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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33, No. 5 22 April 1970

Fated Lurch..

Fated Lurch...

Documents Issued In Vanishing Ink Faded into Old Pawn Tickets. New Documents were Constantly Required. The Citizens Rushed from one Bureau to Another in a Frenzied Attempt to meet Impossible Deadlines

Arts Conference 70 is, from the onset, clearly to be the demesne of Fred Turnovsky, leather manufacturer and gentleman of the arts, a real Dr Benway with his sepuchral Latah, W.N. Sheat, beside him. Early notice is served that the Conference can achieve nothing—Benway leads out the politicians to disabuse his captured on that point: Hon. D.C. Seath sounds off with the statement that the Government (the Annexia that haunts the whole proceedings) will not deal with the Arts which are to be self-sufficient in terms, he continues, of self-support and self-reliance. Any Government outlay should be determined by public demand. Phil Amos is simply inept in opposition, a line of gauche platitudes about the 'quality of life,' a community searching for a soul and the quest for an "awareness of beauty, sensitivity, creativity and Truth." Already the whole thing has lost reality and now old Bill Gains, sly old dog, Deputy Prime Minister, no lesser luminary, completely obliterates any memories we may have of that particular concept. The people out there are humble folk and you artists should not be too arrogant; you have just to develop self-support ("What can this shibboleth mean?" I ask myself); come now, let us avoid the notion of culture for culture's sake; and, after all, financial restraint develops priorities, and for god's sake think of the economic implications of everything you might say. In other words, don't ask for the money because the Government will be sympathetic but above all responsible. Send any realistic demands to local government.

Dr Benway is Operating in an Auditorium Filled with Students: Now, Boys, you won't see this Operation Performed Very Often and There's a Reason for that . . . you see it has Absolutely no Medical Value. No One knows what the Purpose of it Originally was or if it had a Purpose at all. Personally, I Think it was a Pure Artistic Creation from the Beginning.

Fred Benway-Turnovsky rises to his feet and is followed by a hush—then what I take to be the burden of this Conference: set the arts in the economic framework and all will be saved (for this man has a fear that the Arts may not survive to the end of the seventies) and, because there is a later statement of belief that the arts are necessary for man's personal survival, I am overcome with an existential rage that we must rescue the arts now. This merchant enchants me. New Zealand will be an island of sanity in the world if only we can save the arts he says and, because of the profit motive in art, merchants are most sensitive to the needs of the people. He adds; the arts will create, by 1979, a distinctive NZ nationality. There should be no controversy, the visual arts people in Auckland misunderstood (wilfully, it seems) that the people have a democratic right to Culture and retail stores have it also.

We all sail gladly on, too frightened to come out of this Never-Never-Land in case we sense the implications of all the incredible abuse of Art, which is close to us: we carry it in our hearts, in our tit pockets. We stay there, despite a gesture from the real from Professor John Reid who, somewhat in despair, indicates that the arts should be abrasive as well as comforting and that the Conference should make an absolute commitment to the individual vision. The Conference ignores him and I am too offended by his attitude to what he calls the "voguishly unconventional" to want to lose my anonymity by making my distress public. Instead, I castigate myself with the wise words of Benway-Tumovsky: "Much of the blame for the present neglect (of the arts) lies at the door of the artists and supporters themselves."

A.J.: "Call out my Sweitzers, God Damn it! Guard me from these She-Foxes!" Mr Hyslop, A.J.'s Secretary, Looks up from his Comic Book: 'The Sweitzers Liquefy Already."

Latah-Sheat now straddles the microphone purportedly to outline the organisation of the Arts Council but really to show what a clown he is; his claim to fame resting originally, it is alleged, in producing an Extravaganza for Victoria some years before. His bias is towards the performing artist and his task to keep the amateurs happy. He further claims that the Arts Council is disappointed with the quality and the number of the applicants for aid. It is not difficult to see why. A record such as follows can only mean that it would be an embarrassment to be connected with the machinations of the Council:

