The Word As Art: A Complaint to Lodge with I don’t know who. The idea of this essay came out of a long frustration with witnessing word use within visual Artists work. I hate that. I hate in fact, despite that some of my own poems sings contrarily, for the work and worth of a writer to be defined by the same variables as the work and worth of Artists. Art is one thing. The word and its use are another. This is a very critical concept I want to impose, and which is embedded, I believe, in our actual biology. We see pictures, yet we hear words. An Artist represents what is, yet a writer tells it either as it is, or is telling a lie. The painter lies as their method of representation of what is, in defining what is by a sly process of showing what it is not. Yet with words we can find that we begin to manifest actualising belief as though every word is a breath of reality. Not every word tells it true, and that is a fact which we must all grapple with. Yet simultaneously grapple with the fact that when the word is telling it true, it carries a power which is rarer than is the might of the influence of Art. This morning, (a morning in August 2007, up to the end of the first poem in this part) I walked out of the Brisbane Convention Centre onto Melbourne Street, to face the window displays at number 99. The building is new and there are three larger shop front style windows with what is taken for Art being exhibited inside. There have been a variety of displays in the windows since the building was completed, but there now is a neon light sign exhibition. The first window reads “ancestors wounds”, the second window reads “make” and the third window reads “children bleed”; and my stomach turns every time I have to go by that part of Melbourne street. What in the world had become of our understanding of Art that we, as a human society, can have let such abhorrence be committed to the public eye. Sure, we all know about the ’sins of the fathers’, but not one among us need our faces scrubbed in the fact, and at the very least the signs could have read ‘made’ in the past tense, rather than “make”, which reads alike to being instructive. The whole could be read as though it is our duty to children to force that they are whom believe in the sorrows of our ancestors since we in our generation intend not to have to accept any such responsibility. It is not Art! It is not art because I will not let my world be defined by the important and clever representations in Artifice, which real Art is. That real Art being the Artificial replications of surrounding natural and man made constructs, in which we individually and collectively choose to orient with, as enabling of making contributions to the future. The neon sign words bear no will for relating with the future. Even if they had read “let the children believe they bleed because of the world their ancestor’s survived”, it might just be acceptable as art, but as it is now, the words depicted in neon signs as though art, have no relative or absolute portrayal of a future of any worth. The experience of witnessing such a display arouses a number of emotional and intellectual responses. The emotions are all negative. I happen to believe that we are not suppressed or repressed or even sick in mind, if and when we choose willingly, not to express negative emotions. But we can turn an emotion around into a positive effect, such as this written example is, as a combating of the negative experience in witness of an ill defined social manifestation. The intellectual response is thus overriding the emotional and constructing a frame work in which the emotional response need not be so distressing. I begin to wonder, how much is there in the world being called Art, which can only evoke the emotions which have healthy response by with a belly ache alone. How much of what we witness is evocative only of wanting to overeat what our kidneys or liver are no longer able to digest before our next meal? and because that is true, why might we ever want to subject our eyes to further such experiences in the name of Art. If the experience of witness causes no more effect than to have to choose between: a) sounding off about the situation; b) having a belly ache and not eating for a week; c) self denial by overeating and becoming fat or sustaining liver damage; or d) just avoiding art altogether; then why is it our community as a whole continues to generate and pay money for such manufactured statements as parade to the world as though in the value of decent Art? How is the window display being paid for, I just can not help but wonder. Is it become that being an Artist is defined by: a) having the money from other work/investment income to just play around at being an artist; b) having the latitude in social status to be able to write successful government grant applications; c) being able to depict a future which big money art investors want, and is at least pretty enough to pass for being Art. But these neon words I saw were not even pretty. One of the social facts about the Art world, is that the way in which government, at every level, sponsors Art and Artists, especially through Community Art funding programmes, has taken the place which used to be reserved for Religion. Youth work in the community, to rage against drugs and dance out fervour by splashing colour around and strumming guitars, has always seemed like a quite good outcome by comparison to the trouble that youth might be in otherwise. It is in fact. The sort of social structures which enable those outcomes, have largely often replaced the social structures in which the Church used to monitor, guide, and enable youth to produce young person’s expressions. Obviously the move away from funding ecclesiastic