marcus westbury

Mid last year I was appointed to the role of Artistic Director of ISEA 2013 in Sydney. I haven’t said too much about around here in part because i’ve been busy doing it and in part because there hasn’t been much to say. Now that proposals are open i thought it might be a good idea to reflect a little on why and how i ended up doing it and what i hope to do with it… 

Considering that about 5 years ago I told anyone who listened that I would never do another festival again many have taken it upon themselves to remind me of the flat out hypocrisy of this. In the intervening years i’ve said no to several offers and enquiries to take on other festival type-gigs down but there was something in the opportunity of ISEA – the International Symposium on Electronic Arts – that made it an easy decision and an exciting opportunity.

From the late 90s when Newcastle’s This Is Not Art festival began through to the end of 2006 when I finished up as Director of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival, I was never not working on a festival – sometimes juggling several other day jobs at the time. There is a particular insanity to devoting a year or two of your life to an event that comes and goes in a little over a week. There is a uniquely empty emptiness when you wake up when it’s all over partly exhausted, partly elated and often asking “was that it?” But there is also something enthralling and terrifying that draws you back.

Part of the reason I thought I wouldn’t be doing it again was the lack of something that actually fitted.  My skills aren’t really suited to the large-scale performing arts or major biennale and that’s what the majority of festivals are based around.  As the opportunity to take on ISEA came up it really caught my attention. ISEA is part conference and symposium and part festival – it is a format that particularly appeals to me. Its success will be measured less in box office numbers and more in the lasting legacies and connections it makes. It comes with a fantastic brief and a great history. It provides an opportunity to position electronic arts and creativity at the centre of Sydney and Australia’s cultural life for a while – a place where I think it increasingly belongs and yet is often under acknowledged. Also, the fact that in 2013 Sydney will become the first place in the world to host ISEA twice after 21 years is also a nice excuse to get electronic art out of its “perpetual tomorrow” and to acknowledge the contribution that artists have made as experimenters, explorers and questioners in creating the world we have today.

The other reason I jumped at the idea of doing ISEA is that I think I have something to bring to it. Both in Australia and internationally there is a sense that it may be time to play with the model and reinvent it. While the community gathers at ISEA is engaging in work and ideas that are fascinating, provocative and at times inspirational the context often doesn’t do them justice. There are so many adjacent communities of artists, experimenters, imagineers and media makers that are not yet part of ISEA that could be as audiences and participants.

We live in a world where creativity, culture and technology are deeply intermeshed and ISEA should sit near the centre and not at the margins of that. My experiences creating festivals and events that connect to some of these audiences will hopefully lead to better contexts, new audiences, and lasting connections between the core of what ISEA does with the possibilities around it. The fact that ISEA’s theme “resistance is futile” – provides a direct invitation – to acknowledges and embraces the idea that electronic arts are increasingly ubiquitous is a great platform from which to do this. It gives us both an excuse and an obligation to connect out to those forms of contemporary media-based creativity that are all around us.

A challenge, for better or for worse, is that I am not an electronic arts specialist. I don’t pretend to be and yet all my projects there is recurring obsession with the ways in which technology is changing creativity and artistic practice in all its forms. Indeed, making a TV series about that idea first took me to ISEA in Singapore back in 2008 and that interest has led to many of Australia’s ISEA those artists have already crossed my path through This Is Not Art, Electrofringe and Next Wave through to my writing and media work.

ISEA 2013 is fortunate to have Ross Harley as chair of the academic advisory committee and Kathy Cleland as chair of the curatorial advisory committee. Both bring a wealth of knowledge and their knowledge, and the teams weare assembling will bring even more. With their help I’m excited about the prospects for curating a compelling platform of ideas, artists and exhibitions and a context that brings a community together more effectively than before and that presents them to a new, excited and engaged audience.

Calls for proposals have now opened so check out the ISEA 2013 web site if you are interested to submit or find out more. 

Tags:   ANAT · Art and technology · ISEA 2013 · ISEA SydneyNo Comments.

