Arts & International Affairs Volume 5, Number 1, Summer 2020 | Page 33

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
rest of us mortals�new imaginings of life. These magicians and prophets left us long
ago: the sorcerer, possessor of a unique method (talent, gift, vocation?) for interpreting
or experiencing the world/existence/chaos in the name of all the others has disappeared
from today’s stage. According to Deresiewicz, artists are no longer masters, professionals,
or artisans either: they are no longer seen as possessors of strenuously accumulated
wisdom in a certain discipline of art. The artist of today is no longer associated with ideas
of individualism, originality, selfishness, and reclusion. Instead, the artist of today is a
creative entrepreneur.
The language employed by ACE and the traumatic memories of Song of Romania convinced
me to propose a fourth option for the artist of the twenty-first century: that of
social worker and political activist by proxy. That is how ACE (and the state) seem to
envisage the role of the today. In that direction, Goran Tomka’s essay, Escaping the Imaginary
of Engaged Arts, provides useful insights. Tomka uses the expression “activation of
artists,” which is, in my view, an apt way of suggesting the instrumentalisation of artists.
Tomka (is it a coincidence that he too comes from Eastern Europe?) poses what I believe
to be a fundamental question: “What is the activation good for? What cause does
it serve?” (Tomka 2019:2).
What ACE does�conditional upon the release of funds�is to ask artist-recipients to
activate themselves and provide a social service (subordinated to a neoliberal political
thinking) in exchange for money received. Tomka comes with a pertinent explanation
for such a strategy of barter imposed by the funder:
At the foundation of it [activation] is the belief that communities are
on their own .... To their aid, the arts should come. Arts organizations
should turn into social hubs whose aim is to support communities and
wider societies in rekindling their own local economies and finding
patches to the broken health and education systems. (Tomka 2019:2)
In effect, ACE expects artists to make use of their skills and professional competencies/
talents to support less advantaged or marginalised communities. What is the aim? Certainly
not that of proposing a new way of life and types of people who are lacking, but
that of reigniting local economies. What happens in practice? The artist co-opts in the
creative process people without a techne or skill in a particular artistic domain (public
engagement is key). As in the case of Song of Romania, the effect is a diminution and
dilution of the skill, an unfortunate mixing of competencies, resulting in ratatouille-like,
pseudo-artistic acts. Surgeons cannot lend their scalpels to amateurs to cut into the organ,
can they? None of us would like to be flown by non-pilots. Why do we assume that
art is not like heart surgery or like flying planes and that it can afford a mixing of competencies
and levels of skill?
Artistry (whether we choose to call ourselves artist-entrepreneurs or artist-seers) implies
the existence of an inclination (a set of personal qualities) coupled with the emergence
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