The Australian - 4 October 2011
THE catalyst for this speech is a series of recent decisions taken by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which seem to demonstrate a style and emphasis of its management in relation to the arts which deserves to be examined in the context of the history and origins of the ABC itself, and more specifically, in terms of the charters which, in 1932 and again in 1983 established it. I would like to use this speech to test the contours of an argument which is rather fragmentary in nature; an amalgam of anecdote, impression, analysis, experience and intuition.
Approaching a discussion about the ABC and its relationship to the arts will always be complex, even picaresque. I would like to identify some linkages between a series of phenomena; between the threads of action and influences, through which individual artists, from time to time, and from generation to generation, have tentatively explored ways of connecting to what might vaguely resemble in Australia, and in other places such as Europe or India, be loosely called a cultural continuum; something approaching a pattern of influence which while not exactly forging anything as coherent or consistent as a tradition, at least points to attitudes which accumulate some recognisable patterns or sequences.
Running in parallel if not concurrent with such tentative quasi-historical impressions is a recent conundrum of rather seismic proportions; a shift, as a result of the advent of digital technologies and the internet, in the ways in which our memory functions; literally the ways we chose or are encouraged to remember things; to collect and preserve our stories, allegories, myths, personal and communal histories; and furthermore, the capacity and disposition of individuals and societies, to connect with anything resembling a cultural memory.
Following Professor Yates’ thesis, the shift from extemporised oration to printed page and further on to computer screen, can be understood as a relentless process, from an intimate embodiment of knowledge through memory to a disconnection and separation of facts and fictions on printed pages of proscribed, standardised proportions, bound within manuscripts, and both, hard and soft covered books; deposited in libraries, or archives - the physical, architecture of the labyrinths of our minds and their memories; through to the total disembodied, un-paginated, virtual, borderless infinity of the internet; a world in which the mnemonic feats of oratory of Plato or Cicero, delivering lengthy speeches that were staggering in their logical subtlety and virtuosic in their palindromic reversibility have ceded to what one digital age commentator has described as an era of “partial, continuous attention”.
The specific implications of the internet and more broadly of an era of digital technology are profound; never more so than for institutions such as the ABC.
The role of the arts in contemporary society has similarly, undergone a radical transformation. The last decade, let alone half-century, has seen a total technological renovation of the collection and dissemination of all manner of information, of data of any kind – sounds, texts and images.
The memory capacity of a personal computer or mobile phone today far exceeds that of a super-computer from the 1950s. It is entirely possible to retain or capture on a small shiny disc, the contents of vast libraries, galleries, museums, opera houses and concert halls.
There have been enormous changes in my own field of composition; the way in which music is recorded and distributed, even downloaded; the manner in which scores are produced and published; an almost revolutionary elaboration of the use and function of musical instruments; and most especially, the analogue and digital sonic treatments that are now available to the point of domestic ubiquity.
Nor is it the technological context of composition alone that has changed. The sociological circumstances for contemporary artists are radically altered too. An example of what I mean; the music of composers such as Monteverdi, Mozart or Mahler, to take three very different examples, could not be amplified and was entirely acoustic. Even the raucous chaos of the sounds of the marketplace was straightforward by comparison to the possibilities of displaced ‘schizophonia’ offered by electronic technology. It was not possible to simulate being anywhere else. Radio had not been invented; and ‘sampling’, that now, rather mainstream process to be found in almost every disco-DJ’s, bag of tricks, whereby, short musical ‘samples’ of any kind of music or recorded sound can be removed and reconfigured elsewhere; such a concept was just too bizarre.
The ABC was created in part to take advantage of some of these conceptual and technological shifts and opportunities.
From the 1930s, at beginning of the advent of radio, the Australian Government decided that the whole country should share an exciting new technological innovation and voila, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, complete with brand new studios and premises in each state capital was born; its activities supported by no less than six professional orchestras, as well as the quaintly named ‘wireless’ choruses, several dance bands and even, until 1951, a military band.
