What is politics about and what is culture for?

Chicago heatwave 1995
(image taken from Liva Kreislere's presentation)

In the beginning of August, I had the opportunity to participate in a summer school organised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and dedicated to the subject “Care of Earth. Care of People”. Just before I left, I had the opportunity to attend part of the presentation of a young architect and urbanist, Liva Kreislere, on cultural planning. Cultural planning is an approach to city development that looks at the city as a cultural phenomenon and strongly focuses on the local population, local cultural stakeholders, and municipality involvement. It is a method where artists and cultural institutions are increasingly placed in a more central position, with a demonstrated contribution to social well-being as well as to the improvement of citizens’ civic engagement. “Culture”, Liva said, “is closely linked to healthcare, economy and politics.” One of the examples she brought up was that of the deadly 1995 heatwave in Chicago. According to a study, there was a higher survival rate among the older population in neighbourhoods with a strong connection among their members. Closely knit communities took better care of older people, especially vulnerable under the circumstances.

“We have lost a sense of the city and sense of citizenship”, Liva said. Which reminded me of Greek philosopher Christos Yannaras writing in his book “On the meaning of politics” about the origin of the political phenomenon, the organised coexistence of human beings. According to the Greek myth, people used to live dispersed, so they were an easy prey for the beasts. Although they had developed creative arts, that guaranteed their nourishment, they had not developed the political art. Thus, the gods offered them the political life, the life organised in a polis (city), as a condition for their survival. This does not come naturally to humans, it is not in their nature. It is a present from the gods, an achievement of liberation from the human nature.

These references blended in my mind, they kept coming back, making me question what we understand as “culture” and what its role is in building a society that cares for the earth and for people. I spent my summer holiday in my hometown in Greece. The country witnessed this year severe natural / man-made catastrophes; saw the image of a black vulture looking for its nest in the burnt forrest of Evros; learnt about the death of a late passenger when he was thrown into the sea by the ferry crew and heard a minister equating the pain for this death to the pain of the families of those responsible for it; saw the prices of bottled water going up as people stricken by the floods in Thessaly were deprived (are still deprived) of running water. In the month of September, two murder anniversaries intensified my questioning regarding the culture of this nation: that of rapper Pavlos Fyssas by the fascist criminal organisation Golden Dawn (once an elected party in the Greek parliament) and that of queer activist Zak Kostopoulos in the centre of Athens and at the hands of “common” citizens, with the police watching.

When Arts Council England announced in 2020 its cultural strategy for the decade, Let’s Create, the question underlying it was “Who do we wish to be in 2030?”. And it stated: “By 2030, we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish. A country where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences. (…) By 2030, we envision a country transformed by its culture and, at the same time, constantly transforming it: a truly creative nation, in which each of us can play a part.” Do you know at this point of any other country that looks at its culture as something more than a network of formal cultural venues and perhaps also the people working in the sector?

Zak Kostopoulos’ mother reminded us a few days ago that “The culture and superiority of a society is seen in the way it protects and helps the weak person, the poor, the disabled, the woman, the child, the immigrant, the elderly, the sick and others. In Greece we saw the poor lose their home, the disabled thrown into the sea, the woman murdered by her husband or partner, the child raped, the immigrant sunk with the boat, the transgender person stabbed.” (her open letter for those who read Greek)

What can we say to Zak's mother when in Greece we also saw a party led by one of the arrested Golden Dawn criminals, emerging three weeks before the last general election, win 11 seats in parliament? Who have we become? Who do we wish to be? What is politics about and what is culture for?

 

Readings suggested by Liva Kreislere:

Lia Ghilardi (2015), This is our city: Place-making through cultural planning

Franco Bianchini (2014), Cultural planning and artist-led urban transformation

Both available here

More on this blog

Freedom for what? Culture for what?

A black vulture looking for its nest in the burnt forrest.
(photo by Christos Kalogeros/Facebook)