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The transforming power of culture

The rehearsal studio and warehouse of Taiwan's national treasure -- Cloud Gate Dance Theater (雲門舞集) -- in Bali Township (八里), Taipei County, was devastated by a fire last week. The finest of the troupe's work accumulated over 35 years was destroyed. This conflagration not only exposed the hardships suffered by artists working long-term in near poverty, but also highlighted the cultural oversight typical in many industrial cities and nations in a state of transition.

Taiwan's cultural policy is a typical example of many developing or newly industrialized countries: Culture is a means of propagating ideology or to promote the image that all is well. Since its main purpose is decorative, culture often lags at the tail end of national development projects and its budget is ridiculously small. Even if individuals or groups in the cultural industry receive a pittance of public funding, death is often preferable as they are frequently forced to work under torturous conditions to meet a deadline despite inadequate resources.

But the problems highlighted by the Cloud Gate fire go beyond the issue of cultural subsidies: They draw attention to the value that is structurally assigned to cultural policy.

National policymakers are disdainful of the arts and culture because they perceive them as mere cosmetics, overlooking the fact that they could be a driving force for development of a city or the country. Like a locomotive engine, culture can lead and promote new developments and bring in unlimited economic value. Indeed, it can forge a creative urban environment that gestates culturally rich lifestyles.

As one of the four Asian tigers, Singapore's distinguishing characteristic in its globalization strategy since the 1990s has been to re-evaluate the development potential of culture. After the departure of the colonial power, Singapore harnessed a cultural industry built around a strong ethnic Chinese identity that had resisted foreign powers and managed to gain independence, while at the same time imbibing and promoting the multicultural characteristics of a multi-ethnic society.

After the meteoric rise of China's economy, Singapore took advantage of its geographical and cultural proximity to China to transform and reinvent its identification with Chinese ethnicity, develop industries associated with ethnic Chinese culture, including immigrant history, costumes, architecture and food. Singapore established Chinese-language education centers and contemporary Chinese studies institutes, which are actively exported to the world at large. Over the past 20 years, Singapore has almost become the place where Westerners gain an understanding of contemporary China: In the English-speaking world, Singapore has obtained a unique right to interpret Chinese culture and produced limitless potential for development and tourism for the nation. Singapore's strategy to globalize its culture has also indirectly helped it define its position in the new Asia.

Some may have visited San Francisco, on the other side of the Pacific, and were entranced by its layered, winding and profuse urban sights. But prior to the 1960s, San Francisco was merely a derelict, run-down, mining town, much like Jiufen (九份) in Taipei County. Low rent attracted poor writers and artists, who gradually congregated in the town center, forming an artistic community. In a chance graffiti event, colorfully painted houses unexpectedly won the praise of residents, who collectively demanded that the city government preserve these pieces, and relax urban design standards to allow residents the freedom to repaint their houses in an affirmation of communal identity.

The habitation and cultural, creative activities of artists became the basis from which a flourishing San Francisco cityscape war born. Even more interestingly, the innovative climate of a city that has amassed the essence of counterculture movements and artistic energy has become an inspiration for Silicon Valley's abundant supply of outstanding technical talent.

Culture is not only good business. Aside from being the developmental drive for a new urban economy, it is also an expression of the national spirit and a force that defines its residents' identity. Singapore's globalized strategy has successfully allowed the politics of cultural identity to advance from being an expression of opposition to becoming an industry, whereas San Francisco's creative environment has forged a superb educational and cultural environment which people are more than willing to inhabit.

Groups such as the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre or the Tsai Jui-yueh Dance Research Institute (蔡瑞月舞蹈研究社), which are capable of artistically rendering the history of the human rights movement, as well as the ethnic and national identity of an immigrant society, should be considered national treasures that deserve to be preserved and encouraged. They should be appropriately installed in the urban network as a fount of creativity.

Producers of arts and culture are the genies of the nation's future development. It is through their magic that ugly industrial towns are made beautiful and transformed into a sustainable homeland. Only by thoroughly revising cultural policies can we make sense of the Promethean fire of Cloud Gate in the hope that it will help create Taiwan's next cultural hope.

Sabina Sun is a special lecturer at the National Taiwan University of Arts.

Translated by Angela Hong
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