Artists in an Iron Cage? Artists’ Work in Performing Arts Institutions

Abstract

This article discusses artists’ work in performing arts institutions in Norway. Many scholars describe Nordic performing arts institutions as slow-moving and heavy “art factories,” where artistic creativity is almost suffocated within bureaucratic “prisons.” The general problem that we raise in the article is whether this pessimistic picture of the relation between state control, market influence, and artistic work is relevant for studying the performing arts today. The study is primarily based upon twenty-seven qualitative interviews with informants in an institutional theatre and a symphony orchestra. We conclude that the actors in the Theatre are trapped—not so much within “a bureaucratic iron cage”—but rather within “an iron cage of charismatic leadership,” while the musicians in the Orchestra enjoy the relative freedom and democratic power of a rather soft bureaucratic organization.

Keywords:

• bureaucracy, charisma, iron cage, performing arts

Notes

1. According to Gerth and Mills (1946/1968, 53), “Weber's conception of the charismatic leader is in continuity with the concept of ‘genius’as it was applied since the Renaissance to artistic and intellectual leaders.”

2. Bjørkås (1998, 130) qualifies cultural production within the field of performing arts as “preserved Fordism.” The Fordism metaphor refers to the organization of industrial production marked by Henry Ford (1863−1947) as a dominant capitalist entrepreneur.

3. In a previous comparative research project of ours, a French artistic director of a theater remarked that the “artistic ensemble” model had helped him and his actors avoid “becoming civil servants.” They were instead “approaching the status of artists.” He was himself able to stay “an independent producer” within this kind of artistic ensemble (unpublished data from interview, 1994).

4. The whole study is published in Norwegian in Kleppe, Mangset, and Røyseng (2010).

5. “A term introduced by Erving Goffman in Asylums (1961) to analyse a range of institutions in which whole blocks of people are bureaucratically processed, whilst being physically isolated from the normal round of activities, by being required to sleep, work, and play within the confines of the same institution. Prisons and mental hospitals are Goffman's key examples, but he suggests others including concentration camps, boarding schools, barracks, and monasteries.” See http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/total_institution.aspx.

6. It may be objected that work in contemporary bureaucratic organizations often takes place in open landscape offices. But this is just partly the case in Norway.

7. The director of a Norwegian institutional theater is primarily an artistic director, but he/she is also usually the head of the whole institution, including the administration of the institution. He/she also usually has a managing director or executive director by his/her side. The artistic director is usually employed for a term of years.

8. The informant perhaps means “autocratic” rather than “hierarchical.”

9. The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) is a public service institution with a long history as the unique broadcasting institution in Norway. In the 1980s and 1990s it was supplemented by several private broadcasting companies, but NRK still has quite a dominant position on the air. The audience figures are higher than for most other public service broadcasting companies (Larsen 2008).