Continuing from last week’s blog, I now ask this question:
What part of, artists do not like to be
instrumentalised, DG CONNECT, did you not understand?
Instrumentalisation – to use people as a means of achieving
an end. ICT Topic 36: Boost synergies between artists, creative people and
technologists – the State, in the
form of the European Commission's DG CONNECT, using artists as a means of
achieving their ends. This is a sinister development and a foretaste of what to
expect in the future as technocrats, deluded into thinking that they know what
they are doing, appropriate anything and everything in the service of the power
of money. Time to resist while you still can! And if you do participate in the Tale of the Director General's new clothes, you cannot say that you were not warned! You
too will stand there and proclaim that the very naked Director General is
wearing the most exquisite suit of clothes. Such is the nature of
self-constructed realities and collective delusion. It’s money talking! This is
the corrupting nature of the Brussels
bubble – and a bubble it most certainly is, full of people out-of-touch with
reality, living in the past. But judging by what one also sees elsewhere in
the world of STEM, they are not alone.
Instrumentalisation is wrong, but self-instrumentalisation
is not, that is to say, artists leading the move and developing their practice
towards the use of art for more utilitarian purposes, which they have been
doing since long before DG CONNECT arrived on the scene. And there are examples
and lessons to be learned from this self-instrumentalisation. If you want to
know more about this, we refer you to the ICT ART CONNECT study report. And
there you will find what? Read it and find out for yourselves about all the
well-known examples and the lessons that can be drawn from them that were … never
studied. Now why was that? Of course you may yourself not be aware of these,
which is why the study report should have mentioned them, so that known
problems would not be repeated. But why bother with such details when the poor
taxpayer is footing the bill for DG CONNECT’s deluded adventure in wonderland.
The problem that we face is that the current drive to use
art comes from people within the existing power structure and what is very
clear is that they do not understand art and are just seeking to exploit it, often
based upon restrictive cognitive biases, as well as STEM agendas, which lead to
the positioning of art as a resource to be deployed in the service of those who
hold power, i.e. those who have the money. This is often reflected in the words
spoken by STEM people who advocate art-science and art-technology collaboration:
it’s all about using art for communication, visualisation and, more recently
creativity. This is just like the old artist-in-tow model from the 18th
and 19th centuries – “hey sketch and paint that plant please.” This
is not art. It is of often also the case that those in STEM also are engaging
in image making; the remaking their own image to make themselves look more
respectable. DG CONNECT serves to demonstrate the point.
The mind-set that treats art as just another way for STEM
people to pursue their agendas and role as handmaidens is most definitely a
subject for artistic study. There is plenary of material for satire, both of
the descriptive and the plastic form. This is like finding a diamond mine!
To tolerate instrumentalisation or not to tolerate
instrumentalisation, that is the question: whether it be nobler in the mind to
suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea
of troubles, and by opposing end them.
You might have already perceived that, in CONNECTing with
STARTS, I have chosen to take arms, and my arms are the instrumentalisation DG
CONNECT. Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself! So now they are
being used to serve my ends …
What are these ends? What are the results? Revelation, you
will find, is a slow process of discovery. But if you are artists you will
already know this.
If there is to be self-instrumentalisation, then those who
hold power, i.e., those with the money, will have to surrender that power and
allow the arts to take charge of how that money is used. The message is clear –
The European Commission, DG CONNECT, and others, they have to go. There are
other means of undertaking international projects, European or otherwise. Is
there anyone out there listening? Now is the moment to learn from the DG
CONNECT’s nonsense and to begin to construct a different type of research and
innovation system, one that is not founded in the past. Time to set Prometheus
free! Skunk works!
There is more to bringing artists into ICT research and
product development, than is dreamt of in DG CONNECT’s and STEM’s self-constructed
and very limited reality …
And thanks to Will for allowing the use of his very elegant
and poetic words, Julia xxx.
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