Earlier this year, the Federal Government called for submissions in response to their draft discussion paper on the forthcoming National Cultural Policy. Being quite time-deprived at the time i hastily cobbled together a response – somewhat compiled from other things that i written in the past and probably desperately in need of a good editor. I have pasted it in full below…

Tags:   Arts in Australia · Australia Arts Policy · Australia Council Review · cultural policy · National Cultural Policy · National Cultural Policy in Australia · Simon Crean1 Comment

Recently i had a chance to do a talk about Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia to some staff of the Department of Planning and Community Development in Victoria. They filmed it and it turns out they posted in on YouTube. It’s one of the better captures of a talk i’ve done recently.

[At this point it's worth pointing out that you too can have one of these talks: both I and Renew Australia are available for talks, workshops, training, consultancy, and general advising on these kinds of approaches for communities across Australia and around the world. Drop me a line if you're interested.]

Tags:   Communities in Victoria · DPCD · Marcus Westbury talk · Renew Australia · Renew NewcastleNo Comments.

Thanks, most unexpectedly, to the lovely folks at Virgin Australia who are giving me a Free Trip to New York (i won a competition, would you believe it?) i will be heading state-side again early in the new year. I’m keen to meet with and talk cities, urbanism and geekery with audiences of artists, architects, urbanists, city planners, students and anyone else.

I will be in New York and thereabouts from about the 3rd to the 8th of March then heading to Austin for SXSW interactive from the 9th to 13th of March and then off to San Francisco or thereabouts from the 14th to the 21st before heading back to Australia via LA. I’m really keen to meet people, do talks, generally hang out with interesting types in any of these places or anywhere a short hop from them. Paid gigs definitely encouraged but any all interesting offers will be considered! Will post in more details about plans later but if you’re interested in catching up or have any great suggestions of things to do people to meet then let me know.

Meanwhile i have posted my TEDxNewy talk above and there’s a bit more background on me from my last US trip here, a talk i gave at Project for Public Spaces in New York last year.

Suggestions of people to meet, things to do? Anyone? Contact me here with any suggestions.

Tags:   cities as software · Empty Shops · empty spaces · New York · Project for Public Spaces · Renew Australia · Renew Newcastle · San Francisco · urbanism · USA · Virgin Australia1 Comment

[This essay was originally written for Griffith REVIEW back in 2008. In many respects it is the forerunner of the Renew Newcastle project which did not exist (and i had no intention of creating) at the time that I wrote it. I realised recently that i had never actually published it on this blog so to celebrate the recent launch of Renew Australia I thought it might be time to post it here and release it under creative commons]

What makes a city culturally dynamic? What makes a city the sort of place that people want to visit, move to and explore? What makes a city the sort of place that spits out or draws in artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers? What makes a city culturally desirable and talked about, or a hub of music, literature, media and the arts?

The cultures of cities are far less predictable than their hard infrastructure. You can quantify good transport links, and you can commission public buildings or even the quasi‐scientific art of designing successful communities, yet there are few roadmaps to apply to the hard task of fostering a dynamic successful culture. It is much more than placement of monuments, buildings or transport links.

Cultures aren’t fixed or fixable. They are barely measurable. While you can identify the preconditions that led to Renaissance Italy, early twentieth century Paris, the San Francisco techno‐hippie culture, Hong Kong cinema, the Seattle grunge explosion, Melbourne laneways, the music scenes of Manchester and now Glasgow, or the anarchic wonder of early ‘noughties’ Berlin, it will never be possible to replicate them.

They are a product of living things and become living things themselves. They’re fluids, not solids. Cultures flow. Cultures surge. Cultures stagnate, inundate and flood. Cultures pool and freeze, and in doing so they create another landscape in cities, countries and continents as tangible as the legacy water leaves on smooth plains and jagged mountains on the ever‐changing earth. The very act of quantifying these preconditions risks undermining the vitality that produced them.

They aren’t transferable. Culture is the process by which we communicate with each other, exchange ideas, explore possibilities, and collect and curate our personal and collective histories. They are the means by which we learn something of each other’s lives and experiences, and reflect, respond to and reject inner and outer worlds.

For cities, though, culture takes on another role. Culture is an aspiration. It is a driver of status, and status is bound to wealth and prestige. Global cities increasingly aspire to cultural prestige for its intangible aura and because they believe it will drive economic growth. Wealthy cities race each other to build grander museums and hoard ever more of the world’s treasures; poorer cities look to cultural renewal for salvation and rejuvenation.