A brave new world of technology aligned with the best of our European heritage in a newly formed nation, finding its way in the world.
When the Australian Broadcasting Commission was established on 1 July 1932, Australia like the rest of the world was in the midst of the Great Depression. Unemployment was in the region of 23% of the then, mostly male, workforce; GDP was the equivalent of $6 billion and the population was approximately 6.7 million people. Joseph Lyons replaced James Scullin as Prime Minister. It was a year in which the Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened, the “Dog on the Tuckerbox” statue in Gundagai was unveiled and Phar Lap died.
When in 1983, the Australian Broadcasting Commission became the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Australia was again suffering from an economic downturn, though nothing like the dimensions of the Great Depression. Bob Hawke replaced Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister. The High Court blocked the construction of the Franklin Dam. Alan Bond won the America’s Cup. Treasurer Keating floated the Australian dollar; and our population had reached 15.5 million people.
Today, as a result of several decades of social and economic reforms, and notwithstanding the political complexities and policy challenges facing our current generation of elected representatives, Australia is at least in terms of its financial prospects, the envy of the world.
There probably always will be serious issues surrounding the funding of any public institution of the size and ambition of the ABC. However we need to remind ourselves that any such thoughts at the moment are conducted in an environment of unprecedented prosperity. Australia is rich and free. A country with a nominal GDP of $1.235 trillion (the 13th largest) and a per capita GDP of $55,000 (ranking 6th), a country that ranks 2nd in the UN’s Human Development Index, can afford a debate about the relationship between public broadcasting and culture.
The original impetus to establish the ABC was consistent with a pattern of nation building; and in the case of Australia was undertaken in part due to the recognition of the particular challenges of distance and isolation in various communities throughout this vast continent. Indeed, the geographic and demographic dimensions of Australia exerted a significant influence on the ways in which these debates and decisions were originally framed.
One of Australia’s greatest challenges concerns critical mass. There are so few of us. Therefore everything we do, assumes an importance that, in comparison to places like Europe, the USA, China or India, that cannot be taken for granted. The context in which our artistes operate is altogether more fragile and exposed.
Beyond the democratising instincts of inclusion and access, I would like to think that there was another, equally powerful motivation behind the establishment of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
I would like to believe that the processes of nation building to which I referred a moment ago, were accompanied by an impulse towards the need not only to build things; roads, houses, ports, railways, hospitals, airports; but to create institutions such as universities, libraries, galleries, parliaments, courts, research laboratories – the CSIRO – as well as public broadcasters – the ABC; and that such actions were part of a deliberate, systematic acknowledgement that any nation needs both physical and creative capacity.
Creativity is illusive. It is messy. Relationships with creative individuals are never straightforward. Unhelpfully, there are no strategies or policies that will guarantee the emergence, existence or even effectiveness of a creative impulse. Nurturing creativity requires enormous patience. Rarely does anything worthwhile emanate quickly or in some kind of conveniently pre-packaged format. Some scientific advances take years to unravel and comprehend. Some works of art are so confronting, even revolutionary, that several generations after they are first experienced, and they continue to baffle audiences.
Creativity can be brutal and wasteful. It takes scores of conductors, instrumentalists, composers, a multitude of actors, writers, designers, a vast network of computers and techno-nerds, reels of film directors and producers, to establish an environment which is conducive to significant scientific, artistic and technological advancement.
To be truly effective, a culture of ideas has rarely been led by people whose careers have never required them to venture into the often confronting, uncertainty and instability of a creative realm. Unfortunately, in Australia at the moment, the people in charge of many of the public institutions responsible for supporting creativity are disconnected from these vital processes and stimuli.
When I first graduated in composition from Sydney University, the most important professional opportunities offered to me came from ABC Radio. I would like to acknowledge the role the ABC has played in my own development as a composer and artistic director.
