Keynote dialogue

A public dialogue between Max Wyman (left) and Hank Bull at the CCA 's National Policy Conference, November 28th, 2002 .

Max Wyman : I would like to start off with a quote from Life of Pi , the most recent Booker prize winner, by Canadian author Yann Martel. Midway through the introduction, Martel writes: "If we citizens do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams." It's a good thing to hang onto, I think, as we talk here for the next couple of days about these issues that confront us all.

I think we have no planned outcome from the discussions we will have. We are not to create a document or manifesto out of these two days. Nonetheless, I do think we can move the conversation ahead quite usefully. What we need out this conference is a blend of vision and practically.

We all know that we have to work on the politicians, and it was wonderful to hear the Alberta Minister for Community Development, Mr. Gene Zwozdesky, so tuned in to the issues. However, we have to convince the politicians that there are other arguments than the economic ones to make on behalf of the arts.

Politicians tend to be linked to what I call "the immediate long term" because they can't look very far ahead. But we have to. More than ever, we're in the situation where we're being forced to look to the future and to know where we are going, because things are moving so fast.

In the initial note about the conference, the CCA described the function of this event as: "how to advance cultural policy in order to keep up with the changing nature of arts practices across Canada ." Although that is what we are going to talk about, we can't do that in a vacuum. Arts practice exists in society, and I'd like to spend a minute putting what we are doing in that broader context.

It seems to me that the human race is at a time of great moral and ethical challenge. We have to deal with social and scientific advances that are fraught with danger as well as with possibility. We're under intensifying pressure to come up with innovative responses to some of the most profound dilemmas that mankind has ever faced. We're are already managing global health threats badly; we're unable to protect human rights; we have little control over the international flow of capital; we're nowhere near curing the world's environmental ills. Meanwhile, advances in scientific research that lead us to an era of tremendous opportunity (like stem cell research, human cloning, robotics, promise of extended life) force us to examine our moral priorities as human beings.

Based on the simple notion of access alone (access to machines), the new technologies risk creating a society of "haves" and "have-nots". And everywhere we're seeing the new manifestations of exclusion: xenophobia, distrust of the other, an unwillingness to share, a closing of borders. As society comes to terms with these challenges and opportunities, decision-making will, of necessity, be based less and less on short term political opportunities, and more and more on long term, moral and ethical choices. It's a process in which the aware and informed individual is going to play an unprecedented role.

The social and economic structures of the new Canada will be all about innovation and imagination, and that comes from the individual. It will also be about ways to find the solution, both human and humane, to problems we don't even know exist yet. Reason alone isn't going to do that. Engagement with art synthesizes the rational and the emotional, the imaginative and the intuitive. It releases the visionary impulse to bring a new imaginative dimension to problem solving. It is vital that the arts and culture are front and centre when the new techno-social contract is drawn up. A diverse and imaginative cultural expression, one that asserts the primacy of the human and the humane in the face of the dehumanizing forces of the modern world, is a fundamental component of the dreams and ideals of Canada . The need to foster the imagination and to bridge the ingenuity gap in ways that allow us to grasp both the challenges and the opportunities that these new dimensions of the human society offer, is going to become a priority for anyone and for any government. Nurturing the imagination, which is what you, the artists, do, means taking full advantage of the benefits of engagement with artistic creativity. That means nurturing a sense of within the audience and educating for uncertainty (education for uncertainty seems to be a valuable function of what art does these days). It lets people know that it's ok not to know for sure. I've spent my life as a critic and as soon as I find answers to questions that have been bothering me about art, the artist changes the goalpost, and I have to start looking again.

We're in a world of shifting sands, and we have to let people know that uncertainty is okay. Art will do that. We're at a point in life where we can't know things for sure: art helps us to recognize and be comfortable with that. So encouraging engagement with creativity is a central core of what art has to do. It's going to displace reason as the prime source of answers. That means giving back the arts to everybody. Art is a universal franchise, but we've somehow built an awareness within society that art belongs to a small walled off group. We have this imaginary ivory tower in which art exists. It doesn't belong there. We must democratize art, demystify it, and give it back to the people who own it. If we do that, people will become fearless and then we'll move the arts back to the centre of the social agenda along with health and education which is where it should be.

 Culture, education and health are the three pillars of society. While health is a necessity for life, culture, the arts and all our expressive heritage are the reason for living. They are at the centre of our lives, the catalyst for our imagination, the prompter of our dreams.

