Brave New Art World

The National Gallery of Canada created a button which proclaimed, "Art is essential for everybody." This sounds impressive but the impossibility of universally defining "art" or "essential" makes this vague cliché difficult to argue with. Looking at today's typical leisure activities, what emerges as essential for most people is self-expression, which may be channelled through creative activity or through the aesthetic choice of consumer goods ("This pink stripy blouse is really me").

The "art is essential" cliché came to mind recently during a focus group held by The Living Arts Centre (LAC), a new "high-tech arts facility" slated to open in October 1997 which aims to be "essential to everybody" -- or at least, everybody in MEBO, the Mississauga- Etobicoke-Bramalea-Oakville Metropolitan area in southern Ontario. The objective of the focus group was to obtain advice from the electronic art community on the functions and purposes of the Centre's electronic art production and programming, and was organized by Jim Carroll, a member of the Board of Directors of the LAC and co-author of The Canadian Internet Handbook. Also present were President and CEO Ian McCallum, Marketing Director Warren Garrett, and Programming Consultant Wayne Thompson.

The Living Arts Centre is an ambitious collaboration between the City of Mississauga, the Ontario provincial government, the federal government's infrastructure program, and private investors. A few steps away from Square One, and close to an indoor amusement- park now in the planning stages, the LAC will be part of a huge development in central Mississauga. The $65-million dollar structure is intended to be a new kind of arts centre, with activity envisioned on an inventory-clearance blowout scale: an afternoon pops concert, a glassblowing workshop, experimental theatre, multimedia artists' talks and so on.

According to a LAC representative, what makes the centre "living" is the hands-on aspect: classes will be offered to the public and resident artists will be invited to stay for several months. The LAC will be wired to the hilt, networked throughout, with fibre-optic drops for high-speed connectivity to the Internet , and widespread capability for linkages between rooms, videoconferencing, live audio and video recording and playback. In addition, the Centre will contain twelve studios for computer-based artistic production. Sponsors from major hardware and software corporations have pledged top-end equipment.

The Living Arts Centre raises questions about arts sponsorship, and its approach to electronic art demonstrates several current tendencies. Consider that the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) was stunned to learn this past Spring that the Chalmers family, one of the most generous supporters of the arts in Canada, would not continue its ongoing donations to the OAC's granting programs. A spokesperson for Joan Chalmers called the announcement "a warning shot to arts bureaucracies." According to news reports at the time, the Chalmers felt that they did not have sufficient say at the OAC and they wanted to see more money going directly to artists and less to administration.

Welcome to "The New Sponsorship" of the arts in Canada, in which private donors and corporate sponsors take up the financial slack that arms-length government funding can no longer accommodate. It has sometimes been accused of resembling the Old Third-World Development in its dumping of surplus resources in exchange for a positive public profile and a significant tax write-off, while ensuring dependency on the part of the recipient. But are these stereotypes accurate, or is it a knee-jerk reaction from an arts community that wants to be exempt from global economic realities? Artists and arts organizations may consider themselves harder-pressed now than ten years ago, but viewed on a time scale of centuries, the individual who makes a living from art has usually had to answer to somebody else: patrons, Popes, merchants, collectors, critics, Salon juries. Was it naive to expect that the relatively free situation of the past few decades would continue?

Says a spokesperson for one of the groups which organizes the Toronto Jazz Fest for Du Maurier Arts, " [Arts] organizations sometimes confuse the line between corporate sponsorship and corporate donations. An event is a marketing/p.r. campaign and even though there's no financial return, the company is putting up marketing dollars which need to have an impact. It's part of the general trend, it should be a business deal. However, sponsors are careful: no-one wants to be accused of overcommercializing an arts venue. Often at an event, the product itself is not present. And Du Maurier has never given the slightest suggestion of dictation to the artistic people it sponsors. The concern is for a quality event; we need to feel confident that the organization is capable of delivering the package they present."

Michelle Gay, an artist who works at Mackerel Interactive Multimedia, discusses a situation in which a commercial organization's sponsorship of an arts activity has been beneficial for both parties. The Grievous Angels' enhanced CD 'Waiting for the Cage' was initiated by Rick Conroy, a musician and Mackerel employee. He and Gay, along with other artists, created the CD, which addresses miners' deaths in mining accidents, produced with Mackerel's multimedia facilities. The day jobs of the artists were crucial, both because their status as Mackerel employees was the necessary guarantee of their reliability and quality of their work; and also because they were not paying themselves. According to Gay, Mackerel was fully behind the project. "We felt welcomed and supported. Mackerel saw that we were passionate about doing this." This was a new project for the company, so it was useful as R & D as well." The CD is used by the artists for self-promotion while awaiting distribution status from a record company, and by Mackerel to demonstrate that the studio can do extremely creative projects which push the edge.

But in the case of the Living Arts Centre, their dependence on corporate sponsors might make it difficult for an artist to use software tools made by a competitor. If Microsoft, for example, is sponsoring one year's artist-in-residencies, it is questionable whether they would allow an artist to do a project which critiques corporate use of art images. [Sponsors, wanting to give visitors that feel-good feeling, might not accept art created through their largesse which uses disturbing images to make people question their beliefs.]

