--
Ann Racuya-Robbins
Founder and CEO World Knowledge Bank www.wkbank.com[1]
Thank you so much for your comments. I would like to converse with
serveral of them but to avoid confusion will do so one by one. I hope
I have wresteled my server mail client into cooperating better with
identifing my email.
Steve wrote,
"I am irritated, no /maddened/, by the illusion of this struggle.
My explanation of this is that Science(tm) and Art(tm) are, in fact,
in a deadlock. (tm) implying Trademark,
is my designation for a thing which has been "appropriated" for
economic, religious or
political exploitation. Competition for resources in the
marketplace, in the political
landscape, in media lead to a sense of competition where there is none."
I agree except with your inference that the competition is not
real. It is indeed real in the marketplace and political landscape and
the media. That is why rethinking and creating a new economic paradigm
has been central to my own work. But it is not simply that art should
get a bigger slice of the pie and science a smaller, or the
inverse, it is that currently the health of one depends on the reduced
viabillity of the other or others and that the viability of each is
dependent on the successful selling of one over the other.
Most artists give their labor away. I don't know that that can be
said of scientists. May I be so bold as to suggest that most of those
that would call themselves scientists and that participate in Friam
make a living doing science. Most artist no matter what or where they
participate in American culture or elsewhere do not make a living
doing art. Does that matter? You bet it does. How can the role of art
and artists be understood when it is so little valued. Of course there
are a few artists that very successful financially and otherwise.
That is not to say that many scientists are not un and undervalued
and that this experience is not as much of one of loss and despair.
But I even heard at a recent lecture sponsored by the Santa Fe
Institute (I will try to get the exact event) that a study had been
undertaken which showed that if you paid young people to make art
(which they had been doing before without pay) they were inclined to
stop making art. Of course the Santa Fe Institute as a whole may not
share this view but this is a very toxic idea and reinforces the idea
that when artist receive money for their work they, or much worse,
their artistic drive is somehow ruined...especially coming from
someone making a living from doing this research and telling you about
it. I think this is a kind of humiliation...a subject I have been
studing recently. This keeps artists and artmaking in a dependent,
weakened and marginalizied relationship to life, after all sooner or
later most of us have to figure out and spend most of our time putting
a roof over our heads and feeding ourselves and our children.
Further by more hightly valuing the artefacts that artists produce
as opposed to their art(making), creativty, artists often confine
themselves to a range of subject matter that is outside the realm of
activites that could be more economically viabile and end up trying to
make artefacts that will sell which may have little to do with their
art(making) insight and power.
But to me what is so troubling is that despite our finicial
situation most of us feel unappreciated and un or undervalued. No mere
redistribution of financial resources will completely solve this
despair whether this redistribution is possible or not. We must have a
realignment of what people value and what they are rewarded for.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.wkbank.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