work, and into funding the Arts and community ventures, had been very necessary within the context of the Churches needing to flush out the real evidence of incidents of abuse to children. The Churches still today have not re-substantiated that they are a model in which the public can trust that their children will be well mentored. Yet I can not help but wonder if the Arts world is really that much better. Regardless of which, it is a happy thing to let any person in our community make their own experiments and ventures into creative self expression. Most craft supply shops, and many actual artists earning an income from art, are teaching. Much disposable income is spent upon having a creative hobby. In fact, the line between the world in which a teenager aspires to studying jewellery making at Art school, and then later in life, after being refused the opportunity because of other social pressures, buys a kit and learns bead weaving, is no longer a social divide. Neither might we continue to imagine that any difference exists in social place between buying a expensive old fashioned style imported French bed spread, entering a quilt into a quilt makers exhibition, and learning to hand embroider at home because the socks need darning. Truly we can not afford to forget the original skill in the hand is that of the labour of work to abide in Human need. What I am depicting is that we are well and truly aligning with a real process of becoming a classless society. But in that process, why might we have to tolerate being subjected to meanings which defy the worth of that process. We don’t, and that is my point. Many, many Australian families will avoid the public Art galleries and places where Art is on display, because they know it is mainly clap trap on display, and they know that if only their own hands were resourced to make beauty, their work would be far more deserving of the places in the galleries. But then, the Artists are who found that they had the means, usually by hook or by crook, to spend their lives developing the necessary craft skills for working a craft into real Art, are who have dedicated their time and lives into making expressions of what their experience is, and so we are all reticent to deny that of their selves. But I still can’t find any reason for the neon sign. While I can find many and numerous reasons for the multitude of examples of back yard Arts which I know abound in our city life. Maybe the neon signs worth is only in that the level of hate it portrays might be making the artist feel less hated; but at what expense to the general level of hatred in the social fabric? Similarly I can find immense worth inside an Art Gallery, only by walking among the Aboriginal galleries, in which I am educated about my witness, and know that the, intention, and degree of motivation and efforts which are made to produce these paintings and sculptures, is truly worth the wander into the gallery to witness. In fact, the peaceful atmosphere in those Aboriginal Art displays might east my heart somewhat after realising what else might be getting away with being called art. Other examples exist also of art work reflecting the will to build a real and positive future. Examples such as the interactive sculpture of a table of only white Lego, in the new gallery of modern art, (GoMA), will be adept at providence to the positive stream of emotions in art, and are no less bizarre than the neon sign, but have clear worth and relevance unlike the neon sign. Although, perhaps the relevance of such a huge quantity of white Lego, bears better relevance for a mother of younger sons than it can for most folk. After seeing the neon, I walked down Melbourne Street, past the giant metal cicada sculpture, (which is at least humorous if rather overly expensive on the public purse), past the inexplicable suspension in the air nearby older Art Gallery, now in front of GoMA, past the new sculptures in front of the new Brisbane City Council building, and into the library here. I find further inexplicable examples of modern Art surrounds me here also. There is a circular stack of open books manifesting as a sculpture. Not a sculpture of anything much except a circular stack of open books, but it seems mighty odd for a library since the books are all becoming damaged at the spine. Is the Artists meaning to belie the worth of literary witness I wonder, and somehow, knowing that the books are in the process of being recycled, the wonder seems worthy, and thus the sculpture’s humour also seems to warrant that it had been made. Somehow, but perhaps without wanting to know about how much money was spent on it. I sit here wondering why even the walls of the new library state, as though for art’s sake: “City Zoo”, and can not help but believe in the humour being too true for most folk to want to realise. Therefore we masquerade our social commentary as art. Even the new metal spheres outside, of a variety of large sizes, all manufactured to seem as though they are constructed out of many repeating examples of one out-of-use piece of kitchen equipment, but when it is all newly caste metal; even that inexplicable, seemingly random, and bizarre, overt statement of modern art, shows evidence of an intellectual engagement in questioning the world and pursuit of a better future. What is more, I reckon it is an improvement upon the more famous public sculpture now removed from just across the road, of the glass surfaced table over running with constant water. We never really were quite that wealthy were we? But surely we are wealthy enough to object to neon words filled with hate for children being defined as art. However, I will leave it with you to decide whether this poem, made in response to witnessing