It isn't easy when we look at what's happening in terms of the changes technology is wreaking on the arts, and we wonder where we're going. I believe that fundamental changes are going to happen to arts delivery and arts practice in the next 20 years. I'm looking 20 years ahead, but we could be looking further. We can't even begin to conceive of what delivery is going to be like in 20 years time. Already things are changing by the month in terms of what you can get in your house. A real time, three-dimensional holographic presentation of a string quartet in your kitchen may sound like creative fiction, but it's not. It's coming. And we've got to be ready for it. I think very few people are, very few arts organization are able to get beyond the moment to look to the future. What we can do here is to help move in that direction. This is what I'll ask Hank to talk about, and I'd like to ask him to join me now.

Hank Bull is a wonderful inspirational figure in Vancouver . He's been an essential part of the Western Front Society for close to 30 years. The Western Front Society has been at the forefront, at the outer edge of what's happening in media arts generally. Hank himself has been involved in the new technology and the new uses of the technology for longer than most of us have known about the technology. He's a veteran innovator.

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MW: Hank, what do you think the CCA meant by the title of the conference: When is Now?

Hank Bull : Well Max, Now is us, in this room. Right now. That's what it is. And that's kind of an exiting idea in itself. But I also would like to say that Now is a place. Now is not just time; Now is space. And I'd like to acknowledge the space that we're in, this room, but also this city, Edmonton . I also would like to acknowledge the nations who have lived here: the Cree Nations, the Assiniboine , Black Foot, and other Nations, and thank them for letting us be here. I would also like to point out that I am proud to say that I was born in Alberta , in Calgary . Je suis très content de dire que je suis canadien, et cet événement est un phénom P ne typiquement canadien, et il est essentiel. This is a really Canadian event. There are not many countries in the world where you would find an event like this. That's also about " Now ", and what we can do as Canadians that most people in the world can't do.

 Now is really a very fragile and fearful time. Max has done a really good job of setting some of the key questions in motion. It is a time of fear, not to say a time of terror, and of great uncertainty. Every day we read about that in the paper. Yesterday for example, you could read when you cross the border to the US , a camera will take your picture, recognize your facial features and be able to call up all the phone calls you've made over the last ten years -not to mention all the purchases you've made. We're looking at a very frightening commodification of the individual's imagination in a real "1984" scenario. So when we talk about the opportunities of the Internet, it has to be taken in that context.

But not to jump too far ahead, Now is also about our conversation, and it's about relationships with people. Max and I are going to jam for a bit, but I would invite the hecklers in the room to please jump in.

MW: We talk about the "avant-garde", but hasn't it always been there?

HB : Well, you know, I've always thought that our practice was post-avant garde. Avant garde is really a moment in modernism. It was something that happened in the early part of the twentieth century. Everything that we call art, or that we call art today, that we fund and consume and go to as audiences, is really a manneristic variation on the very deep change or paradigm shift that took place about 100 years ago when the ways of looking at the world and the way art inscribed itself as the way we see the world, changed in a huge way, with cubism, Dada, Duchamp, and with all of the practices of the avant garde. The avant garde was really knocked out by the second world war. What happened af ter that was not really avant garde any more. It was a recuperation, to try to bring it back, and recently we can say an acceleration of those modernist values to a kind of vertiginous wave.

MW: Does it always have to exist in conflict with society at large? Do we always have to " épater les bourgeois "?

HB : No. What do I mean by "post-avant garde"? It means spreading art into society. In some ways the art world is losing sight of what is happening with art nowadays. Post-avant garde means no more masterpieces, no more Picassos. It means networks of collaborations and things bubbling up all over the place. It also means changes in the way art is delivered. It's not simply a matter of getting used to a new delivery system, it's getting used to a new delivery system every week. Now is happening on your cell phone. The thing that used to be a delivery system, the record player for example, is now turning into a musical instrument. So the people that were listening to the records are now playing with the turntables and becoming the musicians. This hothouse environment is that instability that you, Max, were referring to.

MW: How do we equip artists and arts organizations to deal with that? Is it a matter of a mental change?

HB : To make the art of the future is clearly not digitizing our collections of paintings. That's a classic example of what McLuhan called "rear-view mirrorism," where the new technology uses the old technology as its content. For example, when the printed press came along, bibles were printed. It took another 200 years before the novel emerged. The same thing happened with film. The first that happened is that the novel became the content of film. We're really on the threshold now of discovering what really is going to be possible with new technologies and new delivery systems. What we have to do is enable that research.