1.A touring collection of ceramics and paintings in 1965 was actually lost in India until retrieved by accident—the damage inflicted on some articles in the exhibition was not covered by insurance.
2.Barry Lett was refused a bursary to study gallery methods in England in 1967, the Council claiming that to award such a bursary would identify it with a specific: commercial undertaking.
3.Throughout the Utter stages of 1968, correspondence from the Auckland City Art Gallery detailing the page 18 procedure for the exhibition of New Zealand works at the Biennale of Sao Pualo, Brazil, was ignored in practical terms; the matter was settled by a refusal from the Prime Minister himself.
4.The attempt to promote art in retail stores was inadequately researched and ineptly pursued—the artists involved were approached by the Council to perform in the actual stores with scant regard for the evident motive of the merchants of exploitation, whether in terms of prestige or finance. The committee notion of 'bringing art to the people,' in this instance at least, was advanced by the Council without sensitivity to the needs of the artists themselves, and with a heavyhanded rejection of the advice of its own visual arts panel.

There are intrusions of the real: Neil McGough wants to toss out the idea that interested bystanders should be controlling the finance that is available. Gil Docking is more specific in his complaints: he regards the Arts Council as monolithic, autocratic and representative of only one region; he voices a suspicion that those on the Council are more interested in the by-products than the arts themselves, the search for kudos and prestige determines the nature of the arts administration. Point ignored, Benway-Turnovsky is running a Conference and discussion is not, it seems, to be one of the objects. He is paternal, managerial, and waves a wristwatch in one hand and a silver gavel in the other. He hears nothing. Not even Roger Horrocks' attempt to establish a semblance of direct action by raising the question of priorities, i.e. what the Conference and the Council should be doing to support specific and feasible areas of individual creation, i. e. stop wasting all that money on ballet and opera; the gavel rises from behind plastic flowers and liquefies him.

The Great Slashtubitch Stands Revealed. His Face is Immense, Immobile like a Chimu Funeral Urn. He Wears Full Evening Dress, Blue Cape and Blue Monocle. Huge Grey Eyes with Tiny Black Pupils that Seem to Spit Needles. (Only The Coordinate Factualist Can Meet his Gaze.)

It is Professor John Roberts who has been asked to lecture on The Arts in an Expanding Economy' and he makes it the occasion for a display of facile and self-entrancing obfuscation and stupefaction of his spectators. He ranges from the hunger of the spirit to the Dureaucratisation of patronage, committing verbicide with abandon. His proposal for a welfare security scheme for the artist (nicely described as "a public utility") is surrounded by a pudding of Hegelianism about the relative quantitative and qualitative natures of the economic function and the artistic function, which relate, in his wisdom, to collective and individual experience. A wealth of platitude is compounded with the sneer of modesty. Eddie Isbey, one of the commentators on this paper, says that he cannot understand the two pages of it which he has read and makes a reasonable if simplistic plea for art patronage to be rescued from the beer and tobacco industries. From beside him Dr Sutch cries for aethetics to be the main subject taught in schools.

Photo in a lecture theatre

In the afternoon I find myself between a man from Federated Farmers and the Secretary for Foreign Affairs in what is called a Working Party but which merely shows the dilletante forces at the Conference and their ineptitude in conducting a meeting in an intelligent fashion. Each Working Party has its quota of civil servants (to trace possible sources of embarrassment and eliminate them if possible), its ideologues of the arts, its old women, its sniffy patrons, its articulate and therefore largely ignored artists, its artists silenced effectively by the too-quick grasp of the futility of it all. It is an exercise in egalitarianism and, as a consequence, the 'Working Party convenience' (in every sense) achieves little beyond frustration.

A Rout of Mullahs and Muftis and Musseins and Caids and Glaouis and Sheiks and Sultans and Holy Men and Representatives of Every Conceivable Arab Party Make up the Rank and File and Attend the Actual Meetings from Which the Higher Ups Prudently Abstain. Though the Delegates are Carefully Searched at the door, These Gatherings Invariably Culminate in Riots.

