In response to the article about Ernest Daetwyler’s piece that will be installed in front of police headquarters, this letter was sent to The Record. This post will certainly not be a judgement about the person who wrote this letter because her sentiment is echoed by most of the community, nor is it about the spectacular piece by Daetwyler that will be created as public art. Time and time again I am witness to conversation, news, and opinions about how contemporary arts are not understood.
Truth is, when it comes to contemporary art, people aren’t as interested or engaged in exploring the meanings in this city. How do we, as a community of artists from all disciplines, start to engage our audiences? In a city that continues to market itself as a traditional German culture city, where is there room for the truth of who we actually are or what we really do especially to the more suburban of our region? Keep in mind that thousands of these more suburban people will in fact jump in their cars and drive to Toronto for Nuit Blanche. Where are we going wrong?
When you break it down, Waterloo Region, and downtown Kitchener especially has shifted dramatically away from its German roots. One just needs to look around and open their ears to see and hear the diversity of voices that make our region (and make our region strong). The development of this city has also moved us beyond a collection of landscape painters (the city made famous by Homer Watson), quilters, and craftspersons and has seen a major rise in contemporary arts. These exist across the board from several avant guard installation artists, an enormous interest in movement and contemporary performance, abstract painters, and sound, noise and contemporary musicians all seeing rise out of this community. It has been a birth place for major creative innovation in art. So where is there room for the continued fashioning as a traditional small town with the emphasis on primarily ancient Germanic culture? I used to chuckle with some of my young German friends that even the most remote Bavarian cities focus more on the cultural development into the contemporary than this city that celebrates traditional Bavarian roots. Berlin is one of the avant guard capitals of the world.
Funny how our focus in innovation still only stays with the technological aspects of the city, as well as our major city sponsored festivals all focusing on the more traditional forms of entertainment especially when the grass roots culture industry is in direct opposition ideologically, much like our tech industries, with a focus on innovation and growth.
So again, where are we going wrong? We have three major festivals focusing on the three major branches of the arts, several institutions and more artists than most could even imagine living, working, struggling, and ultimately moving away. The institutions have almost all seen major crises in funding and staffing in the last few years yet innovation and growth still somehow continues. Where are our audiences?
One only has to glance at many of the regional arts websites that are meant to serve as portals (Cultureblast.ca, explorewaterlooregion.com, artsportalwr.ca) to see how they reflect very traditional tourism based culture industry and in no way are useful to the innovative, exciting and new things happening in this city, or they are just unaesthetic, and some are even outright dysfunctional and broken.
Problems in the arts
- Marketing – we are not traditional and the marketing focused on mennonite, agriculture and the pastoral are not reflective of the exciting innovation in our contemporary practices across the board. This exists at the highest level of the city government to how we position the region from a tourism point of view. It’s not working anymore. Oktoberfest is fun, but it isn’t drawing the market it used to.
- Marketing- many of our local artists have been in Nuit Blanche or similarly large festivals. Some have even toured the world. Why isn’t the region aware of its regional talent?
- Marketing- Several organisation and institutions need to change their communication focus to make art accessible to the masses. It’s the masses that pay taxes and attend festivals, openings, and shows, thereby generating attention and much needed finances for regional arts. These organisation and institutions need to keep their high quality, and not “dumb down” but establish a productive and educational dialog that is accessible.
- Consistency- Art programming goes from high art to low art. When cake decorating is taught in galleries, and yet we struggle to be taken as serious practioners of art, there must be some disconnect. The problem isn’t cake decorating but what kind of dialog are we setting up about the arts? Why is the focus on craft and entry level art in a city where we have enormous innovation in arts and technology?
- Why aren’t we pairing artists with hubs? The innovative art here matches the innovations in the tech industry. We are seriously losing an opportunity to create a real and unique vibrant arts scene. What a shame.
- Artists as educators- Institutions hiring people with degrees in education as opposed to visual artists to teach art. Why not offer cutting edge programming taught by a famous regional/Canadian artist? Instead of cake decorating, why aren’t we teaching installation work? Why aren’t we teaching contemporary drawing? How about contemporary dance? Where is our movement theatre training?
- There is no work for artists in this community other than the banal. Why would they stay and create a vibrant arts scene in a location where rent is high, studios are dirty, dangerous, and scarce, and there is no capacity to earn a wage? Well, they aren’t staying thus the C grade in the Vital Signs report.
- No space- there are so few affordable safe studios. Again, why aren’t we pairing artists with hubs?
- Art as exclusion- if art is only for the most educated and the elite, we are missing out on almost the entire regional population. Organisations need to focus on how to communicate with the larger population without alienating them.
- Funding for grass roots collective- money from large organisations are not trickling to the regional artists and culture workers. Artists cannot earn a wage in the arts in this region. There is no capacity for work here and artists are disempowered from even basic living.