Programs like Surface Tension and The Listening Room offered me and many others, opportunities to explore our creative boundaries in ways which have not existed for many years. I would like to think that on occasions, I have returned the compliment; a radio feature produced by Jane Ulman, based on my composition Sandakan Threnody, which was a very personal homage to Australian Prisoners of War incarcerated in North Borneo from 1942, won the Prix Italia in 2004. And in 2008, Channel 4 and ABC TV offered librettist, Dorothy Porter and me the chance to have one of our opera’s Eternity Man, made for television by the British filmmaker Julien Temple.
Few of these programmes or resources exist anymore. Despite reassurances from ABC management that any number of changes over decades to programmes, schedules, and producers would not diminish the organisation’s commitment to commissioning original material, my own experience has been contrary to this claim.
Programs like those I have just mentioned were not invented to chase ratings; they were designed to build opportunities for artistes; talented and dedicated individuals in whom the education system of this country has made a significant investment.
It is precisely because I owe such a debt of gratitude to the ABC that I am so concerned to think that the opportunities once available to me are being considerably diminished for the future.
The ideas and impulses upon which the ABC was founded were subtle, nuanced and complex. And they are, I believe, expressed very clearly in the corporation’s own charter. The ABC’s charter is a remarkable document. It is unpretentious and concise. Some commentators have criticised it for being too vague. I disagree. I think it would be most unfortunate were the ABC’s charter to be too proscriptive. As clause 4 makes clear, one would not want to impose expensive and protracted litigation as a fundamental condition of how the ABC could or should arrange its affairs. Such impositions would be impractical and a serious potential threat to the independence of the organisation.
The charter is interesting both for its inclusions and omissions. I am impressed by its sense of balance; expressed through clauses such as 1(a) (i) encouraging “programs that contribute to a sense of national identity”; 1(b) (i) which is to “encourage awareness of Australia and an international understanding of Australian attitudes on world affairs”; or clause 2(a) (iii) to “provide a balance between broadcasting programs of wide appeal and specialized broadcasting programs”
The most powerful impression that I take from reading the charter is an entreaty to consider the often-reciprocal relationships, which the arts so eloquently, perhaps uniquely offer in terms of creative ambition, and an awareness of one’s place in the world. It is I would suggest, no accident that the charter contains a simultaneous appeal to Australia’s view of itself and the impressions, which the ABC is urged to create beyond these shores.
I would like to think that those who devised the ABC’s charter and most especially clause 1(c) demonstrated remarkable insight and wisdom in to the essentially ephemeral nature of performance and the performing arts. Clause 1(c) states that one of the principle functions of the ABC is to “encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia”.
Perhaps it was apparent to our predecessors that while museums and galleries were appropriate repositories for our visual culture; for painting, sculpture, for the various objects and artefacts of significance to our history as important components in any evolving national or intimate conversation or reflection, in which we may wish to participate over successive generations, there is a particular challenge within the performing arts in capturing, at least as a matter of some kind of public record, the performances, the music, drama, dance, operas and ballets that constitute our heritage. A challenge, so it would seem the ABC was uniquely designated to fulfil.
The recent announcement by the ABC that the television programmes Art Nation and The New Inventors would cease production at the end of 2011 is one thing; the accompanying announcement that “in the face of an increasingly competitive broadcasting environment and increasing financial pressures, ABC TV must ensure it uses its Government funding as efficiently as possible to deliver maximum value to its audiences and the Australian taxpayer.” and as result to “reduce the levels of staff in NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Northern territory ‘production pools’ resulting in proposed staff redundancies”, is a decision, which whilst conforming to a certain logic, would, according to those who are familiar with the management protocols of the ABC, effectively disband the ABC’s Arts Unit, the in-house production resource charged with the key responsibility of co-ordinating, if not commissioning or curating an arts policy on behalf of the ABC. Such a situation is entirely more serious and problematic than any announcement concerning the future of a couple of niche programs.
Mark Scott writing in The Age on 7 September said that the “The loss of a 30-minute Sunday afternoon arts magazine program with an audience in significant decline should not be conflated with the end of arts programming.” I am delighted to hear it and I agree.
