Performing arts Essay

Art, culture, and society; these three elements are closely linked. These three elements affect one another in one way or another. There is often a conflict of interest between the artist, the audience, and the government body. The artist’s aim is to express art freely. The audience’s aim is to view art in forms that are not offensive to them. The government’s aim is to mitigate the conflict of interest between the two parties by implementing policies and restrictions to art pieces that are produced and viewed. Controversy is an issue to take into consideration by the government when funding art and censoring art. This is due to art pieces being widely reached through the advances of technology. Audiences of art are thus easily accessible to art that could influence or offend. However, art is innately challenging and often provocative. Creativity would be stifled if the government funded only art so bland that it offended no one. Creativity would also be stifled if the government creates censorship to limit art that challenges the strongly held beliefs of the society. These concerns raise a few questions to Art in the society. Firstly, how much restriction should the government restrict the type of art forms that could have an adverse effect on the society? Or rather what limitations on censorship and funding should be made for the sake of artist value, or more broadly freedom of expression? Secondly, should it be the responsibility for the artist to take into consideration the effect on the viewer when creating art pieces that may seem controversial to others? In Singapore, Art is increasingly promoted. The promotion of Art in Singapore can be seen from the provision of arts institution that provides full time programmes for the performing arts, the implementation of the yearly Singapore Art Festival which provides a platform for artist to express their talent and for the community to appreciate and to understand Art better, and the funding from the government to arts companies, the opening of the Art Science Museum in February 2012, etc. Although Art is increasingly promoted in Singapore, artistic freedom is being under assaulted. Freedom is threatened by pressures from the government. The society only accepts art that is socially acceptable; one that does not break the law and does not offend any individual. The recent works of a student of an art institution in Singapore is one example that provides evidence for freedom of artistic expression being restricted. The artist printed stickers with captions and pasted them on a pavement and on road traffic signs an act of a guerrilla art scene. She also painted â€Å"My Grandfather Road. † along certain roads in Singapore. While her works portrays certain value of the Singaporean Culture, where singlish and certain forms of lingos are being used in her stickers and paintings, they are then being deemed by the law as vandalism. This specific act of art creation has roared a debate among netizens in Singapore, with many fighting for freedom for creative expression, while the others stating that what she did was merely seeking attention, vandalism, or creating art of no value. In 1994, a performing artist was fined for committing an obscene act. In his performance, he snipped his pubic hair before a small audience as a symbolic protest against police entrapment of gays, punishment by flogging, jail sentences for â€Å"victimless† crimes, and news media exposure of those convicted. He was also prohibited from future public performances. While the artist did this for the love of art and in the interest of expanding the general outlook of art in Singapore, The National Arts Council branded the acts â€Å"vulgar† and â€Å"extremely distasteful. If the government funds and allows only art that is has no controversial value, then wouldn’t creativity be buried in our society? Also, if art works is created to conform to the norm of the society, is art still art? Art is a form of freedom, expression, creativity, and life. However, from the above two examples, it can be seen that there is a constraint place on freedom of artistic expression and the value of art. Artists can express art only with lawful restrictions. Artists who are daring enough to oppose to such norms are either being punish, or their art works are being restricted from the audience. The rest restricts their work to those that conforms to the societal norms. With these restrictions, art can never be expressed in its original form; audience can never be exposed to some brilliant art works which may be vulgar to some but artistic to others. By total restriction of art works that lack redeeming social values, we will be exposed to only art that conforms. This would cause depreciation in the value of art in our society. Despite the fact that art should be freely expressed to preserve its value of creativity, it is important to take into consideration what effect some art works may have on our society. It can be seen that the two artists go against cultural norms to showcase art works that breaks away from the norm and set themselves different from others. By breaking away from the cultural norm, viewers with his or her set of cultural values may be offended. However, by silencing art pieces that the majority considers offensive, we may be oppressing the minority and preventing the society from learning the message that the artist conveys. Thus it is important for an artist to recognize how far he or she should go in order to create art works that do not offend some individuals. It is widely believed that Singapore, being a Cosmopolitan city, has to be very careful when expressing our thoughts on sensitive issues. In our society, censorship is necessary to protect its community from artistic content that lack redeeming social values. It can be argued that artistic content that oppose social values should be restricted. It is stated by our minister that artists can express themselves through many other areas without crossing any red tape. This shows that total freedom of artistic expression is indeed not present in our society. In conclusion, while artists should be able freely express as much as possible, it is only fair for them to consider whether their work would cause harms to others. In both examples, from the artists’ point of view, they are merely creating art freely and creatively. Yet their works did not take into consideration the effects it has on the environment, community, and individuals. Also, although the government has the responsibility and the right to protect its community from inappropriate message and content, individuals should be given certain rights to choose what they deemed suitable for themselves. The definition of obscenity differs among different individuals. What seems obscene to one may not be obscene to others. Thus it is important to have a clear line on what the rights does the government has on implementing policies and guidelines to restrict art works from the audience.