So, here is my question to you: How do we transcend these and develop a vibrant contemporary arts scene?
“
Rob Ring
January 19, 2011
This won’t be an eloquent, thought out reply, but here’s my knee-jerk take on it.
I’m not saying that festivals are the only key to a vibrant art scene, but since you’re talking specifically about developing a broader (mainstream?) audience it’s a good place to start.
Our Contemporary Art festivals (CAFKA, Open Ears, IMPACT) are all very good at presenting works that are challenging/engaging to an arts audience while remaining accessible to the broader public. They should have huge audiences, right? What’s the problem? Funding funding funding.
Compared to the blockbuster Nuit Blanche (as one easy example), our local festivals offer more consistently strong programming, operate on appallingly smaller budgets, and exist for more than 12 hours.
I know first hand what resources our local Contemporary Art festivals are working with. I also know the caliber of artist they work with, as well as those they could attract given adequate funding to cover artist fees. How much did the City of Toronto spend on Nuit Blanche? Invest even ¼ of that into our local festivals and prepare to be blown away.
There are an insane number or very talented artists living here, there are 3 highly respected festivals, and there are also the much talked about high-tech companies… but not just any tech companies… Christie Digital, RIM, Dalsa, Electronic Arts (and others I’m sure). These are businesses who could not only benefit artists with access to expertise/equipment, but who would also benefit from collaboration with artists. Some of these connections are starting to happen, but it’s been a long haul and relationships are still in their infancy.
There’s a lot of potential here in KW, and we seem to be missing the boat… agreed… but I’ve been hearing that “got potential” argument for about six years now, and I imagine some of my more seasoned colleagues have been hearing it for even longer than that.
There needs to be a serious investment on the part of the cities/region to rebrand this area in a way that better reflects what’s really happening here today instead of dragging our the same old messages about what was happening here 40 years ago. Rebranding alone won’t do it, though. They also need to step up & increase their funding so the festivals can actually deliver what they’re capable of.
There’s always a lot of lip service paid to prioritizing the arts, and about getting buy-in from private/corporate funders, but these “multiplatform talks” and “strategic meetings” have been going on for over five years & I’ve seen no real results… just a lot of wasted time and disappointment.
We need a serious revolution to make this work. If were not prepared to do that we might as well all move or get out if the biz.
Terre Chartrand
January 20, 2011
Rob, you have made some valid points but this still doesn’t explain why people came in droves and hoards and masses to the Spotlight festival: Celebrate Artists Weekend. Everything about that festival was built around accessibility in art to Waterloo Region residents, including young people. Also, each artist was paid a quarter of the CAFKA artist fees, yet participation was wild. People wanted to get to know the artists, and interact with the art and its creators.
I don’t know what makes a good festival. I know that if people don’t get it, they won’t come. Our language surrounding art needs to be constant, and non-exclusionary. CAFKA is a magical platform for bringing in some of the biggest and more innovative contemporary visual artists to the region, so why is this world class event slipping to the sidelines? Is it marketed for the region or is it trying to pull from outside the region? We need to kick butt here before we can possibly expect to garner audience from elsewhere. A festival that isn’t attended by the city it operates in is a non-entity. CAFKA is attended, this I know, but it won’t hit the world’s stage until it hits critical mass here. I would put my money still on it being a marketing issue. People just don’t get it (I have proof of this too!) How are we going to get people to “get it”? Continued accessible dialog and more regional arts everything. Public education and access… marketing, understanding, and also cherishing. They can’t cherish what they don’t know or understand.
Oh and, heck yeah, Rob. CAFKA and the other festivals do need WAY more financial support. Funding here is crap. It’s why everyone in arts and culture up and leave. It’s a cultural dead zone. A waste land. And boy, we feel it. That is exactly why this area was picked for Spotlight to begin with…
psa
January 23, 2011
I seem to be the grumpy contrarian lately but I do have to note some of the responses to the arts that I’ve received. The last Cafka event was mocked at street level. Conceptual art can be difficult and should be challenging but at the same time when it is scaled to a public space like the Rotunda or projected onto the city hall there should be something about it that appeals. The face smearing video that ran incessantly on the city hall was reviled by a lot of passers by and the response I heard to it was that it was ugly and boring. High brow art is all well and good but like anything in this day and age, it must be sustainable. I’ve no doubt ruffled a few feathers by saying that the symphony, the centre in the square and the museum should be allowed to die. The simple truth is that there isn’t much point to hoisting their lame arses into a terminal life support mode ad infinitum. Pouring more money into marketing something that isn’t wanted won’t suddenly generate interest.
