Art as the Logo of Global Cities

Transcription

1 *The following article appeared in print in TICINO MANAGEMENT (April 2015) Art as the Logo of Global Cities In Lugano, at a Convention, International-Level Experts Discuss the Role of Culture that Identifies the Urban Fabric in the Era of Globalisation. Our cities are undergoing a transformation. Once venues of work and living, they have increasingly turned into hubs of cultural enticement and leisure activity. And because they are increasingly the places where a majority of the world's population congregates now and will congregate even more in the future, it is vitally important that we ask ourselves what kind of quality of life we want to take hold there. As we look at current trends we see that a central role in the socio-cultural and economic growth will be the space they will be able to devote to creative activities. This is the conclusion that emerged from an interesting and much-followed convention held in Lugano on 4 March last under the title Art + City = ArtCity?, conceived and produced by Maria Elena Rudolf, the founder and president of Rudolf Global Ini tiatives (RGI), a private company with twenty-five years of experience in the world of art, created as a platform for the exchange of opinions and perspectives by easing communication between the world of art and the public at large. The conclusion we've mentioned earlier is an open question that everyone political authorities and simple citizens alike is called upon to ponder. And we do so here by re-evoking the main moments of the event. Everything Grew Out of Art Basel. The role and success in the world-wide promotion of art garnered by Lorenzo Rudolf the moderator of the Lugano meet make him a guru in this field. His personal experience as Director of Art Basel from 1991 through 2000, inventor of Art Basel Miami Beach, creator of the first international fair of contemporary art in Shanghai and now of a similar project in Singapore (Art Stage Singapore) has moved right along with the emergence on the world stage of a winning concept: the centrality of branding in the promotion of art events. What happened for Art Basel transformed into an international brand and world-class event has been repeated in the various institutions where he operated. The look onto the international art scene, to which he introduced us through this convention, has been extremely rich of stimuli and surprises. From the Nineties onward he commenced we have seen an explosion. Contemporary art has become a world-wide phenomenon and the production hubs are no longer the traditional, i.e. the Western ones, but they are scattered all over the world of the art market as a new form of investment: the higher the prices, the greater the artists. Then came the great crisis of 2008 and everybody thought that the bubble would deflate. But and therein lies the surprise it didn't turn out that way. Contemporary art became a world-wide phenomenon and the production centres are no longer the traditional, Western ones but are now scattered all over the world. This is a fact not only of culture, but of values as well, and for many cities it is also an important economic factor. Thus we witness today a competition among the cities and capitals of the world to become hubs of activity tied to predominantly contemporary culture and arts. It is out of these considerations, then, that his first question to the speakers arose. How Much Art Do We Need? Hans d'orville, special adviser to the Director General of UNESCO, starts out by saying There is no limit to this need because art goes hand in hand with the spreading of culture; it is the blood of culture. But first, we need to define the concept of art: not merely painting and sculpture, but (also) ballet, theatre, cinema, eco -art, kinetics. Diversity is important: a city with these diverse forms of art is dynamic and must mirror the varied make-up of its population. The urbanisation we are moving toward d'orville goes on saying, re-launching the leitmotiv of the introduction is, together with