the neon sign parading as Art, is worth the exhibition’s ill effect having manifest. I happen to believe that I am a decent enough poet to have wanted to express this sentiment without seeing it expressed so poorly as to force my hand. But I believe that of myself simply because I like to use words so as to condense certainty of similarity in meaning, rather than of disparity in meaning. Surely all Art must be defined as the tool for Human communication by which we prevent that two persons are able to perceive the opposite meaning from one expression. You might note that the point being made in the neon, is one I write to more strongly, yet without the negative correlation into children’s lives. Family Ties Let mothers be boundBy everything that is soundIn her children’s perception of needAnd fathers be foundTo not need be rareSo long as that they provide ofIs not more than a child’s mindCan forgive equitably in timeFor who in the worldWill father mineBound as I amBy three sons fineTwo daughters in the dreamtimeAnd an ex-husband of sortsWho would rather have married the wifeWhose want is control ofThe child’s mindSo let us be boundThis gift a roundTo impose on all fathersIn children’s forgiveness abideNo matter how far need weRedress the tideOf fears to live withinPaternal consequence bindLetting mothers thus Clean up the messOf what has become ofFamily tiesBound and gagged aloneBy timeThat none can denyIn our genetics Must we rely How far into social ill need we read to be realYet stillSolutions Focussed? This being the title for the next word string. I would like to suggest here, after my rant about words not being Art, (merely suggestions perhaps), a solution to the conundrum set in a sideline issue of the main thesis to this booklet. I am holding the idea of this potential resolution, apart from that thesis, but for a concealed reason. Yet I will not conceal the fact that the resolution can only manifest to seem to be that same thing as what is manifesting the problem. This real world situation of the conundrum of social deviance which I described, is not one which any of us can manifest immediate prevention or alteration of, and in fact is potentially positive for the general social attitude to cultural diversity. While many of us are extremely critical of various government policies around multiculturalism, and also around the related racism in private industry and commerce, we must believe in our selves as a truly multi-cultural society, and that multiculturalism is a genuinely positive aspect of modern Australian society. The fact that most Australians know of near by neighbours or colleagues who live within a different set of social constrains, has a huge significance in respect of how worldly wise we all are being enabled to become, and thus how well any of us might better be equipped in any international setting already, only by having grown up here in Australia. At the outset, to realise how the solution to problems I have not yet entirely identified but amply suggested, might manifest, you need only a set of basic statistical data about the South East Queensland economy, so as to contrast to the rest of those parts of Australia with similar population density. Many of you will be very familiar already with parts of the relevant data, and in fact, my own contribution to further research in such, is most likely only to manifest obvious holes in existing available research; therefore, I intend not to even attempt to collate that very readily available data for furthering my own argument. However perhaps enough of that data is already common knowledge for readers to accept my particular angle upon it. Yet you might not all agree with me in asserting that, the south east corner of Queensland spends on average: less on petrol; less of fresh food; less on the maintenance and upkeep of bricks and mortar (or weatherboard), including on the garden and general housing surrounds; more on mortgages; more on investing in tourism; more on entertainment; more on cosmetic surgery, jewellery and other vanity related accessories; less on donating to charity; and probably in reality far less on more independent ideals of education. In that last point I mean to assert that in other parts of Australia, various families/communities/congregations/sub-cultures, place a higher material valuation in expenditure upon very specific ideals of education. Therefore that “edu-tainment” industry, has much more variance and diversity in other parts of Australia, even though here in Queensland it is better funded by government grant monies and commerce, and has every semblance of a bigger and brighter future, every public semblance at least. But what is edu-tainment, since if we were always letting ourselves be entertained only by what is poorly educating, then what worth were we to anybody. Let me, before an argument manifests in mind, just clearly define that edu-tainment is inclusive of most, if not every, public event. The differences between the Brisbane edu-tainment scene, and the rest of Australia, are really quite stark, and are also are potentially less obvious to Queenslanders than to folk from other states who spend time living in Queensland. The sort of spending patterns in Queensland, in fact attracts a certain sort of person. Usually either already in retirement, or looking to invest in tourism, if not arriving as an already well off intellectual import of another industry. All persons whom are more economically liquid than others. This might seem to be a bit of a rough analysis, I know, and there will always be proven to be other contributing factors associated with this reality. Many of those associated factors can and are mitigating against the overall negative aspects of what I am