an opposite tack, erecting a barrier designed to keep the rest of the world out – the <a href="http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/08abolition.htm">White Australia policy</a>. In turning away from the world, we turned away from ourselves. The cultural history of Australia in the 1950s and 1960s is depressing not because so little happened but because so much tried to.</p>
<h2>As good as it gets</h2>
<p>Australia is now <a href="http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/australia/">one of the most privileged countries</a> in the richest epoch in the whole of human history. Economically, it doesn’t get much better. Yet the last election was fought in a flailing panic of gratuitous materialism and widespread whinging about standards of living. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33428/original/v6wjjwf5-1382406589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33428/original/v6wjjwf5-1382406589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33428/original/v6wjjwf5-1382406589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33428/original/v6wjjwf5-1382406589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33428/original/v6wjjwf5-1382406589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33428/original/v6wjjwf5-1382406589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33428/original/v6wjjwf5-1382406589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33428/original/v6wjjwf5-1382406589.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julian Smith/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Journalist <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/tom-allard-20120322-1vlrc.html">Tom Allard</a> <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/the-affluenza-effect-20130830-2sw3t.html">noted</a> “the disconnect between reality and sentiment”. Meanwhile, economist <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ross-garnaut-237/profile_bio">Professor Ross Garnaut</a> <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/the-affluenza-effect-20130830-2sw3t.html">warned</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a new political culture that elevates private over public interests and the immediate over the longer term. If we continue within the political culture … we will live in greater comfort for a short while. But sooner rather than later we will experience deep economic recession with high unemployment. We can expect bitter conflict within our society, and unhappiness about our institutions.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A sense of culture</h2>
<p>We are a country not without culture but without a sense of culture. That distinction is crucial. Australia does not lack art, artists or audiences. But as a nation we find it hard to see culture in any but consumerist terms. </p>
<p>Debates about cultural value degenerate into stoushes over personal preference – Schoenberg symphonies versus school concerts, elitism versus equity. Lack of catholicity of taste transmutes into cultural rigidity, even intolerance. For all the talk about a technologically-connected world and <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/australia-in-the-asian-century">the Asian century</a>, the drivers of our national imagination feel querulous and underpowered.</p>
<p>Launching Sophia Turkiewicz’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2956808/">Once My Mother</a> in August, for example, Australian director <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0175352/">Robert Connolly</a> delivered a withering assessment of the current state of documentary film financing. </p>
<p>Turkiewicz starting looking for support in 1975 – which makes her hardihood notable even by Australian standards. Long-form documentaries fall between the cracks of current production models. That this is more than a glitch is evidenced by the fact documentary film-making is fast migrating to the internet, where interactive, multi-platform formats offer greater diversity and creative sophistication. </p>
<p>In 2011, Once My Mother finally attracted support from <a href="http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/funding/documentary/Signature_Doc.aspx">Screen Australia’s Signature Documentary Program</a>, a fund established in 2011 aimed at documentary storytelling that is bold in form and content.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xqK6ZJrQsYY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Once My Mother.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Turkiewicz’s film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2956808/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl">focuses on her Polish refugee mother</a>: “a story of survival and forgiveness, explored through a troubled mother and daughter relationship, revealing an epic journey from a Siberian gulag to safety in Australia”. </p>
<p>Its advance screenings <a href="http://tix.adelaidefilmfestival.org/session2_aff.asp?sn=Once+My+Mother&s=">attracted warm commendations</a> from film directors Bruce Beresford and Peter Weir, giving Connolly <a href="http://www.screenhub.com.au/news/shownewsarticleG.php?newsID=49262">a platform to lambast</a> the myopia of Australia’s cultural gatekeepers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For two years I watched [Turkiewicz] grinding heroically away for love and no money […] Given the obvious quality of the work, it made no sense. Actually, it all too depressingly <em>made entire sense</em>. For reasons best known to them, the then ABC and SBS commissioning editors repeatedly passed on the film […] and because the way things currently work, no SBS or ABC presale means no funding body support, and no funding body support usually means no film.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Stories of systemic frustration can be found in every area of Australian culture, both the traditional high arts and the newer creative industries. They indicate a situation whereby commercial imperatives block artistic ones because the internal order of value that should keep them in productive tension is not present to the needed degree.</p>
<h2>Due process</h2>
<p>So where do we go from here? Fortunately, Australia’s weak sense of culture has produced a compensating strength: its <a href="http://creativeaustralia.arts.gov.au/">cultural policy process</a>. </p>
<p>Meeting with some UK researchers earlier this year I heard the same admiring message time and again: how cultural policy in Australia is bold, comprehensive and of high quality, a real attempt to cast the problem of culture beyond the doings of a few lead institutions. This is not a partisan achievement. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33507/original/296sr5f2-1382485603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33507/original/296sr5f2-1382485603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33507/original/296sr5f2-1382485603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33507/original/296sr5f2-1382485603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33507/original/296sr5f2-1382485603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33507/original/296sr5f2-1382485603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33507/original/296sr5f2-1382485603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33507/original/296sr5f2-1382485603.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Toby Schmitz (left) and Tim Minchin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Labor and Liberal governments have both contributed to developing cultural policy as a positive field of endeavour. Given that the bureaucratic provision of something as wayward as culture is difficult to begin with, Australia has done well in utilising its support infrastructure (the <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/">Australia Council</a> is going strong 15 years after the UK replaced its own independent <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/">Arts Council</a> with a hands-on Ministry of culture which, surprise, surprise, doesn’t work any better).</p>
<p>“A strong and slow boring of hard boards,” is how the German sociologist <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70587-politics-is-a-strong-and-slow-boring-of-hard-boards">Max Weber described politics</a>. Those boards are doubly thick when it comes to culture. Nevertheless, good cultural policy is crucial for all those who want to see Australian culture well served and serving Australia well. </p>
<p>Culture warrants a high position in the new government’s pecking order. If Australia is to <em>get</em> culture any time soon, it will need leadership from the centre. The administrative machinery and money are there (despite our complaints). </p>
<p>What’s needed is an evolved policy vision.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>This is a foundation essay for The Conversation’s new Arts + Culture section. If you are an academic or researcher with relevant expertise and would like to respond to this article, please use our <a href="https://theconversation.com/pitches/new">pitch facility</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>A previous version of this article included the line: “For a country so settled it has no dialects and doesn’t bother with a written constitution …”. This was amended on October 29 to more closely reflect the author’s intentions.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Why doesn’t Australia get culture? What is it about culture that defeats our perception to the point where, like an unwelcome magic trick, it vanishes as an object of collective concern? For a country…
Julian Meyrick, Professor of Strategic Arts, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.