I once had a discussion with a composition teacher and another student. This student was happy to report that he was to compose music for an event organized by a big corporation. The teacher, after congratulating him, started questioning his morals. Was he comfortable with selling his art to some corporation? Didn’t he realize that big corporations often have questionable goals and exploitative means? At this point I imagined the teacher ordering a burger at McDonalds, and asking the girl behind the counter the same questions. How can she work for such a corporation, doesn’t she know McDonalds does not care for the environment etc. etc.? So what’s the difference between a composer and a McDonalds employee? Why should one have a guilty conscience when working for a corporation and not the other?
First we have to assert some obvious points that are unfortunately not asserted enough; there is no such thing as big evil corporations and small good ones; they are all evil. Every company that makes a profit, no matter how small, does so by means of exploitation. Second of all, there is no escape from capitalism. Participation is obligatory. In theory, you could “extract” yourself by starting a self-sufficient commune on a piece of unclaimed or stolen land, but doing so would amount to going back in time and would not solve any problem. Also, such an experiment would only work on a small scale; getting too big means becoming a threat to the establishment. Thirdly, we are not guilty of capitalism. Sure we participate in it, but we are forced to.
But art should be exempted from the logic of capital. This however doesn’t mean that the artist has to remain “pure”, careful not to sell out. Artists have to eat too. Why should they get to keep their hands clean and live on public funds and subsidies, while other people have to work? I believe that it is art which should live on public funds, not the artist. This means that the production of a work of art should be subsidized, but not the lifestyle of the artist. This also means that once an artwork is complete, it’s public property, and no-one, not even the artist, has the right to sell or buy it. This is why I would gladly compose music for say, a McDonalds advert, but I refuse to join GEMA, the German handler of music copyrights.
This is also what I didn’t like about the movie Sophie Scholl, the student that heroically protested against the nazis in the middle of the war effort. Near the end of the film, her nazi captor wants to make a deal with her; he will let her go if she publicly endorses Hitler, otherwise she will be killed. Of course she heroically denies and is killed in the end. This left me incredibly frustrated; why didn’t she take the deal and publicly endorse Hitler, only to plot an assassination or an uprising another day? When she refused to deal with the nazis, she put her own integrity ahead of her Cause. The artist should never make such a hypocritical mistake and always be ready to sell his body on the street for his art.
Maarten Schumacher 