Think of a small village in the Netherlands: against the flat surface of the earth tall, flickering windmills stand out. Their arrival did not only change the landscape, but the whole status of the village. Villagers became known for their protests against the wind mills, their law suits, their anger.
What is cultural democracy in this context?
The discourse on participatory art often circulates around the complex notion of community. Participatory art is not only believed to sprout from communities, but also to have community-shaping qualities. The process of joint art-making would, amongst other things, provide communities with artistic tools to express themselves collectively.
A recurring concept used to describe this is cultural democracy. It can best be explained by its contrast to a related concept: the democratization of culture. If the democratization of culture is about increasing access to forms of established culture – museums, theatre or dance companies – cultural democracy is about increasing the amount of cultural activities that count as established culture. The way participatory artists (who aim for cultural democracy) do this, is by co-creating art with communities. In this process, what counts as ‘professional art’ is mingled with amateur art or other forms of creation. This mix is what makes François Matarasso call participatory art a ‘restless art’. It operates on the border of what counts as art and what not. It is a movement extending the territory of cultural expressions being taken seriously and the amount people involved in them (Matarasso, 2019).
A participatory artist visits the ‘wind mill village’. She expects the local community to explore the topic of the wind mills with her, but to her surprise there is a stronger desire. Long ago, the place was locally known for blues music. This was now completely overshadowed by the public attention for the wind mill problems. Could she not help them bring this music-loving atmosphere back (Davis et al., 2022)?
For a participatory artist aiming for cultural democracy, the result of the artwork is not pre-given, but co-determined by the participants. The artist of the wind mill village, Yanthe van Nek, therefore calls herself an instrument of the village. It is an image that challenges the image of the artist as composer. Not the artist (and also not the government), but the participants themselves decide on the composition of the art piece. If this was the direction the community wanted to take, Van der Neck would help them revive this musical atmosphere.
This type of participatory art has been heavily criticized from within the art world. Most well known is Claire Bishop’s criticism, judging these art projects for narrowing the practice of art down to treating participants in a friendly way. In her view, the artistic approach of minimizing the artist voice also limits possibilities for transgression and criticism where feelings of discomfort play an important role. Another well-known point of criticism is the idea that such projects would not be able to bring about the change needed for the community. Quite the opposite, they would only make a situation of injustice more bearable by giving it a positive cultural twist. The writers duo BAVO once called this being ‘too active to act’ (BAVO, 2010).
I wonder if this criticism would be justified in this case. Why would enjoyment of the arts necessarily contradict other forms of action? For me, the case is an interesting example of what could be implied by article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘Everyone has the right to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts’. It is about feeling the opportunity to be a dancing, narrating, music making species and to see these activities not only as a way to spend individual leisure time, but as a possibility to give a voice to what you want to be and represent collectively. In this case: not angry villagers resisting any form of change, but music loving people, being bothered by the mechanic noise that comes with wind mills.
This blog post was written for https://artij.org/, a platform dedicated to studying the relation between art and international law. Find the original text here.
Sources:
BAVO. (2010). Too active to act: Cultureel activisme na het einde van de geschiedenis. Valiz.
Davis, S., van Nek, Y., & Horlings, L. G. (2022). How to Nurture Ground for Arts-Based Co-Creative Practice in an Invited Space: Reflections on a Community in North Netherlands. Co-Creativity and Engaged Scholarship: Transformative Methods in Social Sustainability Research, 229-263.
Matarasso, F. o. (2019). A restless art : how participation won, and why it matters. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, UK Branch.
Carmen van Bruggen 