20、 Obama
B1 Intermediate US 17527 Folder Collection
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I am a cultural omnivore,
one whose daily commute
is made possible by attachment to an iPod --
an iPod that contains Wagner and Mozart,
pop diva Christina Aguilera,
country singer Josh Turner,
gangsta rap artist Kirk Franklin,
concerti, symphonies and more and more.
I'm a voracious reader,
a reader who deals with Ian McEwan down to Stephanie Meyer.
I have read the "Twilight" tetralogy.
And one who lives for my home theater,
a home theater where I devour DVDs, video-on-demand
and a lot of television.
For me, "Law and Order: SVU,"
Tine 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'd 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,
theater 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 5,000
different marketing messages
a typical citizen sees every single day.
We now know in fact
that technology is our biggest competitor for leisure time.
Five years ago,
Gen-X'ers spent 20.7 hours online and TV,
the majority on TV.
Gen-Y'ers spent even more --
23.8 hours, the majority online.
And now, a typical
university entering student
arrives at college
already having spent
20,000 hours online
and an additional 10,000 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 three in the morning or eight at night,
ordering jeans tailor-made for our unique body-types.
Expectations of personalization
and customization
that the live performing arts --
which have set curtain times, set venues,
attendant inconveniences of travel, parking and the like --
simply cannot meet.
And we're all acutely aware:
what's it going to mean in the future
when we ask someone to pay a hundred dollars
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 who 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 and 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 talk to in performing arts
resonates to the words of Adrienne 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?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, rather than saying that we're on the 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 Reformation.
Both reformations were predicated on fractious discussion,
internal self-doubt
and massive realignment of antiquated business models.
And at heart, both reformations, I think
were asking the questions:
who's entitled to practice?
How are they entitled to practice?
And indeed, do we need anyone
to intermediate 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 Tail,"
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 technology,
mini-cams 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?
(Laughter)
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 ams,"
amateur artists doing work at a professional level.
You see them on YouTube, in 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
is, 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 10 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,
or on global warming issues or AIDS relief for 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 the Shaw and Stratford Festivals,
but by the Cornerstone Theater of Los Angeles --
a collective of artists that after 9/11,
brought together 10 different religious communities --
the Bahia, 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 Rhodessa Jones,
work in women's prisons,
helping women prisoners articulate the pain of incarceration,
while today's playwrights and directors work with youth gangs
to find alternate channels to violence
and more and more and more.
And indeed, I think, rather than being annihilated,
the performing arts are posed on the brink of a time
when 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 or on parking,
at the fabric stores where we buy fabric for costumes,
the piano tuner who tunes 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
come 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 a context of analysis,
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 ever needed
that capacity in human history,
we need it now.
You know, we're bound together,
not, I think by technology, entertainment and design,
but by common cause.
We work to promote healthy vibrant societies,
to ameliorate human suffering,
to promote a more thoughtful,
substantive, 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 in listening to me this afternoon.
Thank you, and godspeed.
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B1 Intermediate US

【TED】Ben Cameron: The true power of the performing arts

17527 Folder Collection
Echo published on December 21, 2016

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