The infrastructure of mind
Every year, when it is clear who gets the coveted artist salary, the comment sections of icelandic news media outlets go wild. The opinion, that the icelandic government should cancel this funding program is immediately worded, shouted, written about, like a tremor with aftershocks that lasts a few days. Until the next big controversial news break. This opinion is though indeed upheld with a lot of passion and is the reason for this article. I would like to express some thoughts, some wanderings about why the icelandic artist salary, which aren‘t particularly high in the context of the Icelandic expenditure (and return those expenditures with profit), are so controversial and how we do think about art.
Practicalities
What is a work of art? Usually we think about art as a product, for an example, a record, a painting or a book and that is a basis for a lot of rage. If artists are producers of a product, just like any producer in another field of work, then why does he need funding? Why is he exempt from the natural laws of the market and aided by the state?
These would be reasonable questions if not for the different nature of works of art. Art is no regular product. For an example, it is almost impossible to put a price on a piece of art, even though it is done all the time. How do you put a price on a poem that makes one cry and another one to roll their eyes, or calculate the cost of a record that one connects to the death of a close relative but another one to cringeworthy teenage years? The value of a piece of art is indeed not connected to its utility but in the reactions of the one who witnesses it. The goal of art is to get minds to dwell within it, to stir up some ideas, connections and emotion. This invitation to dwell isn‘t merely exciting and sought after but also has an important role in the creation of our society. What would our ideas about one another be if we had no art to reflect our beings in. How would we reach a common ideological and emotional basis?
Maybe the artists‘ salaries are so controversial because of this strange nature of the product. Art is not practical in any means. You cannot do anything with art, except spend your time within it. Art is not an electric mixer or skin lotion, it does not whip your cream or ease your itch. Art on the other hand gets you to open your mind to new ideas and find that which we have long since decided is the most important in life. Happiness, sympathy, love and laughter, to name but a few. There is nothing practical in a product that causes bursts of laughter or produces tears on a cheek, or what? Does such a product maybe help families thrive, friends to bond? Is art our souls‘ lotion? Does it whip the cream of life?
The economy of inspiration
Everyone enjoys art, and that on a very regular basis. Just think about the songs you sing while out camping, the poems in the funerals of relatives, the movie you watch with popcorn or the music you listen to while you cook dinner. If you enjoy art in any way, then arts funding system benefits you personally. Just like if you eat food, then fundings for farmers are beneficial to you, or if you travel, then the road system and its vast funding benefits you. In short, if you would like to live, and that in a society, then there are all kinds of funding programs and system that help you live that vision, the buttresses of society.
Yes, maybe you don‘t want to buy the new book by that annoying Author, but maybe you listen to your favourite record while in traffic, and maybe that record is inspired by the books of said annoying Author. You don‘t need to enjoy all art by all the artists that are funded, just like you don‘t have to eat cucumbers from every cucumber farmer of the nation, or drive by all of the country‘s roads.
Art thrives in a society that has plenty of art. Art begets art in a some kind of positive feedback loop, something that I would like to call the economy of inspiration. If a town has a lot of theatre performances, then more theatre will be created, more actors, directors and playwrights. If your society boasts of a plenitude of concerts, then more concerts will be, more garage bands. Books create more books, design more design and fine arts more fine art. But art also knows no borders. Fine arts are inspired by music, music is inspired by books, books by theatre, theatre by fine arts. Between disciplines and branches, around in circles, criss cross. Art begets art, the more, the better. The economy of inspiration in Iceland has a huge turnover of thoughts and feelings and the artists‘ salaries from the government is an important monetary support for that economy, an economy that doesn‘t really deal in money except as a side product.
Of course there would be art if there was no artists fund, but the turnover would diminish and the economy of inspiration would shrink. The spectrum of art would become smaller and leave out less profitable parts. The side product would take over as the main thing. The funding system is not perfect (and much has been written about that) but it does provide opportunities for those who do not have the means to work without pay for their creation. It does give time, though scant might be.
Maybe art funding is so controversial because art is a sharing of a state of mind. It shapes thoughts and controls emotion. People are very selective of what affects their thoughts, understandably so. Of course one has opinions which individuals are given time to affect the thoughts of society. But in a pool of people as big as Iceland it is impossible to make a list of artists everyone would like to be funded, especially as the fund supports works that are yet to be created, future works of artists that receive the funding. The future products that are so strange in their nature.
What is art simply is not a product?
The infrastructure of mind
Supporters of the artists‘ salaries commonly compare them to the funding farmers recieve. Both classes, artists and farmers, are respected in the society, although one might argue farmers should command a more respect. We do not want to stop producing food and we do not want to stop creating art. But as we saw earlier, there is a lot of difference between the product tomato and the product book. One is easy to price, the other is more complex in its valuation. Yes the book is a pile of paper, but it is not really. Because of how peculiarly art works as a product, I would like to suggest that it is not viewed as such, and propose a new category. Art as infrastructure.
According to google infrastructure is „the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society...“ Included in that are for example the health care system, road networks and educational system and I will be using the road system in iceland as comparison. Everybody agrees that we need to travel, just like we agree that we want to be able to spend time enjoying art. We agree that we want a wide reaching road network, even though we only need to use a miniscule part of the road network, mostly to get to work, to the store, to friends and family. Occasionally to go out of town or into another one.
Let‘s imagine roads as a product, just as art is considered. What if contractors would need to produce the roads by their initiative and charge retrospectively for use of them. What if the state and towns would cut all funding to the road network because contractors should be able to live from their products, to be fair to other producers. One imagines that there would be a lot of road building in popular places, it would not be hard to live from the biggest veins of traffic, but less traveled roads would need to be built voluntarily by the few that used them. Little by little the volunteers would give up on the maintenance work, move something else and the road network would shrink. Little by little the road network would be a few big roads and the more unusual dwellings would become inaccessible. The same way that if the artists‘ salaries were cancelled, the travels of our mind would slowly be limited by the most popular places.
The destinations of mind
The comparison with the road network might seem farfetched but upon closer inspection it shares great similarities. An artwork is not a ornament for the home but a destination of mind. You take up a book, puts on a record, loose your eyes in a painting or sit in the fifth row of the local theatre. For a limited time you travel to another place in you mind, maybe a place that you didn‘t know existed, maybe somewhere you always enjoyed revisiting, or a place you wish you‘d never known, all within your own mind. Just like with destinations outside of mind then some are memorable, others disappoint and others live with you as long as you live, becomes you, becomes your chosen place to dwell. The product you buy, the book, the painting, the record is a bus ticket to said destination and a memorabilia but not the place. Art is the place, the destination. You cannot enjoy art unless you allow yourself to travel to that place of mind and stay there.
In the small society of Iceland there are indeed those who can live from selling their art, but that does not make all those that can‘t useless. Just like we want to be able to travel to all the nooks and crannies of Iceland, then we want be able to travel to all the destinations of our mind. Just like we need roads, the basis for tourism, cities and towns then we need art, the infrastructure of mind that serves that which is important to us. Happiness, sympathy, love and laughter, to name but a few.