Recently by Lewis Hyde


One organizing idea of Bill's book Arts, Inc. is that our default conceptions of "art" and "culture" leave us blind to and powerless before many of the forces that in fact affect expressive/cultural/artistic life.  Bill and others have offered examples in these posts:  the consolidation of radio stations, the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, the Supreme Court's ruling on corporate money in politics...  

To make a list of these things is to come at "expressive life" from the substantive rather than linguistic end of the puzzle.  What are the problems that might be solved, or at least better enjoined, if we could get beyond our default conceptions?  

To continue the "what's in and what's out" thread, then, might we generate a more formal list of the topics or policy areas that Bill and others hope to see come into focus?  Bill's initial post offered a starter set:  

intellectual property, broadband penetration, amateur art practice, media regulation, the vitality of for-profit arts companies, non-school arts learning, Fair Use, union policies, and access to cultural heritage.

A later post adds a few more:  "media regulation, corporate archival preservation policies, revenue streams that flow to the arts industries...."  Russell Taylor suggests we look at "what role an expressive life should have in a developing democracy" and consider the idea that "our ... adherence to 'star' hierarchies in the arts contributes actively to social and economic inequalities, just as in the realm of sports."  

My own list would include:  

*  Claiming the fair use doctrine for all realms of expression.  As many of you know, good work has been done in this realm by documentary filmmakers.  I myself have tried to start up a project for teachers and artists in higher education.  (Funders:  please call soon!)  There's much to be done here.  

*  Designing online libraries to maximize the circulation of knowledge, consistent with current law.  Specifically there are serious issues at stake in the Google Book Search Settlement that is now before a Federal Court.  The disposition of that lawsuit will shape our expressive ecology for a generation to come and yet much of what is about to transpire seems to me invisible to the "arts & culture" community.  

What other topics belong in this list?  
January 27, 2010 11:26 AM | | Comments (0) |
George Lakoff's ideas about "reframing" interest me, and I've even tried to do a bit of it myself, redescribing "intellectual property" as "monopoly privilege," for example (the frame that the nation's founders would have used).  

A question lingers, however:  when does reframing work and why?  Many Democrats in the 2004 election thought that if they could just change the catch phrases of the debate they would win.  They were wrong.  

I don't know the answer to the "when & why."  I hope others can offer some insight.  That said, my guess is that, as always, it matters whether the ground is fertile or sterile when you scatter your seed.  In this line a decade ago I wrote an essay that looked toward American history to try to understand what did and didn't have political traction when we debate issues such as funding the arts.  

I ended up with a short list of themes whose roots are very old in this country but whose fruits we still seem to be harvesting.  I suspect, for one, that we still have a surviving ethic of Protestant simplicity.  We also have a strong suspicion of anything that doesn't seem practical and useful; finally, from our early emphasis on the value of voluntary association, we have inherited a particular sense of what it means to contribute taxes to any common enterprise.

The opposition between simplicity and luxury was a commonplace in the eighteenth century, the latter always linked to corruption and tyranny.  From "the dawn of history," John Adams wrote, the fine arts "have been prostituted to the service of superstition and despotism."  It wasn't only the opulence of European art that put him off, either; it was the hierarchies of wealth that the stuff implied.  Adams had visited Blenheim in England, a palace that had taken twenty-two years to build:  did Americans wish to repeat the class system required for that kind of project?

As for the American love of the practical and useful, its flip side is distrust of learning or art pursued for their own sake.  To take but one old example:  in the nineteenth century, Yankee blue bloods, weary of having civic offices filled by the spoils system, hoped to institute competency tests, whereupon they were attacked for demanding useless knowledge when only the useful was needed.  On the floor of the House a congressman from Mississippi spun out the following fantasy:  

Suppose some wild mustang girl from New Mexico comes here for a position, and it may be that she does not know whether the Gulf stream runs north or south, or perhaps she thinks it stands on end..., yet although competent for the minor position she seeks, she is sent back home rejected.

A Senator from Wisconsin worried that a businessman, his mind "long engrossed in practical pursuits," would be rejected for public service in favor of a "dunce who has been crammed up to a diploma at Yale."  

Bill Ivey writes that Art and Culture "are so burdened with assumptions and multiple meanings...that our key words are actually barriers."  I agree.  But those assumptions and meanings have very deep roots.  How effective can a change of terms be in cutting those roots?  

I like the phrase "expressive life."  I'll use it myself.  But I'm also aware that I don't know when reframing works and when it doesn't work.  Ideas anyone?  
January 25, 2010 11:05 AM | | Comments (0) |

About

This Conversation Are the terms "Art" and "Culture" tough enough to frame a public policy carve-out for the 21st century? Are the old familiar words, weighted with multiple meanings and unhelpful preconceptions, simply no longer useful in analysis or advocacy? In his book, Arts, Inc., Bill Ivey advances "Expressive Life" as a new, expanded policy arena - a frame sufficiently robust to stand proudly beside "Work Life," "Family Life," "Education," and "The Environment." Is Ivey on the right track, or more

Our Bloggers

Adrian Ellis; Alan Brown; Andras Szanto; Andrew Taylor; Bau Graves; Douglas McLennan; Ellen Lovell; Bill Ivey, William James; James Early; Jim Smith; Lewis Hyde; Marian Godfrey; Martha Bayles; Nihar Patel; Russell Taylor; Sam Jones; Steven Tepper

more

Contact us Click here to send us an email... more

Archives: 40 entries and counting

Resources

Recent Comments

Research commented on Can we add Creative to Expression?: Consider that 'Creativity' is a given; it is common and shared with all lif...

Scott Walters commented on Where's the Action?: Speaking of young people, could a share a story that relates to this? Back ...

James Early commented on Twenty Years On...: First Step towards a Participatory Cultural Policy: Re-Engaging Diverse Com...

Latifah Taormina commented on Contact us: I heartily recommend that your bloggers go back and look up Shalini Venture...

Scott Walters commented on RE: What's in and what's out?: And that list, put together by "arts professionals," is exactly why the ter...

James Early commented on Let's Switch to "Expressive Life!": WE ARE THE ONES WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR! I weigh in on the conversation lat...

Scott Walters commented on To Marian and Andras...: To my mind, what the phrase "expressive life" does is open up the idea of w...

Jesus Pantel commented on All models are wrong, some are useful: I'm interested in more of your reasoning for "creative life" being just a s...

Jim Rosenberg commented on The Expressive Life Grid: Hear hear!...

Jim Rosenberg commented on Whose expressive life?: I don't think "expressive life" passes the "smell test" for common use. Wor...

AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
critical difference
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Dog Days
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Real Clear Arts
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
Creative Destruction
Fresh ideas on building arts communities
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PianoMorphosis
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
The Unanswered Question
Joe Horowitz on music

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog