I must confess I feel a little bit like Little Miss Sunshine after all these wonderful presentations I'm standing here on this empty stage I have no slides no music no PowerPoint and I'm sitting here with my cards uh with a speech I didn't memorize but in any case I really hope to inspire you to reflect more on the important role that art has to play in society and to do so without images which is something very very difficult for someone on my vocation all art is quite useless wrote Oscar wild in his preface The Picture
of Dorian Gray it goes without saying that his b Mo are always quite tongue and cheek but what I want to draw your attention to here is the word quite it indicates that declaring art as utterly useless was a step too far even for wild how to better explain then that art is something of an unnecessary necessity imagine for a moment a world without art and culture without music without Cinema without dance Opera literature poetry that world would be a very very dull Place devoid of imagination the one thing that distinguishes us as human beings
from other species without art the banality of reality would be intolerable or to paraphrase nche we have art in order not to perish from the truth what I want to talk about today is the role of Contemporary Art in Society why is Art important and I'm not talking here about the 1% of the art world the handful of artists selling for millions of dollars to billion billionaire oligarchs which is a very tiny minority of what constitutes the art world but about the art that is engaged with Society at large and engaging also with the key
issues that affect us all today because that is the art that matters today more and more artists are inspired by reality than by the formal properties of that reality as we know them colors shapes Beauty in today's complex world I believe that Art For Art's Sake is insufficient it is the importance of another kind of art that I would like to talk about and this is what we call socially and politically engaged art artists working in this realm the realm of the sociopolitical use different media to express themselves from traditional media like sculpture and painting
to film video performance and installation to deal with key questions such as democracy civil and human rights capitalism the economy migration and Mobility the environment and the commons and a whole host of such issues they strive to provide a Counterpoint to the prevailing images of power and also to the stereotypes that are fed To Us by the media since the time of the Enlightenment art has a very long history of Engagement with the political art is in a sense political as it is about a person's views and freedom to act freedom to express themselves so
art is always about taking a position there have been moments in history where art was put to the service of politics and Society in a program in which the gap between the two was temporarily bridged one can immediately think of example of the Russian avangard but this effect has been always very hard to pinpoint and to quantify and times have changed so that what does art do what can it do and why is it important the fact of the matter is that it is very very difficult to pigeon hole and categorize what exactly art is
and how it functions that is its beauty and that is is its ungraspable value for want of a better word it is impossible to both quantify and qualify how art affects those who see it because it works in mysterious latent and very subtle ways that's why it's always such an uphill struggle to convince politicians of Arts funding to convince them that the value that is the importance the significance and the Merit of art cannot be judged by popular consensus and numbers alone and this is because artart allows for something that cannot be defined therefore one
can never predict the ways in which it will affect people change people's minds or influence their subsequent Behavior as such it's a subtle power that changes the world one perception at a time and that is why art is very often seen and rightly so as a threat by the powers that be the British art artist Anthony gorley began by defining art as follows art is about one person's expectation of and their use of their own freedom to act art is optimistic because it makes a person it makes a statement that one person can change the
world even if that world exists on a tiny piece of paper 5 by seven in art as an act of shared communication is in a small way saying I make the world I don't simply inherit it in making this world what does art do then art can change the way we think it can crack open cemented opinions and it challenges the given it looks at the world with a critical eye it opens up Horizons but beyond those which are familiar to us it challenges standardized or atic views of the world it exposes that which is
often hidden under the carpet it reaches further than the accepted and the known and Beyond the inevitabilities that we have been told we cannot escape art functions as the conscience of society the best art should ask you what you think prompt you to ask questions and put you into doubt art testifies to the power of the human imagination the unique capacity of human to project to dream and to reflect on things not only as they are but as they could or should be in a world driven by popular consensus including for example the homogenization of
globalization and the general dominance of conservative values art Advocates difference and gives voice to the other with a capital O it highlights important ideas problems and issues that are sidelined or silenced due to political or economic interests art functions as the barometer of society as a moral and intellectual resistance and as a friend of mine the South African artist Kendall gear says art shakes the tree and then all the monkeys fall out art doesn't change the world on a macro level it changes the world on a micro level in that sense its importance cannot be
measured art changes things in very subtle ways it is a form of soft power artists themselves are a kind of free floating intelligence independently operating untied individuals who are free of the normative thinking of their environment and are able to act independently of social or class realities art can foster dialogue reconciliation engagement solidarity connectivity and understanding of those with opposing views I'm convinced that if more people engaged with it the world would be a much better place in that sense art should also have a much more important place in school curriculums and education artistic imagination
and creativity are not added bonuses for society they're not the icing on the cake they are integral to the human spirit and to human aspirations an essential part of what makes us Human Art thinks about the world in its current state and it can reimagine the world as as it should be more importantly art is the Last Frontier of unregulated free expression which is particularly important at a time when the commons public space and information are increasingly being privatized and regulated by the neoliberal order in that sense art is born of and Advocates Freedom artists
always see a world full of opportunities chances potentials possibilities and Prospects their ability to go beyond the possible and into the imaginable should be an example and an inspiration for us all and as I started with Oscar wild I'd also like to finish with him no great artist sees things as they really are if he did he would cease to be an artist Open Your Eyes to Art and surprise yourself thank you
