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Whenever I raise this issue that everybody is an artist, and even
more so now that digital technology makes effective tools available
to such a wide range of people, I get a predictable range of objections.
The objections mostly center on issues of quality (the work is not
any good), creativity (people are just not that creative), expressivity
(self-expression is not art), and commodity status ( who would pay
for art if it were everywhere). By and large, I think the objections
miss the point, because what lies behind the idea that "everybody
is an artist" is an urge to create a society in which such
a statement would not be absurd, but would instead reflect a cultural
reality with a different set of operations than we have today. For
the sake of argument, what would society have to be like in order
to produce the result that everybody is an artist, and could those
conditions ever occur in our global future?
I am thinking that this question presupposes that issues raised
by post-structuralist, post-feminist, post-colonial and posthuman
theory are important. While these theories have been useful in partially
dismantling the oppression of the Enlightenment project, it is worth
asking if there is anything of traditional humanism worth saving.
To propose that everybody is an artist is a way of addressing this
topic. Questions of quality, the canon, multiculturalism, hierarchy,
inclusion, historiography, universalism, essentialism, particularity,
deconstruction, authority, reception, identity, subjectivity, consciousness
and pleasure, among others, are all at issue in this simple proposition.
I will try to touch on these as best I can in this limited space.
The quality issue is actually a question of politics, and not a
matter of perception nor aesthetics. "Quality" is defined
by the interaction of authority and audience. The post-structuralists
give us marvellous tools for deconstructing the author and understanding
reception. It is possible for us to have a deconstructed author
in which all receivers are authors and the work is what the audience
wants to make of it. Post-structuralist theories clearly indicate
that we are all undertaking acts of creative interpretation at every
moment. In this line of reasoning, quality is a cultural construction,
and the actual content of the works is effectively meaningless.
But what is really meant by the objection about "quality"
is the notion of the "canon" versus "multi-culturalism",
implying that the canon knows best. By now we know that this use
of the term "canon" is purely a tool of cultural imperialism,
a method of limiting market access and preserving the commodity
status of the art object. And it too has nothing to do with meaning
in the work of art.
Is there any other way to talk about quality? Don't we have any
non-culturally-imperialist ways of finding "good" in the
world? That seems like a question with far reaching implications.
I can see some promising trajectories happening via dialogic digital
media when people tell their stories, express themselves, share
this freely, enable access for as many others as possible and begin
to sort out together what it would mean to have an inclusive, particularized,
non-hierarchical and pleasurable discourse as the foundation for
cultural expression. As we seek to develop our technologies further,
and even begin to think of ourselves as potentially posthuman, how
can we account for the majority of the population which remains
unenfranchised by these new media? This dialogue which takes place
on a peer to peer, many to many basis, interests me greatly. Perhaps
a nascent aesthetics of particularity or even empathy are opening
up important avenues for the future of art making, new directions
which are in the process of materializing more clearly. Art can
be transformative, as well as reflective.
But immediately the objections about creativity and expressivity
come up. The first one says that people as a rule are just not that
creative. If everybody was as creative as I am suggesting, then
the whole world would be filled with artists already. This view
also sees digital media strictly as a set of tools, rather than
enabling an enfranchisement in a new way of thinking, being or acting.
Coupled with this view of limited creativity is the second objection,
which sees self-expression as an inadequate definition of art. "I
don't mind if people express themselves," a well known authority
on art and digital media said to me recently, "Just as long
as they don't call it art." Are these fair and reasonable objections?
Maybe for the way society is today, yes. But if instead of being
inundated with messages about how comparatively worthless their
contributions were, a cultural construct if there ever was one,
people were encouraged to express themselves, I am sure we would
have a much healthier society than we do now. Widespread feelings
of failure to live up to such media induced expectations is a cause
of psychic rupture for many. Child development experts tell us that
children hit a wall of cultural expectations just prior to puberty,
a pre-adolescent phase of identity construction during which they
begin a rigorous process of self-criticism. Realizing that their
pictures do not match up with the photorealism which they see all
around them, they essentially give up the art making process. Girls
especially seek to emulate such pervasive imagery, not only in their
artwork, but in their bodies as well. Advertising is specifically
engineered to engender feelings of "lack", so it is hardly
surprising that such imagery reinforces other social messages about
worthlessness.
