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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 20th 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 7th 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/

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