Arts & International Affairs: Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 2018 | Page 53

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
to treat Memento Park as a repository for Soviety era statues. He believed the statues’
presence were useful affirmations of history.
Works that memorialise and commemorate history are often public goods, as Solomiya
explained to the group. But culture wars also involve disputes over private goods with
finite resources such as the number of theatre tickets available each night for purchase.
The Fellows disagreed to various extents on the benefits and costs for different pricing
models. Natalia reminded the Fellows to consider motivation for attendance in addition
to access; she argued that expensive tickets prohibit the disadvantaged from arts participation,
but that cheap state-subsidised tickets do not automatically guarantee the same
population shows up either.
Xenia Hanusiak offered an alternative structure to calculate potential audience motivation.
She argued that the decision to attend a performance is in part informed by how the
individual perceives a sense of community with the work. “It’s not a question of money,”
Xenia said.
Debates over access and motivation revolved around the themes of inclusion and exclusion.
For example, Ann contended that theatre’s practice to scale seating prices excluded
low-income audiences from the same artistic experience as those that could afford the
best seats.
Furthermore, the conversation demonstrated that cultural business models also limit
or exclude which works art practitioners can introduce to the public. Devika Ranjan indirectly
answered Caitlin Nasema Cassidy’s question for how arts administrators could
be allowed to create more complex programming with her observation that performing
arts companies tend to produce only the safest, most popular shows out of financial necessity.
Throughout today’s deliberations, the role of the state served as the hinge between all
topics. Public support can restrict artists by making them comply to funding stipulations,
but also force citizens to indirectly pay for art that conflicts with their moral and
value systems.
Shubham Roy Choudhury stated that people needed to support art they don’t like because
to condition funding on taste would have an isolating effect. Shubham argued
that support for controversial work benefits the individual, noting that when that an
isolated population would be unprepared to confront such work when it does show up
in society.
The discussions on culture wars covered the spectrum from arts and cultural policies to
the position of culture in violent conflict.
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