Skipping off the blog for a cultural rights seminar…
Just a heads up… I’ll be out of circulation tomorrow as I’ve been asked to contribute to a round table on cultural rights hosted by Interface at the Arts College tomorrow. I’ll be hoping to reference Jeff Jarvis’ excellent piece on what’s wrong with the Blogger Code of Conduct; Why Mencken may have been right then, but is so wrong now; and how concepts of authority change in an networked world… Or at least, that’s what I hope to push into the conversation…
Mick it looks like Interface are waiting for you to inspire them to post another couple of sentences on the Interface Blog.
Don’t forget your camera
“INTERFACE explores two key processes that underlie innovative research practice in art and design. One is the investigation and redefinition of inherited categories of value and the other is the impact of digital media and new technologies on the production, distribution and mediation of art and design. Both areas are examined in the context of the wider social/economic/political arena of Northern Ireland and in the world.”
Do you laugh or cry? Why use one word when you are bullshitting to get a grant.
My cultural rights are not being respected. I want great big Notting Hill Carnival sound systems down my road instead of spides and lambeg drums.
That’ll be you in the phillistine’s corner then Soupy?
I think Soupy has a point. There’s a great deal of ‘guff’ – mainly to get grants – about “Northern Ireland†culture as if it exists independently of mainstream Irish and British culture. I don’t think it does – the exception which proves the rule being the GAWA – and I think too much is being done to cultivate a sense of a NI culture.
What emerges when it is cultivated, for instance, is a bland and mostly monlingual and definitely British biased culture. To wit, the Rediscover NI programme in Washington being funded by DCAL. Irish language poets and writers aren’t the only cultural figures being excluded – out in the cold also are the GAA while rugby and soccer seems to be well covered.
When I see Northern Ireland and culture/literature/art/design/music etc mentioned in the same sentence, it makes me think someone’s trying to have a laugh!
I’d take some rythym and blues or punk if they were on offer, aye tiddly aye or boom tiddly dee only takes you so far.
Oilibhear,
There are several thoughts contained within your post. There were some very high powered people at that meeting today and I can assure you that the parameters of the debate were a lot wider than that. I’m taken some rough notes, which I will try to turn into a blog tomorrow…
In the meantime a couple of lines (from my hastily assembled notes) from the Polish artist Krystof Wodiczko:
“I left Poland in search of democracy and found it was more like a phantom always shifting and constantly lingering on the horizon. Once it is given to someone, it changes. In fact, it needs to be remade every day. It requires the consistent disruption of silences and the [utterance] of things that people do not want to hear.”