Extension of the Call for Papers: Issue 9.2 Revista Aspas
On the debates about public policies for culture, there has been for a long time a wish for a State that can act as a regulator and investor in areas and expressions that are not a subject of interest to private investors, such as artistic productions that prioritize the development of plural world subjectivities and perceptions, instead of ideas more acceptable to the market. However, interactions between public power and culture agents, the exponents of this vision, are not so obvious even between those who share ideas. The insertion and emergency of new groups, companies, collectives, languages, aesthetics, is becoming everyday more a challenge and a difficulty inside the means of financing and viabilization of the national artistic production. Prioritizing and overvaluing well-known artists and producers, increases the inequality on the distribution of the public resources.
The idea of art simply as a way to generate profit – as it was said in the slogan “Culture is a good business” that would introduce the Rouanet Law to the big corporations when it was created – forces art to the only and central goal to show itself as a commodity. In Brazil, where historically there has been almost none public policy to democratize the means to express, this idea can overwhelm plurality. The independent production is still very common, but the fear of been associated to an idea of art as a “good business” stops the collective reflection about new means of insertion on the market. Unable to correct the intermittence that characterize the theatre and performance art, this vision pushes groups and artists to mix public financing and projects developed on a estate of precariousness.
The means of theatre production has been had difficulties to fit on the economic and social changes. The development of technologies that allowed higher productivity to other areas does not have such an influence on this activity that demands a lot of work from different people and increasing investments so they can be paid as any other professional. The viability of profits ca be even harder to scenic productions that are focused in languages research, looking for a social impact diverse of those who aim to enter on the entertainment path.
As a result, a dependence has been established on the government subsidies through edicts, which brings along political pacts that the artists submit themselves, many times as an attempt to keep alive an art that has difficulties to cope with the current material conditions. Acknowledging the dilemma, some punctual initiatives have been trying to debate the theatre autonomy in relation to public financing politics. The discussion starts from the idea that artists should not keep a relation of complete dependency with the public spheres. It is cognizable, however, that this debate open room for Minimal State ideologies, that are growing in the current Brazilian political scenario, that present the artist as a lazy professional that “suck on the government teat”.
Immersed in a time of crisis, of intensification of disputes over political views and a scenario that still shows little effective integration between a production focused on language research and Brazilian society, it would be time to ask ourselves what characterizes public policies directed to culture and, specially, performing arts. From a historical point of view, what were the discussions that surrounded and still rule these relations? What changes, contrasts, and similarities can be established between the public policies of the past and the present?
Thus, how can the relations between production, market and State guarantee the democratization of public resources directed to culture and at the same time ensure the plurality of languages and aesthetics without perpetuating the modes of legitimation proper to hegemonic culture and economic logic? In what sense does the State enable the performing arts in its various spheres, going from education to formation of spectator and the means of access to culture? What pacts would we, as artists and researchers, be interested in doing with the State and the market? To what extent should the performing arts make concessions in order to ensure minimum guarantees of the production and circulation of their cultural assets? Finally, what are the prospects of the current decrease in resources and the suffocation of public policies aimed at culture?
