Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Aid worker Marcus Prior travelled with the World Food Programme (WFP) to visit the Darfur refugees:

In the absence of television, thank heavens for my satellite radio - live commentary on England versus Portugal in the Euro 2004 quarter-finals. Whoever coined the phrase "it's a small world" got it wrong. Tonight, miles from anywhere, the world feels bigger than ever.

Sudan's desert, with its golden sand streaked with red, broken only by the odd village, would be breathtaking were it not for the dark shadow of human rights abuses that hangs over it.

I went to visit a small, inadequate shelter that had become home to a mother and her four children. The eldest is clearly severely mentally ill. As we talked, she stopped to reach for a small plastic bowl filled with water and poured some of it into a cup. It was all she had - but with the temperature at over 45C, she offered it to us. It was hard to know which way to look.

Sunday, June 20, 2004

Debate between Financial Times' chief music critic Andrew Clark and Arts writer Peter Aspden.

Question: Has the proliferation of festivals devalued their concept?

Mr. Clark: Yes.

Festivals are now commonplace. In today's cultural environment, the word has become meaningless. All the world's a festival. We have too much choice. Culture has a become an industry, a commodity to be sold. The modern festival takes the process to the extreme: it is sort of supermarket where the paying public is persuaded to bulk-buy processed culture.

They used to inspire a sense of pilgrimage.

They celebrated interculturism, the rare, the exotic. They offered things that were otherwise not available.

What should be the purpose of a festival?:
- a source of renewal, a break from routine
- a forum for open-minded discussion
- a time for inquiry
- everyone, on both sides of the stage apron, is motivated to stop and think; to ask questions about what is being performed, why it needs to be performed and what the performer and the witness can bring to it in this place alone, under these unique circumstances. Make the artist-audience relationship more of a conversation, less of a transaction by, for example, celebrating the identity of the host city.

Seeking enlightenment through a series of artistic challenges that stimulate and stretch the mind and senses.

The problem with today's cultural landscape is that there's overprovision of what people can buy, and underprovision of space where people can engage in creative dialogue. It celebrates narcissism and the economics of art. Its trick is to flat-pack what is already available. It's only distinction lies in being more conservative, more expensive and more exclusive than your average season-to-season promotion.(Such purism could indeed be romantic conceit)

The problem comes when art is used as a tool of social inclusion. Addressing the quotidian concerns of humanity are all very well, but it encourages a definition of artistic merit by popularity, not excellence. That's audience manipulation, not art.

Too many promoters get away with passing off mediocre as special, often with a hefty premium on the ticket.

Mr. Aspden: No.

They create an irresistable sense of event - providing the medium by which tens of thousands get the arts bug.

They are a vital tool for cross-fertilization, breaking down barriers between high and low,popular and classical,new and old.

Appreciation for arts must be seen in a wider context. It should take its place among all our other reasons for living, not put itself above them. The trouble over obsessing over expressing the inexpressible is that you fail to perceive or express anything real at all.

Art has simply become too arrogant, too isolated from the quotidian concerns of humanity. Culture, in an environment free from the pressures of everyday life, is arid escapism. Art should be embedded in fabric of everyday life. The idea that we need some kind of idyllic retreat to engage better with the handiwork of humanity's greatest imagination is monasticism.

Most art performed in front of public is neither transcendent nor execrable, but somewhere in the middle. And it's fine for people to enjoy that, without feeling the need to be radically challenged. And the last thing they want is some professional critic pissing on their parade because they should have been at the avant-garde love-in(no food or drink provided) down the road.

Monday, June 07, 2004

Model for making it big in small town India. Using the internet.:

Now if only this idea could be applied even more usefully:

1. Getting discounted village-wide fertilizer orders.
2. ?