Berlin, or Against the New Provincialism
Short-term installations and community-based art “events” have become de rigueur, it seems. I wish this were only a U.S. phenomenon. But a summer of travel in Europe—Berlin, Istanbul, Paris, and Leipzig—reveals that other cities are “celebrating the local”—which often unfortunately translates into, “Look at the crap anyone can make.”
The desire to attract audiences, to celebrate “the local,” to emphasize relational aesthetics over-and-above artistic quality have become the standards of the day. Cities have become aesthetic bordellos, museums have become aging madams, encouraging artists to prostitute themselves for the cheapest client: The tourist with no taste.
Even when artists and curators of “international reputation” are invited to participate, the focus of these site-specific, geographically masturbatory enterprises is the same: Look at us! We can make art here, together! One hears in this focus on “the local” remnants of a wounded childhood: Everyone deserves her or his say. Everyone gets a blue ribbon.
The inevitable outcome of this uncritical focus on the local is a new provincialism. It must be stopped because it threatens not only the distinction between artist and non-artist, museum and non-museum, but also the very idea of aesthetic taste. This is not to suggest that well-intentioned community arts are misguided. Indeed, the intention is quite different from the “art” objects produced, which is precisely the problem for me.
I’m a Modernist, I confess. By Modernist, I mean that I define aesthetics based not simply on an elitist sensibility of refinement, but rather on an acquired knowledge of the exceptional skill and craft it can take to make a piece of art. This is an idea of art that speaks against a non-materialist conceptualism or an all-exclusive participation. It does, however, emphasize that art-making is a skill, a talent, a learned set of movements that deserve appreciation.
But what I’m concerned about here is both the limits of the untrained participant in site-specific, city-specific programs, as well as the way in which such arts programming cheapens art, encourages bad taste, makes everyone think they are arts experts. It stops, in other words, real thinking and real making. Too often “the local” and “the global” remain separate in site-specific events. But does “being there” actually make the experience—of art, of each other—more authentic, more significant?
Based in Berlin
No other event demonstrates the problems of the new provincialism the way Based in Berlin does. The site-specific event spans the six weeks, from 6 June to 24 July, in five of Berlin’s museums and public parks. The exhibition was the idea of mayor Klaus Wowereit, who also serves as the city’s senator for culture. Trying to secure political and public support to fund a new venue for exhibiting contemporary art, Wowereit responded to resistance by circumventing it. When the senate of the city-state of Berlin refused to allocate funds for an art school and exhibition center, in part because of significant and continued budget deficits, Wowereit used a reported 1.8 million Euro (roughly $2.5 million) to fund a short-term, contemporary art exhibit in Berlin during the tourist season in the summer of 2011.
In response to Wowereit’s plan—and his rather awkward, commercially-oriented definition of the exhibit as a “Leistungsschau” (i.e., “Industrial Exhibit”)—a number of artists not only refused to participate in Based in Berlin, but openly criticized it as an attempt to politicize—and to profit from—culture. The most troubling aspect of this Kulturpolitik, for many artists, was an effort to transform the city’s avant-garde, underground art scene into a commodity for sale to tourists, among others. Because a number of notable figures in this underground scene refused to participate, the age of the participating artists—many of whom were younger than 30—became an additional point of contention. Still, several politicians, cultural figures, and citizens came to Wowereit’s defense, suggesting that because Berlin continued to struggle with significant debt, the effort to profit from the city’s cultural offerings made sense.
Wowereit, a mayor known for both his love of art and his passion for parties, was not to be defeated. He gathered approximately 80 emerging artists and invited notable international figures such as Hans Ulrich Obrist to participate in Based in Berlin. The event, however, does not appear to have had the international impact for which the mayor had hoped. But, given his lengthy political career thus far, if Wowereit is reelected in September for a sixth term, look for another site- / city-specific art event in summer 2012.
Visiting Based in Berlin in its manifestations in two of its five locations, at Atelierhaus Montbijoupark as well as in the Berlinische Galerie, the works themselves proved the limits of this method of cultural production. While not based fully in a model of relational aesthetics, in so far as the works are created by “trained” artists—that is, individuals with some degree of education in the arts or some formal recognition of the quality of their work—the exhibit emphasizes the community aspect of the interaction over-and-above the quality of the works themselves.
At the Berlinische Galerie, Simon Fujiwara’s Phallusies (An Arabian Mystery, 2010) and Ingela Bulloch’s Vattenfall Contemporary: Information, Manifesto Rules and Other Leaks (2011) seek to reinterpret history to expose the fictional narratives, individual and collective, that create memory. Their works are both site specific, but in different ways: Fujiwara’s work engages conflicting accounts of a discovery in the Arabian Desert and Bulloch’s piece examines the structural consistencies of artist manifestos of the 20th century, many of which are found in the Berlinische Galerie’s archives. Fujiwara’s and Bulloch’s works, perhaps because they are housed in a traditional gallery space, fail to reflect a radical political agenda. The works in the Aterlierhaus Montbijoupark, however, are quite different.
The numerous artists’ works in and collections of events planned for the Atelierhaus focus primarily on encouraging visitors to engage with each other and the temporary installations that occupy the space. The work, for the most part, is uninteresting: Poorly constructed, poorly displayed, confusing. The space simply can’t contain the voluminous amount of work stuffed inside it. Even the most interesting pieces, such as Matthias Fritsch’s We, Technoviking (2010) or Kajsa Dahlberg’s Ein Zimmer für sich / Ein eigenes Zimmer / Ein Zimmer für sich allein / Vierhunderdreiundreißig Bibliotheken (2011), are simply conceptual, demonstrating little artistic skill or craft. The pieces are interesting as entertainment, but not as objects worthy of preservation. This focus on the conceptual, in the context of the inherently limited yet relational nature of the space, suggests that anyone could have made the works on display. The artist is downplayed; the visitor is made—even more than in a traditional gallery or museum space—the focus of the “event.”
Indeed, what is most disturbing about the exhibition in the Atelierhaus specifically, and Based in Berlin in general, is the focus on the visitor rather than the work. Art becomes an afterthought. A diversion. Mere after-dinner entertainment.
Can’t relational aesthetics do more than substitute performative encounters for real relations, either with art or with each other?
Images
1.) “Berlin Does Not Love You,” unknown artist (sticker displayed on a lightpost in Berlin, Germany), 14 July 2011.
2.) Photograph by the author, section of Angela Bulloch’s Vattenfall Contemporary (2011), Berlinische Galerie, 14 July 2011.
3.) Photograph by the author, section of Angela Bulloch’s Vattenfall Contemporary (2011), Berlinische Galerie, 14 July 2011.
4.) Photograph by the author, section of Angela Bulloch’s Vattenfall Contemporary (2011), Berlinische Galerie, 14 July 2011.
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