The LAC also serves an example of another trend: the presence of the superstore in the arts. Moving out of the suburbs and invading downtown, superstores are installing cafes and lounge areas. Meanwhile, cafes are producing cafe t-shirts, galleries are marketing art umbrellas, bookstores are swelling with cafes and lounge areas of their own, and schools are now festooned with ads from soft drink and telecommunication company sponsors.

Now for the whole family, your artistic satisfaction is guaranteed, conveniently under one roof. The convergence of selling and social environments is not new, but eventually the LAC may need to turn to a more profit-oriented outlook when government sponsorship for art organizations disappears. In the environment of the art superstore is there room for the exploration of the sometimes ugly truth of the human spirit? The LAC cannot afford not to satisfy the expectations of those people who would want to pleasantly graze through the space as they would wander through a mall.

But are the arts ready for Arts'R'Us? The people publicizing the Living Arts Centre are very proud of its "wired-ness", as it could have the technical potential to publish a staggering amount of its activity on the Internet, or record events live, package and then sell them by the time the audience comes out of the auditorium. How is the LAC going to provide enough quality content, and contextual frameworks, to keep all their cables humming? Once the novelty of the new technology has worn off, how will the Centre draw people?

One Director of the Centre told the focus group, "The LAC is the only one of its kind in the world, and we want it to stay that way." Such a generous and open-minded attitude raises the issue that, although the $65-million facility has been completely thought out, it is unclear how much consideration has been given to the provision of significant funding to go towards artists to create in this wired heaven, and whether the organizers of the LAC are truly ready for digital artists. Toronto "cyber-feminist artist" Nancy Paterson put it this way: "You give us [electronic artists] a nice comfy seat in front of a nice new computer in a nice tidy cubicle, and we're not going to sit down and start making neato little computer drawings. No way. We're going to take the computer apart, see what we can make with the hardware. We're going to fool around and hammer things together and we're going to mess things up. Count on it." The use of low-tech components as opposed to glitzy high-tech installations with the latest gizmos is an approach common among Toronto artists in this field. More of these artists get inspired at an electronic-parts surplus store than at FutureShop.

Douglas Worts, Programming & Interpretation Officer at the Art Gallery of Ontario, feels that the relationship of the public to the art organization is more important than the issue of sponsorship: "There have always been strings attached to sponsorship. Museums need to become relevant to more people, to re-think their role with a new kind of humility about what they know and don't know, otherwise they will gradually disappear. Once the museum is perceived by people as being of value, museum events will be easier to sponsor. And the whole idea of arts partnerships needs to be re-worked: there's a place for the tourist-oriented spectacle, but museums need to be more connected to people's everyday lives. I'd like to see more complex partnerships, with not only the private sector but universities and other cultural organizations forming a network, not fighting each other for survival."

On the other hand, art and commerce have always been more than just friends. The Art Gallery of Windsor, for example, has not noticeably suffered since its move into a local shopping mall. Nataley Nagy, the Director, stated that dropping in is becoming a habit, and that curators find it interesting to address the mall in their exhibitions: "However, we are not succumbing to black velvet paintings." She confirmed that being in the mall had changed their approach to publicity and visitor services, for example, there is more emphasis on attracting teenagers. "Our comments from the public have been mostly positive; people feel that we are more accessible."

Stuart Reid, Curator of the Art Gallery of Mississauga, which is across the street from the site of Living Arts Centre says, "For Mississauga, Square One is more like a Mexican zocalo, or central square, than just a place to shop. Yes, it is built around the mall, but this is a meeting place as well as a marketplace. Square One also hosts arts festivals, and the library and City Hall are close by. This is the centre of Mississauga and it's logical that there would be a linkage between Square One and the Living Arts Centre."

Reid is not worried about the Art Gallery of Mississauga being overshadowed by the LAC -- since the mandate of the Gallery is centred around their permanent collection, whereas the LAC is not a collecting institution -- and sees the coming of the Living Arts Centre as very positive for the Art Gallery of Mississauga, a mutually beneficial exchange. "It will develop new audiences and give us a higher profile in the community. The Gallery has been involved in several committees and community discussion groups around the programming, planning and organization of the centre. We've also been lending our expertise on the local visual arts scene and issues of studio practice and conservation." Reid was also enthusiastic about the possibilities for his gallery to access space in the centre for collaborative programming including artist-in-residencies.

It's an open question whether, by the time the Living Arts Centre starts operation, its current fixation on state-of-the-art media will be brought into balance. The means shape the ends, and the technology should be treated as a tool in the service of artistic expression, instead of the art viewed as the stuff which must be found to showcase the technology. If sponsorship intrudes to the point that culture becomes little more than an advertising vehicle, and if the presence of advertising on the visual landscape overwhelms that of art, then why should governments fund it? But if art does not provide a significant advertising function, then why should the private sector fund it? Perhaps we will see a return to the idea that art activity should pay for itself. Then we'd see what was really "essential to everybody".