describing. But before I mention those mitigating factors, let me exemplify two further of my examples which are often not so obvious to Queenslanders. In my assertions about household budgeting, what is visible is that a “Old Queenslander” residence, seems to either need to be done up as good as new and looking totally gorgeous, or is let to become far too run down. What this depicts is an expectation of the better worth of newer buildings, but when in fact it is obvious that many old Queenslander style houses, are in real emergency need of being painted, but are fully structurally sound. There is less of a concept of what we already have being good enough to be worth our labour. Here then is another example. In Brisbane, more of the population take to the latest fashion immediately that it becomes available. What that might mean for the fashion industry is that garments move faster, but it also means that Queenslanders have a national reputation for looking like idiots, since not every style fits every body type. The rest of Australia just reckon on Queenslanders having had the sun go to their heads. But the fashion industry in the rest of Australia can also depend further upon any specific fashion garment, sustaining a longer run in commercial viability through being more consistently bought by who really suits wearing it. One more example then, here where there are more Casino revenue, ‘BrisVegas’, funds are available in the Arts, those Artists who receive of have an extremely sheltered concept of what the Arts economy is. Meanwhile the relationships in the Arts world of competing for those funds, are far more stark, overt, and transparent, than in the rest of Australia. However, that is a topic which this booklet is all about dodging, and so you will need to read me between the lines in that. What mitigates against the negative correlations which can be drawn from my observations of Queensland’s economy, and you will need to read on to learn about what those negative correlations in fact are, is fully embedded in that fact of the percentage of the net profit of gambling which is being spent upon the Arts. Also are examples of local government prioritising spending on environment. Yet I want to lodge a complaint with the powers that be, about how we culturally relate to our own spending. Why is it that when I was living in West End, I could not buy certain health food items without entering the shop which looks trashy on the outside? Yet some of the other items that very good health food shop is selling, (but selling by attracting only those customers who want to seem alternative), are available in a much cleaner seeming “get high like a hippy on herbs” shop, the equally cleaner nut shop which still masks itself in the older economy of the area of food wholesale, the Asian food supermarkets, and then also the ordinary supermarket chains these days selling organic fruit and vegetables. Thereby I can not help but question how many folk are finding it cheaper and more socially viable to avoid the health food industry, but when if the health food industry is able to mainstream itself, its prices will become more affordable. My question then is around what is socially preventing that to date. The mitigating factor here for Queenslanders, is that here in Queensland that sort of economic oddity is more obvious, therefore more likely to be on the brink of a change for the better. I might even say that Brisbane has two forms of health food supermarkets, and that is different from other parts of Australia. Most large enough towns have the Mrs Flannery’s chain style shops, for those who can afford it, or whose guts are too sensitive to shop elsewhere. But in Paddington here there is also the Fundamentals shop, which is very oddly striking in being far more affordable than most such shops. You Brisbanites might not ever much like that my strangeness can point to the basic fact that here in Brisbane, Queenslanders are taking less care of their gardens, and that is a fact quite disconnected from drought. Perhaps it is rather a climate issue of how well we know a garden can here grow without very much attention really. Yet it is the truth that on average other Australian Cities tend to have more fluidly attended to gardens. While here in Brisbane folk make more overt use of public parkland facilities, or at least the ones which have name reputation. Perhaps it is also a function of managing social cohesion in this climate? I can not here help but ponder upon why a Murri is a Murri, and a Koori, that I am, a Koori. While there in the Rainbow region of Northern NSW, which is environmentally that same region as South East Queensland, Aborigines are Goories. But if you are not immediately yourself socially equipped to notice that difference, don’t bother but to know that there is real strength of conviction in our every effort in making sure we enable welcomes to country, smoking ceremonies, tribal dances, etc, etc. Perhaps off the beaten track which this introduction wanders along, but in fact my own road is that road, and only occasionally joins with the more well worn paths of the Arts world and other social structures which we inhabit in mainstream Australian public life. Now it occurs to me, that if we frame our tourism efforts, and thus exemplify what is worth investing in, within the definition of cultural tourism, and ecological tourism, rather than only weather based tourism, that we are well on the road to turning the economy around so as that it sustains a more healthy environment for our children. However, in this assertion there are a few basic assumptions I am making that still need further explanation. One assumption is that when a company profits by tourism, that we are already engaging