MW: Absolutely. I have this vision of what's happening now with technology on the same sort of curve as music. If you think of western music beginning with plain chant in medieval times and ending with Stravinsky, we're probably at plain chant in terms of the technologies curve of development. When so many things are changing "by the day," like you say, what do we do with that?

HB : You want to dance on the curl of the wave. If you were into illuminated manuscripts in the 1500s, you were in trouble. It's a matter of really trying to do something with the new technologies that you can't do with anything else. The musical performance this morning by Raylene Campbell was a perfect example of that. It's very easy to imagine that musical performance being distributed live over the Internet, and perhaps engaging with other performers in other cities, also live, in a kind of random exchange. In fact, that is the kind of musical event that is happening more and more using this new media.

MW: Let's talk about that interaction. We're seeing more and more artists working with scientists. It's like a new renaissance; it hasn't happened this intensely, I think, since the renaissance. Artists are running with scientists in terms of crossing their imaginations.

HB : I think that is true. A lot of disciplinary boundaries are breaking down. Not only are artists working with scientists, but they are also working with farmers, homeless people, or in hospitals. The idea of an artist in a residency in a hospital or a scientific research lab is turning out to be a productive, very fruitful type of engagement.

MW: Take Judith Marcuse's company as an example. It put on a suicide show which was actually saving kids. I remember reading a letter from a girl who had written: "I was going to kill myself. I saw your show. I decided not to." Art is a social act.

HB : I think it is true that art is a social act. It's about taking art out of these old institutional confines and out of the old kind of connaisseurship of the excellence of arts, and bringing arts into the daily life of the community and the world. I was going to say a word about life in the broad sense of it, but I don't want to sound utopian because I don't think that we are in an utopian moment right now.

Not only are we looking at these surveillance systems and this enormous concentration of power and control using electronic technologies, we're seeing the same sort of thing happening with life forms. These enormous banks of information being collected, and that have been collected, in quasi-private hands and all the genetic information, not only about humans but also plants and animals, are increasingly privately owned. The first patent on an animal was granted in 1981. The idea that you can create life forms and patent them, life forms that until now perhaps unimaginable, is a terrifying idea. And that is about culture. Because culture is also a life form.

Culture is what happens in cheese or wine. These things are made with real culture, in a petrie dish with real living culture, and it can often take 100 hundred years to develop. Really good blue cheese doesn't happen overnight. The process is now accelerated tremendously and actually divorced from the soil and the land. This is a very dangerous situation. [So as it becomes commodified and part of this "pensée unique" of globalisation, where everything has a price tag and everything becomes reduced to a horizontal plane of equality, that becomes a sphere around the world, where any resistance against that becomes terrorism, and the most extreme resistance are the resistance of cultures that are extremely different from ours and are abhorrent to ours, but in a sense are a reflection of our own frustration of living in a world where there is no more difference any more, no more outside. So the enemy becomes inside. Osama Bin Laden is not part of them, he's part of us. There's this internal viral thing that's fomenting. The role the artist can play is that of a creative subverter of systems of meaning and control, to go mess with the codes, to destroy old meanings and look for new ones.

MW: Isn't that what's happening with the interaction of art, science and new technology? That new means of communicating and destroying the codes are occurring all the time.

HB : Absolutely. I think we're on the search. I think there's hope for democracy, and artists are a big part of that hope. There's hope for the UN. There's hope that the nation state does have a role to play in the future. But, you really don't feel right now that change is going to come from there. Change is going to come from the street, from below.

MW: Is that why cultural diversity is so important? You've just talked about the steam roller effect of gobalization: isn't cultural diversity at many levels a way to save the planet?

HB : For me, it's the most interesting subject. You can think of cultural diversity in terms of bio-diversity, in terms of what used to be called multiculturalism, and also in terms of the ability of nation states to cr af t and define their own cultural policies. There are various ways of looking at cultural diversity.

One of the questions that is posed in the keynote introduction in the programme is "who will be making the art of the future", and I think that one thing you can say for sure is that most of the people who will be making the art of the future will not be white people. It's worth thinking about that, a lot. It's worth trying to engage that and be part of that. I come from a city where over a third of the people are non-white, mostly from Asian populations. That is not reflected when you listen to the CBC or when you visit the museum. However, that is where the art of the future is coming from. That is where the change is coming from, and the change is happening very quickly. And that's a hopeful thing. Trying to figure out the way that works of collaboration and communication between informed individuals can actually create a meaningful democracy for the planet in the future, means getting out there and being curious and generous about other people and engaging that very diverse world. It's interesting when you think about the situation vis-a-vis Iraq. Who's on board? It's the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia: the English speaking world. What we're talking about is the terrorism of the English language on the rest of the world. That also has to be considered.

