A future workshop for the conception of a new cultural policy – on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 at the University of Applied Arts.
In May 2022, a symposium on the future of cultural policy “Our culture doesn’t cut any cowhide” was held with great interest from the cultural scene. Power structures and conflicts, cooperation and coalitions, new settings and formats as well as changes in cultural behavior were negotiated as central topics of discussion.
This year’s cultural-political symposium is entitled “A different future for the cultural sector is possible”. It sees itself as a sequel with the intention of countering the increasingly dark expectations for the future with positive perspectives. Strategy and cultural development planning as well as culture as a public place to create new forms of cooperation and interaction across traditional disciplinary boundaries are proposed as central topics.
“Our culture doesn’t go on cowhide” was still dominated by the pandemic and its consequences for the cultural sector. A year later we know that combating them has led to a considerable tightening of production, mediation and reception methods, also and especially in the field of culture. Overall, it is clear that the aid programs – important as they were for the cultural sector – not only had positive effects.
This has led to a further drifting apart of the actors in the cultural sector: A group of secure employees in state institutions faces a growing artistic proletariat that is desperately fighting for survival and feels compelled to create new livelihoods outside of the cultural sector. At the same time, the cultural sector must familiarize itself with the fact that the cultural behavior of large parts of the population in all its diversity has changed permanently during the pandemic and that the quantitative criteria for success are reaching their limits. The ongoing public discussion about the absence of the audience, at least in parts of the cultural sector (apart from the big events), is evidence of this.
And so, after the official end of the pandemic, the fog clears – a battered cultural establishment comes to light, which makes gloomy forecasts. According to the latest scandals, his inner contradictions are becoming more and more visible to the outside world, telling of traditional power structures, gender disparities, a lack of diversity, self-referentiality and the associated lack of social anchoring. In dealing with the problems that pop up everywhere, cultural policy proves to have little perspective. Without being able to offer a convincing perspective again, it is limited to a continuation course, almost at any price, which is increasingly fed by the mythicization of a better past.
And yet, with the breaking up of the structural deficits inherent in the culture industry, all those who assumed that the old normalities would soon return are being taught a lesson anew every day. Everyone involved knows that nothing will ever be the same again. And it will not be enough with selective repair measures.
The cultural policy of the last 50 years represents an impressive success story. With an increasing differentiation of their funding programs, the demands of a growth society could also be met in the cultural sector. What counted were increasingly quantifiable criteria for success, which allowed qualitative dimensions to recede into the background. With the consequences of the pandemic, the story of a constantly growing cultural industry comes to an end. The need for a reassessment of artistic quality (and its state enabling) is all the more evident, which a small group of experts recently agreed among themselves without the results being communicable to a broader population.
With the growing signs of crisis, the negative effects of a differentiated support system that has placed the cultural industry under a protective hood in order to give it a place beyond the dynamics and adversities in the rest of society are becoming increasingly evident. Today it is increasingly found as an isolated company on the fringes of society (the discussion about its systemic relevance bears witness to this).
There is much to be said for a structural relaunch of a cultural policy that aims to put the cultural industry back at the center of events in order to reposition itself as a social force. Such a plan cannot limit itself to preventing worse things from happening, but – contrary to the prevailing trend of rampant progress fatigue – once again, as a planning institution, shows convincing ways to a better future.
Some components of a future orientation can already be recognized easily by the increasing inclusion of new, apparently non-artistic criteria in the genuinely artistic discussion of quality (and thus their eligibility for funding). These range from aspects of sustainability, use of resources, innovative strength, urban development including consideration of social diversity to new forms of employment including fairer remuneration for those working in the cultural sector.
Theme I: The strategic framework
In many local authorities, cultural policy is in the process of strategically repositioning itself, redefining its goals and discussing suitable measures for their implementation.
To this end, a broader cultural development planning movement has started in recent years. Even the large political regional authorities such as the City of Vienna and the federal government have decided to align cultural policy more strategically and along comprehensible priorities in the future. You can refer to some exemplary attempts at local and regional level, some of which have led to significant changes in the standing of the cultural sector.
The event would like to comment critically on this development and, above all, to pursue the question of what this strategic orientation means for further development, specifically for the participants of the symposium, how they can participate in this process and what they will have to prepare for .
This also applies to the importance of strategy in the cultural sector, includes the question of power, asks about responsibilities, but also about opportunities for participation and about the expected effects on the cultural sector and those working in it.
Topic II: The culture industry as a public in a diverse society
A second major topic of the event is the question of cultural publics. Once again, national societies are confronted with a new “structural change in the public sphere” that accompanies the further development of a civil society committed to common (cultural) values in favor of a variety of cultural forms of expression.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for the cultural sector to count on a reliable regular audience. Instead, it is important to reposition yourself within the respective community and to function as a place of exchange. The culture industry is no longer limited to a representative function; he becomes a facilitator of community building.
The need to work together more closely in the future does not only apply within one’s own sector. It also applies in cooperation with representatives of neighboring political fields in order to enable a new anchoring or relevance of the cultural area. After all, there is much to suggest that the cultural sector, as an isolated company, is in danger of being increasingly marginalized in the future. It seems much more worthwhile to recommend the cooperation and interaction of different social groups and to try a participatory repositioning of the cultural sector.
Linking the two topics
Both topics are closely intertwined and related to each other: The cultural researcher Anke Schad-Spindler will give an introduction as part of the symposium with the input “Cultural-political strategies and new public spheres” and thereby establish the connection:
In cultural-political negotiation processes, party and government politicians, people wrestle
from administration, representatives of interest groups and companies, scientists, artists and experts as well as citizens with different interests and backgrounds for political influence. The arenas of cultural politics are correspondingly characterized by power and conflict relationships. In the sense of culture as a public matter and of the democratic public as a critical public according to Habermas, the aim is to make negotiation processes as inclusive and transparent as possible. This is a prerequisite for citizens and other affected parties to receive information so that they can intervene in these processes with civil society means (e.g. statements, open letters, protest) and potentially have a say in the decision-making process. The quality of communication (broad participation, careful consideration of information) is central to the legitimation of decisions in democracies. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, has shown that current developments often require quick decision-making. The climate crisis is also creating a tension between the democratic negotiations of different positions and the great pressure to act. When considering cultural-political strategies and measures, it is not just a question of how they work, but also how, by whom and in whose interest they were decided: for example, to investigate the question of whether partisan power politics prevail over factual political content won or to what extent certain elites were able to prevail over less privileged groups. Within the participation and negotiation processes, participatory procedures, such as those being tested in the context of cultural development planning, represent particularly demanding and demanding formats. When “politics of the cultural” is not related to state action, but more generally to rule and hegemony according to Antonio Gramsci , the perspectives expand. Against this background, cultural-political research and practice refers to power relations (among others along the dimensions of race-class-gender-ability), ideologies, values, questions of identity, as they manifest themselves, among other things, through cultural production, works of art and texts. This is currently relevant in view of a changing population and accelerated technological developments. Digital infrastructures co-create new global publics and determine interaction possibilities between humans or between human and artificial intelligence. Social interaction becomes isolated and polarized, while new forms of solidarity are tried out at the same time.
Deadline:
Tuesday, May 23, 2023, 9:30 a.m. – 7:00 p.m
University of Applied Arts
Vordere Zollamtsstrasse 7, 1010 Vienna
Auditorium
Organisation
Coordination team and moderation
Astrid Kury, Akademie Graz
Ivana Pilić, D/Arts
Anke Schad-Spindler, University of Vienna
Aron Weigl, EDUCULT
Conception and overall moderation of the event
Michael Wimmer
Link:
the Angewandte