SOUTH AFRICAN
BUSINESS ART October 2009 | Supplement to The South African Art Times | E-mail: subs@arttimes.co.za | Member of the Global Art Information Group
SA Visual arts sector shies away from World Summit The recent World Summit on Arts and Culture dealt with the arts in general. Did this isolate specialists in the field of art, asks Mary Corrigall Joy Mboya, the executive director of The Performing and Visual Arts Centre in Kenya, suggested that in her country creativity in the arts had been stifled by this supposed need to create work that was designed to address a particular social ill. Surprisingly delegates from western countries or representatives of western-based cultural institutions - the primary funders to non-western countries - seemed to be in agreement.
Mary Corrigall The 4th World Summit of Arts and Culture was held in Johannesburg last week and with 250 of the 450 delegates hailing from the African continent the affair had a decidedly African flavour. The themes that Mike Van Graan, the programme director, had set for the discussions also reflected the summit’s destination. Reflecting a predominant concern in South African cultural and political realms the central theme seemed to probe the dynamics and the best conditions for intercultural dialogue. It was also relevant to a gathering of arts organisations and practitioners from around the globe who were keen to exchange ideas. Issues facing all the various creative disciplines were adumbrated in favour of engaging with ‘the arts’ in general and the commonalities that might face all who toil in creative industries. Consequently none of the talks were tailored for the visual arts sector albeit that some of the speakers made oblique references to this arena. In her address on intercultural dialogue through the arts, Yvette Vaughn Jones, a British-based policymaker and policy analyst, who now runs Visiting Arts, referred to the 1 mile squared project, an online arts initiative which is currently running with the Johannesburg Art Gallery. She presented it as an example of ways in which technology is facilitating intercultural creative projects. Representing South Africa was Steven Sack, director of arts and culture for the City of Joburg. Nevertheless there was a paucity of delegates
hailing from the visual arts sector. Sack suggested that many were put off by the cost – fees for locals could cost up to almost R5000. “The money just doesn’t seem to be there,” commented Sack. He tried to drum up interest in the visual arts community, especially academia but without funding to attend Sack said his efforts were met with little interest.
“There is this perception that organisations in the North aren’t willing to fund projects that deal with soft issues. This is a real problem for organisations in the South. The artistic value of projects is just as important, we are failing artists if we do not address this,” observed Laurent Clavel, director of the French Institute in South Africa. Peter Anders, Clavel’s counterpart at the Goethe Insitute, concurred.
In the run-up to the summit some arts practitioners and organisations were unaware that the summit was taking place. “One can never have enough publicity,” observed Sack, whose organisation is one of the sponsors of the event. Sack also implied that the visual art fraternity in South Africa tends to isolate itself from the arts community at large. He also suggested that the visual arts community were less “interested in policy” than the rest of the arts fraternity in the country whose livelihood is more dependent on the government’s funding policies. Certainly artists hailing from other disciplines expressed disdain for the National Arts Council (NAC), the main government funding body for the arts, in the run-up to the summit. In talks held at the African Museum preceding the summit artists bemoaned the paucity of government funding for the arts. Annabel Lebethe, the new chief executive officer for the NAC, implied that the summit, which was predominantly
“We are not development agencies, we are here to listen to what artists want and need,” Anders observed.
Brett Bailey piece opened the 4th World Summit on Arts and Culture sponsored by the NAC, would help identify the issues facing the arts fraternity and set future funding policies. At the closing press conference, however, she was unable to outline the specific insights the NAC had acquired during the summit. However, in its programming the summit seemed more geared to probe more philo sophical quandaries such as the arts role in society. In other words it operated as a platform
to reassert arts value. Madeeha Gauhar, a theatre practitioner from Pakistan who has used her art to challenge the draconian laws set by the Taliban in her country, and Stojan Pelko, the state secretary for the Slovenian Ministry of Culture, attempted to discover what role the arts play in advancing peace or propagating conflict. Pelko observed that no cultural product is neutral and can be appropriated to further any kind of political end – “there are no innocent songs.” It was perhaps thought that
these kinds of topics would highlight the importance of the arts and their political value thus drawing governments’ attention to the role they could play in furthering democratic ideals – hence justifying the need for more generous funding. In the concluding session Sanjoy Roy, head of Teamwork Films, a production house with interests in the performing and visual arts, also placed empha sis on the social value of art. The implication was that art had to be seen to add value to society to prove its worth.
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Many of the commercial galleries in South Africa operate without aid from foreign agencies but our museums and artists remain highly dependent on foreign funding, consequently the summit might have proved the ideal platform to come to grips with the dynamics of the relationships between the “north and the south” and to simply network with the host of foreign organisations which were present at the summit.
Kate Tarratt Cross, director of the Greatmore Studios in Cape Town found the summit to be highly stimulating and worthwhile. “Just in my own work I have been trying to get cross cultural projects off the ground so the summit has affirmed that what I am doing is on the right track,” she said.
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