 MW: We've got to recognize the demographic shift that is occurring. I live in the same city as you, Hank, and it's quite clear. We're living in a very different Vancouver than the one 30 years ago. Tie that, Hank, to this idea of new democracy of access which accompanies the new technology.

HB : You know, one has to be careful about the notion of "democracy of access." It's very easy to be a technological utopian, to believe that the new technology is going to put publishing power in the hands of everybody and we'll be out there communicating in this wonderful new democratic world. Yeah! That's partly true, but it's also true that we're now seeing an unprecedented concentration of power and control that is enabled by the same technology. What happens is that you have these two movements growing in opposite directions at the same time. One is towards more control, towards "1984," and the other towards more diffusion and more democracy. It's not a hopeless situation. If you look at the history of the computer, the desktop computer, the WWW , none of those were corporate strategies. IBM thought the idea of the desktop was insane and that no one would be interested in typing on a typewriter and have it appear on a TV set. It was thought of as a crazy idea! Video games, which now are a bigger industry than Hollywood, were created by hackers working af ter hours. The WWW was invented by a college student. The power of the individual to transform and make a difference is really key.

In the context of the CCA this is not to be forgotten. There has been a great pressure on the CCA over the years to represent the so-called cultural industries, to represent the corporate decision-making bodies within the arts. I'm happy to see though that the individual creator is the centrepiece. That's very important. It is the individual dancer, the individual poet, who are the engines of the whole thing.

MW: Ok, but what does this democracy of access mean to notions of excellence. Who judges? Should people judge?

HB : Well, sometimes you have to judge. My teacher had a wonderful theorem that he called the principle of equivalence. He said: "in the unfolding of the universe over all times, all these are things that come up and down, there are three things that are equivalent in this huge creative process: either a thing is well-made, or it's badly made, or it's not made." He'd then proceed to extrapolate this into a whole system of dealing with the world. But it is not about those kinds of decisions. Sometimes you have to judge. If you're a critic or on a jury...

MW: Will there be a the role for a judge or critic if everyone has access to creativity and everyone is an artist?

HB : I think so, yes. Artists are the ones who should judge. In other words, we should have jury by peers. That should be part of a new federal cultural policy. That should be a basic principle along with arms length. Why? Because the artists are the ones who are really engaged in the most sustained and critical reflexion on what is the meaning of communication, politics, technology, perception. Artists are the ones who studied the history of all that. They are the ones who think deeply about it and have come up with the most provocative engagement about it.

I give you one example. I run a centre in Vancouver, The Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A), and we just gave an exhibition to an artist called Mo Sa'lemy. He's brilliant. He teaches Web design and has a very fast mind. Right now, he runs a shop called Database , which is very successful and very cool. It is one of these little shops that, when you walk in, you can't tell what it is. They've got dj turntables you can rent, Internet access, they sell clothes by local fashion designers, jewellery, paintings, and they have a little art gallery in the back. They're beside another store that's a combination hair design, florist and cast iron furniture. This is the way it's going. It's very creative. You could say that's exiting; that's the art of the future. Well, no. Mo did a show for us at the Centre A which was all images of Ayatollah Khomeni, which he presented in a very dead pan way without taking a position. It provoked really intense debate and strong audience participation both for and against the images. Mo said to me: "you know this is it. This what I should be doing with my life", and I have to agree. I think Database is really cool, but actually to take something and push it to a level that has nothing to do with commerce, that is a pure intellectual pursuit, is really what art can do. And it's extremely important to our future as a nation. I like your three pillars idea: culture, health and education. The more you think about it, they blend into one. Don't they?

MW: They sure do. Let's come back to my blue skying of about where we might go technologically. If we see an increasing sophistication of delivery systems, what would that mean to the centralisation of art production or museum and gallery access?

HB : Well, two things: decentralization and centralization. What it means first of all if you are designing your web site is interactivity. The Web site is not just a showcase where you present your works to the world. The Web site is a forum where people that visit the Web site can actually contribute to the discourse and the construction of meaning. That's the creative use of media. This is not a new idea. Berthol Brecht was the first person who put it out in his essay in radio. Radio is right now just a means of distribution of information but communication has to be two ways. The wonderful thing about the telephone, and it's extension the Internet, is that it enables two-way, and multi-way, communication. That's the way to make it work.

