Reflections on Artistic Freedom
By Members of the International Programme Advisory Committee (IPAC)
In the lead up to the 9th World Summit, members of the International Programme Advisory Committee (IPAC) will each share a short reflection on an urgent issue of concern related to artistic freedom.
Building a Better Dialogue between Artistic Freedom & Cultural Rights
By Olu Alake
While there seems to be an emerging consensus of what artistic freedom is, there remain several areas of contestation mainly around the question of how absolute that right to artistic freedom should be? This contestation comes into stark relief when there is the encounter of artistic freedom with cultural rights, especially when cultural rights are deployed as a defence mechanism against cultural exclusion and marginalisation.
This was at the heart of a recent furore where the casting of a Black man in a leading role of London’s Frozen The Musical resulted in some audience objections. While supporting the artistic freedom of the actor, some members of the Sami community, descendants of nomadic peoples who had inhabited northern Scandinavia for thousands of years, made the pertinent point that the show should have originally cast a member of that community in the role, especially considering the recognised endangered status of their culture and under-representation in mainstream arts.
Thus, the show’s exercise of artistic freedom brushed up against the assertion of the cultural rights of a cultural community, especially in the context of representation with authenticity and due respect. This demonstrates that the right to artistic freedom also requires a responsibility to recognise cultural rights, respect diversity and honour subjects with authenticity and dignity. Such considerations require communication, understanding, humility, sensitivity and discipline without compromising the artistic integrity of the work. Some may argue that this is itself a form of censorship, akin to the contemporary phenomenon of cancel culture. Alternatively, it can be recognised that the responsible discharge of artistic freedom includes a need to manage impulses the same way we manage the discharge of other rights - i.e. there are always limits to what we can do, say or show in society.
Discussions of cultural rights within the artistic freedom discourse can sometimes be particularly tricky, as the act of creativity is an expression of culture subject to different interpretations, claims of ownership and malleable boundaries policed by differing motivations. When developing tools for protecting the right to artistic freedom, it is vitally important to also consider how to exercise responsibilities of access, participation, and social cohesion. While this is particularly important for minoritised communities, the benefits of so doing will resonate for all of us.
Art and tech will join forces for artistic freedom
Metaverse, Web3, NFT (non-fungible token) – you probably all know these buzzwords. Sometimes it seems these are the type of concepts that never get the chance to materialise before they get dated. Web3, the idea of a new, decentralised iteration of the World Wide Web, formulated already in 2014 by disruption artist Gavin Wood, might still make it. The time is certainly ripe for disruption: the unforced, inspired and diverse settler spirit of the 1990s has for far too long now been repressed by large scale colonialisation and exploitation of the internet and its citizens by a few global corporations.
The World Wide Web is no longer the promise of a land of the free. It is but a bleak shadow of what we used to imagine it could be. Instead, we are all queuing to the rides of the great amusement parks of the internet - the platforms - paying in old time money or big data. There are no public spaces left, which hinders artistic freedom and forces artists to conform with the obliterating policies of the platforms. Even though you knowingly agree to the terms and conditions of the platforms, it is often next to impossible to know what one has actually agreed to. And it would not be an exaggeration to assume that you have lost all your artistic rights by doing so. Will you be put centre stage on the main arena of the amusement park, or discreetly referred to the side stage by the rest rooms? Perhaps you will be stored for next season? In either case, you are almost always left with the feeling of having been scammed, not knowing whether your voice will reach out to the public or not.
Through a decentralised World Wide Web, new technical solutions as well as updated and responsive regulatory frameworks, a joint effort of artists and tech to support creativity and artistic freedom in the digital area is possible. This could be termed a New Deal, if you will, to secure common interests of meeting the true wishes, expectations and needs of the public. In this New Deal, tech will be supporting artists to take control of their content and voice. For instance, NFT technology is enabling counteraction of fake artists, fake streams and fake news by displaying provenance of content. Transparency and diversity will, undeniably, follow from decentralisation. Tech will play an even greater role as an enabler of a sustainable society, at a time of myriad challenges including the pandemic, climate change and political attempts to dismantle not only freedom of expression, but democracy itself.
