I am a cultural omnivore one whose daily
commute is made possible by attachment
to an iPod an iPod that contains vogner
and Mozart pop diva Christina Aguilera
country singer Josh Turner got gangster
rap artist Kirk Franklin concerto
symphonies and more and more I'm a
voracious reader a reader who do deals
with Ian McEwan down to Stephenie Meyer
I have read the Twilight tetralogy and
one who lives for my home theater a home
theater write of our DVDs
video-on-demand and for a lot of
television for me Law & Order SVU Tina
Fey and 30 rock and Judge Judy the
people are real the cases are real the
rulings are final now I'm convinced a
lot of you probably share my passions
especially my passion for Judge Judy and
you fight anybody who attempted to take
her away from us but I'm a little less
convinced that you share the central
passion of my life a passion for the
live professional performing arts
performing arts that represent the
orchestral repertoire yes but jazz as
well modern dance opera theatre and more
and more and more you know frankly it's
a sector that many of us who work in the
field worry is being endangered and
possibly dismantled by technology while
we initially heralded the internet as
the fantastic new marketing device that
was going to solve all our problems we
now realize that the Internet is if
anything too effective in that regard
depending on who you read an arts
organization or an artist who tries to
attract the attention of a potential
single ticket buyer now competes with
between three and five thousand
different marketing messages a typical
citizen sees every single day we now
know in fact that technology's our
biggest competitor for leisure time five
years ago Gen Xers spent 20.7 hours
online and TV the majority on TV Gen Y
are spent even more twenty three point
eight hours the majority online and now
a typical in a typical university
entering student arrives at college
already having spent twenty thousand
hours online and an additional ten
thousand hours playing video games
a stark reminder that we operate in a
cultural context where video games now
outsell music and movie recordings
combined moreover we're afraid that
technology has altered our very
assumptions of cultural consumption
thanks to the internet we believe we can
get anything we want whenever we want it
delivered to our own doorstep we can
shop at 3:00 in the morning or 8:00 at
night ordering jeans tailor-made for our
unique body types ex expectations of
personalization and customization that
the live performing arts which have set
curtain times set venues attended
inconveniences of travel parking and the
like
simply cannot meet and we're all acutely
aware what's it gonna mean in the future
when we asked someone to pay $100 for a
symphony opera or ballet ticket when
that cultural consumer is used to
downloading on the Internet 24 hours a
day for 99 cents a song or for free
these are enormous questions for those
of us that work in this terrain but as
particular as they feel to us we know
we're not alone all of us are engaged in
a seismic fundamental realignment of
culture and communications a realignment
that is shaking and decimating the
newspaper industry the magazine industry
the book and publishing industry and
more saddled in the Performing Arts as
we are by antiquated union agreements
that inhibit and often prohibit
mechanical reproduction in streaming
locked into large facilities that were
designed to ossify the ideal
relationship between artist and audience
most appropriate to the 19th century and
locked into a business model dependent
on high ticket revenues where we charge
exorbitant prices many of us shudder in
the wake of the collapse of Tower
Records and ask ourselves are we next
everyone I talked to in performing arts
resonates to the world of aid words of
Adrian rich who in dreams of a common
language wrote we are out in a country
that has no language no laws whatever we
do together is pure invention the maps
they gave us are out-of-date by years
and for those of you who love the arts
aren't you glad you invited me here to
brighten your day
now rather than saying that we're a bit
brink of our own annihilation I prefer
to believe that we are engaged in a
fundamental Reformation a Reformation
like the religious Reformation of the
16th century the arts Reformation like
the religious Reformation is spurred in
part by technology with indeed the
printing press really leading the charge
on the religious and Reformation both
Reformation czar predicated on fractious
discussion internal self-doubt and
massive realignment of antiquated
business models and at heart both
Reformation I think we're asking the
questions who's entitled to practice how
are they entitled to practice and indeed
do we need anyone to inter mediate for
us in order to have an experience with a
spiritual divine Chris Anderson someone
I trust you all know editor-in-chief of
Wired magazine and author of the long
tale really was the first for me to nail
a lot of this he wrote a long time ago
you know thanks to the invention of the
internet web cell a web technology
minicams and more the means of artistic
production have been democratized for
the first time in all of human history
in the 1930s if any of you wanted to
make a movie you had to work for Warner
Brothers or RKO because who could afford
a movie set and lighting equipment and
editing equipment and scoring and more
and now who in this room doesn't know a
14-year old hard at work on her second
third or fourth movie similarly the
means of artistic distribution have been
democratized for the first time in human
history again in the 30s Warner Brothers
RKO did that for you now go to youtube
facebook you have worldwide distribution
without leaving the privacy of your own
bedroom this double impact is
occasioning a massive redefinition of