However, the issue is not the loss of a particular programme, rather the connected decision to disband the Arts Unit at ABC TV, The crux of the matter here must be an assessment of how the arts are best supported and any such assessment must include a deep understanding of how the arts and most especially the performing arts operate; the process from conception through commissioning, to creation, revision, rehearsing to fully staged production and performance is complex. And this does not even begin to deal with adapting ‘live’ performance to the particular idioms of broadcast.
Mr Scott goes on to say that “ABC TV's decision to end the Sunday afternoon slot and shift arts stories into prime time should be seen for what it is: a chance for the ABC to connect this content with as wide an audience as possible.”
Such an initiative is laudable; however, a note of caution. Any decision to change the schedule is likely to be received with a degree of cynicism especially from the arts community; we’ve all heard such things before and the results have often been the reverse of what was claimed.
The reference to “prime-time”, seems to indicate a mind-set which is at odds with a central characteristic of digital technology. The whole point of digital convergence is that it dispenses with linear time or conventional chronologies and makes decreasing sense of the division of media time into ‘prime’ or ‘down’ time.
This could be a moment when the ABC should be commissioning with great alacrity. When media time zones are collapsing; content, the more distinctive the better, should be considered supreme. The process of commissioning, especially in the arts is rather intricate.
I am not arguing against a model of public broadcasting which insists on producing everything in-house; there is ample evidence, especially in the development and production of drama of collaborations between public broadcasters and independent producers working very successfully together; equally I do not think it appropriate to the autonomy of a public broadcasting organisation to outsource the majority of its material.
There is a need for balance; and any desire for equilibrium must be accompanied by an understanding of both the financial sustainability of co-production arrangements in specialist areas such as the arts, science, or natural history as well as an equally powerful argument for the existence of some form of curatorial continuity, call it a cultural memory, through which public broadcasters such as the ABC provide the arts with an evolving narrative.
The decision to do away with the Arts Unit on ABC TV has generated a small but rather articulate reaction from the arts community throughout Australia. A flurry of letters, containing, as one might expect from those involved, some rather colourful accusation, provoking equally indignant responses, have been widely circulated in the urban salons of Melbourne and Sydney in recent weeks.
In an editorial last week The Australian observed that; “The broadcaster’s charter requires it to be an entertaining showcase of creative Australian talent and gives it considerable freedom to decide what that means in practice. What it has meant in recent times is a lack of distinction and differentiation from commercial television. . . . Too often, it has confused substance with form and spread itself too thinly as it tries to compete with, rather than complement, private operators.”
In the same edition of The Australian an article by the BBC’s former Australian correspondent Nick Bryant appeared. He spends much of the article refuting some of the well-worn clichés, which have characterised Australia’s reputation in the past. He describes Australia as “an increasingly consequential country, unrecognisable from the journalistic kingdom of the mind of old: a land good for the occasional “And finally” animal story, a bizarre outback crime or two and, in the eyes of many foreign news organizations, not a whole lot more”.
He continues to dispel the cartoon script version of Australia by describing the economic, social and cultural achievements of Australia over the past few years in glowing terms. He even goes so far as to suggest that we are;
“. . . a nation where the tyranny of distance no longer brings with it the felony of neglect . . . Now that the locus of global economic activity has shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific, proximity has become more defining than distance. The “land down under”, a phrase dripping with inconsequentiality, is also likely to become redundant”.
His article concludes with an excoriating attack on our politics. He is quite depressed and scathing about the “dismal” antics in Canberra at the moment. In fact, politicians of all persuasions have been obsessed with one aspect of the ABC’s functions to the exclusion of almost everything else; they have been regularly frustrated to the point of personal indignation by perceptions of bias and lack of balance which the ABC has brought to its news and current affairs reportage; that in turn has encouraged the ABC to become overly protective of this undoubtedly crucial, though by no means exclusive aspect of its operations. When one adds into this convoluted mix, a modern mania for a certain species of accountability, expressed through the craze for measurements and quotas, accompanied as such directives always are, by an excruciating jargon of inputs, outputs, performance indicators and the like, it is no wonder that the ABC has, according to the secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, Graeme Thomson, lost its way.
