The most important task for the artist of the future is to remain an artist

3.2.2025 0 Tykkää 0 kommenttia

Art exists because of humanity’s need to explore, imagine, be curious, think, express, and create, says Academy of Fine Arts alum Pavel Rotts in his blog post. The text is originally Rotts’ speech at a cultural policy seminar organised at Uniarts Helsinki in November 2024.

In the autumn of 2024, I was honoured to give the opening speech at The Future is Art event. Organised by Uniarts Helsinki in collaboration with Turku Arts Academy, Novia, and the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the event served as a platform to discuss the upcoming Cultural Policy Report, set to be submitted to Parliament later that year.

My role was to deliver a speech as a young artist, envisioning the future of art – a task that initially left me puzzled. What could I possibly say, on my own, about such a vast and complex topic? Fortunately, conversations with my friend, curator and researcher Adel Kim evolved into a collaborative effort. Adel’s thinking resonates so deeply with mine that it’s hard to tell where my words end and hers begin.

Following the event and its discussions, the organisers and I agreed to share the opening speech as a blog post. What follows is the entire speech, with minor adjustments for readability.

One Song Is Not Enough: Opening Speech from the ”Future is Art” Discussion Event
Pavel Rotts feat. Adel Kim

I was asked to give a speech about the Future – or, more precisely, about the Future of Art. The event program announced it as ”A vision of the role of art in the future”. Let’s start from the beginning – the title of this event: ”The Future is Art”. Just imagine! Isn’t it wonderful? Everything is art, and everyone is an artist!

While preparing a speech on such an exciting topic, I became so eager to describe a bright and extraordinary future for art that I almost lost sight of the core question. What I’m actually meant to discuss is ”the role of art”. To clarify, let me refer directly to the source – the event invitation states: ”We believe that art can and should play a central role in building our future”.

I see a contradiction here. If art is the future, as the panel title suggests, then its role is the future itself – it implies that art is everything. However, talking about ”the role of art in building a future” positions art as a tool we use to construct something. From the utopian dream where everything is art and everyone is an artist, we are now coming back down to earth, back to work.

This optimistic idea of building the future together unsettles me, as it brings back personal memories of my childhood in the Soviet Union – a country that promised a bright future of communism built on equality and the common good but ultimately became a colonial empire, occupying its neighbours, repressing minorities, and stripping people of their fundamental human rights.

To avoid getting too dark about it, I want to clarify that I’m not against the idea of my art serving a purpose for someone – ideally, even contributing to the common good. However, the idea of art being ”useful” reminds me of a scene from an old Soviet cartoon I watched as a child, where the characters argue about a painting on the wall:

”What’s the use of this picture on the wall?” asks the father.
”This picture on the wall is very useful. It covers the hole in the wallpaper!” the mother responds.

What I’m trying to say here is that before discussing the role of art in building a better future, we must first ask: what about art itself? When we say that “art (and the artist) can and should play a central role in building our future”, I, as an artist, have to ask – what are the terms of the deal? What can society offer art and the artist in return?

We cannot discuss the future without first grounding ourselves in the present. To begin, we must address the conditions in which art and culture exist today – specifically, the cuts!

If The Cultural Policy Report, with objectives that will extend all the way to the 2040s has anything to do with the populist statement that “Culture is a Luxury”, our future is in trouble.1

The Helsinki Deputy for Culture, Paavo Arhinmäki, generously responded to the proposed cuts by quoting Winston Churchill. Legend has it that when Churchill was advised to reduce funding for culture in order to boost the defence budget, he famously replied:
”If we didn’t have our culture, what would we defend?”

However, I’m not bringing this up to argue with Riikka Purra’s statements. Rather, I want to use this example to explain my assumption. I believe that when someone views culture as a luxury unworthy of support, it stems from the belief that culture is something fixed, something already given. I can try to understand this perspective – after all, if we already have millions of artworks in the world, thousands of songs and poems in Finnish national heritage, museums filled with paintings, and public art flourishing in our streets, why should we invest in creating more?

It’s not an entirely unreasonable question, actually. I must admit that it was an existential question for me when I chose to be an artist. I asked myself something similar: if all the works of art have already been created, does art still need me? As I pondered this, a popular Soviet song kept playing in my head. It had lines like:

”Hope is my compass on Earth,
And luck is a reward for courage.
As for the song – one is enough,
If only it is about home.”