There is no easy way to buy or build a culture. Culture has properties that defy planning. The more you grab at it, freeze it and attempt to set it in its place, the weaker it becomes. Grand buildings, landmarks or monuments are often the legacies and artefacts of profoundly resonant cultures that echo to this day. But they are not catalysts. Today they are far more likely to be signs of aspiration than achievement, and are no more likely to produce culture than tyre tracks would be to produce a car.

Cultural evolution has more in common with divination than design. A city can’t build a culture any more than it can build an idea, a thought process or a polar bear. Cultures emerge from the spontaneous, temporary nature of human motivations, passions, interactions and enthusiasms. They often form in rebellion and opposition rather than by deliberation and design. They are unique and idiosyncratic. They result from adaptation and evolution, and they have a tendency to be strongest in the places where no one is looking or particularly wants them to be.

All is not lost. Once you let go of the idea that cultures are constructed, new possibilities emerge. Cultures can be nurtured. Cities can seed and feed culture. They can give it somewhere to live, to move, to breed, to grow. And when it fails (as it often does), they can provide fertile ground to go to seed in. Cultures are living things – they die as often from ill‐thought‐out initiatives to preserve, protect or resuscitate them as they do from starvation. They live in a complex ecosystem of regulation, regeneration, tax laws, economic decline and resurgence, subsidy, anarchy, inspiration, history, technology and – most importantly of all – the unpredictable, unquantifiable and subjective fertiliser of human creativity.

Great cultural cities are those which allow their cultures to flow rather than freeze.

[Read more →]

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Just when i thought that my short lived TV career had gone to the great archive in the sky the fairfax web site currently has both series of Not Quite Art available on live streaming I’m not exactly sure how or why, but i’m not complaining. Unfortunately there is no function to embed them and from what i can tell from here they only work within Australia.

Both series are 3 episodes. Series one is essentially an exploration of the question where culture comes from – it’s essentially an argument that is also manifested practically in projects like Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia (coming soon – but more about that later). Series two is really about the impact of technology on culture – how it’s changing how it’s made, how it circulates, who the makers and audiences are – which, oddly enough – will probably be manifest in my other big project of the moment which is the gig as Director of ISEA 2013 (but more about that one soon too!).

Anyhow, if you are in Australia (or can convince the SMH web site that you are) and have an idle 3 hours to kill you can watch both series here.

Tags:   ISEA 2013 · Not Quite Art · Renew Australia · Renew Newcastle1 Comment

IN POLITE company in arts circles these days, you do not mention the “e” word. No, not e-books or e-commerce or the other electronic innovations running a wrecking ball through Australia’s much loved big-box retailers. The uncomfortable e-word in the arts is “elite”.

The arts are in a bind when it comes to elitism. Once central to the very idea of the arts, elitism now seems best not talked about. On one level, that notion of being elite, of being separate and better, is unashamedly (or not ashamedly enough) a reason why many gravitate to the arts. There are plenty of people who genuinely believe that “the arts”, and some art forms more than others, make for a better class of person.

I’m not a better class of person. I tend to see culture with a more inclusive bent. The notion of the arts as disproportionately for an elite sits very uncomfortably. That particular kind of elitism is exhibit A in why much thinking around the arts is dysfunctional and alienated from many Australians.

It’s easy to get stuck between two different meanings of the word elite. The first and relatively unproblematic definition is the idea of elite as the “best” of something. While it opens up plenty of practical debates about exactly who gets to determine it, the idea that the arts should aspire to producing stuff that is somewhere between pretty good and downright awesome is not particularly contentious.

On the reverse side is another idea of “elite”  the idea that reserves certain status for the privileged few. Historically, this has been a major part of what “the arts” have been about. It’s probably why every single ticket to the nation’s symphony orchestras is subsidised to the tune of $137, while many excellent musicians couldn’t get $100 to produce an album.

Arts lovers are quick to point out that Australians are mostly comfortable with the idea of “elite” sportspeople. Yet the comparisons between how arts and sport approach the term can be misleading if not disingenuous.