in a process of selling a fact of a visit to our land. In Aboriginal culture a visit to a place is essentially defined by the visitor needing to re-orient their mind at least partially, into the culture of the owners of that land. So rather than sell our labour in the service industry, which often comes along with expectations from the buyer of various forms of prostitution, maybe we ought to be more conscious of what we are selling, and begin to sell our real cultural values. The reason thereby we are not prostituting our culture, is simply because real sets of cultural values are the sort of ideas which are propagated and make stable and assured by sales of. In fact, we might not even need to openly identify with the large efforts many Australians make in ecological and environmental science, to manifest that such work is stabilised in being assumed to have a cultural sales value in the tourism industry. Already there are many farms which use farm visits to supplement their agricultural based income. There is also the network known as Working On Organic Farms, or WOOF, which any international backpacker can join to obtain a set of contact details for farms and even City accommodation, but which have environmentalist and eco-agri-industry work available to exchange for board. Its a great system, despite the odd too many lonely weirdos who could be either the backpackers or the farmers. It works for both participants, since the tourists are making their holiday more affordable, and the organic farms are making their farming ventures more affordable, and although the social situations can be difficult, only minor levels of resources are required to establish very valuable social conditions. However, I am not here in the business only of stating that more of the tourism industry needs to be based in funding the survival of our indigenous ecology. Rather I want to assert that if we are able to regard Australian ecological science, and forward moving projects such as the exemplary permaculture movement begun in Tasmania in the 1970’s, as being already well within the full influence of the indigenous cultural values; then if we use government funding to open up the market of “Cultural Tourism”, we are both providing a supply directly into the Arts industry, and also into those portions of the agricultural industry which are most in need. There are already organic farms upon which holiday cottages can be rented, from farmers who have been enabled to supply labour for managing holiday cottages, by using backpackers labour and letting backpackers camp in tents on their land. Its the sort of too simply obvious idea which government has for some bizarre reason not be attune with. We all know that where government decides to inject funds, can prove to be where the economy and market for commerce, later flourishes. So now I have a question. Why is it that our own sales in our most idealised cultural values, are not generally regarded as suitable for the market? Surely we know that we want our children to learn about the industry of health food farming, and the difference between a painting which was only made for shock value, and a painting which asserts an Artisans impression of the real world from which we can all learn. We want our children to be able to gain the benefit of living in a country which has the Australian Ballet and Opera and Symphony Orchestras, can pay to see the Chinese circus, the Russian dancers, the Indonesian shadow puppets, Native American traditional dances, the choirs which sing Gregorian chants, the African dancers, the music of Soweto, etc, etc. So let us not forget also that our own land has its own dances, and songs, and that a real and viable economic basis for sales of witness of such is already existing. Attendance at a Rom ceremony, for example, requires at least a few days, and can be the sort of life changing experience which well to do folk pay fortunes for. The success of the Garma Festival being the real world evidence of an already existing market. So what are Australians afraid of then and why have we not already started to resource our own ideals. Are white folk with money too afraid that if they invest in industry culturally oriented to black peoples lives that we might be branded as racists? Why? Only for putting our money were our mouth is and investing in what we say that we support? You might want to realise that many Aboriginal communities are really sick to death of having to handle the mountain of clap trap from the hippy feral sector, as that section of mainstream Australia which are socially enabled to not be afraid of being labelled by association with the Aboriginal community. What are we socially enabling and why, is the real question, and then how is it that the economy inter-relates with our enabling strategies? I want to assert that if we sell a commodity and it proves to have a sales value, then we, as the producers and manufacturers, begin to manifest ourselves in repeated re-production. So if we assume that the market wants to buy what is of little value, then we entrap our selves into re-production of what has little value. But if we assume that we are worth the attention of the most realistic material valuers in the economy, and that there are enough in the market who have a real world sense of what sustains economic currency over time, and so who will buy such items; then we can manifest ourselves into repeating patterns of manufacturing those parts of ourselves which we know to have worth already in perfection. By that I mean the obvious perfection attained by generations of using the same method, the same dance steps, the same tunes, the same patterns in paintings, and the same processes for discerning which individuals