WHAT A DIFFERENCE a DAY MAKES; OR POWER & ACCESS
Warren Feeny recently quoted my blog - in a weekend Press article on post-quake CCH arts - noting the lack of artists on the AVC committee.
All of a sudden the AVC folks have located 2 (yes 2) of my email addresses and sent me an updated release/vision statement.
I must have been hard to find (hiding in plain sight) previously.
I've also been invited to join the AVC email list and have been informed about future so-called forums.
What's interesting about the new press release? Here, read the AVC's release for yourself.....
"How this group will work in future
A single coordinated group representing the voice of the arts community is long overdue in Christchurch and we want this group to have a long life. The initial elected members will set up a formal structure like an incorporated society to ensure the arts community is well represented long term. Once the current period of urgency is over, and we have responded to the rebuilding process, the group membership will be subject to normal election processes. It will be open to all members of the arts community."
Below lies the key sentence- keep in mind that every fishing-line tangle has a key..pull the key and the knot unravels....
"Once the current period of urgency is over, and we have responded to the rebuilding process, the group membership will be subject to normal election processes."
"Normal election process - " an admission that the AVCs first so-called election wasn't normal?
"-period of urgency -" were things so urgent as to warrant a helter-skelter election process where almost none of the members of the working-artist community were notified, present, or given the vote concerning who they'd like to represent them? And the term period of urgency to justify undemocratic measures sound like a communique from a Junta.
At the end of the above paragraph we are promised (as if the AVC is somehow authorized to give working artists a kiss and promise) that when they "-have responded to the rebuilding process, the group membership will be subject to normal election processes. It will be open to all members of the arts community." Respond to the rebuilding is nice and open ended, eh?
Whatever the believability or arguable merit of the AVCs promise - to hold a fair and inclusive election - the committee, as it stands, is about to accrue enormous amounts of democratically unauthorized access and power. Access to millions of public dollars and the appreciable power that resides in that access. Kind of like an artworld equivalent CERA.
The fact that there are no working artists, Maori, Pacific Islanders or Asians on the AVC committee means that those groups are - in effect - being denied access and power.
By the time the AVC 7 conduct (if they do as they promise) a legitimate election they will have handled the appreciable financial spoils of the CCH natural disaster. What is not apportioned out to organizations having preexisting relationships with the AVC 7 will go to understandably grateful groups and individuals. Groups and individuals who will owe their good fortune to the AVC 7. Do the math and add up that sort of social debt. Debt that can be called-in at some future time.
I'm posting this little diatribe on my blog as well. It would be helpful if you sent my blog page as a link in an email to your email lists. It's my opinion that the only reason the AVC are now using concessionary language - concerning fair and free future elections - is there's a perceived cloud of social-pressure brewing in the distance and they don't wish to get wet. I say pour it on.
UPDATE 31 May - Just today the Main Macher (macher, yiddish, Google it) of the AVC somehow managed to locate the (hard to find) email address and telephone number of the School of Fine Arts. Eureka!
