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WE see it again and again: A marginal — rough, industrial or just boring — neighborhood attracts artists and musicians and generates an “edgy” reputation. For a few years, good things happen. But after a while — and, often, a benign explosion of coffee shops and bike paths and cheese stores — the artists and musicians and fellow travelers are driven out by high rents. Hollywood players and hedge-fund guys move in. And a creative community — a music scene, a consortium of visual artists, and so on — disperses.
Today I discussed how this process works — and what the stakes are — in Los Angeles. Host Warren Olney, of “Which Way LA?”, spoke to me and three others, including artist Julia Meltzer of Clockshop. The program goes up on KCRW at 7 p.m. (Pacific time) tonight; it’s already up, here, online.
The subject made me think of two other posts I’ve put put up in recent months — this one, about visual artists in New York, and this one about San Francisco’s music scene being crushed by skyrocketing rents.
I should also mention an upcoming documentary film — Miracle on 42d St. — about subsidized housing for artists in New York, and which includes narration by Samuel L. Jackson, Larry David, An
gela Lansbury and others who lived in or knew the place.
Could it be that the forms of disappropriation and flight artists face through gentrification actually keeps artists creative? Greenwich Village, Soho, and the Lower East Side were innovative places until they became gentrified. It’s not just that the artists were pushed out. Too much contentment breeds stasis and complicity in artist’s lives. Bourgeois values kill them. They seem to work best in an atmosphere that is a bit wild and chaotic. So those that remain in a gentrified community become complacent. It seems like artists are at their best when they are healing, building, and revivifying. Perhaps there’s a middle ground where just enough struggle helps, while too much gentrification destroys. It’s almost as if one could create graphs to show the correlations between the economic factors of urban renewal and the rise and fall of creativity.
“Too much contentment breeds stasis and complicity in artist’s lives.”
An imbecilic stereotype.
An “artist” (whatever the hell they are) come in all shapes and sizes. However, they all need to eat, keep warm in the winter and dry from the rain. Being poor, they seek out cheap real estate. If they want to engage in commerce, the real estate needs to be in an urban area. If they want a place that’s moderately habitable, they are forced to do the renovations for free (without any equity) and then are swatted out like flies when their labor is done, period.
(By the way: I think you mean complacency, not complicity). People like William Osborne are the ones that are “complicit” in perpetuating a stereotype with no basis in fact.
In many established American artists, I see a kind of complicity (and complacency) — and often even in the ones posturing themselves as rebels. Think of the faux rebellion in so much rock music. Or how the “revolution” in classical music is mostly just an embrace of neo-liberal philosophy.
It also seems that the tenure system in universities (in arts departments and elsewhere) is also a system of ensuring complicity. The professors then pass this ethos to the next generation. This might be related to an earlier discussion we had here about the loss of influential public intellectuals in the USA, and of the social forces that have resigned them to silence. In short, I’m all for artists living comfortable lives, but not at any price. Interesting the rage and personal animosity this seems to engender in some.
Perhaps a strong corollary to any discussion about the destruction of the “creative class” would be how artists can work within a plutocracy and not be complicit in its injustices. Taking away the areas where artists live is destructive, but destroying their souls is just as bad. Or is that not a problem in the USA?
There’s an interesting article in the NY Times about how recent events are disrupting the seeming complacency in hip-hop in recent years. The article addresses the problems even hip-hop artists have in possibly being complicit in a system of oppression and how to find a balance. Quote from article:
“Asked about his initial response to Mr. Brown’s death, [J. Cole] said that he had reacted much as he had to other recent killings of young black men: with resigned frustration. But then he turned the gaze on himself: “I’m ashamed that I had that reaction, ’cause we always have that reaction, for years, that’s how we be feeling.”
“The word ‘ashamed’ was the real rupture here. When Mr. Cole said it, his eyes softened, and his brow furrowed just a bit. He went on to describe the cracking of his own complacency. “I didn’t even watch that Staten Island video, ’cause I ain’t want to see it no more,” he said, referring to a clip in which Eric Garner struggles in a police chokehold in July. (He died shortly afterward.) “I don’t want to see a dude, I don’t want to see another black man get killed.”
The article concludes with this:
“Maybe that’s the sweet spot for modern hip-hop outrage: when you’re successful enough to have a voice, but not so successful that you don’t remember what it was like to have no voice, when you feel you can topple authority without toppling all that you’ve built for yourself in the process.”
(End of quotes.)
Cynic that I am, I remain skeptical. Where’s the revolution if you’re working with MTV? I think of the paradox Jean Baudrillard outlined about how any resistance to a system of oppression only strengthens it. If even an overtly political genre like hip-hop suffers from appropriation, what chances do other artists have working within the system? And yet we want our place in Greenwich Village… I’m interested to see how this is sorted out in Scott’s forthcoming book (assuming the book addresses this particular topic.)
The Times article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/arts/killer-mike-and-j-cole-bare-their-emotions-at-a-pivotal-time.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-middle-span-region®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region&_r=0
Ha, at first I thought you were speaking of Portland but than as I read further I realized here we are not pushed out. Musicians, techys, artists and the like have thrived here and continue to do so. But I do agree with you on how it is happening in the places you speak.
It is hard to make it as an artist in general let alone having added stresses of high rent and such. Perhaps another question for some, is it worth squeaking by to do what you love? And will fate look kindly on you because you didn’t sell out?
Portland ranks 307th in the world for opera performances per year — far behind many cities with much smaller populations. Wouldn’t want to be an opera singer in that town. On the other hand, the Oregon Symphony has fared much better than many orchestras in the USA.