And in a time of economic crisis it’s always easy to cut funding of arts and culture. Nobody dies because musea budgets are cut, symphonic orchestras disband or theatres are closed. Yet people do not live on bread alone and the necessity for slashing budgets the way the current Dutch government wants to do is debatable. It’s not the arts that have put us in debt, so why should it have to pay for the bankers’ crisis? Sure, there probably is some wastage, some dubious funding decisions that can be looked at, some ways to do more with less money, but we’re ruled by a government that takes pleasure from its own philistinism and the cuts are done for ideological reasons. It’s payback for the “leftwing church” that has supposedly ruled the Netherlands for decades enforcing its cultural norms on “Henk and Ingrid”, Wilders’ average Dutch couple. Bullshit of course, but popular bullshit at the moment — there’s always room for resentment against elitist artists.
Which is why the protests against these cuts need to get the public on board, get their sympathy. A good start was made last week, with public stunts like the flashmob performance of Mambo by the Dutch Radio Orchestra and the Radio Choir at Den Haag Central Station done to protest the closure of the Netherlands Broadcasting Music Center, shown in the video above. If the art world wants the cuts minimised or stopped, it needs to do more stuff like this, to show people why culture is important, even if it’s grossly unfair these cuts are planned at all.
(Video found at 24 Oranges.)