Slog - Comments on It's Different in China http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/its_different_in_china I was thinking about political art (specifically Rachel Corrie) and arts funding (specifically, whether publicly subsidizing artmakers is always and everywhere a good idea) when I came across this quote in this article about dance in China: “The idea of arts as propaganda no longer prevails,” Willy Tsao, who runs three dance companies in China, wrote in an e-mail message. “The government sees that art serves more the purpose of entertaining the public than of education, thus wants the art groups to get more support from the audience through box office and commercial sponsorship. I see that this is a... Copyright 2008 Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:37:18 -0800 Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:20:25 -0800 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.34 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Comment by kt "Or that the urge to make politically persuasive art is, at its root, the urge to propagandize?"

i think propaganda only has negative connotations in certain contexts (most of the u.s. for example). etymologically it is quite tame.

]]> kt http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/its_different_in_china#c679331 http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/its_different_in_china#c679331 Arts Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:30:12 -0800 Comment by Fnarf A gajillion years ago, back in the seventies right after Nixon "opened China", there was a documentary on TV that featured Shirley MacLaine wandering around with her Maoist minder and admiring all the wonderful works of man there. At one point, they were in an "art studio" where the "artists" were all hard at work turning out thousands of identical cat statuettes. Shirley thought it was pretty marvelous to see so many people creating art, and it's pretty hard to argue with that.

]]> Fnarf http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/its_different_in_china#c679435 http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/its_different_in_china#c679435 Arts Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:20:25 -0800