SCIENCE, SOCIETY, RESILIENCE AND THE ARTS
by Robyn Archer

An after-dinner talk at the Australia21 conference Shaping Australia's Resilience: Policy development for uncertain futures
Canberra, Feb 18, 2010

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we gather tonight and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I will take the opportunity sadly to note the passing today of the artist Ruby Hunter - her great voice and presence will be sorely missed.

I thank you too for letting an outsider in to this august group. I'm not a scientist or an economist or an environmentalist. I come from the arts - I guess that's why I'm the dinner speaker.

I hope you'll excuse me if I don't come up with the expected quota of gags and anecdotes which dinner speakers are meant to come up with. For me the arts are a serious business - even though that may seem ironic or amusing coming from someone who once wrote a song called
" You're an insect on the windscreen of my heart"
And indeed, my next book is called Detritus - and it too is a serious collection of my keynote addresses to be published by UWA Press this June.

What I want to do is start tonight with some little distinctions about what it means to be 'in the arts'.

You can be an artist - a creator, like many of you, dealing largely in ideas, experimenting all the time, researching a lot of the time.

You can be an artist - an interpreter which requires training, constant training and intense mental and physical pressure.
The best interpreters sometimes end up on a par with creators because of energy and originality which goes beyond mere skill.

And there are so many other arts workers. I'll use a play as an example to illustrate; in fact my last play.
a. I had an idea to write a play about architecture. Through research over many years, and putting the antennae up in that direction, I found the perfect subject. It was a woman whom I met in her mid-nineties. She was Vienna's first woman architect and she had a remarkable story to tell. From the time I became familiar with her work I kept picking up bits and pieces of information about her and her work and the eras she worked through. An offer some fifteen years later from the State Theatre South Australia to produce something of mine meant I could focus my research, take it further, start experimenting with form and then start writing. The writing continued all the way till the first performance and will probably continue again with further productions
b. Then we needed interpreters - a director, designer, actors, composer, etc.
c. But then there are all the other ancillary roles that a play needs to get up and in front of an audience. If it's a company then they will have a manager, publicist, financial manager, sponsorship person, a Chair and Board, technical and operations manager, etc. If the play is to be presented in a theatre then there are ticket-sellers, ushers, parking attendants, food and drink sellers, cleaners, transport, food production, etc.

Or possibly we could be talking about an artist who seems to be more self-sustaining. We imagine a writer - alone, thinking, inventing: or a painter alone in the studio, or a young kid tucked away in their bedroom and creating on-screen art or music in virtual space.

But then even writers might still want publishers (on or off screen), perhaps an agent and then all the army behind a 'book' - paper-makers, forests, designers, printers, ink-makers, machinists and again publicists, launches, transport, fuel, etc. Even in the emerging world of digital books there are always systems and many people whose employment depends on that initial idea from the creator.

We also make a distinction between:
Individual artists
Companies - small and large
Institutions - such as galleries, small and large

In this complex arena my plea for a long time has been basically for the support of the new and the not-well-known in the face of enormous support for the traditional, the well-known and the much-loved.

And it was only when I met Brian Walker, through Jane Dixon, and was introduced to Resilience Thinking, that I found the perfect model for arguing my case. I invited Brian into a number of the Deakin Lecture series I curated in 2008, and was completely hooked on a theory and way of thinking which stemmed from ecology and the environment but in its explanation of the cyclical life of any system, made perfect sense for the arts.
I've been using Resilience Thinking in my addresses about the arts ever since, and I'm very happy to hear the word 'resilience' being used more and more in connection with the arts and am hoping it will actively influence future funding decisions.

There are many aspects to this connection between Resilience and the arts, and tonight I can touch on just a few.

What would Resilience mean in the life of an individual artist ?
If the basic tenet holds around its definition that Resilience is 'the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function', then I suppose we start thinking initially about all the ways in which an artist needs to be trained to be aware - that change will come, and often unexpectedly.
Tastes for a certain kind of art will evolve and change, there will be generational change, the ability of an artist will change: the power of the mind and quality of ideas may increase, the capability of the body will gradually decrease. This is particularly true of dancers, for instance, who need to be trained like sportspeople: make the most of it while your body can still deliver… but after 10 or 15 years, what then ?
How do you cope with a sudden accident, or an economic crisis which decimates the quantum of dance companies and audience who can pay to see your work ? How can you go on retaining your basic function - as an artist ?

Unfortunately much initial training in the arts simply takes up kids with stars in their eyes and doesn't take long-term resilience into account.

In my own case diversity has been the key to resilience and this came about not be design, but by accident. In the dusty northern suburbs of Adelaide, I grew up totally unaware that you could take up formal training for the arts. I simply apprenticed myself to my father who was a stand-up comedian, singer and compere - weddings, parties, anything, as they say. I watched him invent routines, practice and test them and then take them to audiences.
Dad bought me a ukelele when I was 8, my scoundrel of a great-grandfather bought me a guitar when I was twelve and from then on in I just sang whatever I thought would make me famous - pop, folk, rock, heavy metal. If there had been an Australian Idol in the 1950s then I would have been in like Flynn. In fact, I did enter the equivalent of the time, Bandstand Starlight International. I made the grand final and in my last year of high school was making regular trips to Sydney, staying alone at the Chevron Hilton in Kings Cross and singing on Bandstand. I see now that I was instinctively creating a diversity of opportunity and pathways which were not available to the kids who surrounded me in our neighbourhood.

