Dear Culture: Please Make Up Your Fucking Mind About What You Want Art to Be
No government ever lost an election by attacking the arts. It is, after all, the part of our culture where most people assume there is some combination of high levels of entitlement and low levels of actual work. This is the legacy of centuries of magical thinking when it comes to the art, associating the creation of artworks with genius or the muse. No-one cares when the arts get less. In Australia, in particular, it’s right up there with attacking refugees, young people, and the unemployed as a safe tactic for the right and the left alike. The last few years have been bad for the Australian arts sector. Not just in terms of the visible stuff: cuts to funding, attacks on the nature of copyright, a general hostility from the sitting government towards all things creative and its creation of a discretionary slush fund that is poorly managed and generally there to buy votes; no, the invisible stuff has
