Value matters
Art and economics. Are they closely related or completely incompatible? I personally go for the former. In the early years of deciding to train as an artist, I remember having deep and prolonged conversations with my father, who was an entrepreneur, walking amongst industrial estates in the stark and difficult working environment of the Puglian landscape. He always used to say to me that being an artist, as well as anything else, is also about understanding and valuing what you offer, be it ideas, products, or life-changing affirmations. And he meant value not only in ideal, but also in financial terms. "People will only value what they perceive as valuable. If you don't value what you do, nobody will". A deceptively simple statement, that has stayed with me all this time.
What are the consequences of that value? What are its characteristics?The concept of "cultural entrepreneur" is one of material as well as idea-related value. Being an artist can't be isolated from the larger economic values and infrastructures that surround us. And at the same time, the monetary value of art cannot be isolated from its idealistic, vocational value.
Throughout my practice as an artist, I have tried to make that value come across in different ways. Questioning why art is necessary, even in difficult economic times, even after a tragedy like a landslide, an economic downturn, an earthquake.
A few weeks ago I was in Gothenburg, Sweden for the ELIA (European League of Institutes of the Art) conference. Zou Xianping, the director of the Department of Music at Mianyang College, a region of China badly affected by the recent earthquake, said to me that especially in those circumstances people need art to restore hope, humanity and belief in future change beyond just survival. An opinion mirrored by that of Rahraw Omarzad, the director of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Kabul, Afghanistan, who said in its manifesto in 2004: "Art should be valued as a major discipline which should contribute to cultural development and the advancement of society."
In this blog, I will be examining that value, interfacing it with the global economic environment that we find ourselves in, drawing from art and non-art economic landscapes.
Links: CCA Kabul manifesto: http://universes-in-universe.org/deu/content/view/…
