.... I cannot remember where I came across that Latin tag.
Translates as what: ad hoc pragmatic approach to everything ----
doing artwork responding to changes of conditions obedient to authority of PARADIGM arrived at theoretically ---- the pattern --- garment-trade fashion-world method --- before beginning series of productions. Work done so that there is no glitch while putting tools to work. Results immaculately clean tidy & machine-like. [McCahon was 'untidy', Walters perfect].
As against leaving all possibilities -- foreseen and unforeseeable open during process of working each piece --- ready for all eventualities --- variability of bounce as the ball comes off the court with a mind prepared for masximum stretch & coordination of mind with the time --- cutting a stone glyph, stone is not uniform in its internal composition -- take consequences of each glyph or sentence as it goes forward -- by the time I got to Phoenix it had gone up in smoke & down in ash --- path to knowing something is no more specifiable than what is to be known & what knowledge comes in -- & from -- working.
Answers to questions like 'why is Poussin still in the syllabus for this year's art history exam' can only be determined in a retrospective accounting, of where inquiry began & what route it took, after course has ended --- knowledge about teacher-student relation among other things --- about the felt effect of changes of feeling towards paarticular artworks during study --- prejudices dissolving --- something in analysis of an artwork that raises questions of interpretation & therefore slways of subject positions in dialogue --- all of which are 'subjective', not only those with the most incisive speculations as starting points for investigations, such as problem of generalities raised by particulars.
======= maximium sretch Genio ========
Hic labor, hoc opus est cries out to be justaposed with University of Auckland's motto Ingenio et Labore --- labouring up field in 30 phases of pick-&-go or coordination of a team able to invent on the run end with a team-try --- in retrospect I note the distinct lack of collegiality even in 1970s, instead a gaggle of competing male-egos & bullying of newcomers --- wars of the nobles with not a few robber-barons among them no Robin Hoods
I've just got the Alumni magazine -- Spring 2013 -- don't remember asking for it no mention of uni's savage attack on Fine Arts -- recognise at once it's corporate format & journalism styled like progress reports from Infratil. No hint of what a former colleague of mine tells me in the street recently that staff are intimidated, that they are afraid of 'punishment' if they 'speak out'.
So "Are the arts, and humanities really having a crisis of confidence? No mathematicians or scientists I know regard these subjects as irrelevant or valueless". Prof Bill Barton. Sure, those guys are in the same boat. Publish or perish, show immediate cash values for courses. Cost-benefit analysis, working hours controlled, leave and promotion dependent on production of word-lengths assessed by envious peers.
The fear comes from an administration made up of ex-academics turned apparatchiks, who are answerable only to political bosses. Irrespective of academic priorities. It is they who define what is 'today's economic climate' & having defined it make use of their definition to 'redirect' funding. Primarily from inquiry subjects, critical subjects, subjects that require understanding of philosophical issues, towards technical school training of more managers wih no inquiry into philosophical issues. [Tourism? what is that?]
Who needs more managers in Tourism so badly [local tourist industry -- clean green hobbitland] leisure entertainnment travel-spectacle & adventure for fairly rich retirees -- a good earner -- that politicians have to redirect yet again more funds from Fine Arts, where they've lost 19 part-timers in very recent times, I'm told, 2 retiring senior teachers will not be replaced & now 50% of their course to be cancelled.
"Isn't adversity the breeding-ground of revolutions, be they political, artistic, or intellectual". So artistic and intellectual revolutions are not political revolutions? Does this mean only revolt of workers would be real & to be feared? Guess so, because administration thinks that intellectuals are compromised by their class background & their inability to do anything other than talk for ever in their ivory towers at the public's expense. Forgetting the giant glass & steel thing that houses tomorrow's entrepreneurs who are never faced with ethical questions, with questions about the social value of the systems,or their effects on the lives of people, only costs-benefits.
However, let us ask who are the critics of social injustices, are they rent-a-crowd protesters [so they say in politics] Who makes inquiries into the systems that politicians put in place, who is informed enough to tell the public at large when some inequity appears? who informs the press? when information is lacking or suppressed for political ends? Who makes the reports tht are chucked inn the bin by ministers? Who makes social conditions & issues visible & readable & seeable as movie & TV & hearable as radio, if not those who have studied the arts&sciences?
The advantage of having arts&sciences prominent in a university is that they are best placed to advise government, to offer significant debate on issues, as independent of political pressure & commercial pressure as possible -- public is entitled to a free intellectual press in order for democracy to exist. Any attack on the arts&sciences is implicitly or explicitly an attack on democratic process.
There are famous examples of political interference in academc process & repression of arts in 1930s Europe & USSR in 1950s USA in much of South America.
Nov 5th yesterday: -- remember Parihaka, remember Ghandhi, remember Mandela, cherish Ai We Wei, remember thousands who have disappeared & imprisoned.
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