European Council of Artists
Meeting at the invitation of Jytte Hilden, Minister of
Culture, Denmark
Skagen, Denmark, September 1996
Resolutions
1. Maintaining and funding public
broadcasting
2. Giving artists a chance in the new environment
3. Education
Ministers of Culture of Late-Twentieth Century Europe:
We speak to you as artists of Europe, of a Europe that crosses current political boundaries, a Europe where the individual voices and visions of artists have, often with struggle, found their way. Today, the conditions for the creation and reception of art are being deeply changed by great developments in worldwide media. As artists of Europe, creators of many of the values of this continent and key contributors to its economic vitality, we have a right to your urgent attention
The map of the world we used to get from our public media is being sliced up. The new map excludes many voices and faces, many ways of speaking. The fragmentation, uniformity and distance of our market- and technology-driven media are breaking the link between personal and public worlds. If left solely to commercial interests, these developments could lead to a kind of media apartheid. Child pornography on the Internet, which cannot be regulated, is one symptom of this new phenomenon: the world-wide circulation of private obsessions, or less dramatically, of commercial manipulations, unchecked by public exchange or shared communication.
If we were to lose the map of a whole, multiple society, if narrowcasting were to erode general public broadcasting, facsimiles and reductions of reality would begin to replace the real thing. Public space would become commercial space, as in so many city centres already. Dialogue through inclusive debate or the metaphors of art would be replaced by electronic "inter-activity" on a very narrow wave-band of views and forms of expression.
The new media world characteristically produces information without perspective, drama within predictable formulae, comedy with pre-recorded laugh-tracks - the laughter of prisoners in air-conditioned viewing theatres; it melts down forms and conventions; anything goes, everything is equally sensational, nothing has weight or resonance. In the new media universe, everything is both fluid and compartmentalised, for commercial reasons. There is no such thing as an appropriate tone of voice, only false chumminess, strident selling, fabricated good cheer.
This world-wide network run by so-called media barons threatens an extensive mutation of life, behaviour and art. If allowed, it would replace real things with their virtual counterparts. Education could mutate into "infotainment", culture into "leisure", audience into "ratings", the electorate into "opinion polls". This high-tech floating world threatens to swamp the world of place and time in which people make poems, pictures, plays, dance, fugues. We call on you, ministers, politicians, mayors, educators, business-people of good will, trade unionists looking after the needs as well as the interests of their members, to help us in fighting for the real world, the rooted world of creators, makers and poets in all the arts, in all the media.
At the birth of our democracy, in fifth century B.C. Athens, the citizens’ assembly commisioned sculptors and architects to make images of Athens’ history and values and gave prizes for the best dramas - which often questioned that history and those values. We remember the Acropolis, we remember Homer and Aeschylus after 2.500 years. What will we remember in 2.500 years from the leaders and parliaments of our world? Shopping malls? MTV? The Eurovision Song Contest? "Neighbours"?
We, artists of Europe, propose action in the following areas:
1. Maintaining and funding public broadcasting
Imagination is too important to be left to industry and business. Elected governments have a responsibility to hold open a space for the most imaginative images, stories and ideas for all citizens, to meet their actual needs and to provide for their latent ones.
The new global media industry, which resists regulation, is growing at a prodigious rate. By the year 2000 it is predicted to be at least ten times bigger than it is today. Meanwhile the revenues of the public sector are shrinking in real terms. Faced with such a stupendous growth in the private sector, the public sector needs a renewed dedication to quality, originality and diversity. It also needs secure and adequate funding.
Therefore, firstly we propose a new principle: That public broadcasting should be enabled to grow at the same rate as the media industry as a whole, whether this be by license fee or public investment. Otherwise, public broadcasting will become the poor relative of the media family.
This step should only be taken on condition that the public broadcasting institutions remain true to their original vocation in today’s terms, give greater emphasis to original creation and avoid the temptation to compete with their commercial rivals by lowering standards and narrowing horizons. In particular, the creation of innovative and distinctive work should be a priority for public broadcasters, and an act of enlightened self-interest for the commercial media industry. Without innovation, experiment and artistic research, tomorrow’s talent cannot be nourished.
Because the new media industry is global in scale, it penetrates national and personal domains with little resistance. A great deal of power is already concentrated in very few private hands. We call for greater vigilance in applying the existing anti-monopoly legislation, and a dialogue with the new media interests, inviting them to consider that respecting the social and cultural environment is as much a responsibility - and perhaps enlightened self-interest - as the protection of our natural environment.
There must be a European transnational response to the globalising and standardising tendencies of the private media industry. Despite some co-productions and joint ventures, the public broadcasters of Europe should be encouraged towards further and deeper cooperation - sometimes in wider regional contexts and sometimes across all Europe. We call upon our elected representatives, as guardians of democracy’ foundations in Europe, to take the lead now in bringing about these potentially fruitful cooperations.
2. Giving artists a chance in the new environment
The tendency of new media technology and production is towards short attention-spans, simplified narrative and visual styles and easy formats and stereotypes. The effect of what sometimes seems a hysterical media discourse on today’s children is notable and is likely further to affect the sensibility of coming generations. So it is more urgent than ever to nurture unpressured spaces in the new media and the traditional arts world in which creators of all kinds can realise, of works that rise to the challenge of our altered environment.
We emphasize the importance of greater protection of the intellectual property’ rights of authors and performers in all artistic and media domains. Problems of authors’ and performers’ rights in global multimedia systems - so called electronic rights - must be included in national legislation, as well as in international law.
3. Education
The vitality of culture, arts and the media depends upon the education of children and young people.
It is generally believed that school should be open to life. But to what sort of life? It would be a disaster if schools should become a testing-ground and market-place for mass media and new technologies, which is already beginning to happen.
School should be a haven of unpressured space and time where new generations can develop as critical readers, sensitive perceivers, free citizens’ and not as consumers.
Young minds are already fascinated by the weightless play of virtual worlds. A European education for our times should find newly appealing ways of teaching Europe’s classics, and equip young people to navigate consciously through channels and nets.
Ministers of Culture, the artists of Europe have often been accused of being dreamers. But history shows that artists’ foresight have often become reality. In this conviction, we trust that you will seriously engage with our arguments.