STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
• rapid growth of the industrial and economic environment: there are countless small
businesses, even individual businesses, alongside very large multinational groups that
have been formed from the takeover of cultural undertakings by financial and industrial
groups;
• promotion of creative work: the creative dimension tends to be part of every sector of the
conventional and social economy (e.g. publishing, cultural tourism, heritage
development, organisation of events);
• evaluation of the result: artistic success is not necessarily financial or media success;
• financing: artistic innovation and the quality of the cultural sector cannot be judged
solely in terms of return on investment; they require specific forms of government
action, together with private and non-commercial contributions, and increasingly involve
foreign partners in international co-productions, which adds considerably to production
costs (arranging finance, travel, etc) 126 .
Observers such as Mona Cholet try to explain these conditions by using the term ‘the
intellectual underclass’. She writes, ‘The precarious intellectuals come from privileged milieus
or have acquired the symbolic capital of the higher classes, yet as far as their condition and
incomes are concerned, they belong to the lower strata of society’. 127 .
3.2. Artists in their time
Nevertheless, one of the specific features of street arts is that this sector differs from other live
performance sectors, in particular subsidised or private indoor theatre.
There are two camps in the highly controversial debate on the function of art and its role in
society. On one side are the advocates of art for art’s sake, who think that art should not be
subordinated to a purpose. On the other side, those who think that art should be useful and
creative work should have a social, political and economic function (some would say a
responsibility).
Elena Dapporto’s view is that when public bodies fund the arts and promote their social
development, it is possible to identify which ‘services’ the State intends to provide to society by
helping artists: heritage conservation, support for creative work and cultural democratisation. In
addition, there is a desire to foster national cohesion by developing public awareness and
promoting the image of the country abroad.
Street arts do pursue those aims, but they also have others, for example:
3.2.1. Political aims
• preservation and revival of popular culture. Street arts keep festival traditions and certain
popular skills alive;
• promotion of innovative forms of creation. Street arts decompartmentalise the academic
rules of the arts by linking the various disciplines (theatre, dance, music, plastic arts);
126 European Parliament, The Status of Artists in Europe, op. cit.
127 Cholet, Mona, journalist, author of La Tyrannie de la réalité, Gallimard, ‘Folio Actuel’ coll., Paris, 2006.
106
PE 375.307