With the vanishingly little being done by government to tackle issues affecting artists during this global pandemic, a sprouting crop of disgruntled creative continue to fight for the rights of custodians of social conscience – artists.
And while our present minister has embarked on a rampaging blame game directed at artists, which has sadly gained a foothold carved by a complacent media structure, we observe a further isolation that impedes progressive creativity being fashioned to strangle to the arts in the country.
The chasm between the art community’s purported aims and those of “social cohesion” as a mandate for the department of arts and culture is ever widening, with artists opting to work in silos and independent of support from the powers that be.
But there is the general vitriolic disparagement meted at artists’ demands by the ministry, and the blatant ignorance of our plight that is characteristic of agencies meant to foster the growth of the arts.
To date, the majority of artists occupy an economic spectrum that marginalises them and further stacks a plethora of challenges against them. Poverty, homelessness, lack of health care resources, let alone infrastructure for creative output are but a few of the challenges we face daily.
And whilst we encounter rampant corruption at each turn, artists seem already predisposed to corrupt dealings with patrons and agencies, and this disheartening realisation has bred a despondency and complacency that borders on complicit behaviour with those who hold the keys to the vaults.
For instance, the indignant responses to IAM4Arts activists by the NAC authorities when interrogating financial mismanagement of funds allocated the arts, is but one example of how trivially artists grievances are taken by government, and this common and dim-witted technique has actually worked to disrupt and frustrate the course.
Dodgy subscribers and group members working (trolling) to derailing discussions through inflammatory remarks, pushing all limits of human decency, have become common-place occurrences around forums aimed at discussing challenges faced by the artists, thus sublimating the gravity of their demands.
So, how can artists choose to insulate themselves from the rampaging machine of structural corruption glossed with Technicolor sheen of respectability?
Should artists abandon all prescriptive versions of radicalism and fashion an art weaponised against society?
Should conceptual artists craft derogatory depictions of our current oppression, sculptors carve obscenities of our leaders, while painters splatter disparaging imagery on walls of authoritarian enterprises that govern all platforms of expression?
Shouldn’t our music now become slogans of rage against a monstrosity of anti-art sentiments we observe among this desensitised chorus of ageing ministers burying themselves beneath fluffy pillows of nostalgia about their love for culture?
Are artists to remodel protest culture of the past, towards a reactionary, extremist art movement, pelting spears to frustrate all concepts of social cohesion espoused by charlatans and ideologues in power?
And how are we to go about sabotaging institutions that are fundamental to societal norms to our benefit and defacing memorials and renaming streets by names of corrupt leaders?
Are they truly concerned about corruption in the industry if they view artists as perpetually offended victims, who are always biting the hand that feeds them, and continually obfuscating their sinister plot to eradicate art in the country?
Exaggeration and moral self-defence by authorities further escalates when the reshuffling of parliament seems to have been a slap in the face of offended artist activists.
As though the arts required policing, the self-same executioners of Marikana victims worked hand in glove to keep the status quo intact, where arts and culture are mere décor for the decaying decadence of the elite.
Many artists are now inundated with mass campaigns to discredit their works, all this happening through a large number of tactics aimed at terrifying them into silence or withdrawal.
Social media profiles are stalked and mainstream hashtags that haunt and taunt targeted persons, go beyond racialist rhetoric, pitting various demographics against each other, with the prevailing public notion being that black artists suffer more than the rest.
And the actual danger of a segregated and fragmented artistic assault on the disempowering system of government funding and support for the arts and culture practitioners, is likely far fetched an idea, but we are here still confronting the brutal denialism of power.
We, as artists, still forge a unity beyond unionised dogmatic bodies, instead of resorting to racial stereotypes and tropes used to divide social collectives since time immemorial.
And together, even at the risk of alienating the powers that be, we need find a new lexicon for our rage, and work to dismantle our reliance on the scraps thrown at an entire population of memory-keepers, storytellers and preservers of collective memories.
Khahliso Matela
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