Artists on their feet versus artists on their knees

 

Artists on their feet versus artists on their knees

 

In a Q & A via Al Jazeera with the artists Ai Weiwei & Anish Kapoor, Ai Weiwei talks about artists in China as artists “on their knees.” As if penitents.

 

Last evening, I had the pleasure of going to see the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra with old friends.

The program featured pieces by two Soviet composers, Shostakovich & Prokofiev, from the same year 1958, when indeed artists were held to extreme scrutiny, as to suspicion of promoting ‘counter-revolutionary ideas,’ the price to pay: the brutal Gulags or death.

 

Shostakovich was the bravest public artist working during that time & earlier, during the reign of Stalin. His piece filled with subversive codes, sarcasm, intensity, abandon & a deep pathos for the suffering of his people. He was also probably the greatest composer of the 20^th Century.

He went head to head with the authorities, indeed placing his in the lion’s jaw.

He lived for 20 years with a bag at the foot of his stairs packed for Siberia, in case the knock came at his door.

Amazingly the call never came, perhaps it was his greatness & that it would have been a public relations embarrassment for the Soviet authorities.

His cello concerto, number 1, that we heard, is extraordinary. A titanic work, of a man on his feet & fighting.

 

Prokofiev, a fine composer, on the other hand was more conservative & careful about his wellbeing. More politically neutral, understandable for self preservation, but at a time of great evil, leaves questions to be asked.

His 7^th Symphony is beautiful music composed on its knees. Composed in fear & caution. Prokofiev takes no risks with this one.

 

So, artists ‘on their knees.’

Ai Weiwei suggests that it’s a Chinese problem today, but I rejoinder that isn’t indeed a global problem, even in a democracy like Australia.

There are few artists today risking their necks, their ‘careers,’ which is the reason I seek to work (play I call it) outside of the government funded publishing industry in this country, else I be muzzled by conservative editors & management.

 

In Irish culture under British occupation, it was illegal for people to gather & perform their arts & so people gathered in secret, & a culture & the spirit of the people was kept alive. The AMATEURS did it!

This was brought into my childhood home by my brilliant amateur father & his Irish friends & the songs they sang were galvanising, defiant & frankly to a child, terrifying. But dad was right on & the day he left the church as a younger man was the last time he kneeled.

 

I’ve taken this culture inside me too.

I don’t want to be a part of this infantilizing modish identity politics driven grant applying arts scene.

 

Now in totalitarian societies, subversives are killed or imprisoned.

In Western societies, subversives are ‘cancelled’ or ignored – hidden from view.

 

& so I work as an outsider.

I can write what moves me intrinsically & I will write ‘on my feet’.

I defy kowtowing to an audience, administration or industry.

I will not be managed.

I am working for the future of a universal humanity,

That we can throw off our shackles, unite & challenge, in numbers, the Corporate-State ruling class.

 

 

Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

https://melfrommelbournemusicwords.blogspot.com/