Presented at 55th AICA Congress
Krakow, Poland, 13th to 17th November 2023
‘Contested Infrastructures. Art Criticism and the Institutionalisation of Art’
Introduction
In the past decades the idea of democracy has been increasingly contested. At home, and to a certain extent, although the United Kingdom has been build upon a robust legal and economic system of laws and a set of independent controls that theoretically seek fairness, it continues to be uncontestably governed by unelected representatives:
“It is not the five failed prime ministers since 2016 and their incompetent sidekick… [it is] a sclerotic, antiquated democratic system allowing people you wouldn’t trust with your wallet or to babysit your children to rise through deceit and thrive through failure. We boast of “British exceptionalism”, yet tolerate weaponised nostalgia, the supposed glories of a misremembered past used as a distraction from an uncertain future … No country in Europe uses the UK’s fossilised first-past-the-post voting system in its general elections – except Belarus, the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko. No country in the world has members of the state religion sitting by right in its legislature, except Church of England bishops in the House of Lords … and Iran’s mullahs.”
(Gavin Esler, in The Guardian, October 2023)
This kingdom is known for its social compassion and the rule of law (in justice); this kingdom has long dubbed itself as a multi-ethnic democracy, that has been blessed with (often stolen) wealth and talented people (many of them stolen too); the realisation of Brexit referendum has shown English society ideological slip and detachment from reality and from its own colonial or imperialist historical past.
In the USA, labelled as the bastion of western democracy, the surreal impulses perpetuated by right-wing radicals in politics (the Republicans and the Trump presidency, with the riots on Capital Hill in 2021 as the visible tip of the iceberg, etc.); the dismantling of reality that accompanies the careful administration of such adjectives as ‘post-truth’ exhorted by absurd neo-Nazis or conspiratorial groups, have been flooding mainstream conversations; while, on the other extreme, on the liberal-left, we have seen, as well, the raise of populist politics based on left-wing sensitive noisy opinions about trivial matters that might offend whoever, only equivalent to privy gibberish, and the same unfavourable predestination to listen to disagreeing parties.
On the other side of the hemisphere, in India, professed as the largest democracy in the world, the rewriting of history by a popular nationalist political ethnic group and their silence concerning the physical violence perpetuated by those towards ‘other’ ethnicities. Those are just a small sample from the wide democratic spectrum that show how globally the concept of democracy is a fragile and an instable ideal. Thus, it is not only in Europe, in countries such as Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia where political parties with nationalistic frameworks dictate what is happening in the public sphere through state policies.
Democracy as a space of conflict
This is what happens in democracy. Which is an abstract discursive space existing for the conceptual dispute of ideas and ideologies, rather than being a space for bolstering homogeneous views and for the enhancement of autocratic differences through hate and violence. Hence, we can say that democracy is characterised for existing in a permanent state of conflict. This situation of conflict, of dispute, has been carefully accompanied by the incessant feeding, through popular discourses, of ideas about the lack of integrity and accountability on the part of the democratic elected representatives; and a growing mistrust, both at a local and national level, on the role of democratic institutions. A distrust that could be, mainly, due to the tangential and occasional intimate relationships between political representatives and socio-political laundering, which is encouraged through different forms of clientelism and cronyism. However, this distrust is only overcome by people’ detachment from their ‘citizen’ role within society. Dumbfounded, society is more concern with entertainment novellas detaching them, though a constructed illusion, from everyday life issues regarding their own safeguard and existence as a sovereign body.
This leads me to ask, firstly, what are the alternatives for the illusion of freedom to choose that are brought to life by what is known as representative democracy? and, secondly, how can society actively participate in the democratic process and how will be its impact? Although participation in artistic practices is not a substitute for the deficit of cultures of democracy in society, the act of participation in artistic projects can be perceived to be a social desire to renew democratic standards.[1]
As was expressed in a report commissioned by the Council of Europe, regarding Cultural Participation and Inclusive Societies, within that framework, participation in “[c]ulture and the arts can ‘create a space of expression beyond institutions, at the level of the person and can act as mediators, thus paving the way for the ‘shared public space(s)’ necessary for intercultural dialogue.”[2] In social-liberal democracies the idea is that culture is no longer produced and imposed from above: individuals are not only users, a potential audience for a cultural product or experience, but, rather, they are citizens likely to be involved in local life in all its dimensions, including, in the collaborative formulation of public cultural policies.[3]
Acknowledging the significance of ‘citizenship’, a body with social responsibilities, rather than an ‘audience’ targeted by cultural products or experiences, I am arguing that active participation in artistic practices provide platforms for the existence of cultures of democracy in society. Drawing from my practice as a multicultural professional working in simultaneously on a multiplicity of levels, what I will do now is to give an account of how a so called democratic national state – Portugal – has been using this ‘religion of state’ – institutionalisation of the aesthetic experience and criticism – to redraw the application of cultural policy to fit their “democratic” agenda.
