Artists are very often considered to be a narcissistic and very closed community, which hardly affects any other groups except itself. On the other hand art seems to contribute more and more to civil society nowadays. Many artists use their artistic expression to convey a message to create change, or connect with citizens around specific values or actions.

Can art oppose discrimination and phobias which the civil society has to deal with nowadays? This was the main question that author, academic and activist Tomek Kitlinski asked the speakers of the first warm up discussion at the Civil Society Forum in Bratislava.

Anna Daucikova, a leading queer artist from Bratislava, claims that the role of art has genuinely  changed in the last several years. Having evolved from an issue mostly confined to artists’ studios and being more and more a global phenomenon, modern art is bringing about social change and making many change their minds. However, to make the links between art and culture develop further in the work for active and vibrant CEE civil societies, there need to be more recipients of the art involved and activated into the very action. In this case, art can become a source of provocative but also inspiring thoughts and a platform for social activism.
Responsibility

A modern civil society seems to need artists-activists who are sensibilized to the social issues and who take responsibility for the communities they live in.

In order not to stay at the very theoretical level, the discussion was accompanied by video clips, music and art. One of those was a concert of the Czech band Krylovici.  The band was created to pay tribute to Karel Kryl by passing his message. Kryl was a Czechoslovak artist who became known during  the “Prague spring” in 1968, when he reflected the situation in Czechoslovakia through his songs and lyrics and highlighted the sense of freedom, human and civil responsibility. Ivan Juras, the manager of Krylovici, thinks that we still need to be reminded of the values that Karel Kryl is singing about, as we still have to deal with very similar problems.

Long-lasting change

Is the participation of citizens, mentioned by Anna Daucikova, the only factor of a successful cooperation between art and society? Definitely, not. Art seems to be very often a short-term event constructed only on a stage which can hardly make a long-lasting change. How can we change it? Krzysztof Czyżewski claims that we need  to reconstruct the stage and to activate the culture which is until now mostly happening behind an invisible curtain.

Czyżewski reminded the audience of the concept of the famous Polish dramaturge Jerzy Grotowski who imposed on changing the dimension between the audience and the performers. There is a need nowadays to build a new art of creativity that involves the audience and is looking for new forms of artistic expression. It’s time for art to become an agora – a meeting place for discussions that can inspire and revitalise society.

Except from reconstructing the artist-recipient relation, the character of art that wants to affect civil society has to be changed as well. In Czyżewski’s opinion, art is not always a tool to deal with every social problem, as some of them demand long-lasting programmes rather than an artistic event which can only provoke, but does not come up with solutions.

Nevertheless, long-lasting art projects are possible and it gains even more relevance if we devote enough time to thinking about linking art and culture to civil society work.

Posted in | 15.11.2008

By: Marta Gawinek