No-one in the arts can ever escape the domination of the word over the visual - when every activity is ordered via the word and a word-based education - which conditions responses and decisions. For that reason those in the arts see themselves as apart because they are set apart by others... Music and film have special factors in which both can use writers - and in the case of film, writers have found themselves often treated as subservient to lesser minds. The best modernist aims were to synthesize the various talents at an equal level of seriousness and quite a few examples exist in film. Some today would like that to happen but the counter-vailing pressures are too great to establish anything like the early co-ordinated efforts, however low-tech.

Critics, theorists and art-historians belong to the word-based group - and don’t want it any other way since that gives them greater status with those likely to employ them. Financially, the star-system in the arts which goes through Romanticism and Bohemianism, has meant fame and fortune at the top go to the few artists, not the interpreters or managers. There is evidence that in the US in recent years a co-ordinated effort was made to elevate the manager to prior position - rather on the lines of a conductor of an orchestra ; an occasional big personality will emerge but with all the PR in the world and un-threatening creative teams - it all goes up in smoke at the sight of genuine ideas and talent.

Admittedly that in history such periods are rare. Due to the powers to impede suitable conditions, we find long moments in which the arts are very dull and no doubt the managers powerful, but no-one cares who the managers were. Today’s pursuit of the outrageous to avoid the accusation of dullness, hence get a place in history. Needing complex word-support.

Anyone can declare themselves to be an artist from one day to the next and frequently do. With all assessors of ability long-since fired it’s not hard. So one belongs to a disreputable profession open to every kind of outside exploitation and no-one seems to be able to re-assert previous skills. That means the word-based policy-makers - the Hidden Hands across the Ocean, don’t mind - find it advantageous in some way. Perhaps we could be given a glimpse of the documents from such decision-making sessions and ask to know the names and backgrounds of those involved?

Certain Surrealist and Situationist thinkers might find amusement in the idea of state-sponsored avant-gardism - and themselves have been happy to spur it along in order to witness the po-faced contortions to square the circle in such a public manner. When it reaches an advanced stage the word is needed as never before.