After a lot of soul searching, intense horse trading and reflection on the realpolitik of the nation to ensure a stable government, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced his Cabinet that reflects the spectrum of coalition partnerships.
He addressed the relevant economic and social issues in delineating his Cabinet positions. However, he advertently or inadvertently missed out on the designation of arts and culture in his Cabinet announcement.
Previous governments have positioned arts and culture in various hybrid ministries.
Their inception was in the Culture, Youth and Sports Ministry, which later morphed into the Culture, Arts and Tourism Ministry.
Tourism was then given prominence when its designation was changed to the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry. But the present government is silent on the role and position of arts and culture in the Cabinet.
Perhaps it regards arts and culture as entertainment, and not economically viable and pertinent to the people’s wellbeing.
Therefore, they do not merit mention in the same breath as finance, economy, agriculture, industry and international trade, health, youth, and sports.
One wonders if it is anathema to mention it. Could it be that arts and culture are religiously sensitive or even offensive to some segments of society that it is best left unmentioned?
One suspects that it is surreptitiously subsumed under Tourism, lest its open declaration would be unpalatable for some.
For the uninitiated, who only see the physicality of existence and are unaware of its aesthetic and metaphysical quotient, it behoves upon them to be schooled in the reality that arts and culture are not subservient but of equal importance to the other facets of governance.
Arts and culture are integral elements in the country’s social, economic, and educational development.
Arts and culture are embedded in the social fabric of various communities, especially the tribal communities where they serve a religious and aesthetic function pertinent to the psyche of the community and in ensuring the wellbeing of the people.
The Iban, Kenyah, Melanau, Bidayuh, Penan, and Malay communities of Sarawak, and the Bajau, Kadazan, Dusun, and Cocos communities of Sabah, exemplify these ritualistic and aesthetic functions of arts and culture as the core of their existence.
In Islamic communities, arts and culture adorn their lives, serving an aesthetic secular function, evident in their tangible and intangible artistic expressions.
In the contemporary setting, the arts and culture are integral elements of modern life. Almost all nations, especially in the metropolitan or urban enclaves, boast of vibrant arts and culture scenes as defining the contemporary lifestyle.
Arts and culture are economically viable, for they combine the aesthetic and the functional.
They create economic spinoffs through the sales of paintings, sculptures, and other products.
They generate revenue from the sales of tickets for exhibitions and performances.
On top of that, they employ a host of small, medium, and large-scale enterprises to supply materials for these tangible and intangible artistic activities.
As an integral part of the educative process, arts and culture engender a higher level of cognition in visual thinking that perceives phenomena beyond the usual verbal textual expressions.
They challenge the creative mind in expressing beauty by transforming nature into a realm beyond the mundane and allowing insights beyond the physicality of forms by constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing these forms into various dimensional possibilities.
Arts and culture appeal to the intellect and develop a creative mindset that explores the whole spectrum of expressions of beauty, and opens the mind to look beyond the stoic physicality of forms.
Arts and culture inculcate creativity that would enable the practitioner to express emotions in two-dimensional, three-dimensional and plastic forms that are innate and intuitive, traversing the realm of reason and beyond reason.
In so doing, they allow the practitioners to explore various facets of realism, surrealism, absurdity, and fantasy; to perceive phenomena through the mind’s eye.
Such preoccupations build discipline and character and a free spirit to roam the vistas of knowledge that provide intuitive and conscious cognition of terrestrial and cosmic existence.
The current government must review these imperatives and involve them, not as a mere addendum, but as an integral part of national development, and restore arts and culture to their rightful place.
(Editor’s note: Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Tiong King Sing has announced today that arts, and culture will remain in the same federal ministry as tourism.)
This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Twentytwo13. Main image is by the Information Department of Malaysia.