Australia takes a pretty broad view as to which sports are elite  inclusive of any with television coverage or medal tallies involved. Every Australian need not follow aerial skiing for there to be a consensus that we like having Australians who are good at it. We don’t generally suggest that particular sports are more elite as a matter of policy.

The arts have tended to approach it from the opposite end  beginning with the assumption that certain art forms are more elite than others and working back.

It’s simpler in sport, where the competition itself shows who is the best and funding has, to some extent, rewarded medals, participation, interest and success. In the arts, any simple measure of “Are we any good at it?” and “Does it need a subsidy?” is complicated by who gets to decide.

There is a legitimate role for nurturing the elite in the arts, but there are dangers. One danger is detachment from the living cultures around us. Cultures are plural, so striving to be great needs to be less about elevating select elite cultures and more about supporting a range.

There’s a bigger danger, and it, too, has a parallel in sport. Tennis star turned Liberal federal MP John Alexander last year convincingly argued why Australia is producing fewer great tennis players. The problem was not underinvestment in the elite or our choice of Davis Cup captains. The problem was Australia has been losing its tennis courts. Alexander estimated that Sydney alone had lost more than 2000 courts in the past 15 years.

The same thing has occurred in the arts. Places to rehearse, to play, to exhibit, to try  and fail  are disappearing, swallowed up in a property bubble or regulated out of existence. If you had been focusing exclusively on the elite, you might not have noticed. But greatness will always need somewhere to practice.

Tags:   Art v. Sport · Elitism · John Alexander · Opera · orchestras · Property bubble · rent · tennis · tennis courts18 Comments

TECHNOLOGY is creating a strange paradox when it comes to art and culture. It’s expanding our options but narrowing our choices. It’s a phenomenon that has consequences far and away from the online world and one that is even threatening the business models and viability of some companies and art forms.

Recently, the National Endowment for the Arts in the US released a report that attributed much of the decline in the audiences for large-scale traditional arts to what it called the “decline of the omnivore“. For the NEA, “omnivores” — culturally speaking — are people who involve themselves in a broad range of cultural activities. They have long made up a large proportion of the audience for what is traditionally regarded as “the arts”, but the trend over the past few years is that there are fewer of them and they are seeing fewer things.

A decade ago, American author Ted Gup wrote about what he called the “end of serendipity” — the idea that in a world of information it is becoming harder, not easier, to learn about things that we weren’t already looking for.

As the internet, social and niche media take over from mass media as the way that people find and share things, it is becoming harder to be an omnivore. The more we get recommendations from those we select for ourselves, the less we find out about things we don’t already know about.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the internet and social media. You’ll easily find me on Twitter and Facebook. I’m neither a techno utopian nor a curmudgeonly sceptic, but social media are changing the way we create and consume culture in ways both good and bad.

On the upside, I’m enamoured of the proliferation of small-scale cultural production; I love that creation is outgrowing consumption as the way people engage with art and culture; and I’m enriched by the constant conversation and connectivity. But the downside goes beyond simply the changing demographics and behaviour of arts audiences.

Away from the arts, consider a highly polarising issue such as global warming and the carbon tax. The mass media — at their (occasional) best — provide a range of viewpoints. They allow you to hear conflicting arguments and compare different points of view. Online, it is all too easy to follow links, read arguments, and only hear from people who validate and reinforce your own point of view. It is easy to live in a self-reinforcing bubble — regardless of which side you are on — and there are real dangers in a world that is so siloed.

In the arts, compare reading this article in the pages of the newspaper to online. They are very different experiences and processes. In the paper you could well be reading this almost unintentionally: because it’s your lunch break, because you were reading the piece next to it or because you happened to open to this page. If you are reading this online, chances are that someone sent you here or that you were searching for it. Online, you are less likely to view the articles around it and you are more likely to read what is most similar to this next.

I’m not too worried for arts marketing. Smart arts organisations are finding new ways of building communities around the content and not the form of the work. While audiences may be less inclined to sample from a range of cultural organisations, they are more capable than ever of following an interest — in design, a musician, computer games or history — into a gallery or performing arts centre. As a result, arts programming and marketing that leads with content and not form is growing massively.

