Trillium Book Awards Author Reading 2015

Artists: Ordinary or Extraordinary?

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Atwood also argues the arts are essential to being human - that to create, express, perform, dance, sing, draw - are intrinsic to all cultures. Yet, she also argued, that artists were risk-takers and that artists embrace and enjoy their freedom of expression as well as dissent. As Atwood writes,


The description of artists' reluctance to conform to a dominant/authoritarian ideology and as risk-takers made me wonder whether the old motif of the Artist as Hero still has a role to play (at a time which many others have argued that art and artists have been folded into a consumerist, commmercially-driven dominant culture). Are artists our voices of freedom? Or, do they embrace human freedom more than others, taking a risk (and obviously, this risk is heightened in countries where freedom of speech and expression is curtailed or not recognized) in precisely the activities that Atwood describe as essential to being human - creating, performing, singing, dancing, etc? And, does this make them extraordinary?

Maybe the division is: who is willing to stand up and be counted and who is willing to "line up and salute," as Atwood put it, to the powerful doctrines of the day? Artists are ordinary people, but perhaps their willingness to take on Conservative policies and cuts and make it into an election issue is to become politically engaged in the public eye, which given our ever-falling vote turnout, is extraordinary in and of itself?


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Nitin Deckha


Go to Nitin Deckha ’s Author Page