efforts to re-new our orientation to tradition, are worth heeding. So I am advocating that we use our own traditional worth as a commodity, and I am asserting that the commodification of such can re-install our own internal valuation of our real traditions. In the discovery of which many might revert to those now out of date 1970’s oriented dialogues about what Australian culture really is. I want to assert that we can simply abandon those 1970’s oriented discussions without having to re-invent the wheel of cultural self definition. Back then, during the Whitlam years, there was a massive upheaval in the joining of the funding for various social sectors, in a labour cabinet arrangement, the influence of which we are still all under significantly today. For a significant length of time Arts was funded alongside the Environment and Indigenous affairs, for example. Also funding for the mainstream Churches was significantly reduced from the broader cultural funding bucket, to make way for a more alternative and minority group focussed parcel of Arts funding. Presumably much of Church work, with choirs etc, was bracketed into the function of Opera, while these days Churches who receive government subsidy for other than capital works, are in receipt from the training budget as well as the community services budget. After attending an Australia Council/Government funding, oriented session of the Brisbane based Arc Art, Design and Craft Biennial’s Symposium, I became curious somewhat about how the various Governments have grouped the funding of the Arts within the Federal Cabinet. Curiously the relevant raw data is more difficult to source than seems right. However I have not investigated if other politics, history and sociology researchers have yet made a significant contribution to the way that such variation can influence culture. Perhaps it does not in the long run, and is more a reflection upon the character capabilities of a Prime Minister’s cabinet. However we can not escape the politics of why today the relevant department is Communication, Arts, and Technology, (and I might note that electronic Arts are more prevalent than the Australian audience for such work really wants, or is interested in) when in the past it was Arts the Environment and Indigenous affairs. There might have once been an argument that it was wrong to assert a notion that Aborigines are socially only worth the environment and the arts, but what was the problem in that correlation when to more soundly associated with the Art world and the world of ecological science, is just what Aboriginal culture is requiring of. Many Artists would also surely like the opportunity of coming into the cultural sphere of Aboriginal regard. While the environment portfolio has never been without the strongest presence of Aboriginal concerns, especially in National Park management. Today’s 2007 pre-election government groups Aboriginal affairs together with community and social services, as though the better commonly held concerns of Aborigines ought to be oriented to the welfare handout structures. Surely also we actively undermining our belief in the Arts, by letting our Government group in with sports and recreation, that is, unless we are raising the status of sport and recreation. To paint Artists work alongside recreational activity, paints a picture of no wonder most Artists need to supplement incomes through teaching. Meanwhile at the Arc Symposium of the Arts here in Brisbane last weekend, the panel applauded the description of the successes in the current British Arts funding model. We were all assured that there is not likelihood of any reduction in Australian Arts funding, were told about the notion that it would require an impossible 20 000 individuals to be funded an additional $20 000 per annum, to keep the Arts world out of the poverty cycle, (as though there is no potential for increasing the Arts purchasing market), and we were briefed upon how overtly successful it is in the UK when Arts is more minimally funded and left out cold in the free market forces more overtly. There in Britain the relevant Government department is Culture, Media and Sport, which seems an oddly neat arrangement in comparison to the Australian recent history of such arrangements. However it is not mine to speculate upon what might eventuate, and neither mine to advise of what I might arrange if I were the Prime Minister. Only that I can not help but hope he will be having a good look at all the past arrangements and making sure that variances in other social analysis data are properly correlated with any impact the Cabinet arrangement might have been having. The Art world is perhaps better equipped to notice that effect, since our actual Artists might be finding their work efforts which orient towards obtaining Australia Council funding, could have been by accident influenced by such usually unobtrusive events as sideways career shifts internal to federal government departments. I do not mean that to be a negative reflection upon the bureaucrats, because in Arts it is more likely to be that a positive outcome of government employees necessarily letting their feelings become engaged in the Art. I dare not ask why any of us were being seduced by any Prime Minister into making intellectual correlations between certain government functions. I will rather validate that one issue which arose in that symposium context is really not more than the general economic pattern in every profession, and not only Arts related. The question was from the audience about why that generation of Artists funded by government in the 1970’s, have not given way any of their social ground founded upon that funding, to a newer generation, despite mass transition into