Citizen discourses in cultures of democracy
Constitutionally, Portugal is a sovereign Republic with plural democratic expressions and political organisations that exist through the separation and interdependence of powers. Portugal is a democratic state base on the rule of law, with a view to achieving and growing a culture of democracy through democratic participation. On one level, in cooperation with distinctive educational and cultural agents, Portugal governmental cultural policies promote a democratisation of culture by encouraging and ensuring access, to all citizens, to cultural enjoyment and (collective or individual) creation. Cultural democracy, a second governmental cultural policy agenda, favours the pluralisation, the territorialisation of decisions and the sharing of power. [4] The reason why I am referring to these two policy discourses is to do with the conceptual and spatial shift in the inherent value of the socio-political narrative in a democratic society; and, secondly, its importance to the understanding and experience of cultures of democracy, in its wider sense, and the attempt by the governing government to use these two policies to transform new philosophies into ‘religions of the state’.
For example, in 2021, coinciding with Portugal six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union, a policy commissioned by the Portuguese government, to a specialised consultant body, through the Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education, mixed those two relatable but different concepts: ‘democratisation of culture’ and ‘cultural democracy’. Those two concepts are often set in opposition, but what divides and unites them, is “their divergent approaches to pursuing the same overarching social democratic ambition: to address, via state action, the damaging effects of capitalism,”[5] particularly through values related with inequality, freedom and identity.
The ‘Carta do Porto Santo’ has,
firstly, adjusted conceptual terms to fit the national cultural policies and discourses while still focusing the narrative on the (plural) idea of passive ‘audiences’ rather than participative ‘citizens’.
secondly, the commissioned report focused its programme on young people by renouncing from the discourse on cultural democracy those with a voice, i.e. older people – thus enhancing a disqualification of one of the main problems affecting the global community in this century – a global elderly society – i.e., the disfranchising of elderly people in an aging society.
thirdly, the commissioned proposed policy dissociates itself from initiatives generated, on an individual level, from within the community, by continuing to give emphasis to those initiatives promoted by local or national political bodies of governance or cultural and educational institutions – the quantifying validations of quality.
In a democratic society “citizens have the right not just to vote, but also to take in every aspect of democratic life, to express and defend their values, and to try to persuade others of their ideas. That process is not only political. It happens in daily life.”[6] In democracy individual citizens have the right to learn within their own cultural contexts, to be able to have the capacity to define oneself as active participants in society. In this light, democracy is sustained when citizens have a voice, instead of being regarded as the silenced other, i.e. ‘audiences’; “[d]emocracy is expressed in and sustained by a culture that enables people to affirm, express and question their own and other people’s values and the relationship between them.”[7] Having cultures of democracy in a society’s agenda promotes diversity of views and active participation; it enables people to participate in policy disputes and decision-making, and provides fair and equitable access to resources while aiming for win-win outcomes, rather then win-lose situations. Thus, enabling inclusive societies, by contributing to citizens’ involvement in the democratic process and in decision-making.
To begin to free art criticism from the ‘religions of the state’ – the institutionalisation of aesthetic experiences and criticism – the first thing we need to do is to see ourselves, again, as participative historical actors. Within a different timescale, as people who belong to a society – not as ‘audiences’ but as ‘citizens’ – and who make a difference in the course of world events through the ‘written language’. What I have tried to do in this quick presentation was not so much to propose a vision of what precisely the next age will be like, but, instead, to throw open perspectives, enlarge our senses of possibilities; to begin to ask what it would mean to start thinking on a breath and with a grandeur appropriate to the time we are living. A times of loss.
[1] Bordeaux, M.-C. and Liot, F. (2012). ‘La Participation de Habitants à la Vie Artistique et Culturelle’, L’ Observatoire: La revue des politiques culturelles, 40 (été), pp. 7–12.
[2] Anheier, H. (2017). Cultural Participation and Inclusive Societies: A thematic report based on the Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy. December 2016. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, p. 13.
[3] Bordeaux and Liot, 2012, Ibid.
[4] Carta do Porto Santo (2021). A cultura e a promoção da democracia: para uma cidadania cultural europeia. Report. Porto Santo: 2021PORTUGAL.EU.
[5] Gross, J., & Wilson, N. (2020). 'Cultural Democracy: An Ecological and Capabilities Approach', in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 26(3), p. 6.
[6] Matarasso, F. (2019). A Restless Art: How participation won, and why it matters. London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation UK Branch, p. 74.
[7] Matarasso, 2019, Ibid., p. 74.
London, November 2023
Rui G. Cepeda
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