Taking the Temperature: Crisis, Curating, and Musical Diversity
Design: Asia Pietrzyk /asiapietrzyk.com
Taking the Temperature: Crisis, Curating, and Musical Diversity har sitt utspring fra Ultima, Nordens største samtidsmusikkfestival. Boken består av en rekke samtaler om mangfold i samtidsmusikken med musikere, kuratorer, ledere og aktivister på feltet. Den er redigert av Brandon Farnsworth, Anna Jakobsson og Vanessa Massera, og inkluderer perspektiver på samtidsmusikk og mangfold fra Norge, Sverige, Finland, Danmark, Island og Canada.
Nedenfor kan du lese et utdrag av intervjuet med Siri Haugan Holden, daglig leder i Balansekunst, som i samtale med Vanessa Massera tar temperaturen på likestillingen og mangfoldet i det norske kunst- og kulturlivet (s. 120–126):
Vanessa Massera: On your website you say that you specifically challenge structural inequalities, stereotypes and prejudice. Do you see resistance to this?
Siri Haugan Holden: With regards to resistance, I would have to say that there is a lot of good will and a lot of great words in the Norwegian art scene but there are two main arguments of resistance. The first one is the old one of ‘diversity as opposed to quality,’ as if they cannot coexist. The other one is about how art needs to be free and that any regulation or attempt to make it more inclusive will in fact make the art somehow lesser because it will not be as free as it should be. I am guessing those are also well-known arguments for you.
I would say those are the most common points of resistance. We all agree that diversity is important but when it comes to actually doing something these are the arguments that come up.
VM: Are there examples of initiatives that you took where your presence made a significant difference?
SHH: I hesitate to point to something as a solo Balansekunst victory because we are so many working in the same direction and I do not want to take anyone else’s light. But I have absolutely no doubt that Balansekunst’s voice now holds some weight, seeing as we are almost ninety organizations. If I were to pick one example it would be our work with combatting sexual harassment in the arts, due to the sector being so vulnerable because of all the temporality; everything that makes artists specifically vulnerable to harassment.
Balansekunst was able to quickly gather powerful institutions to address this kind of harassment, which we were able to do pretty quickly because we already had our platform. Whereas harassment has been addressed through several initiatives and the #MeToo chronicles in the paper, our platform allowed us to combine the efforts of many institutions. We were able to quickly gather so many interesting institutions to create a common front, so I would say that that is a good example of how we can mobilize quickly when there are many of us.