mundo provocateur
where worlds collide ....

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Margaret Atwood, writer, Order of Canada, author of The Handmaid's Tale and Year of the Flood

Could it be true – as Denis Dutton argues in The Art Instinct – that art of all kinds, including narrative art, is an evolved adaptation that gave those that had it an edge over those that did not during the 80,000 generations we spent in the Pleistocene? Did their art unify groups, inspire them, teach them survival methods they needed to know, whether material or spiritual? If so, it’s not a question of whether people do art or don’t do it – they will anyway. It’s only a question of what kind of art they do, or whether someone else does it for them. Our stories are us, on a national and international level, as well as on a personal one.

Which sets the political hostility to the arts in a new light. What is it that power-hungry politicians want from artists? Control over the story through the annihilation of the former story-tellers? Is this the agenda behind the recent decapitation of arts funding in British Columbia, while mega-millions are poured into the Olympics? The BC arts community will retaliate, of course. Over the past 50 years they've put BC on the map, and now they’re being told that their sorts of contributions are without value. They’ve always been a scrappy lot: Watch that energy bite back at Mr. Campbell – that would be my guess.


William Gibson, writer, author of Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition

As a futurist, someone with some experience in long-range scenario-based corporate and municipal planning, I've seen my share of jaw-droppingly shortsighted proposals. But these proposed cuts to support for the arts in BC (almost 90% by 2011) really take the cake. This is governance guaranteed to rot the fabric of our province's future. I encourage you all to do everything you can to prevent this disastrous proposal from going into effect.


Douglas Coupland, writer, author of Generation X, and visual artist

People come to BC not just because of the pretty mountains. They come here because they expect a place where society is both different and better. Haven't you noticed that when you say 'Vancouver' to people, their eyes light up? For foolish short-term reasons we're killing that light, and all the money in the world can't buy it back once it's gone. We become a parking lot with mountains and it doesn't have to happen.


Geoffrey Farmer, visual artist, Vancouver

While the current provincial government continues its duplicitous behavior towards culture in British Columbia, I will continue to live up to the cliché of being an artist by imagining and creating alternative worlds. Tourism and culture play an important role in the future economic and social well-being of our province. If the Liberal government is unable to understand the biology of this - that you can't wipe out a sector without creating a devastating domino effect - well then, we will just have to jazz-hands them out of office.