I have witnessed firsthand, the directives of ABC management to reduce the time and resources available to arts programmes; where once 5 days shooting was the norm, it has become a day or two at the most; previously 5 days editing was acceptable, it now needs to be achieved in less than 24 hours; dedicated, specialist film and audio crews have been replaced by production pools. The presence of experienced sound and camera operators is in itself a matter of huge regret to artistes throughout Australia.
There have been nine executive producers in ABC TV Arts in as many years. And in perhaps the most ironically revealing indication of the ABC’s real priorities, the only channel which broadcasts in high definition, News 24, is the one in which the vision is often recorded on small format cameras or even mobile phones. Where it would be a huge aesthetic enhancement of a programme such as the recently announced collaborations with Opera Australia, the broadcast is standard definition.
Any cursory glimpse at the production schedules for radio or television from the 1950s to the 1980s would reveal a very different emphasis and allocation of resources than today. The range and depth of commissioning, producing and broadcasting in any number of musical, operatic, dance and dramatic genres was staggering. And if one were to compare such schedules to the programmes of our galleries, arts centres, cinemas, museums and libraries alone, there is something inversely proportional to the ABC’s presence.
I think a larger problem lurks beneath the surface. And I think it has something to do with the ways in which we chose to describe ourselves. Nick Bryant in his article described Australia as a ‘consequential’ nation. I am struck not only by the potency of his vocabulary; but perhaps more importantly by how rarely any political leader in Australia would ever use such an adjective. Is this, then, a question of confidence?
If as an artist, I am by temperament greatly frustrated by the reluctance of conservative politicians to offer any grandiloquent narrative to our public life and its purpose, I am perhaps, equally suspicious of the so called ‘progressive’ side of politics’ tactic of creating an aura of mystique and mythology, quite often on slender grounds, and in slight circumstances; it has so frequently proved disappointing, sometimes even hypocritical.
My concern is that we are far too comfortable, conformist and uncritical in our assessments of the past and too linear and didactic in our methods of defining our history and our traditions, such as they have been. I also think that the simplistic rhetoric of these narratives is filled with inaccuracy and cant.
I do not want to enter into a process of competitive nostalgia, comparing the virtues and vices of one era with another. I simply want us to accept that some of our prevailing truisms are themselves part of the problem.
I want us to act as though our cultural life was a matter of great consequence and not some afterthought or peripheral amusement.
About 15 years ago the novelist David Malouf was interviewed by the ABC’s 7.30 Report about the imminent closure of the English Department at a university in Northern Australia. He was expected to say how dismayed he was by the decision. Instead he observed wryly, that while as a writer he did not celebrate the closure of any place, which encouraged serious study of literature, English language, or otherwise, he could not help thinking that some scholars and academic institutions had only themselves to blame. He observed that when cultural relativism reaches such a point as to equate an episode of The Bill with King Lear or The Tempest, it would be a natural consequence of such academic priorities that would enable bureaucrats, administrators and politicians to act without much community concern in the removal of any number of university courses.
It is a situation with strong parallels to the ABC today. So long as the ABC is barely distinguishable from any number of commercial broadcasting outfits, it imperils its own future.
The ABC exists to tell an entirely different kind of narrative to the one in which it seems so fixated; both to and on behalf of all Australians.
For many of my professional colleagues, a recent history of the arts in Australia might well be characterised by the prefixes BW or AG meaning ‘Before Whitlam’ or ‘After Gough’; with BW referring to an era of white, middle-aged, male, leaders clad in heavy, double-breasted suits, with thick eye brows, and scant interest in the arts or other cultural pursuits; power might have rested with those who used the name liberal, but their attitudes and demeanour were not exactly in keeping with the meaning one might attach to that particular adjective.
