SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International: A few weeks ago, four SPIEGEL authors presented the theses of their new book, "Der Kulturinfarkt: Von allem zu viel und überall das Gleiche" ("Cultural Infarction: Too Much of Everything and Everywhere the Same"). The book, a blistering polemic against the "just-keep-on-doing-the-same" attitude of the German arts scene, has sparked an uproar. Arts funding needs to be organized in a fundamentally different way, the authors argue. They say that too much money goes to maintaining an infrastructure that is primarily preoccupied with itself.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
The Price of Cool: Berlin's Struggling Artists Demand Share of the Pie
SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International: A few weeks ago, four SPIEGEL authors presented the theses of their new book, "Der Kulturinfarkt: Von allem zu viel und überall das Gleiche" ("Cultural Infarction: Too Much of Everything and Everywhere the Same"). The book, a blistering polemic against the "just-keep-on-doing-the-same" attitude of the German arts scene, has sparked an uproar. Arts funding needs to be organized in a fundamentally different way, the authors argue. They say that too much money goes to maintaining an infrastructure that is primarily preoccupied with itself.
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2 comments:
These artists to me seem to be complaining that tax dollars are not helping to support their type of art. This is a fundamental problem with public funding for the arts, no one is happy with all of the projects that get funded. The fact that the complaint is that the funding is going to projects that produce lasting art for the future instead of focusing on the current art is complete idiocy. People want some product for their tax dollars and if you are creating art that is only applicable to the here and now your work should be commercially viable. These debates will continue until all of us have the same aesthetics which will never happen.
What surprised me some here is not so much André Schmitz's accusations against the authors of "Der Kulturinfarkt: Von allem zu viel und überall das Gleiche" but that he claimed arts budgets should be INCREASED when public funds run low. ... Preach on, Brother Schmitz. Maybe someone over here will listen...
Luke has a point. As soon as you're paid for it, are you still an avante garde artist?
It's fine to want these things, but to demand government funding because you believe you deserve it seems inconsistent with a previous artistic view many of these arts organizations tout. As the article points out, now Berlin wants its cake and to eat it, too.
What this article doesn't seem to attempt is to identify who these groups are and what they do. Their names aren't particularly helpful, whether they're in German or English. This article could have helped its international readers by perhaps explaining more about these groups for those who're unfamiliar.
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