Anthony Burgess has been landed with the task of discussing the question 'Art or Entertainment?' and makes a fair impromptu fist of the question too. His is an antique version of the pastoral art in which art is at once a problem of aesthetics and of the notion of ultimate reality. The matter of subjective responses and of the illusion of vision, a sense of some value above the temporal-spatial nexus—a vision of order which, as defined in the artifice, limits the chaotic continuum of experience. There is a meaning in the artistic construct only by the trickery of the coincidence of disparate experiences; the image is diversion, art is to give delight, he waggles his joy in the air—the high religion with which we began the Conference self-destructs, liquefies; the subventive definition of Benway-Turnovsky of Art as replacing the religious temper is laid at his feet by this gentleman and scholar of the arts. Burgess raunches on with a passing piddle on the academic tradition of gloomy study and we subside with him into a consideration of Entertainment. In this, we flip the coin of Art, the formal elements are primarily mechanistic operating toward a totality which is suspicious to the spectator, it is therefore a false totality.

Then, mechanistically, Burgess discovers the three points that seem important to the Conference as it now stands:

1.Literature is the most complex art because it is a mindful process of creation. Because it is an individual stance it is suspect to rulers; the individual faces the machine with the threat of subversion, his is a private vision inimical to the polis.
2.Politicians are men who have failed in the other arts, Burgess having with the rest of us to suffer the opening by the politicians.
3.The subsidy of funds leads to a false value system and eventually to a denial of literature, this follows as corollary to the first point but with an extension that is offensive to the bourgeoise.

Alack, for Burgess has catapulted opera and ballet to the lowest rung of the arts and as the Arts Council has few meaningful notions of placing finance except in these self-same areas, the whisper of heresy perambulates the imaginations of the spectators—Benway-Turnovsky is almost impassioned in defence of these luxury items but his captives have escaped. Burgess releases us and George Webby takes the podium to speak for great numbers. Webby has personal artistic needs and he wants them satisfied. This is the first hint that these people could get out of hand but a charming riposte to the concept from Anthony Richardson keeps the conflagration from taking over: to a person in Wellington, art happens in Wellington and entertainment happens in Auckland; sectional interests cannot survive wit.

"You Mean Like Friendly Finance? . . . they Got this Toothless Egyptian Eunuch does the Job. They figure he Arouse Less Antagonism, you Dig, he Always take Down his Pants to Show you his Condition. Now I'm Just a Poor Old Eunuch Trying to keep up my Habit. Lady, I Got a Job to do is all . . . Disconnect Her Boys." He Shows his Gums in a Feeble Snarl . . . "Not For Nothing am i Known as Nellie the Repossessor."

Bob Chapman it is who gives the most lucid paper to this point which moves around the question of patronage until he leaps out onto the bundle of the Arts Council itself having, sly tactics from Academe, presented a perfectly logical grounding for his conclusions. The historical survey proceeds by emphasising the impersonality of the art market at each historical point yet indicating the loss of the knowledge of how to patronise with the encroachment of public and exchequer finance. And with the cessation of the monetary support of men of rank (except in the USA where the relocation of the Old Masters is likened to the looting of Napoleon), the invasion of the arts by the academies, i.e. institutional patrons. The loss of whimsy and the peculiarities of taste of the aristocratic patron have been inadequately replaced by the new emphasis, beginning in Britain with the Education Act of 1944, on the relation between the arts and education and welfare. This is the source of troubles in New Zealand for:

"regardless of the difference between fifty and two and three quarter millions of people; regardless of the fact that we are not moored opposite a continent brimming with opportunities to tour, to exchange, to compare, to recruit; regardless of how different are our native preferences, frailties and strengths; we have reproduced here the proportions evolved by our British exemplar. We struggle to maintain one of everything: an opera, a symphony, a ballet, a theatre, a true Noah's Ark of the arts."

Thus, we here are saddled with a system of bureaucratic centralisation allied inevitably to the taxation system. The orientation towards the performing arts and the concept in the minds of the arts administrators of the 'minimum necessary survival,' has led to the emphasis on ballet and opera for which the Council adopts an 'aid to the stricken giant' approach. It is instructive, perhaps, that the Arts is now a term used in the singular as an advertising gimmick for democratic notions created the idea of the 'masses.' It is obvious that the task of the Conference, in the minds of its instigators, is to do a selling job. David Harcourt in commentary on this paper remarks impertinently—for he is here to snow, along with the other student contingents, that the Young are after all a part of the local artistic scene (noble concession)—that the Conference seems to be "a bureaucrats' tea party." My own notion is that the Conference will serve the very real purpose of establishing the machinery for determining an Establishment against which the young artist could develop anger, revolt and despair: the necessaries of creation.

