Sektor

 

Well-known writers are protesting for proper funding on behalf of what journalism calls the literary sector. This makes sense if you are well-known and therefore stand to benefit from improved funding. It is no surprise that this sector has been neglected in recent years, given that those who allocate funding don’t read. Musicians tweet that there’s one creative sector even more poorly funded than writers, namely musicians. Sculptors cannot carve out an existence. Actors are speechless. All of these grievances are just and it usually takes a change of government for anything to happen. Symptomatic of funding thinking is the very word ‘sector’. No novelist began their life of storytelling happy in the thought they had now joined the sector. Poets, many of whom live in cumulative word clouds, many of whom are self-disclosing narcissists in their own lunchtimes, and punchlines, exist remote from any awareness of a sector. Writing their ‘Pantoum on Prahran’ is more fun, more fulfilling, than filling out the ten-page departmental form confirming they’re part of the poetry sector. Now that graffiti, or wall art, is an art form, funding has gone through the roof; such are the vagaries of public taste. Sektor might be part of the wall art sector, though no one knows because Sektor works only at night and hasn’t filled out the form. Indeed, although Sektor has web presence galore it is uncertain if Sektor is one person, a Renaissance guild, an incorporated business, a religious sect, or a criminal syndicate. The only certainty is that Sektor is a spraycan avatar, which could disqualify him/her/us/they/it from funding. Research indicates that Sektor started out in Sydney but has been infiltrating Melbourne for some time, probably to raise the profile for future funding. Why else spend your every 1 am (read also, in bold Dulux capitals: ‘I AM’) doing your S-name in calligraphy over railway bridges? Like novelists or poets or sculptors, a wall muralist might reply, “Because.” A handy indicator of wealth stream to any particular sector is the term ‘industry’. Music industry, for example, refers to that fraction of the music sector that makes megabucks. There are 100 names for pop music, many of which factor into the category of industry. No one talks about the writing industry, but the publishing industry is a familiar term based on the illusion that every book ever written is the next classic bestseller, a “stunning debut”. No one has ever heard of the poetry industry, despite the immense levels of industriousness going on behind the scenes. Graffiti is gaining traction as a sector, given the official sanction of city councils to wall art. That most of Melbourne is now covered with Sektor and their/its nocturnal friends, wall art’s prospects as an industry are looking decidedly massive, for those who come out from behind their signature.