Transcripts

Asialink Arts Forum 2001:

Special Projects

Transcipts

Art and Community; interaction between Australia and Asia Report

Dinah Dysart Transcript
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What works best individual initiatives or large scale productions?

The first issue I want to raise is what works best in our relationship with China is it individual initiatives or large scale productions?

It seems to me that it is the people-to-people contacts, which have the most influence in the Australia-China arts relationship. The flagship companies make a big splash and are useful for promoting Australia as a dynamic, diverse culture, and of course, we all want to see Australia’s large performance companies touring in China. However, true relationships are really built up gradually in much more intimate situations. The contacts made and visits organized by highly motivated individuals can often have a really lasting impact. And there is now a network of Australian-Chinese friendships, which was inconceivable ten years ago.

Most of this has come about through artists working in China and Chinese artists coming here - through their meeting and getting to know each other and passing on introductions to their friends and colleagues. I think nothing promotes cultural understanding better than the experience of actually spending some time living and working in a foreign environment.

That’s one of the reasons why the Australia-China Council is shortly to make an announcement about an apartment in Beijing, which will be made available for visits by individuals for up to three months. And it will be made available not just to culturally endorsed artists but to anyone with a project which in some way, aims to further the Australia-China relationship.

I am arguing that the funding of imaginative, individual projects can have long term implications. Supporting an artist with an exciting project is generally less draining of funds than sponsoring a tour of the ballet and the results can be excellent. Small amounts of money can be made to go a long way.

2. Take a chance on the innovative project but don’t overlook the possibilities of the seemingly conservative

I think it is important to keep an open mind about China and just what sort of projects could be possible. While we all want to support the best of Australian art and showcase it in China, sometimes the humbler project can break new ground in the most surprising ways. And I’m very mindful of a point that was made by Claire Roberts at a forum I attended in Canberra, a year of so ago. It was following the opening of the exhibition “Inside Out New Chinese Art” that was showing at the National Gallery, Claire pointed out that unfashionable Chinese art, that is, unfashionable in Western terms, or Chinese art which is unfathomable in Western terms, is ignored in the international circuit. These art forms don’t have a place in Australian consciousness. Yet, if we’re serious about the Australia-China relationship, then we can’t only support what is new and exciting.

I think the same point can be made about conservative Australian art, which may be unfashionable right now but might very well have relevance in a Chinese context. In other words, I worry that we often try so hard to sell ourselves as a technologically sophisticated country that we forget that we may have much in common with other cultures, not just China, at a simpler and more human level.

Now to make almost exactly the opposite point, it often is precisely the technologically sophisticated project which makes the most impact. For example, Linda Wallace’s exhibition of new media arts, called Probe, was shown in the Embassy in Beijing in 1999. This was a complex visual arts project working with computers and manipulated imagery. It cost quite a lot of money (it took a chunk out of the Australia-China Council budget), and we were worried that it would be unfathomable in China (because, to many of us, it was unfathomable simply because of its technical sophistication.). However it was a great success and large crowds of young people flocked to the Embassy. We talk about our cultural diversity in Australia but we also need to remember the immense diversity within China - regional diversity but also diversity across age groups.

3. Provide seed money to encourage sponsorship

The Australia-China Council does not have a huge budget but we can fulfill a useful function by providing small sums at both the early stages and the late stages of a project. Seed money from the Australia-China Council often provides much needed encouragement to sponsors who feel that official approval has somehow been given to the project and therefore it is a worthy one to support. On the other hand, the Australia China Council has often agreed to top up funding at the last minute to enable a production or exhibition to go ahead. So little bits of money can be made to work effectively.

4. Take advantage of increasing Australian interest in the traditional arts of Asia to put contemporary Chinese art on the agenda

I think everybody will have noticed that there is much more interest in Asian art in Australia over the last five years or so particularly in traditional Asian art. On the other hand when the art is contemporary, we are dealing with a very difficult product. Many culturally educated people are resistant, in fact they’re quite hostile, to their own society’s contemporary art. Introducing Chinese contemporary art is doubly difficult.

So we need to ensure that contemporary Chinese art is on the agenda wherever possible; that it has a place in art courses; and that when there is an exhibition of traditional Chinese art, there is always some discussion of the impact of this art on contemporary thinking. Every opportunity has to be seized.

