Arts & International Affairs Volume 5, Number 1, Summer 2020 | Page 34

I’LL DO IT WHEN DAME JUDI DENCH DOES IT.
and expansion of techne, of method and competency, or of a sort of professionalization,
a red line for composing chaos through affect, sensations, and precepts. This consistency
of techne produces palpable effects (which are not necessarily and immediately relevant
to a particular local community) of the deterritorialisation and composition of chaos
towards possible lives and possible people. Van Gogh never healed the ills of his local
community, but his work remains, oh, so relevant! If Nu Nu were to consult members of
a certain community during the staging of Hamlet, for instance, we might not be able
to elicit interesting opinions about the text or the characters because the themes that
Hamlet deals with might not appear immediately or directly relevant to that particular
community. That does not render the staging of Hamlet or the text itself irrelevant. The
relevance for that community may appear delayed or mysterious and does not need
to be explicated in the utilitarian, urgent terms laid out by ACE. The economic effects
might also appear delayed, but they nevertheless will appear. To want to know whom a
particular theatre project will help here and now is another way of dismissing the value
of creation and regimenting the artist in the register of exchange values controlled by
the funder.
By asking me to put the problems of the community before my own concerns, obsessions,
passions, and psychoses regarding Hamlet (be they as random and detached as
possible), ACE asks me to help it deliver something akin to community and social work
and ultimately politically motivated work. But that cannot be the primary role of the
artist, because, as noted before:
Issues that produce social, economic, and moral deprivations cannot
be solved by arts, creative industries, or whatever we come to call them
next. They should and can be solved with meaningful social and economic
measures. (Tomka 2019:3)
Tomka continues by pointing out that:
The best arts and culture can do is to mask social-economic inequalities
by having people from diverse backgrounds participate in local cultural
life. If we accept that game, we are not alleviating troubles but relieving
responsibilities. (Tomka 2019:3)
In ACE’s public engagement/relevance requirements and Creative Case for Diversity, arts
and culture are seen as a facile solution to deeply ingrained socioeconomic problems:
Arts are increasingly seen as a cleansing solution. Don’t worry about
that bloody stain, that social divide, that urban deprivation�just throw
a brand-new arts centre and your social fabric will be as good as new!
(Tomka 2019:3)
An experiment on Hamlet can never be reduced to disenfranchised communities or marginalised
people or to the lack of access to education or jobs. Entwining socioeconomic
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