Prince Claus Awards
"Culture is an essential part of the way we look at problems. It can help us find solutions that are beyond the reach of technology and technocracy. It enables us to build bridges between individuals and between groups with different backgrounds, for instance in post-conflict situations."
Your Majesty, Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great honour, and a great pleasure for me to be here and to have the opportunity to speak to you. It is a particular honour for me as Minister for Development Cooperation, because the fact that I am standing here today underlines the importance of the development component in the work of the Prince Claus Fund. Not only am I very pleased about this, I also think that the Fund, in the place it accords development, does honour to Prince Claus's work.
Ten days ago I was able to step into the shoes of Jan Pronk, an illustrious predecessor of mine, who initiated the Prince Claus Fund. In a play called Claus, directed by John Leerdam, the prince was played by Thom Hoffman (for those who don’t know him, a well-known Dutch actor). And a number of politicians were invited to take part. In the play I give a speech, based on the one given by Jan Pronk in the presence of the Prince at the inception of the Fund. I’d like to offer you a flavour of that speech now.
Why commission an opera on the Sahel from a composer in Burkina Faso, when you could use the money to build wells? Why award a prize to a poet, when you could use the money to treat malaria? For some people, their hearts overflowing with compassion at the harsh lot of the Africans, the decisions of the Prince Claus Fund are frivolous. While children are starving, every euro spent on culture seems like a decadent luxury. But it’s nonsense to make that kind of comparison. You could just as well say, while there is still money for tanks and AK47s, we don’t need to skimp on culture. But that would be too easy a response.
To understand the value of culture, we need to look again at compassion. In theory, our capacity for it knows no bounds. We can feel sorry for anyone, anywhere in the world. But in practice we only feel it for people who fit our image of an innocent victim. That’s why we’re so sensitive to the suffering of children. They can’t possibly have deserved their fate. But our preference for innocent victims is precisely what makes our pity cruel.
It reduces people to their capacity for suffering. It strips people of their humanity. We can all bleed and weep, but a person is more than a body that can suffer pain. We are living beings with plans.
Our humanity lies in our capacity to act, to create something new, to shape our own lives. Pity fails to recognise this human capacity. It robs people of their past (because it fails to recognise what they have done) and robs them of their future (because it casts them upon the mercy of their saviour).
The area par excellence in which the human capacity to create something new can be realised is culture. Our self-awareness is made more acute by writers. Vistas off the beaten track are revealed to us by poets. We are taught that the future is open by artists.
So money for culture is not a luxury, it is the air we need to breathe. It reminds us that our challenge is about more than eliminating pain and suffering. It reminds us of Prince Claus’s maxim that, rather than giving people help, we should enable people to help themselves.
Bringing together writers, artists and sculptors from the South is therefore an investment in fresh inspiration. In awarding a prize to a Palestinian poet, we are summoning people to create a different world. In giving money for an opera on the Sahel, we achieve a victory over pity.’
The playwright has used some artistic licence, but these words are spot on. They do justice to Prince Claus’s belief in the blessings of the interaction between development and culture. They do justice to his conviction that people must be aware of their own culture if they want to pursue development in earnest.
The Fund upholds the Prince’s principle that people develop themselves. Besides the important Awards we cherish today, the Fund supports, on request, projects in developing countries. The fact that this support is given on demand is, I think, crucial and should be strengthened. Because it is the artists themselves who in my view are in the driver seat. Another important point for me is ensuring broad access to culture. It probably comes as no surprise to hear me say that. Don’t misunderstand me: art for its own sake can also be vital, l’art pour l’art is limited, but can and should to counteract the instrumentalisation of culture. But I’m glad that the Fund starts to focus more on accessibility and participation by the poorer sections of society in developing countries. That is an essential direction. As reflected, for example, by the awards for township radio, and the travelling film festival Efecto Cine in Uruguay. And of course this evening’s award for Simón Vélez. He combines in a marvellous and unique wayarchitecture and social development.
In the Western world, the arts have often seemed to be the preserve of a small group, a kind of mutual admiration society. I’m glad to say that there is now increasing interaction with street culture. Developing countries are ahead of us in this respect: there, you find art in the street, in townships, in remote rural areas. Travelling around the world, I often notice that people in developing countries are more receptive to art. Art is accessible.
In the Western world, many ordinary people have come to feel that art is ‘not for them’. Maybe because of its supposedly elitist aura. But also because of a distinct ‘anti-art’ message propagated by some opinion makers. I’m concerned about this separation between different groups of people, between different audiences. In Soweto, you can find children who are enthusiastic students of the violin. Recently, a group of Dutch music teachers travelled to Soweto to see how it was done. In some neighbourhoods of Amsterdam, not far from here, you won't find many takers for violin lessons. Here we really need development cooperation ‘in reverse’.
Another example of the openness of Africans to different art forms is the succesfull tour of the Opera du Sahel through West-Africa, drawing scores of young people, students and ordinary citizens. They embraced this form of ‘high brow’ art with great enthusiasm.
