Review of the Interdisciplinary Work and Performance Art Program - Final Report (1999)
Conclusions
We are trying to do work in our communities. When you get out of the cities you find that a lot of work being done in the communities is socially driven. That's because we don’t have the critical dialogue and the critical audience to do "art"-driven work; we are doing "culturally" driven work. And I think we can recognise that that gets discriminated against.
- Cheryl L'Hirondelle, media artist / storyteller (Saskatchewan), "To See Proudly - Advancing Indigenous Arts Beyond the Millennium", Canada Council First People's Arts Conference, Final Report, June 1999
The present system of funding for performance art and interdisciplinary work as one unit of activity has a 22-year history at Council. In spite of some peer assessment and administrative problems (most of which have been addressed in this review), their co-existence and cross-fertilisation has proven to be healthy and fruitful, and should be sustained. The key is to avoid administrative problems that compromise the openness and flexibility of the program.
The nature and thrust of performance art and interdisciplinary practices are to seek the blurring of boundaries and thus stubbornly resist definition of themselves, or of traditional definitions of art. As a result, "fixed" definitions or permanent categories for these practices are undesirable. Rather, the approach of the Inter-Arts Office is to create flexible frameworks in which these multilayered artistic practices can be recognised and evolve in a dynamic and changing relationship with the established disciplines.
Contemporary artists in general, and visual and media artists in particular, are constantly shifting, mixing and questioning conventions, concepts, procedures and structures. As Danielle Boutet points out in her article, Reflections on Interdisciplinary Practices in Canada, "Artists rarely agree on any single definition: they tend rather to think in terms of materials, media and contexts, continually seeking the best materials and formal strategies for carrying out their intentions." In this sense, the Inter-Arts Office is both a transition zone towards expansion of disciplinary boundaries and a harbour for emerging and experimental interdisciplinary artistic practices.
Artists working in performance art, interdisciplinary work and new artistic practices are not interested in being assigned a label or handed definitions. They form a loosely knit community of highly skilled, resourceful and often visionary artists who have much to offer our collective cultural ecology. During this review, these artists have made modest but firm requests to be recognised and appreciated for what they are, to be evaluated by knowledgeable, diversified and representative peers and to have access to reasonable and stable financial resources.
As a result, I conclude that given the eclecticism of performance art, the hybridity of interdisciplinary work and the non-disciplinary approach of new artistic practices, all three are best served within the flexible framework of the Inter-Arts Office. This framework will be complemented by close collaboration with all Sections and Secretariats at Council, and in particular with the Visual Arts Section (through the multidisciplinary artist-run-centre network and support for curatorial work and publications), with the Writing and Publishing Section (through the Spoken and Electronic Words Program), with the Media Arts Section (through the New Media Program), with the three performing arts sections (Theatre, Dance, Music) for experimental and emerging practices in both creation and dissemination.