I was planning to write about this several days ago, but this is the first alone time I've had with my computer since being away on my inaugural corporate junket (which was totes awesome btw). Melbourne has been awarded 'cultural city' status by UNESCO, named as the world's second City of Literature (Edinburgh being the first).
So, you know, this is good for our collective ego and all, but I failed to get particularly excited about the announcement. The best thing about it is that it triggered the Government into putting some money where its mouth was, by developing the centre for books and ideas at the State Library. The State Library has already been drastically improved and is now beautiful, peaceful and extremely useful, and this should be a great new initiative within it. It will certainly be hella helpful to the small and underfunded organisations that slave away facilitating the culture that has induced this recognition.
I just hope it doesn't cause the literati to be self-congratulatory. The publishing industry in Melbourne is largish to be sure, but the foundation for it is laid by the countless underfunded and poorly paid individuals who write because they love it, not to mention all those good people who will happily drop a wad in their local bookstore (which hopefully isn't Borders). And when you do something because you love it, you do it regardless of a UNESCO title. It saddens me to imagine that this City of Literature business will be seen as a victory for Penguin and Readings and MWF and lord knows Sleepers (who are just so hip they even have tattoos!) whilst overlooking the really important initiatives of Express Media, and all the zines in Sticky, and the websites and blogs and streetpress where so many local writers are broken in, and the wave upon wave of ever-shifting underground movements that are the true source of Melbourne's creativity.
I was mildly bemused by the request that was made of Is Not a while back that we provide some hi res images of our magazine and a bit of copy from our website to be incorporated into the campaign. Of course we consented and gave the committee making the bid the materials they requested from us, but I couldn't help feel a bit like we were the Little Red Hen who had laboured hard for our freshly baked loaf and suddenly people were happy to help us eat it. Of course, our magazine hasn't survived into the heady days of City of Literature status (although I'm sure this info didn't make it into the official bid). Nor were we informed of or consulted on any other aspect of the bid, nor notified of its success: I read it in The Age. Which doesn't particularly bother me, and while it's nice to have one's publication acknowledged, it sure as hell doesn't feel inclusive.
It's just that literary recognition is so top-down. I'm sure there's much good reason behind this, and not least because a lot of the manuscripts and other writing people produce are somewhere between mediocre and plain awful. But I would like to see the effort rewarded. I also have a massive gripe with massively-successful first-time author Carrie Tiffany's comment in the same Age article that writing is "..one of the rare things left in the world that isn't about money". Well not if you want to get published, Carrie. Publishing endeavours that aren't about money go broke. I'm aware that there are grants to allow artistic freedom from corporate bottom lines. But show me one grant that doesn't stipulate that your content be about Melbourne, or having a mixed-ethnic background, or the outback, and so on and so on. It's a politically correct artistic freedom that they provide. So that's sweet if you were planning to do that anyway, but if you were planning to write about your love for David Bowie or your collection of shopping lists, or something far more subversive, you better hope it's damned marketable, or have an in with an editor who isn't afraid to take risks.
My spirits were bouyed on Saturday reading the interview with Sophie Cunningham in the A2. The changes Sophie is bringing to Meanjin are truly exciting to me, and represent a new publishing outlet for the kind of work I find intellectually and culturally relevant and entertaining, and far too little of which is locally produced. It was also lovely to see the September issue cover displayed in the article, the artwork for which I'd seen only two days before in the Stuart and Jeremy's office on their new ridiculously fandangled soy-based printer thingy. I am greatly looking forward to getting my mitts on the first edition.
Pine mushrooms, pasta and not much else
10 years ago
2 comments:
Predictably I will gravitate to the comments about art and money. Tiffany's comment was as ignorant as it was pretentious. Writing has historically always been directly linked to commerce. In contrast to other art forms, such as painting and music, writing provided the multiple avenues for the artist to get rewarded for their work (book publication, plays, magazines etc).
The idea that art devoid of commerce or economics is somehow cultural superior is a strange one. That is not to say all commercially viable art is good - but commercialness doesn't necessarily make it bad. I think ideas like that are systematic of a certain level of cultural and economic affluence. Kind of like the rich-middle-class kid who surrenders his possessions in seek of enlightenment, while his parents will always have that financial safety net for him. Poor kids don't do this, and poor communities don't bitch and moan about their "artists" "selling-out"
peace.
I think there are two interrelated issues here: entrepreneurship versus entitlement, and high-art versus low-art aesthetics.
I'm still extremely proud that Is Not Magazine never received any grants - not just because as you say, grants are creatively limiting, but also because they seem to be tied to notions of aesthetic 'worthiness'. One of the douchiest things about Sleepers (and I wanted to add so many caveats here because they are so comprehensively douchey) is their obsession with their own gravitas, and that's why I think they buy into that top-down literary culture, because it rewards gravitas.
I think it's inspiring to see people who don't care if their work is deemed aesthetically worthy or significant, but go out and do what they do anyway. Perhaps we shouldn't be so dismissive of the Matthew Reillys of this world who make a go of it by self-publishing and self-distributing, but don't buy into high-art narratives.
That's where the entitlement part comes in: there's an expectation that 'worthiness' is self-evident and deserves reward and official recognition - when in fact it is a subjective aesthetic judgment. Grants applicants have to demonstrate how their project 'enriches the city' or is otherwise significant. But the market has other ways of enriching the city - and paradoxically, as you say, a lot of projects that get official designations of 'worthiness' are the ones that survive in the market.
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