According to this version of history, AG would refer to another time and place altogether. In the minds of some at least, a paradise of moderation and understanding; of enlightened political and social reform; the briefest of periods in which huge and transformative changes were wrought; from the establishment of the Australia Council for the Arts and the controversial, though ultimately, very canny acquisition of Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist masterpiece known as Blue Poles (No 11), to the recognition of indigenous rights and universal health care, ‘Medicare’, Whitlam’s 3 years in government were a whirlwind of action and change.
And for a whole generation of artists and intellectuals, the advent of the Whitlam Government was the defining moment in the cultural life of modern Australia. It represented the first tentative steps in a separation from the apron strings of colonialist fixations; of nostalgia for the ‘mother country’; a time when white Australia became socially more complex and ethnically more diverse. A period when the defining clichés of an ubiquitous suburbia, of an ‘Everidged’ population obsessed with axminster and lamingtons, gave way to a chardonnayed alternative. Or should that be cardonnay?
It has been characterised, as a period in which we came of age; an all-too-brief moment in which we became bold in our outlook and ideals; a moment of optimism and altruism that was reflected in our politics, and ultimately rejected for equally compelling though rather more harshly pragmatic motives.
No matter that many of the significant reforms and institutions for which Whitlam is credited owed their origins to John Gorton. Let not the facts ruin a good story.
And according to the same mythology, and in spite of a loathed imperial, not to mention imperious fiat, which banished Gough and his government to electoral oblivion, much of what he achieved remained intact, and from time to time was ameliorated, by figures like Paul Keating, at least, so the legend would have it, until the arrival of a certain former member for Bennelong at the Lodge.
As compelling as this narrative may be, I think it as a considerable simplification of both facts and perceptions. And, as we have witnessed through the ideological twists and turns, especially from the Australian Labor Party in the past years, it is an unhelpful and unsustainable view of both our history and cultural progress.
Let me offer some provocations to an uncritical orthodoxy.
Imagine yourself, for instance, at Eastwood Masonic Hall, in June 1947. What would you have heard? Well a certain Miss Sutherland performed Handel’s Acis and Galatea at Eastwood that month and Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Lyceum Club in Sydney in August of the same year. A busy few months for a young woman destined to become one of the greatest divas of the 20th century.
And while on the subject of the Sydney Opera House, can I ask that we spare a thought for Joe Cahill? The Sydney Opera House was commissioned via an international design competition, which attracted 233 entries, in 1955 by a Premier, who, were he alive today, would certainly provide fodder for cartoonists and comedians. Few people remember the brash Redfern railway worker who rose to be Premier of NSW for most of the 1950s. Even fewer state or federal leaders, past or present, come close to emulating Cahill’s record by commissioning JørnUtzon to design Australia’s most recognisable architectural icon at Bennelong Point. One only has to look at Darling Harbour to envisage what the Governments of the 1970s or 1980s would have put in its place.
If you were a bit of a bookworm, what would you have been reading? Most likely you’d already be familiar with two of Christina Stead’s greatest works, The Man Who Loved Children and For Love Alone which were published in 1940 and 1945 respectively.
And if one imagined a country that cared little for its culture, consider the uproar caused by a literary hoax, perpetrated by James McAuley and Harold Stewart using a pseudonym of plausible, if quaint irony; Ernest Lalor ‘Ern’ Malley. The reverberations and modernist fury of the already Angry Penguins led by Max Harris, were to be felt throughout Australian academia and bohemia, that is to say, in lecture theatres and pubs, for at least half a century.
Arriving in Australia in the 1960s, the prominent literary critic and anarchist poet Sir Herbert Read declared that, “a visit to Australia in 1961 was rich in surprises, topographical and cultural”. He was genuinely amazed at the range and diversity of the poetry he encountered; from established figures such as David Campbell, Judith Wright and Kenneth Slessor of Five Bells fame, as well lesser known writers, most notably, Francis Webb, whose work he compared in stature and importance to Pasternak, Lowell and Rilke and whom he considered "one of the greatest poets of our time . . . one of the most unjustly neglected poets of the century".