One of the key things you mention Terre, is safe and affordable studio space. The city has been saddled with a number of buildings in the core that could house artists, theatre groups and collectives. Vast, expensive and mostly empty structures like the museum make no sense in a community that can’t get people into the derelict core to shop or spend time without a sense of purpose. Yet the blues festival packs the streets with an enthusiastic audience (weather permitting) because the community wants it. They come, they party and then they leave. Large scale public art will simply not work in the dead core of a mismanaged city. Just throwing money at organizations won’t work. There needs to be a larger process that begins with fixing the core and making it a public space where people want to be on any given day. It is more than clear that letting people park on the sidewalk in front of empty storefronts hasn’t achieved that.
Part of the success of Nuit Blanche is that it is presented as an event, a happening. For all of the good intentions Cafka comes off as a bunch of weird stuff someone stuck downtown for a while. That is partly a matter of marketing but also a case of misunderstanding the audience for public art. They just might come out if there were a thematic attraction to it. Look at the success of Unsilent Night even in a smaller and more blue collar city like Cambridge. Why does that work so well? It has a unifying theme, it’s an event. People will happily gather for an event. And they get to participate in the art and the event of it. Turning bits of a dumpy downtown into a haphazard gallery just doesn’t have the appeal to bring people. I’d say that the festivals, venues and organizations that aren’t drawing should absolutely NOT be handed yet more dollars until they present working solutions to their inability to engage an audience. Solution first, funding second. Why should anyone trust the Centre to solve itself with money to do more of the same?
Why does Nuit Blanche work so well, it combines the avant guard contemporary with entertainment attractions. It engages a wide swath of the community, the venues and venders, the colleges and universities, restaurants, bars and theatres and does so in a manner that gives a wide demographic power to the events. There really is something for everyone from the more pedestrian to the bizarre. There are a lot of things that need fixing for the arts to prosper in this community. And I am adamantly opposed to the idea that money is the solution. There needs to be a unifying sense of community among arts groups for one. Cafka (sorry to harp but it is the example that comes to mind) gives an impression of exclusivity and uncooperativeness. Whereas MT Space is all inclusive and giving. COPA has made attempts to bring groups and artists together and has met with varying success. I fear a lot of the impetus to generate community among arts groups was deflated when that eternal failure, the KW Symphony, took over the King Street Theatre. That was a message from the cultural/fiscal gatekeepers that the artists in the community would not be heard.
To my mind, the real key to sustaining a cultural community here is not going to be found in the huge festival or exhibition. Open spaces for the artists that live and work in the core. Close King Street to traffic permanently and throw some of the million wasted on the Centre at generating more modest venues and a cafe culture. Model things after Hess Village or Ottawa’s Spark Street Mall. Give the crafters, artisans and artists the venues to work, display and market their work. Give fantastic and engaging places like KWArtz Lab the money and resources to expand and foster a culture to introduce more people to making stuff for themselves. There are examples of dying towns that were saved by the arts, Chemainus was a ghost town that turned to the artists and artisans for salvation. The cliche that constantly doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity applies.
From a personal standpoint, I’d love to see the decades of effort I’ve spent insisting that this community was an arts haven be justified. But these days I’m doing conference calls with movie studios in Vancouver, shooting with Bruce McDonald in Toronto, capturing interviews with Gordon Pinsent, Sheila McCarthy and the country’s acting elites for a national magazine’s website and I can’t get arrested in my home town. That tells me that there is something seriously wrong in the city and in the cultural community as well. I sincerely hope we can see some of the vast potential we all recognize in this area realized but I’m long past holding my breath.
A.
January 25, 2011
I think in this town we need to learn to think a bit differently about visual arts and its impact on local audiences.
In the end…even though my work with community art is seen as a step down ( which I find horribly insulting) I am consistently rewarded by the process of meeting people in my community and learning about their lives and stories. I am also rewarded with being a part of their creative experiences. I ask everyone of my students to talk about a piece of local art they’ve seen or festival they’ve attended and more often than not receive blank stares. It is very disheartening.
Making artwork to be nationally or internationally famous isn’t as important to me as making my work to communicate, educate and create unforgettable experiences. People who have seen Ernest Daetwyler’s Reality in Reverse-{Barn Raising} at Kwag will never forget it for the pure imaginative wonder it creates. Art is a stimulant for the mind. Art creates innovation. We are a region of innovation and art should be integral . And yet the resounding public communication about art in this region is its cost to taxpayers. People here are not aware that art is being made for them. Art seems to exist in some sort of bubble they feel they aren’t privy too.
Is it a marketing problem? Absolutely. Its also a mind set.
We aren’t marketing to people right here in the Region of Waterloo.
Our mantra in this region shouldn’t be based on our dreams of being an international centre for contemporary art. It should simply be “ART TO PEOPLE”. All people. But especially the people that live right here in our cities.