The magazine Art AsiaPacific deals with contemporary art in Asia. It has a very small, very focused niche market. Perhaps it should broaden its base to include some material on more traditional art, on collecting Asian art for example in much the same way as Art & Australia magazine includes historical material as well as articles on contemporary art. In that way, contemporary Chinese art would be introduced to a conservative audience. The current issue of Art AsiaPacific magazine has a focus on Chinese contemporary art.

5. Set up a committee representative of all the cultural agencies to facilitate forward planning and promote common goals.

I want to suggest that a committee or some sort of contact group be formed, charged with the responsibility of keeping information flowing so there is more effective forward planning. With the Australia-China Council we like to know what kind of projects are bubbling away there so that all the budget hasn’t already been committed when the application is finally made.
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Mabel Lee Transcript
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ISSUES

1. China does not have a monolithic culture

Significant cultural differences in the provinces

Carrillo Gantner and Dinah Dysart have already alluded to regional differences. I would like to take this further and stress that the “bigness” of China makes it like so many different countries. I would like to see Australia more aware of the size of China and the fact that there are many provinces that are equally exciting as potential sites for Asialink projects. Inland provinces, in particular, are not privileged with information distributed by Australia’s cultural bodies to places like Beijing and Shanghai.

While the provinces acknowledge that they are an integral part of China, a strong sense of provincial and local identity has re-emerged since the 1980s. For many decades regional differences were minimised by the state but as state control has relaxed in all sectors of life these differences have resurfaced and in fact have been encouraged.

The extent of cultural difference in China can be illustrated quite simply in concrete terms with the example of food. China is generally thought to be a rice-eating country but the people in Shanxi Province normally do not eat rice and prefer not to eat rice, their staple grain is wheat and they also eat a lot of potatoes. Shanxi food consists of an enormous variety of noodles, dumplings and pancakes, and every meal is eaten with aged Shanxi vinegar. The people of Shanxi will take their bottles of vinegar with them wherever they go as vinegar produced elsewhere cannot match the quality or flavour. On the other hand, people from south China, for example the Cantonese, find the idea of living in Shanxi abhorrent, mainly because rice is not served at every meal. There are also many other cultural differences, including the spoken language, which are as significant as those between the French and the Germans and the Italians.

Some writers and translators from Yunnan Province who are very keen on Australian writings complained to me that they are never invited to Australian literature conferences and if they happen to find out about the conferences and try to attend, they find themselves excluded. In their view, “The people in Beijing just want to monopolise Australian literature, there’s something of a mafia over there.” It is worthwhile investigating the matter as there are big pockets of interest in Australian literature and Australian writers.

Cheaper living costs; many cultural bodies have their own funding; there is more enthusiasm for overseas visitors

Living costs in the provinces are cheaper than in Beijing; housing has gone up considerably in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Also, in the provinces many cultural bodies have independent funding sources and are worth tapping. People in the provinces are very enthusiastic to support international visitors because they don’t have them so often and feel that it is a great honour to be hosting visitors. In Beijing and Shanghai, people are often a bit blasé about international visitors as there are so many passing through all the time and so many things are happening at the same time.

Importance of not being locked into institutionalised cultural networks

China is diversifying so quickly that it is worth looking at a wide variety of networks, not just in literature, but in other cultural fields. However, in the literary area for example, there are national and provincial writers’ associations that seem to lock into any international projects that go through traditional channels; many writers are excluded from exchanges unless efforts are made at the individual level. If there are formal exchanges or delegations of writers and artists coming to Australia, usually they are nominated by the relevant writers’ associations.

2. Chinese interest in Australia

There is a huge interest in Australian cultural life, largely due to the large cohort of university graduates who came to Australia during the 1980s. That cohort included a significant number of artists, writers, performers, film-makers, musicians, and composers. Their families and relatives in China are therefore curious about cultural life in Australia.

3. Making full use of local networks

Many Australian academics have large networks in various parts of China and it is worthwhile consulting them for contacts in China.

STRATEGIES

1. Translation and publication

Writings by Australian/Chinese writers and writings by or about Australian/Chinese artists & performers and their work

Performing arts, visual arts and music transcend cultural barriers more easily because they are not language dependent. With publications it is much more difficult. In China people are interested in Australian writers and also critical writings by or about Australian writers. There is also interest in other areas of Australian cultural life: art, performance, film, sport, and also indigenous achievements and contributions to cultural life. Books on these would provide a wider range of background readings for the various Australian Studies units at universities in China. It is worthwhile investigating the feasibility of translating and publication of such works, in addition to works of Australian literature. Cooperative projects could be developed.