We can learn a lot from countries in the South. They are not yet constrained by an established, sometimes conservative cultural infrastructure, so culture there is in many cases more open and accessible. It should be like that everywhere, in my view.
The Prince Claus Fund can build bridges to help further this aim. The Fund makes connections between the West and the South. It makes artists from the South better known by bringing them over here, and enables people here to get to know their work. This is invaluable. It not only strengthens ties between artists from different countries, but also dispels Western stereotypes about developing countries and the rest of the world. I think this is exactly the kind of work the Fund should be doing. It started out, after all, as a gift to a prince who so effectively overcame the Dutch reticence about standing out that he became known as the ‘prince of the poor’.
There was a time when, if an artist came from a developing country, this was the factor that determined his status in the art world and where he could exhibit. I think that time is past. One of this year’s laureates, El Anatsui, has shown how relevance to development and plaudits from the art critics can go hand in hand. El Anatsui provides work for whole villages when he takes people on to make his large-scale works of art. Last year his work was exhibited in Sonsbeek, and it is part of the British Museum’s permanent collection.
Another example of art building bridges is the work of Ramzi Abu Redwan, who will speak next. His work, teaching music to Palestinian children, gives them the chance to enjoy the beauty of music and a sense of normalcy in a very troubled region.
I think the Prince Claus Fund should reinforce its efforts to give artists from abroad a wider platform in the Netherlands, and to make their work accessible to a wide audience in this country. Because it is essential for all artists, regardless of where they come from, to meet their fellow practitioners and to have their work seen by the public.
Art and culture are essential in any society. Art can break taboos. Art and culture hold a mirror to society. Art can transcend boundaries and build bridges. I share the conviction of the Prince Claus Fund, that ‘culture is a basic human need, like food, shelter and safety’. Some would counter this by saying that if you have nothing to eat, you can’t enjoy culture. That may be so, but culture is food for the soul. Who are we to say that others have no right to culture, to the chance to express themselves? Culture and development are inextricably linked – they’re almost synonyms. As Seneca put it, almost two thousand years ago, ‘As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit.
Perhaps, in the times we now live in, when the pace of globalisation is faster than ever, our need for those things that give meaning to our lives is greater than ever. The clash between globalisation and tradition can disrupt societies. The pursuit of rapid economic progress can entail the jettisoning of old values and traditions, and the loss of the feelings of security, safety and belonging that they bring. A new balance will have to be found between, on the one hand, economic wealth and progress and, on the other hand, a way of life that also guarantees intangible wealth. It is here that the arts, as vehicles for passing on broad cultural values, can play an important role. Not by catering to the desire to go back to the ‘good old days’. But by presenting new paradigms that join the good elements of progress to the good elements of the old way of life, and maintaining a sense of pride in one’s own unique identity.
Culture can also be relevant to poverty reduction in a very direct way, by breaking taboos and bringing social problems out into the open. For example: a performance by the Walo dance group in Benin, about the fate of children abandoned by their children. Or the theatre in Durban, South Africa, which not only put on a play which encouraged discussion of AIDS, but also gave audience members the opportunity to take an HIV test after the performance.
Culture is an essential part of the way we look at problems. It can help us find solutions that are beyond the reach of technology and technocracy. It enables us to build bridges between individuals and between groups with different backgrounds, for instance in post-conflict situations. In refugee camps, in the direst of circumstances, people often make music, dance or tell stories to come to terms with their emotions and experiences and to enjoy their lives at least briefly. They turn to culture because it offers consolation, it gives them an anchor, and it is a part of their identity. Culture makes it possible to recognise differences, and gives us the tools to discuss past conflicts and prevent new conflicts. And as it lays bare the differences, it also highlights common ground shared by people, both within and between cultures. This can provide the basis for mutual understanding. The films Tsotsi and District 9, for example, have forced many South Africans to think about the violence in their society and where it stems from.
As we all know, this is the week of the climate summit in Copenhagen. I was there on Monday and will go back as soon as I can. We know that developing countries are hardest hit, while their share in global emissions is tiny. The impact of climate change is visible now in developing countries. From Kenya, where nomads find it increasingly difficult to find fertile grazing land for their cattle, to Bangladesh, where the capital Dhaka is under threat from the rising level of the river Brahmaputra on the one side and rising sea levels on the other.
The choice of Culture and Nature by the Prince Claus Fund as its annual theme could not therefore have been better timed. I am delighted that the Principal Prince Claus Award is going to Simón Vélez. His work is amazing, in terms of both sustainable design and technical and aesthetic innovation.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me return, if I may, to the play about Prince Claus. Money for culture is not a luxury, it is the air we need to breathe. Not investing in culture in developing countries would mean surrendering to pity. It would mean losing our faith in fresh inspiration. It would mean failing to uphold the ideals of Prince Claus. That must not to happen. And I am convinced that, given the energy and passion shown ― like their father ― by the Fund’s two Honorary Chairmen, it won’t happen.
Thank you.