What should we do when governments insist on having the VTA for culture at unbearable values, killing (not so softly) the sector and making even harder for artists to live of their work? And if it turns out that your government "feels" that culture is not as important as... let's say, porn? Doesn't that seem strange? Fortunately if there's one thing we still have for free is the use of our creativity and Spanish performers have showed just that, by selling carrots and porn magazines as tickets for theater. This way, the state says it's ok to pay only 4% taxes (instead of 21%!). And they say we're the crazy ones...
Helder Guimarães, a Portuguese world renowned magician, says that Portugal is not a country for magicians, "it's a cultural issue", he says, "cultural programmers see magic shows as secondary, inferior (to other performing arts)". He was voted by 3.500 people for the second year in a row, as the "world greatest magician", nevertheless there's no interest in buying his shows in Portugal, so he moved to the US...
He's right, there is little tradition in Portugal of attending magic shows but there's also little tradition of attending performing arts in general. Should we just stop thinking about this, because... there's no tradition? For whom are we "creating" these countries (yes, plural, there are many other European examples) where culture is just what people are "familiar with".
When I read these news of people going overseas (or abroad) to seek the recognition they can't get "at home", of cultural policies being made based on economic statistics only, I always remember Churchill's remarkable words when asked to cut down cultural funding to help the war effort: Then what would we be fighting for? We keep cutting and mending and struggling to "go on", get trough these hard moments, but what will we have to show for as "tradition" in a few years?
Maybe we'll need more then Helder's Small Miracles...