Identify appropriate publication sites, including e-journals

Internet use is widespread and is developing very quickly in China.

Develop joint projects & identify PRC cultural funding bodies

In China, cultural funding bodies equivalent to the Japan Foundation and the Korea Foundation are beginning to emerge and should be investigated.

2. Other areas to target

Chinese cuisine, photography & textiles

3. Weblinks to promote Australia

This would include weblinks to promote what is happening in Asialink, the Australian Society of Authors, the Writers Centres in various States, the indigenous and multicultural literary and art bodies, community media and also appropriate academic institutions, in both Australia and China.

4. Listing contacts in provincial China

This is to promote the awareness of the diversity of Chinese culture for resident fellowship holders and in the medium and long term for developing joint projects.

5. Make full use of existing networks

There are China specialists in the government, academic and corporate communities and in the local Chinese community.
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David Ambrose Transcript

Like everyone else, I was asked to identify some issues. They are generic in themselves but specific to China in many ways.

1. Funding

This is generic to cultural exchanges because money is always short and money is always what everybody is looking for - whether you are an artist or a government supporting an exchange or a host country that may be approached to receive it.

Obtaining funds is getting harder now everywhere. It has become more difficult generally because there is less around. This is true for the corporate dollar (as they set their programs well in advance, and basically you can’t pick their pockets) or the government which has been shrinking its money. Thirdly, in China, there too have been similar changes in the reform program over the last decade; many things that were on life support (the drip of State nutrients) have also been taken off. If they don’t survive in a market driven world, they just wither. So there isn’t a lot of money to be had there either.

2. Bilateral Agreements and other government programs

Most of the Cultural Agreements are actually a product of the Cold War. They existed in a period when ideology in politics separated countries, but people within countries wanted contact. Governments, over time, and under pressure from various sets of interests, made it more possible by formalizing bilateral exchanges. As the global economy has changed and communication has revolutionised contact, those formal agreements have become rather formulaic, arrangements with little living content. In the case of China, every two years there were official exchanges, visits, agendas and an implementing program for the next two years. There was always a problem. We rarely wanted what they proposed to send us because commercially it was not likely to be easily saleable. They too very often didn’t really want what we proposed to send them because it was likely to be unapproved - some avant-garde challenge to their orthodoxy.

As Dinah mentioned, with the Australia-China Council already in existence, with its own funds, making its own decisions independently of government but deriving its funds from government, in ’93, we said, “you can identify whatever you want to send to us and we’ll see whether or not we can find an implementing agent at this end, but to the extent you need a matching set of exchange visits, please find them in that program that the Australia-China Council is funding”. That change was really just a product of budget tightness.

The specialized foundations of which the Australia-Chinese Council is one, are all (with the exception of France and New Zealand) in Asia, so Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia and China all have specialized foundations with independent boards and separate funding and they all actually do, as you’ve described, a lot of very valuable work. Again as a result of shrinking resources, they have, however, streamlined their activities. Six or seven years ago, the agenda for the Australia-China Council meetings was like two Sydney telephone books, individual projects with almost no money attached to them, and no internal coherence and no long term strategy. I think all of them now have fairly simple programs - a reasonably sized bucket of money under about four chapeaux with fairly large outlays to simplify processing.

3. Public diplomacy

“Public diplomacy”, words that Gareth Evans introduced into the lexicon of Australian diplomacy. You could call it public relations almost. The world is driven so much by public relations, that Governments are into it too. The intention is to try and address outdated stereotypes because in China, perhaps more than anywhere, Australia is extremely widely known and very well regarded, but best encapsulated in the phrase, “Australian wool”. Everyone wants to own a nice fleecy merino but it represents a very simple stereotype: the farm, the quarry and the fleece. What the Government wants now, is to project an image of:

multiculturalism, because as a society we have radically transformed ourselves over the last thirty or so years,
Australia as a modern society,
that we in fact have a level of technical, and scientific and cultural sophistication, and image which we’re all familiar with but the rest of the world isn’t necessarily,
that we are not derivative; not simply a derivative of the UK or the United States.

All those things are truisms to us but they are not necessarily widely received truths in other places. A lot of the work we do is to try to change those perceptions.

4. Using the Olympics success

We are extremely lucky in that we won the year 2000 Olympics because for the first time, certainly in the time that I’ve paid attention to this aspect of public policy, there was an agreement that through the four years of Olympics cultural festivals all image projection should somehow be coordinated. There was to be one big stream which purveyed an image of Australia as we wished to be seen by the rest of the world. By way of a minor illustration, CNN had the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House as the backdrop to their news casting for at least six months before the Games. It was just there, this subliminal image all the time behind the newscaster.

