By Andrew Mulenga
The bustling crowd scenes during the multiple
opening events – more than 40 on Wednesday 15 September alone – at the just
ended 4th Berlin Art Week evoked an impression of locusts, swarms of
them devouring everything in their path.
From the elite VIP black tie opening event of Xenopolis, an exhibition at the Deutsche
Bank through to the ABC – Art Berlin Contemporary Fair, that had around 100
galleries from 17 countries exhibiting and selling art in listed halls of a
former railway station and also Positions Berlin Art Fair which had 78
exhibitors from 16 countries among other venues, Berlin Art Week is in essence
too much to take in or even explore in the 5 days that it is run.
 |
| In six days the event attracted more than 100,000 visitors (Photo-Edgar Berendsen) |
For the ABC event alone – which had an entry fee of €20
for the opening and €12 for the daily shows -- official statistics show that in
the first four days around 30,000 visitors came to the venue alone which included
national and international collectors, curators, artists and representatives of
museums and art institutions also about 700 guests attended panel discussions
that dealt with current issues in the art market and in the 6 days of the
combined events, more than 100,000 visitors were in attendance.
Honestly, sifting through the crowds it was easy to
get lost in the din, the free flowing champagne and beer, the odd finger snack too
and forget why you are there in the first place, to view art. It must be noted,
that as organized as it may appear, art patronage in Germany is somewhat complex,
with contributors from diverse subdivisions within the public and private
sector. Berlin Art Week for instance, was made possible by the Senate of Berlin
through its department for Administration for Economy, Technology, and Research.
In fact, in the official catalogue for the Berlin Art Week 2015, department
Permanent Secretary Guido Beerman gives an insightful analysis not only into
the fair but also into the art industry that is the city of Berlin.
“In Berlin there are more than 400 galleries, more
than in any other German city. There are over 2,600 active companies within the
Berlin art world, with over 6,600 employees, generating a turnover of 700
million euros per year. This means that the entire German turnover for art
objects is made here,” he states “The Berlin Art Week is an excellent platform
to show itself as being the location with the largest amount of galleries and
art production”.
And addressing an international group of curators, gallerists
and art critics during a lunch meeting, Michael Reiffenstuel, Deputy Director-General
for Culture and Communication at the German Federal Foreign Office explained
that his government intends to use the expertise and life experiences of
artists and civil society for development.
 |
| Vistors at the ABC venue, a converted railway station that housed around 100 galleries from 17 countries exhibiting and selling art (Photo - Marco Funke) |
“We are looking at the ability of culture and
creativity to define a new cultural order, we are trying to increase the
cooperation between artists and scientists to explore solutions to
environmental challenges,” added Reiffenstuel, who also gave the guests a
guided tour of the AArtist in Residence exhibition
as part of Berlin Art Week. The Foreign office invites a local artist to live
and work at its premises and eventually exhibit the work there.
The group addressed by Reiffenstuel, which visited
invited to Germany by the federal government through the Goethe Institute
comprised cultural experts from countries as varied as Taiwan, Kazakhstan,
Mexico and Zambia to name a few, was also informed that Germany is seriously
looking into more ways of reaching out to the rest of the world by means of
increased cultural exchange vis-à-vis, artists exchange programmes.
Nevertheless, addressing the group earlier, at the
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Vlado Velvok, a lecturer at the Weissensee
Art Academy in Berlin gave further insights into the importance of the arts
within German culture, in a lecture entitled “The German art scene and
reflections on the Berlin Art Fair”. In the talk, he also an overview of how the
arts are funded and organized in Germany.
“When I came here 16 years ago, Berlin was very different,
I’m always asked what it that brings people to Berlin is, and I say it’s the
artists. People have been coming in in waves since the fall of the Berlin wall
in 1989, that’s when we had the first wave, but the city changes constantly you
always have to be on your toes or you will be left behind” explained Velvok who
is originally from Bulgaria, but moved to the city at the end of the cold war
and unification of Germany.
He explained that after the fall of the berlin wall,
a lot of buildings on the eastern side of the city were abandoned and left
empty, as people moved to the western half, as a result, groups of young
artists started occupying these spaces, breathing life back into dead areas which
would later develop into arts districts attracting other inhabitants, businesses
such as hotels and shopping malls, and when this happened, the artists felt
infiltrated and would move to a different space, almost in a nomadic pattern.
What was happening in turn was that art was in fact healing dead parts of the
city, bringing them, back to life.
“The rent in these buildings was very cheap and the
spaces very big and ideal for studio, gallery or performance spaces in Berlin,”
he added.
Velvok, who is also a practicing artist apart from
being an academic, indicated that artists in Berlin did not flourish in a
vacuum but there has been constant and generous support through organised
public and private funding.
Art school graduates as well as individuals who work
in the creative industries are eligible for a wide range of financial assistance
from the German government and that merely the show of a university degree from
an art school officially guaranteed you to be labelled a “professional” artist
meaning artistic grants and scholarships and can continue receiving benefits
from the state, applying for a government grant is the equivalent of applying
for a job. Ultimately by so doing, the German government has enviably tackled a
thread of unemployment.
In Germany all arts funding is administered on two
levels, municipal and state. This is because through research, it has been
observed that local arts administrator know the interests of their communities
better, they also know the quality and needs of the artists who live there.
Each city administration has an arts ministry that
distributes the funding for the local institutions and artists, the cultural
minister is often an elected official and usually has professional training in
arts administration and is likewise assisted by a staff of specialists for each
genre, such as visual arts, dance, music, theatre and film or photography.
Independent artists make applications for funding and the decisions are made by
the specialists, often with the advice of a jury of the artist's peers.
But this token of German generosity towards the arts
also spreads beyond municipalities, states and borders, Zambia’s very own Stary
Mwaba spent a whole year in the creative hub of Berlin where he was equipped
with a full studio at the celebrated Künstlerhaus Bethanien, where he also got
to exhibit among accomplished international artists. This was no mean
achievement for Mwaba as he was the only one from the African continent.
Of course the intricacies of the Berlin Art Week and
by extension the German art scene cannot be grasped within the space of 6 days,
but visiting from a country that is artistically fragmented as Zambia with an
equally unappreciated, uncoordinated and unacknowledged creative industry where
artistes are left to wallow aimlessly in their creativity with no hope of
private or corporate support, one can do nothing but reflect on the German art
scene filled with an intense surge of jealousy, imagining how many lives could change
for the better with just a fraction of such support and commitment from government.
But perhaps things are about to change following President Edgar Lungu’s
address to parliament on Friday last week.
“To further promote tourism, the minister
responsible for tourism and arts will bring to this house the arts, culture and
heritage bill aimed at harmonising institutional arrangements in arts, culture
and heritage to reduce overheads and promote cost effectiveness,” read Lungu in
part of his speech.
Frankly, an abridged version of the German arts administration
model would work well in the implementation of Lungu’s new artistic vision
which means the ministry and departments involved will have to employ people
from an arts, tourism and heritage background. While a hand full of such
individuals do exist, the general administration in Zambia’s potential creative
sector are not artistically literate, they are also aesthetically blind and
worse still, they do not see the arts as an industry, as for tourism, they see
nothing beyond the Victoria falls or individual trips to allowance-inspired
tourism conferences.
No comments:
Post a Comment