One song is enough. This is a symptomatic idea set against the backdrop of social realism, the only form of art that was officially allowed to exist in the Soviet Empire. But one song is not enough. That was my answer to this dilemma, and it’s why I’m speaking to you today as an artist.

In my opinion, the main mistake populists make when talking about culture is the assumption that we already own the culture – that the artworks we have in museums represent culture, that existing books are literature, and that enough songs have already been recorded. I believe that culture cannot exist without constant creation.

As a person with a Soviet background, I often bring in references from that era. I find it relevant because it offers a perspective that people from different backgrounds may not have. The USSR was an aggressor state, annexing its satellites by force, and contemporary Russia followed the same imperial ambitions, invading Ukraine and Georgia. Following this colonial logic, many figures who were labelled as ”Soviet” actually belonged to diverse nations. I want to quote the great Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvilly, who says:

”A human being is an effort suspended in time; it is a constant effort just to become human. A human being is not a natural state, a state of nature, but a state that is continually created.”

Mamardashvili understood humanity not as a static state but as an ongoing process – an effort of continual becoming. The inhuman wars of today, along with the appalling loss of humanity, echo the conflicts of the 20th century and sadly confirm his point. To remain human, a person must constantly strive to be so.

Mamardashvili applied this same idea to culture, stating: ”Culture is an ability or capacity to practice complexity and diversity. I emphasise the word practice, as culture is not the same as knowledge”.

For Mamardashvili, culture isn’t a collection of accumulated knowledge or something that can be set in stone and preserved in museums. Instead, culture is a dynamic, living process.

Today, the challenge of supporting the arts is a pressing issue within the artistic community. Proposed cuts in public art funding threaten numerous initiatives, organisations, and individuals, placing art workers in even more precarious positions and forcing us to stand up together for the future of art in Finland.

However, it’s important to remain critical of ourselves, as advocacy for arts funding to the public outside the arts sector can be problematic. For instance, in support of the necessity of art, the art establishment argues that art can increase societal well-being or contribute to mental health solutions. Alternatively, art could be presented as a tool to strengthen national identity or boost tourism. While art can indeed achieve these effects, they are not, by any means, the primary purpose of artistic creation.

Such positions are based on the idea that all human activity must be efficient. When viewed through this lens, art could easily become instrumentalised, with artists seen as service providers to society or as creators of national identity. This approach risks leading to measuring arts by key performance indicators (KPIs) and funding being distributed based on social impacts as the primary criteria. As a result, artistic freedom itself may be threatened.

Artistic freedom is a fundamental human right. In Finland’s 1995 Constitution, Section 16, paragraph 3 states: ”The freedom of science, art, and higher education is guaranteed”. The topic of artistic freedom often arises when there is a threat of censorship, but this freedom can also be undermined when specific effects are expected from the arts.

The Ethical Guidelines for the Art and Culture Sector, commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2022, affirms that “Artistic freedom includes the artist’s right to choose their subject, method, and means of expression. The content and diversity of art should not be externally regulated.”2 This aligns well with the idea that art should not be instrumentalised in favour of social effects. There are other, more direct ways to promote well-being and affect society; this responsibility belongs to politicians and public institutions, not to artists, who do not participate in the relevant decision-making.

Art exists because of humanity’s need to explore, imagine, be curious, think, express, and create. Pressure for “efficiency” risks reducing this free and open pursuit to a mere tool for solving social problems that require political intervention or treating illnesses that demand medical solutions. Art can certainly contribute to social well-being – but as a secondary effect, not as its main purpose. As advocates for the arts, let’s seek arguments rooted in the intrinsic value of art itself. Let artists create freely.

What do we expect from the artist of the future? Simply to remain an artist. This means to be in a constant process of becoming and creating. I believe that only if we understand art not as something to be preserved like a museum artefact, but as a continuous process of creation, only then can we truly protect the future of art.

Writer

Pavel Rotts
A Helsinki-based artist working with a variety of techniques and forms of contemporary practice.

Sources

1 See the the Deputy Prime Minister of Finland, and Finance Minister Riika Puura’s statement [https://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/art-2000009470096.html]

2 https://eettinentaide.fi/en/