INTERFACE

REVIEW

Does Autonomy Really Matter Anymore?

A response to the discussion event ‘Does Autonomy Matter?’
Gasworks, London
5 December

Reviewed by: Neva Elliott

To mark the launch of Does Autonomy Matter?, the eighth edition of Printed Project published by Visual Artists Ireland and edited by Munira Mirza, Gasworks (in association with The Manifesto Club) hosted a discussion on the issue’s focus on “artistic freedom – anxiety and aspiration”.

The question may seem pretty straightforward: it is surely our autonomy that defines us as artists over any other producer. To the panellists convened – Alessio Antoniolli (Director Gasworks and Triangle Arts Trust), Munira Mirza (cultural commentator) Andrew Brighton (writer, artist and contributing editor for Critical Quarterly) Sonya Dyer (artist and arts consultant) and the Director of Visual Artists Ireland Noel Kelly – the concern seemed to be more specifically whether it actually matters to artists anymore in the face of the current cultural climate.

In recent years the ‘cultural experience’ has been increasingly used as a component of urban regeneration, social inclusion and diversity strategies, and the prescriptive model of community based and ‘socially engaged’ art practices has been incorporated by governments and organisations to reach their social development aims. As a result budgets and opportunities for this type of working have increased and it has been accepted as a valuable form of public art, channelling the perceived transformative quality of art to the improvement of society, the individuals within it and their quality of life.

Such has been the rise of the ‘community artist’ and its power as a funding buzz-word that artists have at times subjugated their practices to the funding applications and guidelines of public bodies. In The Visual Artists News Sheet (sister publication to Print Project), Valerie Connor comments on “³a reported conflict between the freedoms of the artist and the instrumentalised objectives of partners with social priorities that subordinate artists’ aesthetic concerns and lead to work of lesser quality.’¹

Commissioning artists to work within target groups has produced work of value to the artist and community, whether it be work solely signatured by the artist or through working alongside communities and engaging their concerns; but it has also at times treated the artist as a mal-qualified social worker, a band-aid on a social problem or objectified the inhabitants of a particular area. What is at fault in these situations is not the sociability of the work but the imposed social usage. We as artists are naturally drawn to be engaged with our social and political environment, making works social by their context rather than social working. Becky Shaw and Mark Ramsden for this issue of Printed Project state that, “The problem occurs when attempts are made to formalise social structures and relationships through instrumental policy”.

This funding of art for objectives of social regeneration and inclusion through instrumentalised policy rather than artistic development is further aggravated by the administrative procedures. Institutionalised spending needs results to see a positive outcome for its investment in line with stated imperatives and objectives. The world of marketing management and current bureaucratic thinking deems that the value of art has to be clearly demonstrable and the usage agreed as per the guidelines, defining the parameters of the work and imposing a success or failure status on projects based on criteria other than the artist’s own.

I recently attended a conference on informal learning in education where I was exposed to the issues and worries of educators with their current funding system – of having to find ways of placing a value on the intangible, ticking boxes, twisting their projects to pander to where the money was coming from, dealing with market language and commercial values that have no place in their context. The words ‘art’ and ‘education’ could have been interchangeable. We are not alone in this situation.

The fear is understandable that if we do not bow to the perceived pressures of funding bodies our work will not get made. However, if we warp projects to fit in with grant applications our work is not being created anyway. Whether corralling our practices, juggling the truth of our work or building gazebos of social worth what we are actually doing is proliferating the erosion of our autonomy.

The problem is not solely about our reliance on public funding causing us to be harnessed for social usage; it is perhaps, as Munira Mirza’s hypothetical cynic would suggest, also caused by artists following “the money and celebrity, rather than their own feelings”. Perhaps we are more concerned with what moves we need to make to ‘get ahead’ than with the work we actually create. There is a danger here of experiencing not only a loss of autonomy but also of our identity as artists. Does autonomy really matter any more if we are willing to forgo it?

There have always been pressures on the artist whether of finance, fashion or market. Of artists’ autonomy Mirza questions, “Was it ever thus?” She stated at the beginning of the talk that the artists she had interviewed on this topic did not feel like victims but described their applying for funding as ‘hustling’. Indeed we are not victims in this matter, it is within our control whether we acquiesce to perceived pressures and let it affect our work.

Organisations will always need some process through which to make decisions. Pauline Hadaway comments in her article for Printed Project that “cultural managers are required to maintain boundaries against political interest, to choose partners with caution and be aware that it is sometimes wiser to say no even to your friends”. This is advice we too could take; we have the choice of rejecting the language and processes we are being faced with.

“So what’s the alternative?” came the cry from the floor. The answer from those congregated at the Gasworks was medley of Sonya Dyer’s “Get a job”, teach, sell, and steer clear of the ‘Arts Council’ (used throughout this article as a byword for all public funding). While I agree with this in part I believe the answer is not just to dump public funding but also to understand where we are situated in relation to it and not to accept what we feel is objectionable.

One solution to the conflict between the aims of the artist and the funding bodies put forth at this talk was to sack all the bureaucrats – which would most probably result in a bunch of out-of-work artists and a new crop of bureaucrats; as for many artists their ‘other jobs’ are within the art system. The problem isn’t a personal one but of the current climate. Another solution put forward was to picket the Arts Council with signs saying ‘We are for the arts’, alluding to the fact that the Arts Council are deemed not to be. Perhaps a better usage for such signs would be to stick them up in each room of the Council to remind them of their own remit; that they are not the department of social services.

In his article for this edition of Printed Project, JJ Charlesworth states, “the partisan nature of state patronage should not go unchallenged: the support of an instrumentalised arts policy and the activity it engenders is as questionable as the support of commercially unviable high culture”. He believes we are letting them define “what art is, can and should be”. I agree with JJ; why shouldn’t artists be involved in the organisations which present them?

We can endeavour to effect change. If the bureaucracies are there to support the arts perhaps we need to show them more clearly what the art is, rather than agreeing to their version. We can point out that it isn’t supporting the arts to labour under market speech and use arts as a social amelioration. We can state that what we need is intellectual critique rather than managerial measurement. Maybe we need to step away from the funding to find our own control, or perhaps we just need to interrogate ourselves in relation to our practices, the language we use, the value and measurements we place on our work. An emphasis on what art ‘does’, does not have to mean a loss of autonomy or indeed the artist being crushed under the demands of the ‘patron’. We create the frame that is our work.

As artists we function in a sphere of luxury, of being allowed to say what we want; therein lies our autonomy. Or, as Sonia Dyer defines it, in the “primacy of idea (as opposed to targets)”, the “desire for artists to set their own agendas”. We can make people look at a snow shovel and think of something other than bad weather. We do not need to be told what to do; surely that is our value? We can look out into the world and comment, highlight or involve ourselves at will.

If there is a loss of autonomy it is not the fault of working within a social context of the funding bodies’ criteria. Loss of autonomy cannot be enforced in this manner; it can only be given. Like copyright our autonomy is our own until such time we choose to give it away. Perhaps to realise our autonomy we have to believe that the buck stops with us.

¹ The Visual Artists News Sheet, Issue 3, May-June 2005

See www.printedproject.ie for more information about Printed Project.

Writer detail:
Neva Elliott

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