#StopBoyShark (Monuments, Democracy and the Arts)

do you support the arts of course you do
nobody wants to be singled out as a group as a boer as an unrefined uneducated individual who does not support the arts we all want to pretend we support the arts even if we spend absolutely zero of our time energy effort or money in any meaningful sense supporting earth do you think do you think the government should take taxpayers money and spend it supporting the arts uh uh uh well um do you mean the government paying for public education in the arts so that poverty-stricken children can learn to paint and draw when their parents otherwise wouldn't be able to afford uh pencils or paper or or paints do you mean the government spending money so that groups of poverty-stricken schoolchildren will be taken to museums that actually have free admission anyway that their poverty-stricken parents couldn't afford to take uh uh no don't question it no debate no discussion do you support uh government funders yes yes of course you do you want to be a refined sophisticated urban intellectual you don't want to be a boer you do not want to be an unrefined retrograde conservative who would dare to question government funding for the arts not even if it's millions of dollars going into the film industry not even if it's millions of dollars going down the drain not even when you read the list of what the government is spending money on for the arts it seems not just questionable or dubious but tragic no no no no shut all of that out of your mind we all support the arts we all support government funding for the arts unless or until it's a statue on your block that you can see out your window unless or until it's a statue two and a half stories tall that is unbelievably ugly that is an unbelievably poor taste it's a statue you're going to have to look at every time you open the window of your apartment every time you walk from your apartment building to the grocery store now all of a sudden questions about democracy come into very sharp focus who decided that this statue should be built here it's suddenly it's not a matter of money at all suddenly oh i'd rather pay 10 million dollars more and have some other statute but not this statue we didn't have a referendum on this statue we didn't choose the statute we don't have direct democracy and who who did choose the statute is it someone we elected no someone you elected sat in a council that indirectly appointed someone to hire someone to sit on a board that selected this this stitch when you look into it board by board statue by statue there may be several more steps removing the people who made the decision from anyone who was ever elected at any time ah and the people who made this decision the bureaucrats who rule and decide so much in our society these days you can probably find some clips of them on youtube giving a deposition to city hall or speaking at the arts council or maybe even delivering a paper at the university it may strike you that they're not particularly bright they're not particularly endowed with any great um facility of mine that would allow them to distinguish good taste from bad it may strike you that these people are on the whole rather stupid and even if they went to art school and got an arts degree these are not the people who went on to be successful artists these are the people who one way or another went on to become successful bureaucrats who had careers as parasites on the government-funded side of the art world who didn't get out and innovate but even if they were innovators even if these were the most brilliant fashionable and edgy of artists that's really not the purpose of public art that's not the purpose of monument making now i have to disclose that i have a very particular bias here my family's fortune comes out of the monument-making business right i said many cynical things about the making of monuments that influenced my parents it might be rare to talk about the child influencing the parents watch more on my youtube channel get to know me and it'll be easier and easier for you to imagine that i was in some ways a much more powerful influence on my parents than they ever were on me uh my parents worked in the museum planning business but they were involved in public art projects of every kind which certainly included literal monuments and also included institutions like museums that were created for a commemorative or monumental function one of my comments that my parents quoted back to me many times and they quoted between themselves that really stayed with them was my simple comment pardon me was my simple comment a monument nothing is easier to build and nothing is more easily ignored i lived through a period of time in which the canadian government was not interested in actually helping cree people actually helping ojibwe people actually helping den a people they were interested in erecting monuments and these monuments are much cheaper than even employing 10 high school teachers then employing 10 specialists with phds in linguistics to study and teach and propound and preserve the cree language or the ojibwe language to do something meaningful if you just do a little rough calculation here if you employ 10 people who are being paid 100 000 a year that's a million dollars so you get into multi-million dollar budgets really quick with real education with making a real difference in the real world and yeah guys let's you know let's not turn the page on history too fast here first nations people also deal with very very simple problems that have multi-million dollar solutions like clean drinking water you know do you remember the ada wapiscat crisis like water and shelter and you know access to education in the most literal physical sense of having a building in which they can receive education there are there are problems here with multi-million dollar solutions pressing and you know there was this thing written called the rcap the royal commission on aboriginal peoples this long checklist of exactly what the government was supposed to do to make the situation better and the government did absolutely zero of the things on that checklist there are a lot of interesting questions we have but you know what stops people asking questions building a monument nothing you know nothing solves the problem of genocide and slavery and colonialism and language extinction like putting up a monument and these monuments that were made in my generation i'm 42 years old now they were neither in a classical european style nor in any kind of traditional cree ojibwe indigenous first nation style right they put up monuments that were in vulgar conservative right-wing terms modern abstract crap i remember one statue that was made to louis riel if you don't know who louis riel is big deal in canada forgotten in the rest of the world louis riel ended up leading a failed rebellion against the government of canada he was a highly eccentric religious visionary he wasn't some proto-marxist left-wing uh you know leader of a poor people's revolution and his own life in politics was very much actually a