2 globalisation, one of the key moments of our century that interests the arts as well. It's not just a globalisation of the market, but also of the various styles of art and of their interaction. This does not mean merely that we must sit down to contemplate various manners of producing art in one country or another, but rather that a very important interaction is taking place between diverse forms of art and artists. For thousands of years they have portrayed human emotions and experiences on a genuine level. Art conveys a vast range of individual feelings, from joy to the deepest hurts, to understanding, to anger, and it gives us access to our most secret inner feelings. But what does this mean for a city? It means transmitting education, inspiration, awareness, a sense of identity and belonging for those who live in a particular area. It means bringing together diverse ethnic groups, persons, countries; shaping new units that didn't exist earlier. We must think in terms of art on two levels. At a micro level, art plays a part in our lifestyles through the material things, decorations and objects with which we surround ourselves; but on a macro level we live in a new era, in an era of creative economy. Investing in Art Creates Spin-Off. To validate this concept Hans d'orville points to the economic data. In the past ten years we have observed a new phenomenon for both national and global economies: about 15% of GDP is generated by creative activities. The political and historical implications of this trend are enormous. On a national level arts and culture will be seen increasingly as the soft power of a nation the only one really capable of functioning in peace-time and the politicians who are aware of this will increasingly integrate culture and the arts in their projects. This is already happening quite visibly in China. China accurately counts how many books are translated, how many movies are produced for foreign consumption and vice versa, being fully aware that art carries one into a position in which one would not be without it. An example? The city of Shanghai: Shanghai keeps an annual count of how much was paid in taxes by creative economy entities, and draws inspiration from this for investments in buildings intended for creative activities, such as fashion houses, galleries, the motion picture industry and museums. China has invested into four thousand new museums; in 2010 it had already completed them and tomorrow it will have six or seven thousand of them, becau se it is moving ahead at break-neck speed. Hence something new has taken hold in these years on the international scene: there is the perception that art represents power. And more: At UNESCO we have created a network called The Creative Cities Network. It encompasses several categories ranging from gastronomy to movies, to fashion, to styling, to industrial design and so forth. The cities that get to join this network have a bounce factor, i.e. an economic return factor, between 5 and 8 percent of GDP. Similarly, a city that has a monument entered in the list of World Heritage sites generates a 30% larger return of tourism revenues. When you are in these lists you can transform your city into a more dynamic and creative and pleasant place to live in. Lugano, Open City. In many cities art has become a very sizeable economic growth factor. Lorenzo Rudolf points out that In Beijing the contemporary arts district has for many years been the most visited tourist feature of the city, after the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China. In Europe, a city like Berlin is building its own brand as an art venue. And this turns it into one of the most important destinations, on a par with London and Paris. The question that arises spontaneously is, then: what other part besides the economic one does art play in the creation and shaping of a city's image? The answer is provided by Michel Schindhelm, former theatre director in Basel, Berlin and consultant and cultural director in Dubai until Surprisingly, Schindhelm brings the discourse back to the territory of Lugano. The title I would like to give this convention is 'Lugano, open city'. The discourse here is far more complex than when we talk about Dubai or other new cities that are just at the beginning of

3 their history. In 2006 Dubai was already larger than Milan, but it had no cultural building or institution; a situation entirely different from Lugano. How can you, then, transport the experience made in big cities to others that are much smaller, such as Lugano? The starting points are not Shanghai or New York, but one should instead point to the potentialities that are already existing. If we talk about city marketing it is really important to show oneself as a city of art and culture, and by art one should as has already been noted understand all forms of artistic expression: theatre, literature, dance, motion pictures, performing arts. In this sense the September opening of the new cultural hub the LAC is a fundamental stage of the process. Brand-Cities, Labs and Hubs. But Lugano also has other potentials, says Schindhelm. There are three kinds of cities: the ones you'd define as Power-House Transactors, which continually generate new contents, create a trend and wield enormous influence in the scene of arts and culture. New York is one such, Paris, London and Berlin were like that. Berlin is unique because it has experienced an enormous cultural development even though it's on the brink of bankruptcy: the poorest major city in Germany. It has been possible only thanks to an enormous involvement of federal aid; Ticino, too, would probably need outside help for it to become a cultural hub. But Berlin is also a city of the second kind: creative laboratories as venues of experimentation that attract people from all over the world. And then there is a third kind, the Hubs; cities that aren't necessarily big, but that connect other areas, cultures, like Dubai: not huge metropolises like the Asian ones, but capable of connecting the whole world, through financial services, tourism, the cosmopolitan society of residents that it has created for itself during the last few years. This could be happening for Lugano, which enjoys a particular position among the greater Swiss cities, a bridge between Northern Europe and Italy around the corner that opens up the doors to the Mediterranean world. Art and Public and Public Art. When talk nowadays focuses on public art, people think not so much about its function as an aesthetic ornament as of its role in making up the conscience of a community. Christoph Schenker, professor at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (Zurich Arts University) in Zurich, who has for quite some time dealt with the interaction between the arts and the public among other things through a research project currently underway in nine major cities world-wide is of the opinion that contemporary public art should not offer itself as an object of passive enjoyment, as has been the case from the beginnings of the last century in terms of monuments and memorials, but should itself be capable of producing changes. There have been many ways of understanding this participative process, but what is substantially being done in the current project is getting artists, curators, techni cians and scientists involved, calling on them to discuss and to take part in this new con cept of public art. We increasingly see public art not as a product to be composed and offered in a shared space, but as a way of facing topics that can be personal, economic and social. Schenker brings an example of this itinerary through the image of a monument by a Beijing artist Sislej Xhafa, a former refugee who now lives in New York that has been placed in Zurich neighbourhood populated by the highest concentration of foreigners and particularly of Albanians. It is a giant slingshot that somehow supports a sort of seesaw, something halfway between a sort of weapon against the poorest and weakest people and a love bench. It's an example explains the speaker of how a work can offer itself as catalyst of a process of identification and at the same time of refusal; a critical image of how integration occurs along the lines of a pervasive and all too speedy Western model. Through art we want to tackle social and political issues, but above all create a public debate even in the face of diss ent and learning how to live with it. Dissent needs to be integrated in our concept of coexistence and this is a value we want to discuss. A work such as Sislej Xhafa's would not have the same meaning in Lugano or elsewhere, as it was produced for a specific context and to characterize the identity of those who live in a specific area, even in hopes of bringing about changes. But the local and the global are two aspects of the same coin. Along with the local dimension it is equally important that in the process of developing an artistic concept people of different