youth funding, or wait a minute, what was that question again, and maybe there is a because of the transition of funding into youth oriented society. When only certain sorts of youth ideals are funded, then that manifests that certain sorts of thirty something individuals seem to be who are more successful, and that can cause a cross validation process of only a few aspects of culture, and if we are not careful culture is thereby hampered. Most thirty something year olds who prove themselves successful in their chosen professions before they reach their thirties, can be proven to be the hard workers, but can also be proven to be whose work efforts were fed. What I am asserting there by is that if a twenty something Artist, or potential tourism operator struggling to feed a family from a small farm, is never socially validated in their efforts, and are contrasted only with those whose efforts are being deemed worthy of being socially subsidised, then the ideas, ideals, and values of those being ignored, are lost to the community. I know many such persons who, now in our thirties, never quite made it into the big league stream, but who believe with a passion that our ideas, ideals, and values are of more worth than what we are being socially suffocated by as that branded with success. When it comes to the Arts, surely the work effort required needs to have proved itself in endurance as well as in the instant of a monetary reward on the horizon. Because such is the nature of Art and of culture, that if we can not manifest the work of for no reward, then why bother to reward it. Rewarding Art through funding with money, only when the Artist might not be able to afford to both stay alive and make their Art otherwise, and then you might better realise what is that Art which our society wants not to go without. The reality is that the Australia Council’s notion of the 20 000 Artists who live under the poverty line in today’s Australia, is not even inclusive of most individuals whom are making a contribution to the Art of our land. Most of us might not want to be branded as an Artist in fact, and let that title belong to those who commit to the world of commercial Art sales. I rarely would even name my work as a writer that, but prefer the more trade oriented title of being a wordsmith, and I expect many real Artists are actually living within the title of their work place craft skills. We all know that good Art is rare enough and so many of us want to defame folk who out and out name their labour as that of an Artist. Yet that title holds a cultural significance to Aboriginal Australians, which more and more Aborigines are being enabled to take up, simply by life being less nomadic than in the past. In Aboriginal cultural tradition, it is rarer for an Artist, unless they show exception flair, self knowledge, and patience, to be so named until they are at least past the age of about forty. Meanwhile Australians and tourists, prove constantly that there is a market for the sort of Art which is either mass produced, or hand made by Artisans who are unnamed. The market being so consistently proven as real, might we ask now then why that market is not available to those who state in their work “I am who is doing the making of this.” Time for a reality check perhaps. That fact of stating a by line, is not always and only a seeking of the attention of fame, and in fact often is also just that statement of “I will be who takes responsibility for having created this.” Once we get that idea and ideal correct in our minds, we can then make more accurate assessments of whose work is worth letting them take such public responsibility for in the form of being rewarded by money. Anybody who has lived both poor and rich, can tell you that money has its own driving force. The getting of it drives the labour which enables it to have been gotten. So, we ought not evaluate the labour efforts of the rich, who were subsidised to become rich, in that same set of parameters, by which we evaluate the labour efforts of the poor. Yet also know that the poor Artist who just kept up painting without selling only for the love of being a painter, is far more worthy of that professional title, than is the Artist who says they are an Artist because their Art was artificially promoted into a social position of unusual saleability, and so they have a distinct professional status. Around this whole issue is the series of facts about what the distinction really is between culture and the Arts. We are not all anthropologists, who define culture very much more accurately, and as we might need to define culture if we want real cultural tourism to carve its own way in the market. Yet the Arts is essential to how culture is re-manifesting in every generation, so it is no surprise then that the British government funds the Arts through a department of Culture, Media, and Sports. It is something of a statement about the culture of English speech in fact. Perhaps, just perhaps, all I am suggesting is a quantum shift in our complex correlations between words and meaning. Maybe a tourist might be a person whom has a valuation of Australians as worth the company of. Maybe eco-friendly might become inclusive of many farms. Maybe environment and Aboriginal land management, already are in a very major sense, inclusive of farmed lands. And maybe, just maybe to be a cultural tourist is not only about seeing the Ballet, but also about visiting the gardens. Gardens of old which were managed in a hunter gather economy, but also the modern permaculture gardens of excellence in our country, and the gardens of those farmers with a will to show out how decent a job they are doing without every yet having had enough of us city folk supporting them.
