Please read post 3 first. Otherwise this is gibberish. Or maybe it's gibberish anyway.
I would like to believe in my head that funding for art practices and students and the rest of the gang is worthwhile because we are advanced society to some unknown higher plane, you know, like, helping them grow and stuff? But then the realist in me reads in the Guardian (champagne socialism anyone?) that we're facing the same unemployment crisis as in the 1980s and we're all going to be on the dole. Oh, and being on the dole when you're young can seriously damage you psychologically. Tasty. So, while preparing myself for a stint at the Job Centre post-graduation, I'm trying to think what skills I have that are valuable for society. Physical, blood and sweat skills, skills that build roads and dig ditches and help us prosper.
If this all seems a bit dramatic, a bit apocalyptic and swerving towards some sort of Equilibrium-esque dystopia, then yes, it might be because I just finished reading 'The Man in the High Tower' by Philip K. Dick. But then, science-fiction futures, as the preface of the aforementioned book tells, are not so much prescriptive of the future as descriptive of the present. Artists always represent a threat, not stability, to governments that dictate and intervene. Maybe it is the threat of our weaknesses, our loss of real labour skills, that make is so, rather than the threat of our accurate and possible antagonistic communication of abstract nouns.