What everybody now, I think, agrees is to use that experience. We have some degree of coordination and some agreement on the nature of society that we actually are, and have attracted a global interest. This was engaged particularly through the Olympics Opening Ceremony which just knocked people over, both because of what it was in itself but also because of the degree of organization, administration and technological and creative genius that went into it. It spoke for itself and it said something about this country which most of the rest of the world didn’t know, not least China. They hadn’t known but they recognized the triumph and they were generous in their praise. “Can we get Nicky Webster? Can we get the Bangarra dance group?” They wish to market Australia on the basis of the Olympic wave. We actually know that too, that we have to maintain the momentum.

5. Institutional links

Those earlier cultural exchange agreements have gone on and nobody any longer knows how many or how extensive they are. Once upon a time, we at DFAT and in the Embassies, could tell you who had a sister-state/province relationship, which cities had a city-to-city relationship, which university had a relationship with which faculty in which university. Even the Chinese don’t know any longer.

That, however, is a good sign, for two reasons: one, it is so extensive that nobody is trying to keep a record, and secondly, in most places, central bureaucracies now don’t want to know. ‘Let it happen.’ It is still possible in China to step out of line but, broadly speaking, nobody knows where the line is anymore. So it is a good news story.

6. Shanghai and the arts

Shanghai is one of the world’s great cities. Over the next twenty-five years the rest of the world will sit up and really notice Shanghai. It has huge ambitions to reoccupy the place it occupied in the ‘30s as one of the greatest cities in the Far East. Now, it wishes to be the great city of the Far East. It has created a cultural precinct: the Grand Theatre, which Michael Lynch said to me before it was even finished, “will be one of the great performance spaces in the world and all the major performing arts companies in the world will be happy to stand in the queue. They will be there just because they want to perform there.”

Shanghai’s cultural festival is now China’s international cultural festival, with Beijing funding as well. They aspire to be an international festival which people go to as they might to Paris or New York. They have the ambition, they have the resources, but they don’t have the know-how. They don’t really know what an international arts festival is. They think that you can just buy the product in and succeed; that you can just ask a ballet from Moscow to perform Swan Lake. We all know that international cultural festivals of interest to the international community are actually not like that.

Australia’s role

Advice

In Shanghai, we wondered how we might help the Festival. ‘They don’t know what they are doing, but they have the intention and the capacity and they will do it. So let’s try to help them’. The first thing was to try to introduce some Australians who might be able to advise them about running international festivals; what they were, what their purpose is, the need to plan etc.

We were fortunate that Robyn Archer, then Director of the Adelaide Festival, was flying to Tokyo and we “Shanghaied” her, as it were, and she spent four days in Shanghai talking to the festival organisers. They had just established the centre for the management of the festival.

Individual exchanges

There were several positive results of that visit: she invited Huang Doudou, a modern dance performer down for the Adelaide Festival, where he actually rescued an Australian performance because the lead dancer sprained his ankle. Doudou, who had been going to all the rehearsals, stood in for him. For him living and working with an Australian modern dance company for a short period of time was a transformative experience. Robyn also invited out one of the former state performing arts agencies to visit the Festival. One consequence of that visit was an invitation to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to perform in the Shanghai International Cultural Festival next year.

We then took a few more steps and thought, let’s have a bilateral exchange program, which the Consulate General would fund. We had a small amount of public diplomacy funds and we decided to initiate an exchange program with people experienced in the management and direction of international festivals here in Oz to talk to the Shanghainese about festivals, whether you have a Fringe, the purpose of a Fringe, how to fund one with what sort of programming, do you have to put venture capital into new work if you are going to interest people abroad. And we’re actually in that process now.

Australian material in Shanghai

Our longer term intention was, that if we could make an entrée at the level of being helpful, and they tend to see Australia as helpful and well disposed, compared with the Europeans and Americans, then we may ultimately gain an entry for Australian product there. And we’ve had some success in that area. Last year, Exile came to the Shanghai International Festival as a direct outcome of one of those exchanges.

For further information, please contact:
Alison Carroll
Manager, Arts Program
Email: a.carroll@asialink.unimelb.edu.au
Phone: 61-3-9349 1899
Fax: 61-3- 9347 1768