[Reader-list] Slash and Burn: Sven Lutticken on the budgetary cut-backs on the arts in the Netherlands

[Patrice Riemens]

Thought the Dutch art & culture landscape is a very convoluted one, with a
high (too high, iyam) degree of institutionalisation, the policy followed
by the current government borders on the berzek, undoubtedly influenced by
the 'hot breath in the neck' of the populist 'People's Party for Freedom',
a kind of Berlusconian clone supporting, but not participating in the
governing (minority) coalition. And though it also derives most of its
ideological rhetorics (and practices) from the UK Torry-LibDem alliance,
with which it shares a lot, both in terms of political context (minus the
populism) and demographics (the revolt of the rightist young professionals
against the leftist ageing baby-boomers), it still is interesting to check
out - was it only for its propagation potential to other places and climes
...

Cheers from Italy, where 'il Cavaliere' has already succesfully killed the
arts - and all kind of new ones are arising...

patrizio + Diiiinooos!


original to: http://svenlutticken.blogspot.com/2011/06/slash-burn.html
(with pics)


Slash & Burn

The Dutch secretary of state for culture, Halbe Zijlstra, has published
his policy plan for coming years. In contrast to the official
recommendations given to him by the Raad voor Cultuur (an advisory body),
the cutbacks will not be spread out over a number of years, but will take
immediate effect in 2013. The budget for visual art will shrink from 53,3
to 31 million. If Dutch politics is marked by a tension between populist
rhetoric and neoliberal dreams of market-driven excellence, this paper is
dominated squarely by the latter, though it takes the form of a kind of
scorched earth politics that will find the approval of Zijlstra’s de facto
coalition partner, Geert Wilders’ PVV.

Among the more damaging and destructive decisions is the complete cutting
of funding for the following (which in most cases will mean their
disappearance):

-The so-called post-academic art schools; these include the De Ateliers,
the Rijksakademie and the Jan van Eyck Academie. These institutions have
been instrumental in fostering international exchange among young artists
and a less anti-intellectual, more discursive culture in the Dutch art
world. They offer a number of young artists (and, in the case of the Jan
van Eyck, theorists) a stimulating context for residencies during which
they can continue to develop their practice. Their disappearance would
leave a gaping hole.

-The NIMK (formerly Montevideo), an institution for video and media art.
It seems that museums should simply take over the collection. Media art as
a field with specific requirements is history—a history that will of
course not be written, for the happy people of Polderland under VVD, CDA
and PVV have no need for history. A national canon is more than enough.

-All but six “presentation institutions” (as local jargon has it). To be
precise, six of these institutions will be allowed into the
“Basisinfrastructuur” and get structural funding. Others will be left to
fend for themselves (for specific projects, they may be able to get
incidental funding from a diminished Mondriaan Fonds—the merged Mondriaan
Stichting and Fonds BKVB). On the Metropolis M website, Dominiek Ruyters
speculates that these six institutions will be Witte de With, de Appel,
BAK, Marres, Noorderlicht, De Vleeshal. Some of these names would seem to
be on the list mainly because of a holy cow called “cultuurspreiding”
(spread of culture). This cow is worshiped with particular zeal by
Zijlstra’s Christian democratic collation partners of the CDA. In short:
art for the provinces, where the CDA’s remaining voters reside. Hence
(supposedly) Noorderlicht in Groningen, De Vleeshal in Middelburg and
Marres in Maastricht. That the first two in particular are far less
relevant than a number of institutions based in the main cities is
irrelevant. It has also been decided that each of the main cities can only
have one institution in the Basisinfrastructuur, so if De Appel is in this
means automatically that no other Amsterdam-based institution can be, for
that reason alone. What was that thing about excellence again?

-SKOR, the Dutch foundation for public art and its journal Open. The
Sekula and Burch film the Forgotten Space, which I review in the new Texte
zur Kunst, would not exist without SKOR. While I have been extremely
critical of the Dutch tradition of "public art" in which art is often
supposed to stand in for the social, in recent years SKOR has started to
develop in an interesting way. It is now called "Foundation for Art and
Public Domain," indicating the transition from a narrow understanding of
“public art” to a more fundamental engagement with the notion of
publicness in different fields, virtual as well as physical. Open,
published by SKOR, spearheaded this transition under Jorinde Seijdel’s
editorship, and it has been a rare local publication (published in a Dutch
and an English edition) that can articulate important issues and shape
debates in a way that goes beyond the horizon of neo-provincialism.

The Dutch art world is marked by a plethora of frequently complacent
institutions and an arcane array of subsidy channels, so some downsizing
need not be disastrous. However, almost halving the budget is patently
disproportionate and wantonly destructive. What's more, in many ways this
plan is an unholy alliance of ideological dogmatism and cowardly
compromises. Excellence and the market, yes, but let’s not forget about
the people in the province of Zeeland. Let’s glorify international success
as the ultimate proof of excellence while abolishing the Rijksakademie and
the Jan Van Eyck and turn Holland into a stagnant backwater. Let’s claim
to be confident that “the market” can fix things on short notice and stand
by the dogma that noble private patrons are just itching to support the
arts while showing our contempt for these arts with every gesture and
every utterance, suggesting that potential patrons would really be better
off buying a yacht.

There is an odd proposal in Zijlstra’s plan to offer support for fifty
“top talents,” again using the language of excellence; but if these are
the top talents, shouldn’t they of all people be able to fend for
themselves, according to Zijlstra’s logic? And where will these talents be
allowed to develop if not at the Jan van Eyck or the Rijksakademie? Far
from stemming purely from the need for financial cutbacks, these are
punitive and vindictive measures that appear to be designed to destroy all
that stands in the way the reduction of art to mind-numbing blockbuster
events and glossy decoration. Nothing could be more political and
ideological than this brand of economism.

Meanwhile, the situation at the universities is hardly less grim. Suddenly
notions such as "the knowledge economy" and "creative industries," which
have been crucial shibboleths of the Dutch version of
social-democratically inflected neoliberal politicy-making, don’t seem to
be worth a penny. Or rather, they show their true face: they always were
at the service of imposing a relentlessly economistic logic on education
and art, resulting in a re-establishment of strong class divisions. Either
you can afford education and art or be educated in the arts), or you
can’t. Bright young art and humanities students today face becoming a lost
generation. That’s the culture of excellence for you: social engineering
under the guise of letting “the market” take its "natural" course.

Dominiek Ruyters' Metropolis M article, with some interesting responses,
is here (in Dutch). A joint public response to Zijlstra's plans by various
institutions and organizations is here (again in Dutch).

An online petition is at 
http://petities.nl/petitie/bezuinigen-op-cultuur-zonder-alle-feiten-nooit