Yes, I agree, those are the downsides to the equation with research, and
what happens to the arts within those institutions--universities--that do
art and research is often a worry. But it's a question of social, economic,
and political validation, and it seems if the arts must be a junior partner
to some other sector, then the entertainment industries are not worth
cozying up to (of course, the performing arts drive this alliance, and
poetry offers little and receives little from aligning itself with
orchestras and opera companies, etc.) Within the university, poetry's
authority is recognized within English Departments, and is in some sense the
r+d arm of contemporary literature--poet's theorize (as on this list)
novelists don't.
The universities' research brief: the advancement of knowledge, or some
such, is far more ready to wear than that of the entertainment business, the
advancement of profits.
What counts as research in universities is in fact whatever is done for
publication, etc by the teaching staff. In a university School of Fine Arts,
an exhibition in fact counts as research. So the definition is
institutional, and the validation stems from that.
Wystan
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, 22 February 2001 9:48 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: space fat/some quick, loose thoughts
Wystan wrote:
> the problem with the bums on seats measure is that it makes no
>distinction between art and entertainment. The distinction that might more
>effectively be blurred is that between art and research.
Ye-es - I too have made that connection - though this might also
encourage the belief that art doesn't matter for what it does, uniquely,
and which other human activities don't do. As if writing a poem were
simply a matter of scholarship, or scrabbling away in a laboratory
torturing mice, and has some definite goal in mind which may, even, turn
a tidy profit to some industry one day.
I think art has to legitimise itself on its own million feet, even if
they are only a pair of clouds.
A
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