Luncheon of Nationalist Party on Balcony Overlooking the Market. Cigars, Scotch, Polite Belches . . . The Party Leader Strides about in a Jellaba Smoking a Cigar and Drinking Scotch. He Wears Expensive English Shoes, Loud Socks, Garters, Muscular, Hairy Legs—overall Effect of a Successful Gangster in Drag.

It is time for a panel discussion; all right, let's get Sinclair, Hanly, Cross, Jenny McLeod, Burgess, Manvell page 19 and Roy Cowan together and ask them things like what is a creative artist and what is the role of the creative artist in society and his relation to the law of supply and demand. Benway will chair the panel and it will be recorded; so we are requested not to swear, blaspheme or libel. The result is the mayhem we have been wishing for. Burgess claims to be working on a volume of an encyclopeadia (Anth-Burg), Hanly gesticulates with fingers to the camera claiming to be "doing his own thing" as a "dedicated nut", Cross wants to take the Arts Council outside and shoot them (wild, delirious applause from the floor), Sinclair rails against the bourgeois arts and the attempt to create a public market for opera and ballet, Cowan talks about the artist as a fisher of men, and McLeod demands that society have no responsibility to the artist. The premises of the existence of the Council itself are destroyed before its own very well-meaning mediocrity. Burgess' talk of the artist releasing atavistic emotions becomes true and Benway-Turnovsky, for the first time, seems to lose control. The Conference is being taken from his hands. The committee-idea that has been the structural assumption of the jaunt liquefies. I am excited out of pessimistic indifference by the character of Hanly (who beforehand had taken in a movie called HUK) his divine accident that makes a work of art happen here and now. We rush to dinner with our apostasies on our lapels instead of in our pockets. Benway-Turnovsky is eradicated. There has been a man on our minds and he, monkey-figure, is expelled:

Salvador Hassan O'Leary, Alias the Shoe Store Kid, Alias Wrong Way Marv, Alias After Birth Leary. Alias Slunky Pete, Alias Placenta Juan, Alias K.Y. Ahmed, Auas el Cinche, Alias el Culito, ETC., ETC.

Finally, the remits from individuals, organisations, spectators, propagandists, old ladies social groups, promotors, frauds, fairies, publicans and brass bands are hauled before the Plenary Session of the last day (Last Day—implications!) to be adopted by the sundry individuals remaining. And despite the manic gabble that there has been, there are important items here. Yet first the dissident are allowed speech, to travail gamely against the Arts Council and its bloody Conference (but it's all okay, you see, it's the last day and you cannot do anything about it, ah, wily Benway.) The most cogent assault against the managers and merchants is that of Chapman once more, again someone with status and argument to impress the former. When he sums up the Conference at the end of the reluctantly granted open session he points to five areas of strong dissatisfaction in the debate:

1.The organisation of the Arts Council (structure of panels etc.).
2.Membership of the Council.
3.Question of priorities (the support of the luxury items that have little place in either indigenous or cathartic culture; Arts Council spending on ballet and opera in a recent 12 month period amounting to $170,338 from a total budget of $325,171—the State Literary Fund total was $4,175 (of which $325 was used for travel costs of members).
4.That there has been no guarantee that the Council, let alone the Government, will act upon the resolutions of the Conference; has the exercise been more than a political tactic?
5.The auasi-debate over regionalism again nationalism has been polite, guarded and not substantial.

Another area where the Conference has been amiss, there has been no debate over the Question of censorship and as it turns out there is none by the conclusion.