But I can’t help but fear for the loss of serendipity. So many of my significant cultural turning points were mistakes or accidents — the product of discovering something by mistake, of reluctantly being dragged along to a thing I had no intention of seeing, of having my interest captured by something out of left field. Of discovering and enjoying the unexpected — sometimes in spite of myself. It would be a terrible thing to lose that.

Tags:   carbon tax · global warming · NEA · niche cultures · self-referential culture · self-selection · Serendipity · Ted Gup · the decline of the omnivore7 Comments

JUST before Easter, Arts Minister Simon Crean announced that advertising guru and philanthropist Harold Mitchell (pictured) would undertake a major review of private sector support for the arts in Australia. The review will look at the range of existing government programs and incentives for philanthropic support for the arts in Australia and abroad, such as the Australia Business Arts Foundation and the Australia Council’s Art Support Australia, and make recommendations for tweaks and reforms.

At first look it is a promising and appropriate announcement. There are valuable arts programs in Australia to foster private philanthropy, but there is also perceived duplication, confusion between different programs, areas where badly designed incentives discourage private support.

Yet the timing raises fears Crean may be the latest arts minister so sidetracked by the trees that he misses the forest. Mitchell’s review is a new step towards the Rudd/Gillard governments’ long-delayed attempts to develop a national cultural policy. The decision to look at philanthropy in isolation and before finishing that process puts the cart before the horse. The role of private philanthropy is surely a function of the unanswered question of what exactly needs to be fostered.

Harold Mitchell himself will, we hope, bring with him the talent for innovative and forward-looking strategy developed through his business career as the nation’s savviest media buyer and not merely the Rolodex he would have filled as chairman, president and benefactor of the likes of the National Gallery of Australia, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne International Festival of Arts. While those roles demonstrate a rare depth of commitment they are also extremely atypical organisations at the periphery and not the centre of the 21st-century Australian arts experience.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, at last count about 3.5 million Australians  or 22 per cent of the adult population  were engaged in some professional work in arts and cultural activities. Most artists never work for, in, or with major arts companies, festivals and organisations, yet the philanthropy deck is stacked heavily in their favour.

Government funding of major companies has grown consistently at the expense of individual artists and yet it is among small-scale practitioners that participation and economic activity is surging. From 2004 to 2007 (the last period for which detailed data is available) there was a 117 per cent rise in people working professionally in photography, 93 per cent in drawing, 93 per cent in computer-based art, 76 per cent in painting, 96 per cent in textiles and 113 per cent in other craft and an astonishing 204 per cent in jewellery.

Yet in funding, philanthropy and policy terms, most of those 3 million-plus people are the forgotten constituency and seem likely to remain so.

The Mitchell review must recognise that the momentum and the most interesting work is taking place away from the major arts companies. The best initiatives in philanthropy are responding to this. Initiatives such as AbaF’s Australia Cultural Fund (allowing donors to give to individual artists rather than large, tax-deductible companies), the proposal by Julianne Shultz and others to establish a Foundation for the Artist to redress the growing imbalance between artists and institutions, and my own experiences through Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia in cajoling property owners to offer up empty buildings to incubate small-scale arts projects, are all motivated in part by responding to a changing reality that the government itself is yet to acknowledge.

We hope Mitchell brings the skills that steered his business through a dynamic media landscape to furthering those efforts.

Tags:   Art Support Australia · Australia Business Arts Foundation · Australia Cultural Fund · Foundation for the artist · Harold Mitchell · Jewellery · Julianne Shultz · Melbourne International Festival of Arts · Melbourne Symphony Orchestra · National Cultural Policy · National Gallery of Australia · painting · Periphery v. centre of Australian art world · Philanthropy · Philanthropy review · photography · Renew Australia · Renew Newcastle · Simon Crean · textiles9 Comments

For more action of me doing crazy hand gestures check out these highlights from the recent User generated cities forum held in Adelaide. The other speakers in this session were Teresa Crea, Tim Horton, John McTernan and John Wardle of ‘buy John Wardle a beer day‘ fame who i managed to buy a belated beer for on the day.

More information on the forum can be found in this overview from the excellent Renew Adelaide blog.

If you have any trouble with the embedding watch the video here.

Tags:   John McTernan · John Wardle · Renew Adelaide · Renew Newcastle · Teresa Crea · Tim Horton · User generated citiesNo Comments.