Maurizio Cattelan, “All” (2011), courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum 

‘Austerity’ in European governance has become as popular and exposed meme as ‘selfie’ in popular use.

In the end of the last year new Belgian government announced new budget cuts, of which the arts  and education turned out to be one of the main victims. Culture and education are even more pushed into the field of so-called ‘creative economy’ and ‘creative entrepreneurship’. Cutting these concept down to the baseline, it’s about marketing and commoditisation of everything as much as possible in order to make it self-sufficient and self-supplied. The trend is suggesting to get rid off ‘art for art’s sake’ and rather focus on ‘art as design’.

The consequences of such approach could turn out to be dreadful. Creativity, when it is ‘directed’ out of practical concerns, hardly has chances of flourishing - on the contrary, it creates parasitism and domination of those, who abuse the hierarchies.

On the other hand, it’s pretty clear that the economic situation and scarcity of resources increases pressure and dictates necessity for such actions from the public budget. Cultural funds distribution is rarely praised.

Is it possible to meet these two opposing dimensions somewhere? Be economical, assess impact and at the same time provide the freedom of creativity and artistic innovation with necessary resources, omitting overcomplicating bureaucracy, corruption, nepotism and systemically ill hierarchies?

We believe there is a middle way and it requires participation of all sectors of the society. Government and public sector shouldn’t be held solemnly responsible for artistic innovation. This ‘socialistic’ view on the cultural sector is out of touch with the reality we are living in now.

Mike Kelley, “Mobile Homestead” (2011), courtesy of the artist 

Jeremy Bentham widely elaborated idea of diminishing marginal utility (which was introduced by mathematician Daniel Bernoulli before him) in his comprehensive concept of classical utilitarianism. A short reminder of it’s essence - the more utility of some kind we get, the less we value it. It concerns ‘public goods’ as well, which for the sake of all have to be distributed by the state as it’s the only feasible institutions to do it beyond selfishness of the individual. But is it really applicable to art in the same way as it’s applicable to military, defence, water cleansing, etc.? Can we say that art is the only one ‘product’ of human activity, that isn’t utilitarian per se?

Our answer is definite ‘yes’. Art is the dimension, that makes us human and provides us with the essence of the difference between ‘existing’ and ‘living’. You can certainly ‘exist’ with good provision of water, electricity, defence and other ‘common utilities’. But when can you say you ‘live’ a full, exciting and rich life? ‘To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people exist - that’s all’ - said Oscar Wilde in the end of 19 century.

Art provides democratic and accessible to everyone platform for reflection, motivation, self-development, inspiration, innovation and creativity - all that we need for moving forward. Jacques Derrida famously spoke about two types of future - ‘planned future’ and ‘real future’. Our calendar of next week meetings and events, expectable key performance indicators in the business, strategic plans with deliverables in policy management is ‘planned future’ - something we design. But there is another type of future - unknown to our plans and unrelated to them. ‘Design’ as the manner of resolving specific problems deals with ‘planned future’, while ‘art’ - with the ‘real’ one, opening more unknown doors of opportunities for innovation, leaps forward in the development of our society. It’s vital to keep it flourishing, without ‘art’ as such society looks more like a mummified body without ‘real future’.

Jon Rafman, “9 Eyes of Google Street View” (2009), courtesy of the artist

To weight all responsibility for artistic development on the shoulders of government is incorrect due to many reasons. First of all, we are all beneficiaries of art, but we rather treat is a something given to us by default. Secondly, many don’t realise potentiality of impact of art on their life if only the artistic production would be used by them in more comprehensive manner. Aesthetics inspire us, give us motivation, ideas, provide for for thought and enticing discussions in spaces. It’s not enough to have it only in spaces of public museums - it should surround us all in multiple environments.

Art in your office, for example, can make employees think of it from many more different perspectives than us a place where they have to spend time from 9 to 18 according to the contract. Art in the office (of course if selected and curated wisely) establish affinity of staff with the company values, connect them with the company as a team of like-minded people doing what they do for a bigger purpose as well.

It is just one example of engagement with arts from corporate perspective - there are so many more ways to boost team efficiency, connection of employees to the company values, finally speak of them not in the terms of dead ‘mission’ statement, that often is not even read by the staff.

Superflex, “Bankrupt Banks”, courtesy of the artists

This impact on companies, as well as similar benefits for institutions, organisations, from our perspective, is the answer on the question of how to proceed with support of art in current economic environment. Business has to step in - not with the charitable intentions - but think of investment in art from perspective of possible and accessible impact on their activities. ‘Art’ is not ‘decoration’ - it’s a unique societal product of human creativity, that hold immense potential. It’s time to unveil it to the fullest.

by Denis Maksimov and Harlan Levey (originally published in The Brussels Times Magazine, Dec-Jan 2015) 

Harlan Levey and Denis Maksimov are working together as a curatorial team to help companies, political institutions and expert organisations work out their strategy of activities via contemporary art, including visualisation of values, collecting and management of the collection. Harlan Levey Projects was selected as the only Belgian participate to the First Call curated category of Art Brussels 2014. He has consulted for the United Nations, The European Commission, and the City of Brussels as well as a number of corporate clients including Levi’s, MTV, and private collections in Europe and the United States.