Roger Horrocks tosses in a remit to support his statements of the first day about priorities: That the Arts Council give close consideration to its priorities in accordance with which it allocates its support. The question has been fundamental and discussed by individuals but this is the formal move to drop opera and ballet from their pre-eminence. Naturally the remit is passed too quickly to allow time for debate or even a brief consideration of its implications. Surprisingly, Latah-Sheat is the one who stands in support of this motion but his call for positive action is rejected and we are caught cold-footed by this transformation of the pallid Chairman of the Council and the time is missed. The remits are dragged into the light of day from where they have been lurking in the working-parties, for formal adoption or rejection by the full Conference. The most interesting one concerns the question of whether or not the Council should in a strict and constitutional manner be subject to review by the artist themselves. Remit Two: That the whole question of appointment to the Arts Council and to its ancillary bodies such as the advisory panels (including the possibility of regional representation) be re-examined. A struggle is lead by Alister Taylor, Hugh Rennie, Bernard Kearns and David Harcourt to add to this a specific injunction that members of the Council and its panels be elected by the practitioners of the appropriate arts themselves and, further, that the government appointees be positioned only after consultation with specific bodies, e.g. the National Arts Federation of N.Z. Kearns would also like to sec an annual review of the actions of the Council by a conference of those artists concerned with the workings of the Council. Both moves are rejected and the reasons are not difficult to locate: the battle is a matter of principle for those under thirty and those who actually do the business of creation; the antedeluvian repressers fear the former while the administrators fear the latter. As both repressers and administrators (and academics) are preponderant here the move fails, by a massive anti-vote. As the move falters, Benway is allowed to move back into the centre of power, darkness descends for us.

The Exact Objectives of Islam Inc. Are Obscure. Needless to Say Everyone Involved has a Different Angle, and they Intend to Cross each Other up somewhere along the Line.

One remit that promised a battle was for the elimination of the State Literary Fund, in favour of an advisory panel of the Arts Council with increased funds for its purposes. The intent was clear, to get a larger part of what was going and to aid the now stricken cause of priorities (literature being NZ's most significant—and therefore, inevitably, underfinanced—art would supersede the arrogant and inflated demands of the performing arts). As it happens, the only defence for retention of the Fund is made by its present Secretary (a civil servant) and by delegates from Pen (which has, supposedly, the independent say in the Fund's deliberations). The temper of the Conference having become rather anti-bureaucrat, the remit is passed without bother. The immediate problem here is unlikely to be fiscal but rather that the new panel will be treated after the fashion of the visual arts panel.

The question of the representation of youth in the structure of the Arts Council suffers more argument than anticipated but is adopted after this manner:

That all Arts Council Advisory Panels include at least one member from student bodies, young people's bodies or the corresponding age group, and that these same delegates meet together, as one group from time to time under their own chairman to advise the Council on the special needs of young people in the arts.

Jonathan Brunette

Left: a plaster bust of Michelangelo's "Moses" on display in. Milne & Choyce—an Auckland haberdashery/button merchant. This display and similar 'art' displays received the blessing of the Arts Council.

Jonathan Brunette

Ans Westra

Ans Westra

The unfortunate wording in this one remit leads to visions of disembodied limbs setting upon the Council and seems to leave representation open to Boy Scouts and so on, yet the intention survives. There is further opportunity for patronage for the young Factualists if another remit, originally from Keith Sinclair, is put into operation: that the Arts Council offer more fellowships in writing and more in painting and sculpture annually. Conversation with Benway afterwards indicates that optimism here would not be misplaced, the Factualists have their consolation.

Other remits range from the recommendation that weaving be recognised as suitable for inclusion in Art exhibitions (passed unanimously), to an attempt to bring pressure upon the NZBC to limit its policy of churning out pop and light music for about 90% of its music programmes (rejected unanimously).

The Ouab Days are upon us Raw Pealed Winds of Hate and Mischance Blew the Shot.

Benway's summation of the Conference is sufficient indication of the tenor of its proceedings, there is generality to avoid humiliation, there is a general demand for more loot than the present four-tenths of one per cent relative to the Gross National Product which is spent now and here. Benway talks of the stimulation and enrichment from the interchange of ideas, the beginning of a flowering of the arts, the political strength, the notion that this Conference has laid the foundations for a cultural policy and a relocation of the resources for the arts. It has been, he says, a very polite type of conference. It would be unfair to disagree with his conclusions—it has been, after all, his Conference.

I Hung up and took a Taxi out of the Area . . in the Cab I Realized what had Happened . . . I had been Occluded from Space time like an Eel's Ass Occludes when he stops Eating on the way to Sargasso . . . Locked Out . . . Never again would I have a Key, a Point of Intersection . . . the Heat was off me from Here on out . . . Far Side of the World's Mirror, Moving Into the Past with Hauser and O'Brien . . . Clawing at a Not-Yet of Telepathic Bureaucracies, time Monopolies, Control Drugs, Heavy Fluid Addicts.

Alan Brunton