Liberty Times (LT): The Dreamers (夢想家) rock musical provoked a rarely seen collective outburst from the artistic community. What discontent and doubts did this aim to draw attention to?
Yan Hung-ya (閰鴻亞): The inadequacy and inequality of arts and humanities funding has been going on for some time, and especially in light of the Flora Expo last year and the Deaflympics in 2009, there is a feeling that a lot of resources have been moved to fund government events.
A lot of the usual funding or locations usually available to arts and humanities groups became hard to come by.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
During the Flora Expo, funds from the Council of Cultural Affairs [CCA] and the Taipei City Government’s cultural expenditure all went to the expo. Nearly NT$200 million alone was spent on the expo’s opening ceremony, meaning many other routine cultural events couldn’t be held that year, such as the Taipei Poetry Festival, which had been staged annually for the past 10 years.
The irony lies in the fact that in order to survive, artists had to work at events related to the flower expo because it was spending a lot of money and was asking for performances and manpower. Most of the performances were short-term — one to two-days events — that had to be performed in tents.
Most of the bands and performance teams were not satisfied with the quality [of their productions] and many components, including things such as sets, used during the performances couldn’t be used for other productions.
The centennial celebrations are even more outrageous, with the two-night Dreamers musical costing NT$215 million, and the CCA handing out at least NT$1.7 billion in subsidies for celebrations.
Any performance group would have been very happy to receive NT$10,000 or more in subsidies and would never have dreamed about receiving millions of NT dollars for just one event.
The difference in treatment [between independent performances by arts groups and those related to events organized by the government] finally led to the arts circle jumping up and speaking out on the issue, and we very quickly reached a consensus to demand that cultural policies be reformed.
What really makes us angry is that the upper echelons of the government do not understand culture, and they do not think about how to nurture the arts and culture sector and help it take root. They continually take a short-term and carnival-like approach to the distribution of cultural funding and subsidies, asking for cultural and humanities groups to work for the government, effectively making the groups operate as policy advertisements.
The mindset of the government toward cultural policies is wrong and ludicrous.
LT: The arts circle has also raised issues relating to the government’s arts and culture policies, what does it think about these policies?
Yan: The NT$26.2 billion funding for arts and culture groups over four years is yet another ludicrous idea that the arts circle has long been against. It’s not that we don’t want arts and culture to become an industry [in its own right] or more valuable, but the reason the government is making such a big deal out of it is primarily because it is a useful way to control the arts and humanities.
The government is proud of the way it has used corporations to help market artists, resulting in about 10 companies working with artists to help them with various projects and getting subsidies for them.
Maybe some artists are happy that their creativity has helped to boost a company’s returns, but the danger posed by the commercialization of art is that it could lead to a one-track creation-commercialization thought pattern. The UK tried it once and it failed.
What different artists or performance groups contribute to society is not necessarily the same, and not everyone has to be sold for money. For example, take Wang Wen-hsing’s (王文興) novel Family Catastrophe (家變). The novel might only have sold a few thousand copies in the three decades since it was written, but its influence on Taiwanese literature is so profound, it practically rewrote Taiwan’s literary history.
The Huashan 1914 Creative Park, which used to be a place for experimentation by artists, has been given to individual companies or industries to run and manage to create more revenue.
The result is that restaurants are opening up one after another and the rent is becoming increasingly expensive. It has become a place of consumer culture where people go eat at a restaurant and see the exhibitions as an aside. The government is taking a similar approach with the development of the former Songshan Tobacco Plant, the Taipei Dome and the Jianguo Beer Brewery, which is very worrying.
Artists no longer have the place to brainstorm and train [because of this.]
The current arts and culture plan is actually one that involves a minimal amount of culture and creative thought — the true emphasis is being placed on the industry side. The environment for creation is severely lacking — there there are so few places where artists can practice and create. However, the government is still only using its money to develop more promotion and advertising channels and building large performance spaces.
The government’s actions are placing everything in an order that is diametrically opposed to what is needed. This is why the arts and humanities circle is calling on the government to pause for a moment and to undertake a complete review of its arts and culture policy, as well as to cease building cultural parks that will simply be left empty.
LT: In the case of the Dreamers musical, does your group see a link between art and politics?
Yan: No matter whether its the Flora Expo, the Deaflympics or the centennial celebrations, I suppose they can only be said to be the product of an authoritarian mindset. Basically, they are being used to “praise the government.”
One should be happy during a festival, and there is no reason why a musical should not be held for the centennial celebrations, but what really gets to people is not just the cost, but also the lack of artistic elements in the performance.
The performance starts off with the Huanghuakang (黃花崗) revolution in Guangzhou, China, and continues through the Republic of China’s (ROC) history until today, seemingly to force Taiwanese to directly accept the legitimacy of the ROC. When an alien appeared to wish the ROC a happy centennial, people in the arts circle didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The artistic merit of the performance was crude, and with the ideology in the background of the performance trying avoiding some of the more sensitive matters, it was hard to get audience’s to actually recognize the ideology, let alone agree with it.
If the lack of merit was because of the artist, who may have had to lower their usual work standards because they were commissioned to undertake the job, then the person who accepted the task needs to face up to a critique. They might also have to defent their reputation, which might be completely damaged after the event.
As for Council of Cultural Affairs Minister Emile Sheng (盛治仁) stepping down and being described as a scapegoat for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), there should be an investigation launched into the matter. If the investigation finds that someone has acted inappropriately, they must be held responsible for their actions.
In the past, when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was in power, there were also politically motivated cultural events, such as the construction of the Yilan Tungshan River Park and the Folklore and Folk Game Festival, but at least they were connected to the local culture and promoted local artists.
LT: Current arts and culture funding is 1.6 percent of the national budget, but Ma has said he would raise it to 4 percent. If the budget really is increased, are you confident as to how it would be used?
Yan: The arts circle would of course be glad to see a budget increase, but the important thing is to ask what kind of culture does Taiwan need?
In the eyes of government officials, what they want to see is statistics of tickets sold, or something that could be bragged about in the international arena. Some CCA officials have even admitted that as long as an event sees a lot of tourists and there aren’t any negative complaints, then the event is considered a success.
What Taiwan does not need is more money spent on carnival-like events. Governmental officials should not be the ones deciding budgets and policies in the future, and it should not be decided by political figures that are not professionals.
From movies, art to the humanities, Taiwan needs the regular gathering of data and an emphasis on preservation and research, as well as professional organizations that would promote exchanges. There should also be a legal professional entity that could make recommendations on the distribution of governmental funding for cultural affairs.
The arts circle has been talking about it for years, but the government hasn’t been listening.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
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