based in Berlin

Today ends the first part of my trip to Berlin as I leave for a short trip to Copenhagen tomorrow. A lot my time here has been spent around the show "based in Berlin," a somewhat controversial showcase of young artists from around the world who live work in Berlin. (Already when I told someone in Maastricht that I would be participating in the show as a speaker I was harangued at length!) The show is, unambiguously, part of the political campaign of Berlin's social democrat mayor. It was originally conceived of as an "achievement" show and permanent art space, though the curators re-routed this towards a focus on emerging artists, fees for work and projects, and the use of already-existing structures. A standard critique of the show takes exception to its excess (there is already a Berlin Bieniale), its purpose (the political campaign), and to the question of resources (wasn't there something better to do with 1.6million Euros for the arts?).

A lot of what I have been thinking about with Cage is the question of artist communities, and how Cage's work built and grew through his participation in such communities (from Cornish to Black Mountain to the New School, etc.). While there is much worth criticizing in based in Berlin (and a lot of not very good art), the question of community perhaps opens up some other thoughts about it. For one, its very conception is about a city where art and creative thinking in general flourishes because its central location, cheap rent, and post 89 romantic allure have made it a gathering place for producers and thinkers the world over. But the show has also interestingly expanded the art community here. While important collectives have boycotted the show for good reasons, they have also lost the opportunity to engage with the broader public: most of the people one sees at based in Berlin are less art world insiders that curious onlookers (including a surprising number of young children). Of course, at the same time, the turn to look at community does not obviate the problems of the show, or the idea of community itself. Although Berlin a city with an ever-increasing Turkish population, for example, one sees very few Turks at the gallery spaces of based in Berlin. But the negative aspects of the show are also some of its most intriguing: for example being forced to consider the often-implicit ways in which funding for the arts drives even the most radical organizations. The explicit hand of the mayor here may force self-critical artists to reckon with the invisible hand that participates in their own work.

When I am asked about participating in the show, I usually tell people it is somewhat allegorical. For one, I won't be speaking about Cage directly, but will be bringing up a number of the themes invoked on the blog. I also won't be speaking directly about the issues above (actually I'll be speaking about Pieter Brueghel's The Triumph of Death), but they will all be present. In a way, as well, I will be speaking about the questions of new media that have been guiding us here, and how communities are still shaped by spaces regardless of technological innovation. The following of this blog is small, but probably no smaller than the number of people who read your standard unpublished dissertation. new forms of technology won't change who an academic audience is, but it may enable the types of creative contacts that once only happened among people based in the same city. Then again, if we do only manage to reach out to those already in the conversation, no matter how much it helps our thought grow, the question of the effects beyond that conversation (what Bertolt Brecht called the cunning to spread the truth) remains undecided