hybrid of european and indigenous culture he wasn't an example of a kind of untouched uh uh yet to be colonized intact uh indigenous culture he was an example of a culture that already over centuries had responded to and appropriated elements of european culture not least of all christianity okay he was a christian fanatic who led this this uprise right but interesting historical figure certainly very significant and there are monuments including monuments in downtown toronto that i have seen celebrating the fact that the british troops the white troops the pro-genocide troops conquered and put down that rebellion and ultimately killed the supporters of louisville and then during my lifetime what do we do we start putting up statues to instead commemorate as some kind of hero louis brielle and the leaders of that rebellion what could be what could be cheaper and what could be more easily ignored and i remember i'm thinking of one statue in particular i remember one statue and first nations people complained one this is not in our style like this isn't our idea of art you know many i mean it's canada is a wider country but there are many distinctive first nations styles of statuary and art i would say it's not like there's just one style it's not just one style for the cree but you could choose to make a statue that is distinctively first nations and it's it's aesthetics no and then on the other hand this does not look like a statue in france or berlin to a great historical figure this does not look like a statue to masana in the plasmasina in france right this knows and they said quite understandably this is not a statue that white people would accept as a commemoration of a great or famous historical white person so why do you think this is good enough for us and they pointed out quite correctly there was absolutely no resemblance between the statue and the historical figure himself they didn't the face the body there was no resemblance between these things it was an expressive modern abstract approach you know to statuary so we've been living through a period of time in which real and meaningful political crises have been distracted from by instead indulging in the politics of creating monuments to monumentality this is another catchphrase that my parents picked up on and they credited me for their rhythms very often when the government creates monuments they do not symbolize or be token or communicate anything aside from monumentality itself except that it is an expression of the government's power to reshape your neighborhood your public park your vista your view out the window your life by creating a monument at any place at any time there is no democratic process there is no vote there is no consultation with the public i want to say this i had a recent video talking about what were the really distinctive elements of ancient greek democracy okay the ancient greeks voted on everything including and especially the arts when the ancient greeks went to see a concert when they went to see a comedy they were competitive they regarded theater as a competitive sport and the audience voted and that was the basis of their system of trials and of justice in the same way that the audience sat in judgment over a work of art the audience sat in judgment at a trial and i have to say the same thing in an imperfect parallel talking about canada's phony democracy our hollow democracy our false democracy is that we have bureaucrats who are in no way democratic in no way responsive to or responsible to the people they quote unquote represent right we have bureaucrats who decide what is art what is the monument that should be built right and we have bureaucrats who decide what is justice who is innocent and who is guilty right we have a total bureaucratization of what is ultimately a british parliamentary tradition this is what we are burdened with in canada so the problem with public art i think reflects the much deeper and much broader problem in our society now first things last guys there is a difference between fashion and style fashion can change every six months fashion can change every three months and it affects and influences the lives of a small percentage of the population that small percentage population may be very powerful influential cosmopolitan magazine announces that this summer it's gem tones this is a memory from about five years ago remember there was one summer gem tones that was it cosmopolitan magazine and all those fashion get out and buy a new wardrobe because we're wearing gem tones this summer okay what percentage of women actually did it what percentage women were influenced by what percentage of women read cosmopolitan magazine unironically to inform them as they go out and buy a new wardrobe as they go out and buy a new closet full of clothes for what they're going to wear this summer i don't even believe it's ten percent of the population like it may be five percent i know it's not nobody there's a small percentage of women who live and die by fashion and fashions change every six months every three months that's fashion okay there are new movies in the movie theater every three months every six months at most right the point of a public monument is not to do something fashionable it's not to do something edgy it's not to do something that seems artistically important this moment here and now that is what art for galleries is about okay art in art galleries changes every three months like movies in the movie theater there are fashions for new art in art galleries that can change in our written about in magazines magazines that no offense nobody in this audience reads how many of you subscribed to the art newspaper have you ever heard of the art newspaper how many of you are actually following the fashions of what's going on in art galleries in paris berlin milan it's not expensive it's expensive in terms of your time you can subscribe to the art newspaper today my parents did my parents were in the tiny percentage of people who were following what was going on in art galleries at the leading edge right okay the purpose of public art the purpose of monuments is to make a very different kind of artistic statement that yes does fade into the background that yes is easily ignored stylistically you are creating something that is going to stand there not for six months and not for six years not for decades but for centuries and that is why there is one style of public art one style of monument that you find in france whether you are in paris or in the cote d'azur or in normandy there is one style of statue that is appropriate for a monument to a mass grave a mass murder you know an atrocity from world war ii and it is equally appropriate to commemorating a great hero or an abstract concept like liberty and the revolution throughout france you see these statues again and again coast to coast north to south east to west there is one style and it lasts for centuries and when people look out their window when people walk past it to get their groceries it is easily ignored monuments nothing is cheaper and nothing is more easily ignored