Several generations earlier, Barbara Baynton was to defy the quasi transcendentalist depictions of the outback of the likes of Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson through a series of ferocious short stories entitled Bush Studies which were first published in The Bulletin.
And talking of The Bulletin, who can help but be fascinated by Sylvia Lawson’s marvellous account of the political and intellectual milieu of J F Archibald, a visionary ratbag, remembered today chiefly for a fountain in Sydney’s Hyde Park and a portrait prize. In her book, The Archibald Paradox, Lawson describes a feisty, gritty individual who, long before the likes of Germain Greer, Clive James or Barry Humphries were considering overseas pilgrimages, actively encouraged the painters of the, yet to be named Heidelberg School, such as Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton to travel and engage with the very latest ideas and attitudes emerging from Le Grand Salon.
The art historian and curator Kenneth Clark’s first encounter with the work of Sidney Nolan in 1949, left Clark in no doubt as to the bold, direct, originality and intensity of Nolan’s work, most especially the iconic Ned Kelly series of paintings which were created between 1946 and 1947. He considered Nolan one of the most significant painters of the 20th century.
And while on the subject of that particular notorious Irish bushranger, Charles Tait’s 1906 film, The Story of the Kelly Gang is thought to be the earliest narrative feature, an eloquent testament to the creative daring and innovation of the pioneers of Australian cinema; produced by the Limelight Studio which was housed at the Salvation Army Headquarters at the top of Bourke Street; a studio which was active between 1897 and 1910 making it one of the earliest film studios in the world.
I could continue with many more examples, in what might seem a surprising list of examples of the diversity and distinctiveness of Australian creativity in successive generations BW. It is easy to be selective with the mass of information and impressions that constitutes any history. However I do not want to labour the point about how accurate or faulty our historiography has been.
One of the issues raised in many of the recent criticisms of the ABC’s decision to disband its TV Arts Unit concerns the creation and maintenance of an arts archive; the ability to preserve for the future, the creative endeavours and artistic aspirations of successive generations of Australian artistes.
Such a repository of public record provides us all with the ability to explore for ourselves the forces that have shaped our society. To think that such ideas are relevant only in so far as they contain an element of utilitarian populism is a vast simplification of the reciprocal responsibilities between individuals within any society and a diminution of our collective consciousness.
The threads of individual artistic achievements to which I have just referred, do allow us a place in which it is possible to begin to describe something resembling a collective consciousness. To a great extent it was such fragments, impressions, individual ideas, works, books, compositions, paintings that formed the basis of the ways in which the ABC once sought to engage with our culture.
They barely scratch the surface. And they do not deal with a myriad of equally compelling aspects of our more recent cultural life; writers such as Kath Walker, Colin Johnson or Jack Davis; artists like Albert Namatjira, Rover Thomas, Lin Onus, Emily Ngwarre or Paddy Bedford; choreographer Stephen Page; and musicians William Barton, Christine Anu, Deborah Cheetham, Kev Carmody and Archie Roach; I could go on . . .
I came to Australia from Poland. I was in Wroclaw to celebrate Poland’s term as President of the European Union. And the Polish Presidency was marked by one of the most elaborate and extensive programmes of cultural engagement at an official level that I have ever witnessed. In response to a question from a foreign journalist, the Polish Minister of Culture said with some depth of feeling, that if you think that the arts are expensive, try ignorance.
As I thought about what I would say tonight, it was this simple thought of being of consequence, of offering ideas that are of enduring beauty and power that continue to resonate in my mind.
Australia too can be a consequential nation, so long as it has the courage and confidence to take itself sufficiently seriously.
Jonathan Mills is director of the Edinburgh International Festival and International Artistic Adviser of the Melbourne Arts Centre