I am both an optimist and a realist: an optimist in terms of believing that the time for tech and art to join forces has come, and a realist in terms of knowing that it is clearly bound to happen. Because, no matter what course the internet is taking, it is certain to be driven by creativity. After all, tech is not feasible without creativity, but creativity will always flow – with or without tech.
Decolonising Success as a Form of Freedom
By Pamela López
We often hear that art is political and anti-systemic. Some say that the neoliberal model is the natural enemy of creative contexts; that culture has no possibility of existing freely under the economic logic of the market. These are oft-repeated ideas: conventions that often recur in conversations and debates among cultural professionals. American sociologist Howard Becker defines conventions as constructs that enable the distribution of knowledge in a community. And while this is true insofar as when we deal with similar ideas, we must also remain especially careful because it is often ourselves who safeguard and endorse hegemonic ideas or practices that may prove dangerous.
I am thinking, for example, of how narratives of ‘success’ still prevail today in canons protected by festivals, public funds, programmers, critics and press, as well as artists. We pursue complacent tendencies that mitigate the possibilities of creative diversity and the right to adopt alternative models. In times of emerging new paradigms, the practices of freedom are not only about the capacity for expression or access to resources, but also about the willingness of cultures to democratically reflect a society in the public domain and to link audiences, artists and cultural realities.
To decolonise success is - therefore - to also allow ourselves to break with the hegemonic structures that have made us live expectant of awards, reviews, box office sales, aesthetic criteria regulated by the West with an ideal of ´beautiful` bodies on stage, likes and retweets on our social networks, theatres that offer seats for people with disabilities but still do not provide toilets for artists in wheelchairs in their dressing rooms. All this adds up to a dominant monoculture and - I fear - to a model which many of us are still proud guardians (and gatekeepers) of. Let's break with the conditions on our professional path that still act as censorship measures.
(Translated from Spanish)
An African Worldview
Before accepting to bring an African voice to the dialogues leading up to the 9th World Summit on Arts and Culture 2023, I reflected on the foregrounding ideas framed by the Summit co-hosts. I reflected on artistic expression as a reflection of human dignity, of collective humanity. I sought understanding within African notions such as Ubuntu (a Nguni Bantu term meaning ‘humanity’) and Sankofa (a metaphorical symbol used by the Akan people of Ghana to express the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present to make positive progress). I searched for African terms in the crevices of my African imagination. I pondered over definitions of art, culture and freedom. I sought counsel from doyens of African culture(s) and Africans living culture and expressing art daily. I observed that African worldviews are often absent in international dialogues. I mused over the universalised governance of culture. I lamented over absent or cancelled-out artistic expressions by Africans. So, I accepted the opportunity to reflect on artistic freedom, expectant of shifts in thinking particularly around what it means to be human.
The African sense of being draws profoundly from deep connections with the land, water and forests. Africa’s diverse historical and cultural affinities are reflected in its dynamic artistic expressions, at once intricate and sophisticated. Assumptions made about artistic expressions within the context of communal participation, shared memorialisation and even personal conscience carry their own risks, and undoubtedly affect individual expression. And, of course, no wise African can make a claim on a universal definition of art or artistic expression. Still…artistic expressions and freedoms shaped within an African cultural ecosystem have the right to be considered. Because notions of freedoms and rights are formed through practice and participation.
Consternation at instruments such as cultural policies is often expressed while minds are also open to progressive notions of humanity. Therefore, discourses around artistic freedom may well benefit from more fluid and less-universalised notions of human interaction. This more porous interpretation of artistic freedom will safeguard that no one gets left behind. Freedoms anchored within cultural contexts and around the right to dignity for all human beings need serious consideration.
Those who were not free to express themselves artistically for centuries were also denied their right to seed and footprint progressive ideas for the benefit of future generations. We now have the opportunity to restore that denied and stolen human dignity. We can restore lost treasures of uniquely African artistic expression, while also giving due value to contemporary ones. Significant shifts are possible with honest and critical thinking, with brave reflection and action.