But instead of denigrating people's abilities to be imaginative
and creative as an inherent lack, it would be more accurate to portray
people's creativity as stunted and repressed by a deliberate failure
to acknowledge and nurture their talents. Why deliberate? Perhaps
because a worldwide workforce, itself subject to identification
as participating in some form of a global culture, which is empowered
by an ability to express itself, think out of the box or take self-actualizing
action would likely disrupt the status quo. Referring back to the
discussion of quality vis authority, with its implicit hierarchical
control of resources, access and benefits, it is clear that determinations
of what counts as art is again a political benefit based on power
relations, and not truly anchored to questions of merit. Saying
that self-expression is not art is an act of political violence
aimed at proponents of multi-culturalism and anti-globalisation.
Theorists should take time to consider what an investment in an
uncreative subjectivity buys in our political economy.
Finally, the questions of the commodity status of art and the role
of the consumer short circuit the acknowledgement of individual
creativity. There is a concern that if everyone were a reasonably
good, acknowledged and nurtured artist, then no one would pay billions
of dollars to sustain the entertainment industry and the arts. This
is an illogical conclusion, as if by becoming themselves active,
everyday artmakers would relinquish completely the role of passive
audience, but it comes up whenever everyday creativity is broached.
It is also a striking piece of logic to equate a creative populace
with financial disaster. How can we understand this?
The American entertainment industry, an economy large enough to
sustain a good-sized country, is not concerned with artistic expression,
but with intellectual property, and keeping consumers in a state
of perpetual consumption as part of the mainstream economy. What
if instead, the entertainment industry were seen as a large resource
whose components were continually recycled as part of the daily
output of self-expressive, everyday artists? Artists of all stripes
would have to be seen in a new light. This is happening every day
in the land of hip hop and dj remixes. Digital authoring re-balances
the bottom line of commodity fetishized artworks and intellectual
property. Everyone can be an artist, but they might not get paid
the same way. What are some of the socio-economic changes which
such an approach would require?
Intellectual property would have to be viewed much more in an "asian"
model, wherein it is not "originality" which is as highly
valued, so much as the contribution to the "commons" from
which others may learn to emulate good and beautiful uses. Notions
of freshness and innovation would shift from the never-been-done-before
to the ideal of mastery of tropes implicit in the "asian"
model above, combined with the unique-ness factor of western individualism,
all the while not slipping into mere postmodern pastiche. This is
the contribution of a particularized approach, and why it is important
that everyone moved to do so, be enabled to make a contribution
to the bio-diversity of our cultural gene pool, to borrow heavily
from a biological analogy. In so contributing, it would become clear
that the notion of "inclusion" results not so much in
mediocrity, as it provides a base line of common experience from
which to avoid, not replicate, the perils of universalism and essentialism.
This would not obviate an artistic discourse, but open it up to
more participants who could play and create in response to one another.
The tools are already here. Digitization of intellectual property
renders it as communalized material, regardless of legal strictures.
Dialogic public spheres are taking shape, and new aesthetic vocabulary
is emerging to describe artistic phenomena related to play, digital
authoring, particularity and empathy. Access is becoming more concretized
as the idealized noosphere girdles the planet with not so much the
computer monitor and keyboard interface as the cell phone and wireless
web applications. Are these changes purely technological and/or
tool-based, or is something else happening? Slowly a shift in cultural
consciousness is taking place as mass media engenders a mass of
individual media percolating through the system. Individuals are
finding both the desire and the means to tell their self-expressive
stories and to participate in the expanding network of peer to peer
communications. Technology can enable, but not lead, human intervention
into the flow of historic events which shape the current socio-political
climate. Culture is still the product of human choices. In conclusion,
the future in which it would be possible to say "everybody
is an artist" would have solved many other pressing problems
along the way.
Tobey Crockett
La Crescenta, California
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