A scholarship to university allowed me to create a parallel path - not that I knew that at the time. I wanted to go off on the road, to take up the offers to be a full time singer - but I resisted out of duty to my parents who made sacrifices for my education. What I ended up with, via Latin and English Lit, was discipline, the ability to meet deadlines, a facility with words.

My first job out of university came through an offer from a nightclub owner, Bill Boyle, and resulted in two shows a night six nights a week at the Trocadero in Hindley Street. And from then, forever lacking a five, or even one year plan, my career proceeded according to the opportunities offered me by a series of generous men. All I did was respond, from nightclubs and leagues clubs to an offer out of the blue to sing in an opera company and a transfer from entertainment to art. I was encouraged by one woman to start writing my own songs and shows and twenty years of productivity flowed. Just at the time when women's voices may weaken, around menopause, another offer out of the blue started a career in festival direction. I could take the heat off the voice and by not having to sing for my supper all the time, could sing when I wanted to. Paradoxically this course has allowed my voice to remain strong and me to go on singing as well as remaining productive in all the other streams as well- writing, speaking, festival direction, etc.

Nobody taught me this. This readiness to pursue opportunity and to work in a diverse range of the arts arose from a simple instinct to survive. The instinct, I now see, was to build resilience in a highly risky and changeable environment.
But my more recent pleas have been much more about the whole system of the arts, rather than the individual. These days many more people are talking about an ecology of the arts: it's a word I had resisted as it seemed a kind of convenient evangelical approach to speaking about the arts. But having met Brian I understood that it was entirely appropriate, and that Resilience Thinking offers an unusually robust defence of how we might approach a resilient arts sector.

You see, in pragmatic, largely English-speaking countries, it became increasingly difficult through the second half of the twentieth century to persuade the case for support for the arts. The arts became more and more considered as what I call ' a frill on the frock of life' rather than its very fabric.

Do I need to explain that? Art is not just entertainment. Art is not just creative industry. Art is that thing that sits between black and white, the place of debate and dialectic, the imaginative and often sublimely pleasurable safe place where you can have a dangerous conversation. It is primarily a philosophical and ethical platform sorely needed in today's world. It differs from sport - which is measurable. We can tell who jumped highest, who ran fastest, who kicked the most goals: in sport there are clear winners and losers.

In the arts, by comparison, everything is contestable and therefore confusing and difficult - you don't know which side you are on. But it is precisely that contestable, arguable, ever-changing dimension which distinguishes us as human beings, not just animals or even just members of opposing tribes.

Neuro-aesthetics has made even greater claims for the unique value of the arts: that there is nothing else which so effectively stimulates all areas of the brain and its multiple connectors than the unexpected in art. Juliana Engberg, Artistic Director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, says this is echoed at ACCA corporate functions. A business man with scant knowledge of the arts might emerge from seeing a new and unclassifiable artist, saying "I don't know what to say….but…it made me think". He's right. New and unknown arts experiences have the power to 'make us think'. She also writes in her chapter of the book Dear Mr Rudd :
"While the Arts have always intuitively argued the case of intellectual and emotional benefit, we now have scientific evidence to support the theory. The emerging area of neuro-aesthetics is interesting in this context… cognition and the arts - the way the brain is activated when it encounters something extra ordinary, something that dislodges mundanity - a callisthenic workout for the mind. It is sometimes described as the third culture - a bringing together of the arts and sciences that have become distanced in our education system. ..

…But increasingly it is clear that the arts and sciences together are the bedrock of creativity. Starting with imagination, we move to ingenuity through experimentation to deliver innovation. We need to offer opportunities for re-engaging the imagination: to enliven our senses and intellect….The arts have a vital role to play in this campaign.
…When mapping the brain activity of people watching dance, looking at visual art or listening to music, scientists have found that there is increased synaptic activity and greater interaction between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. These neurological discoveries have led to the development of the notion of multiple intelligence, and the idea that interaction with the arts can enhance our cognitive capacity. The arts can improve our linguistic, mathematical, musical, spatial, interpersonal and physical skills…

…A recent study found that in a controlled group experiment of business executives visiting an art gallery during lunchtime, stress levels reduced by as much as 31 per cent. As our population ages, this is surely going to be one of the important tools to fight brain attrition. ..…We need to become more genuinely, not virtually, haptic again: to feel our bodies and test our perceptions. If we are to keep our minds and bodies agile, we must give ourselves the chance to deal with the incongruent and encounter the cognitive conflict that gives rise to thinking. …Art is great at creating these moments of arresting, conflicted thoughts…

…Because the arts employ metaphor and abstraction, allegory and illusion, analogy and experimentation, they help us to think through our human situation. We really need this dimension of thinking in Australia, where, in the main, we are pragmatic, rather than philosophical or contemplative - reactors rather than revolutionaries. We need to nurture revolutionary thinking to create evolutionary futures. "

Juliana Engberg , from Dear Mr Rudd (Black Inc ,ed Robert
Manne 2008)

Art - not only the existing canon and collections of the past and their re-presentation and re-interpretation (and these can be books, operas, ballets, symphonies all known and loved) but every shade of the new - the ugly , the unloved and the unknown, as I call them - needs enthusiastic support. The unsuccessful endeavours, just like R & D in science and medicine, are every bit as important as the huge hits. Those who dare the newest, weirdest stuff should be supported and encouraged every bit as much as those whose work immediately resonates, and becomes popular and therefore potentially profitable. It is the entire environment that enables success and progress.

From the 1970s onwards, and particularly in that icy economic bubble of the 80s, our societies starting mounting rhetoric around the idea of an arts 'industry'. This rhetoric demonstrated to funders, especially governments, that the arts constitute a vast source of employment.

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