Texts are in the languages the authors supplied them in.
(S) Yoshua Okon, Mexican artist, lives in Mexico City and Los Angeles
Mientras las corporaciones multinacionales siguen adquiriendo fuerza, de manera progresiva nuestras relaciones con otros seres humanos se encuantran mas y mas mediadas por intereses de mercado La cultura no es una excepción. Ferias comerciales de arte se convierten en los principales centros de exhibición, colecciones privadas adquieren la importancia de museos y los museos mismos cada día responden mas al punto de vista de los millonarios y las corporaciones que los mantienen. A nivel global, resultan muy pocos los espacios culturales que puedan operar con una lógica mas alla de la lógica del arte como producto de consumo o el arte como fetiche histórico cultural. Dentro de este panorama, resulta urgente mantener y fomentar el tipo de espacios que respondan a intereses mas alla de la estrecha definicion de cultura que nos presenta el mercado y mas alla de la preservacion cultural. Espacios en los cuales la comunidad pueda tener una ingerencia directa y en los que, mas alla de predisposiciones, se responda de manera fresca e inmediata a expresiones artisticas contemporaneas.
(F) Juan Pèrez Agirregoikoa, spanish artist, Lives in Paris
«Pour une rèvolution qui ne soit pas du semblant»
(E) Cyrus Schayegh, Swiss cultural historian, professor at the American University of Beirut, lives in Beirut
Boring 1st option: a cultural producer as somebody who gives mere visual answers that fulfil expectations.
Interesting 2nd option: to articulate spaces around questions. Interesting because the one to ask posits himself as a member of a type of civil society that does not take things for granted, but seeks to shape them.
Interesting 3rd option: to ironically subvert option 1.
How? I do not know ... either by being Monty Pythonish, i.e. by taking an absolutely common-place phenomenon (for example modern bureaucracies / ministries) and subverting it (i.e. revealing its inane qualities) by creating a ridiculous mock-model of it (the Ministry of Silly Walks), Or by making such ridiculously plain, obvious statements of metanarratives that are commonly accepted as true and that fulfil expectations, that (the intelligent) spectator / interactor would be provoked to ask him/herself questions about those narratives.
Personally, I prefer the 3rd option. I have started to hate explicit pedagogy, and all Germanoids, Swiss included, have an almost biological tendency to educate, to be good-doers. Which is no good.
And no fun. And also not interesting. Including, I’d say, on the theoretical level (and now I will start to hallucinate, so please do take me very seriously here). Interesting c/s an ironic subversion of accepted truths / truisms:
- does not simply open new vistas by bypassing old truths, but tackles old truths head on
- subverts the high modernist idea that there is true progress, development from one set / level of ideas / truths / questions to the next (i.e. next higher) level of ideas etc etc. It’s more postmodern. Much more important, it’s more playful (btw, should a (post)-modern museum / Kunsthalle be playful? Or could playfulness (as opposed to serious 19th century-like education) be a distinguishing mark setting a Kunsthalle apart from the Museum?) can lead to and/or can imply questions. Just that the questions are not openly posed,
- i.e. pre-fabricated and -packaged for the spectator to consume (HERE is our question, you can think, but please ONLY in relation to the ONE question WE posed). You only define the field at large (bureaucracy, to stay with the Monty Python example). Questions arising thereof are implicit, processual, open-ended, demand more creative input by interactors.
- tallies well with views of museums as places of performance rather than consumption or education (is that true? Truth be told, I have no idea)
- c/s I would not know what to write about options 1 and 2, so I do not want to bother with them in the first place.
- c/s being Monty Pythonish would be my own educational crusade in the Germanoid heartland (which, I am afraid, turns me into somebody who is not an iota better than the Germanoids. Whatever.)
Chus Martìnez, Direktor, Frankfurter Kunstverein
Photos coming soon...
(E) Lucas Bambozzi, Brazilian artist and cultural producer
Regarding literary production, Walter Benjamin pointed out that The distinctions between author and public should disappear.
In ‘The Author as Producer' he wrote: “The reader is always prepared to become a writer, in the sense of being one who describes and prescribes” (1934). He noted that once the author is also a producer, what can be published or not is not a vertical decision anymore.
More than 70 years later we should be seeking for other alternatives to make cultural practices a two way street. Because formats influence content.
Because the common responsibility toward the shaping of the cultural environment can not be ignored.
(S) Claudia Fontes, Argentinian artist, founder of the artists' network TRAMA
En el sistema globalizado del arte, pareciera que ciertas instituciones culturales oficiales y privadas están a cargo de organizar los discursos y proveer canales de visibilidad y legitimación para distintas prácticas culturales. Pero: ¿Cuáles son los mecanismos que estas instituciones emplean para detectar y legitimar nuevas prácticas culturales? ¿A qué valores deben adecuarse estas prácticas para ser reconocidas y qué
En mi experiencia como artista que ha decidido crear una plataforma de cooperación artística autónoma, el conocimiento es un capital social, una moneda de intercambio generada en la interrelación social entre sujetos que coinciden en reconocer una necesidad y deseo en común. Esta manera de entender al conocimiento no como un patrimonio sino como una energía social, estimula la imaginación hacia estructuras organizativas más fluidas y orgánicas, que se relacionan de manera genuina y directa con las necesidades básicas de la comunidad que las conforman.
El saber resultante de estas organizaciones más fluidas es siempre provisorio y difícil de definir, porque es un saber directo, que surge colectivamente entre sujetos, sin mediación o artilugio de distanciamiento. Es el saber de lo que se identifica como urgente y necesario. Los que asumimos responsabilidades colectivas desde nuestra práctica como artistas, curadores, organizadores o interlocutores, sabemos que el arte es en sí mismo íntrinsecamente necesario y urgente, y que los procesos y preguntas que la práctica artística trae consigo, son herramientas potenciales para imaginar modos inclusivos de construcción de colectividad. Sólo asumiendo la responsabilidad política de ser creadores de colectividad, es que podremos considerarnos sujetos libres.
(S) Dora Garcia, Spanish artist, lives in Brussels
Solo se me ha ocurrido lo siguiente: Kafka decía que todos los humanos tenemos una salita de estar albergada a la altura del pecho, dentro de la caja torácica, y que al correr uno puede escuchar cómo tintinea el espejo al moverse sobre la pared de la salita. ¿Será la salita el kunstverein? ¿El que corre la cultura? ¿El espejo el artista?
(E) Lars Bang Larsen, Writer and curator, Denmark
It’s raining reasons
(E) Kota Ezawa, German artist, lives in San Francisco
From 1996 to 1998 I worked at New Langton Arts in San Francisco, the American equivalent of a Kunstverein. I see the main difference between a museum and a Kunstverein in the kind of discourse supported by the organisation. While a museum preserves the end results of artists' work (painted canvases, carved stones, edited videos), the Kunstverein focuses on the beginning - where art begins to formulate itself (ideas, experiments). I find it necessary to look at the beginning and the end. There can’t be a Guggenheim without a Kunstverein.
(E) Nils Norman, british artist, lives in London
The Kunstverein came out of a history of self-organised democracy, a collective social structure that within today's increasingly privatised neo-liberal landscape is essential to support.