the cultural market a time when anyone
is a potential author frankly what we're
seeing now in this environment is a
massive time when the entire world is
changing as we move from a time when
audience numbers are plummeting but the
number of arts
participants people who write poetry who
sing songs who perform in church choirs
is exploding beyond our wildest
imaginations this group others have
called the pro Am's
amateur artists doing work at a
professional level you see them on
YouTube and dance competitions film
festivals and more they are radically
expanding our notions of the potential
of an aesthetic vocabulary while they
are challenging and undermining the
cultural autonomy of our traditional
institutions ultimately we now live in a
world defined not by consumption but by
participation but I want to be clear
just as the religious Reformation did
not spell the end to the formal church
or to the priesthood I believe that our
artistic institutions will continue to
have importance they currently are the
best opportunities for artists to have
lives of economic dignity not opulence
of dignity and they are the places where
artists who deserve and want to work at
a certain scale of resources will find a
home but to view them as synonymous with
the entirety of the arts community as by
far too short-sighted and indeed while
we've tended to polarize the amateur
from the professional the single most
exciting development in the last five to
ten years has been the rise of the
professional hybrid artist the
professional artist who works not
primarily in the concert hall or on the
stage but most frequently around women's
rights or human rights around global
warming issues or AIDS relief or more
not out of economic necessity but out of
a deep organic conviction that the work
that she or he is called to do cannot be
accomplished in the traditional hermetic
arts environment today's dance world is
not defined solely by the Royal Winnipeg
Ballet or the National Ballet of Canada
but by Liz Lerman's dance exchange a
multi-generational professional dance
company whose dancers range in age from
18 to 82 and who work with genomic
scientists to embody the DNA strand and
with nuclear physicists at CERN today's
professional theater community is
defined not only by the Shah and
Stratford festivals but by the
cornerstone Theatre of Los Angeles a
collective of artists that after nine
Levin brought together ten different
religious communities the Baha'i the
Catholic the Muslim the Jewish even the
Native American and the gay and lesbian
communities of faith helping them create
their own individual plays and one
massive play where they explored the
differences in their faith and found
commonality as an important first step
toward cross community healing today's
performers like we're deaf salons work
in women's prisons helping women
prisoners articulate the pain of
incarceration while today's playwrights
and directors work with youth gangs do
you find alternate channels to violence
and more and more and more and indeed I
think rather than being annihilated the
Performing Arts are poised on the brink
of a time where we will be more
important than we have ever been
you know we've said for a long time we
are critical to the health of the
economic communities in your town and
absolutely I hope you know that every
dollar spent on a performing arts ticket
in a community generates five to seven
additional dollars for the local economy
dollars spent in restaurants from
parking at the fabric stores where we
buy fabric for costumes the piano tuner
who chooses the instruments and more but
the arts are going to be more important
to economies as we go forward especially
in industries we can't even imagine yet
just as they have been central to the
iPod and the computer game industries
which few if any of us could have
foreseen 10 to 15 years ago
business leadership will depend more and
more on emotional intelligence the
ability to listen deeply to have empathy
to articulate change to motivate others
the very capacities that the arts
cultivate with every encounter
especially now as we all must confront
the fallacy of a market only orientation
uninformed by social conscience we must
seize and celebrate the power of the
Arts to shape our individual and
national characters and especially
characters of the young people who all
too often are subjected to bombardment
of sensation rather than digested
experience ultimately especially now in
this world where we live in a context of
regressive and onerous immigration laws
in
reality-tv that thrives on humiliation
and in its context of announcements
where the thing we hear most repeatedly
day-in day-out in the United States in
every train station every bus station
every plane station is ladies and
gentlemen please report any suspicious
behavior or suspicious individuals to
the authorities nearest you when all of
these ways we are encouraged to view our
fellow human being with hostility and
fear and contempt and suspicion the arts
whatever they do whenever they call us
together invite us to look at our fellow
human being with generosity and
curiosity god knows if we have ever
needed that capacity in human history we
need it now you know we're bound
together not I think by Technology
Entertainment Design but by common cause
we work to promote healthy vibrant
societies to ameliorate human suffering
to promote a more thoughtful subjective
empathic World Order I salute all of you
as activists in that quest and urge you
to embrace and hold dear the arts in
your work whatever your purpose may be I
promise you the hand of the Doris Duke
Charitable Foundation is stretched out
in friendship for now and years to come
and I thank you for your kindness and
your patience and listening to me this
afternoon thank you and Godspeed