Between Clinched Jaws On Public Sounds and Space

Editorial

By Maria Morberg

The super election year of 2024 did not turn out a tribute to democratic governing. Everything is shaky. Romanticism made a comeback, while Enlightenment is spread as missile flares and trace lights. Children order murders from other children in chats, and the other children book tickets in another app for justin-time delivery. People debate which government is to blame. People debate who are the most one-eyed; those who wanted the world's largest democracy – so it is called – to be supervised by the Orange-White-Haired, or those who in a socio-politically filtered group vacuum had ruled it out. The reference to hair colour I use in the way one used to, in ancient times, conjure oneself from evil powers by not mentioning them by name.

We should stop naming other phenomena. In addition to democracy, also culture. The words are soundbites that could contain anything. If useful things break, however, they need to be rebuilt, be given new roles. So, let us talk about public space instead. About its sounds and images; what public space manifests; how it acts in us.

There is no inherent goodness or reliability in the sound element "culture". The purpose of the 0.6 per cent cannot be to shape future generations, but to give space to imagination, allowing experts to fund ideas based on potential threshold of originality. We need surveys. Reports and reviews from political scientists and economists. Facts, calculations, evaluations, analyses. Trials. Yes. And correspondents for free media. Although free media is yet another dead-end soundbite. We pay for freedom with clickbait. In philosopher Jonna Bornemark’s words: Which desires ought to shape society?

Over the past 50 years, average funds allocated to culture in Sweden were on today's level: 0.6 percent of the national budget. Those who commission sounds and images cannot offer minimum fees to performers. Nor afford the rent for space where sounds and images may be exhibited. Sounds and images in public space constitute social structure that is becoming less and less able through the 0.6 percent.

The most significant financial contributors to culture are individuals who buy tickets. Those who can afford to pay for both housing and food, that is, fewer and fewer. Sweden’s Central Bank’s Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel was recently awarded to academics who proved that inequality is counterproductive for social prosperity. How great that this important discovery is rewarded. What leaps to mind is a folklore tapestry embroided ‘a big dick is a small comfort in a poor home.’

Sweden now wants to manifest That Culture is Very Important through a literal canon. A measure which seems whipped up to parade a proactive response to weak results among elementary school pupils. Now that alarming results apply not only to other children but to those whose parents bring a lawyer to PTA meetings demanding a raise of their kids’ grades. Because they're worth it.

I have sought the powers for a comment, but they do not respond. So, I imagine timbre based on their statements. Verbal artillery between tense jaws, clattering lunges, unwarranted rationalizations. I then realize that the Futurists made such compositions, and that the movement's founder Marinetti, like most in the lowest, that is the largest, caste of the culture business, worked extra hours to make a living. He was a speechwriter for Mussolini.

Without interpretations of occurrences and mental states; pain and nourishment; people and places; death and life – no context. "Don't worry about cool, make your own uncool," Sol Le Witt wrote to Eva Hesse, when she got stuck in her processing of occurrences and mental states. "You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!"

The protagonist of the Danish author Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume seeks methods, tricks, and systems to re-experience seasons of the year, despite her captivity in the same November date, day after day. She tries to embrace her place in the world and the meaning of it, even though events constantly repeat themselves. All the tenderness, fear, attention, anger, and longing that could save us, era by era, awaken by the whims and dumb plays that we call art.

On The Calculation of Volume, Solvej Balle (planned series of seven books, 2022 –)

The letter from LeWitt to Hesse, April 14, 1965, Letters of Note. Correspondence deserving of a wider audience, ed. Shaun Usher (2014) e-mail: contact@public-retreat.com website: www.public-retreat.com instagram: @public_retreat

Maria Morberg Lower East Side dweller turned woodland lover. Former editor, Moderna Museet; producer at Fylkingen; public property-related art curator in Skellefteå. Writer.