Uncritical Mass

In a recent issue of 'Voima' magazine Outi Nyytäjä wrote that there is a severe lack of criticism - by which I mean REAL criticism - in Finlnad. People are afraid to state strong opinions, to name names, to take a position. Even those who do make their opinions known and are perceived as being radical are often only expressing conservative viewpoints. I would wholeheartedly agree with this position. I am therefore going to use this blog as a forum for my -often extreme- critical opinions. Some people won't like this.

I imagine, for example, if I were to criticize some of the grant-giving institutions in Finland, or if I were to criticize certain persons in positions of cultural power in local government that this would make life more difficult for me as an artist in Finland. I imagine that such institutions would have second thoughts about giving me grants and supporting my work. I even fear the possibility that biting the hand that feeds me might result in me starving, quite literally, through a sudden withdrawal of financial support.

But if that were to happen, what would it say about the country we live in? About democratic values of free speech? If people in power were to be offended by my words and withhold funding, what would that say about the Finnish arts system?

It would reveal that the culturally powerful wield their power undemocratically. It would show that the Finnish arts system is based more on a soviet-style dictatorship, where friends are given high positions, the unqualified are handed inappropriate jobs, the qualified are punished unfairly because their opinions do not match those of the powerful, where professional jealously pervades and pollutes the artistic environment, where free thought and new ideas are not encouraged, where potential is ignored in preference to personal profit.

Does any of that sound familiar? Is it already too late?

The only way to change an ineffective, archaic and out of touch system is to directly combat through action, words, art. To make the problems more visible, and to hold the people who cause the problems accountable.

And there is the key word: accountability. For too long the art administrative elite have been unaccountable. They make decisions without consultations with artists, handing down didacts on the direction of the arts both locally and nationally.

Finland is drastically behind the times in the arts. It is as though postmodernism never happened here. The Finnish arts excelled during modernism, but the arts have never moved beyond this. There is such a resistance to taking risks with art that it has stagnated. It has become a stinking pool of rotting ideas.

It is time to change this. But in order to change this, there needs to be a change in administration. Out with the old, in with the new. It is the time for direct engagement. If the boards and power-holders can't handle the heat, then get out of the kitchen.

Finland has reached uncritical mass. It is time to reverse the trend, to hit the restart button. If the arts is truly operated on a soviet-style system, then to change it we must adopt similar tools. Soviet regimes were constantly undergoing changes of personnel, under the guise of the purge. This is what is needed: an arts purge. A coup d'etat. Regime change. And it's needed now.