No Answers and Some Lies

As I flutter around a broader analysis of Scotland’s performance landscape, I am starting to realise that some of the questions I need to ask are economic. The plethora of works in progress, or the alliance of various productions within a festival format, are perhaps the result of the specific economic conditions of 2013. My complaints that they don't represent a full range of possible performance presentations, or that they are a form of aesthetic cowardice, are undermined by the likelihood that they are the result of financial constraints.

Aside from my prejudice against Marxism, it has a fairly coherent attitude towards art. All art is created from the economic base. Art made in a capitalist society will embody capitalist values. Both Maria Miller's speech on the importance of art that has a financial return and Rob Drummond's sarcastic response in The Riot of Spring share a common foundation. Perhaps that's what David Cameron meant when he said "we are all Thatcherites, now." 

Applying this hypothesis is to go beyond the simple idea that the level of funding dictates the nature of the performance. It suggests that any message contained within the work will be part of the broader message of the society that has created and observed it. 

In other words, be as leftist as you like, chump. You are still on message. 

Unfortunately, I don't like to discuss the money. That's mainly because I don't really understand how wealth is created. I have a vague idea that it is something to do with the equation involving human activity and natural resources. I do have a good conspiracy theory, instead.

Let's assume that there is a consciousness behind the monstrous display of global capitalism. I'll call it Leviathan, and make it very clear that it is not the Elders of Zion, the Freemasons or the Rotary Club. It's a philosophical postulate that has no ontological basis, also known as a metaphor.

This consciousness has some kind of purpose: survival, I guess. And part of its survival is to make people work hard for its benefit. It has its benevolent moods, but every so often, it needs to remind the people who is the boss.

So it decides that it is time for s credit crunch. There needs to be too little money to do around. It pretends that there is scarcity. Being a Leviathan, it controls the media, and tells that to put out the message that cash is tight.

Then it cuts arts funding, convincing the artists that the credit crunch is real. 

At this point, the artists start to get interested in poverty, and DIY, and leftist politics. They make work that expresses their anger at the state, at the stock market, at the arts minister who has such a dry vision of creative value.

Being artists, they witness more than suggest solutions. A piece like Chalk Farm doesn't have an answer to the problems of alienation, but it does represent a certain experience. And this experience is made more real by being in fiction.

(If you let the Leviathan metaphor pass, that last sentence will have to wait...)

So, while the art appears to be against the dominant ideology, it actually reinforces its power to dictate the agenda.