David Byrne discusses inequality of wealth and decline of New York art scene

New Wave musician, Talking Heads frontman and recent St Vincent collaborator, David Byrne has written an editorial piece for Creative Time Reports and The Guardian about what he sees as a decline of creativity in his current home of New York City, pointing towards wealth inequality as being the main factor for it.

In the piece, Byrne – whose band formed in NYC back in 1975 – says that the “cultural part of the city – the mind – has been usurped by the top 1%”.

He continues:

“This city doesn’t make things anymore. Creativity, of all kinds, is the resource we have to draw on as a city and a country in order to survive. In the recent past, before the 2008 crash, the best and the brightest were lured into the world of finance. Many a bright kid graduating from university knew that they could become fairly wealthy almost instantly if they found employment at a hedge fund or some similar institution. But before the financial sector came to dominate the world, they might have made things: in publishing, manufacturing, television, fashion, you name it. As in many other countries, the lure of easy bucks hoovered this talent and intelligence up – and made it difficult for those other kinds of businesses to attract any of the top talent.

A culture of arrogance, hubris and winner-take-all was established. It wasn’t cool to be poor or struggling. The bully was celebrated and cheered. The talent pool became a limited resource for any industry, except Wall Street. I’m not talking about artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians – they weren’t exactly on a trajectory toward Wall Street anyway – but any businesses that might have employed creative individuals were having difficulties surviving, and naturally, the arty types had a hard time finding employment, too… Unlike Iceland, where the government let misbehaving banks fail and talented kids became less interested in leaping into the cesspool of finance, in New York there has been no public rejection of the culture that led to the financial crisis.”

“Can New York change its trajectory a little bit, become more inclusive and financially egalitarian? Is that possible?”, he adds, concluding: “I think it is. It’s still the most stimulating and exciting place in the world to live and work, but it’s in danger of walking away from its greatest strengths.”

Read the entire piece here, via Pitchfork.

Photo by Cory Smith