Centralization: will you see it? Yes you will. Why? Because of Jack Valenti and the distributors of American films among others. American films and media are the U.S.' biggest exports. The United States wants the culture sector to be on table of any trade negotiation. There is a huge pressure out there for culture to be regarded as just another product and to be opened up to free market competition. When that happens, when the pressure to make that happen is inexorable - it's like privatizing health it's the same kind of pressure- when or if that happens, then suddenly the British Arts Council will be regarded as unfair competition as well as the CBC, and the various other forms of state sponsored culture. It's very important to oppose that. There is a tremendous trend towards the centralization of the delivery of culture. And it's one that is not favouring creativity; it's one that's favouring the same old thing. There wasn't an original thing that came out of Hollywood in years. All they've got is something they know how to make money with, and they don't want anyone else to come up with any other ideas. They want to keep control over the movie theatres and the distribution networks, and they are doing this more and more and more.

I suppose the good news in all of this is while we hear that governments are losing and corporations are taking over, in recent months, it seems like the opposite. Corporations don't seem to be capable of taking care of their own internal af fairs, let alone running the world. They're collapsing. Mega mergers may not be a good thing. You've got these guys on boards of directors that don't have a clue about the widgets they manufacture or how to run the business. So it's a volatile situation and I believe enough in human creativity and ingenuity that I don't think that attempts to centralise it and control it will ever succeed.

MW: You mention radio and the fact that it is today a one-way communication system. You mention that it began as an interactive medium. Do you believe that interactivity is going to be a more important role for arts organisations in the future?

HB : Oh yes. Yes. I think so.

MW: Because they are the delivery system at the moment.

HB : Yes, but the accepted knowledge now about museums and museums studies is that they are no longer storehouses of treasures. That's a colonialist old fashion model. More and more museums are places where people meet and where people participate in what goes on in museum. I think that interactivity is very important.

From the floor: Do you think that continual change in hardware and software there's an immerging issue about that data extinction? It's beginning to appear that if you commit to new media, you have ten to twenty years access only to whatever it is that you have done. In addition, the emergence of email is going to be a nightmare for future biographers. When the head of Kodak digital says that if I have a digital image that I care about then I would output it to film because digital is not permanent and I feel that the issue of data extinction is going to be influencing what occurs in the arts dramatically.

HB : Yes, that is definitely true. But I went to a copyright workshop once where the lawyer said: "yeah, sure! Information wants to be free, but don't underestimate the capability of lawyers and judges to make sure that it isn't." Here you've got a system being headlined in the newspaper that is going to listen to your phone call made five years ago. In that case, there doesn't seem to be much problem in preserving the digital information. It can be done. Let me talk outside the box for a moment here. Don't forget that the silicon chip is ceramic. So how about inscribing all the digital stuff in bone china. That'll preserve it good!

The other way to look at it is to say that's there is a lot of stuff that won't get preserved in all of this. But isn't it a little bit like a totem pole in Haida Gwaii? You build the thing, it sits in the forest, it composts, and it goes back into the system. Then you reinvent it, and you do it all over again. Culture evolves in that way. I'm in favour of preservation. In fact, the preservation of our electronic heritage needs to be part of a coherent policy. Such policies that have been executed in France, Germany and the U.S., quite successfully. We're at the brink of it in Canada. We really need to address that, and I think there are ways to do so.

MW: I wanted to wind this down by going back to where we began. When is Now. The future is here. We are there now. Should we be scared or thrown or both or what?

HB : We should be both. I would say that the key thing here: Now is a time share. In other words, Now is about relationship. That's happening all over the place. For example, I just bought some new accounting software. I'm talking to the supplier on the 1-800 number and they say, "oh, the software is free." I answer, "great!" Then they add, "it's just going to cost you $29 a month for the service contract." You don't buy a product anymore, you buy a relationship with a supplier. It's about relationship, about sharing the use of whatever it is your permanent collection consists. The future is really about relationships and about individuals working with each other.

MW: And is that how we deal both with the challenges and the opportunities of what's coming?

HB : I think so.

MW: How would you characterize these relationships? What qualities do you need for them? Generosity, Openess?

HB : Yes, I have a tri-city system: curiosity, generosity, and felicity. Three "city". Curiosity is very important; it is important to be curious about what's outside of your world and to find out about it. Generosity is about using the talents you have and the genius each of us has and share them . Felicity is to proceed with joy in spite of the challenges.

MW: Hank, thank you. If we can get that message across to the world, we'd have it sold. Thank you.