4 backgrounds coming from varying parts of the globe may confront one another, as is the case in the Zurich project: It doesn't matter whether the experiences from which the artists originate involve wars or struggles for democracy or economic hardships: in the end art is a laboratory of emotions, which expresses universal feelings and needs and lays them out in a dimension aimed at the intellectual and personal roots of a being. Cities Like Open-Air Museums? One of the most famous artists specializing in public art installations is Arne Quinze of Belgium. He was unable to attend the convention because he's engaged in a large installation in Bangkok, but he was interviewed in a video clip about the importance of art and the role art should play today in an urban society. Here's what he said to us: The greatest challenge for me was turning cities into open-air museums and not just bring a few privileged people into a museum or theatre. That is how we can conduct a dialog with our culture, which is the basis of our education. Today's children don't know what art is because it's too far removed from them. Turning the cities into open-air museums is one of the tasks of societies in the future, because our life runs at an insane pace, humanity in relationships is disappearing: we are hyper-connected but we don't know one another. We need to break with all this and if we manage to directly confront ourselves with art, this could allow us to open the discourse to a much broader audience and would enhance our quality of life. Museums and Open-Air Museums. However, not all agree on the concept of museum art as separated from the public. Quite the opposite, notes Schindhelm: there is another kind of public art that cannot be exhibited in the streets but must be absolutely preserved and defended, such as literature which is not consumed in public but is art declined in the public. We must see to it that the new generations go into the museums. Placing the emphasis on open-air art should not overshadow the importance of our cultural heritage. It is something that we tend to underrate, but if we were to capitalize the enormous value of the museums, theatres, libraries and concert halls we have at our disposal there would be enough capital to rebuild Dubai. Education as a Common Thread. The topic of education has in the end been one of the common threads of the convention. Many voices even in a lively dialog with the audience have asked how future generations might be encouraged to connect with the importance of culture in our society. When I went to work in Dubai commented Schindhelm I was struck by the absence of a home-grown cultural foundation. Culture as an asset shared by a nation is a rather recent item in many new areas of the planet and it is something to be digested, absorbed and understood by a majority of the population. And in Europe? If we think things are different here, we are on the wrong track: many of the people born after the year 2000 don't know what we talk about when we speak of art and culture. What, then, does education mean for a city? We need to look at the specific nature of local realities, look at what exists already, at what kind of institutions we have, and take off from there in order to ponder how to distribute culture and art among the new generations. And it is anything but certain that the path engaged in by many metropolises, especially in Asia, is the right one. Among politicians many interests lead to the construction of huge buildings possibly facing a bay known world-wide in the (naïve) conviction that building something that resembles an opera house will automatically result in attracting huge numbers of tourists, global events and whatever more. Conversely, Schindhelm warns against lending weight to the iconic value of the building if doing so operates to the detriment of an organic growth of culture in tune with the identity of a venue. One ought to be critical of an excessive interest for the great architects because their presence can be so influential as to obscure other requirements for education and dissemination of culture and art that are equally compelling. The most important artistic projects and movements of our time did not grow out of the signature of great stars of architecture, but from much more modest situations: just think of Andy Warhol and the once unassuming Greenwich Village neighbourhood in New York, where for fifty years

5 art was at home. It's not a matter of new shiny buildings, but of contents and people. And in order to put his thoughts into context Schmidhelm recalled how, in the beginnings of the past century, the enticing Lugano region was a place of inspiration for artists and movements and how reconnecting with that is still a great opportunity of our time. Thus, rethinking and preserving the creative dimension of art can be one of the conclusions of the convention and the starting point of our future. Mariella Delfanti