Newsletter 01
June 2026
WHY WE CAME TOGETHER
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Angelika Stepken: I recently came across the booklet from the HKW symposium “Former West” (2013) and read, among other things: “Although the events of 1989 shook the world to its foundations, the West stubbornly clung to the fiction of its own superiority. Former West examines how contemporary art can unhinge this fiction and at the same time rethink the future.” What optimism!
Again and again, art has taken a back seat for me due to world-historical events that completely captivated my attention—the first Iraq War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the so-called Arab Spring. Occasionally, art became a medium for understanding these upheavals. During the ongoing war against the Palestinians, however, my (naive) fundamental trust in an art scene based on solidarity has collapsed. There is apparently no longer any common interest in discussing different points of view, i.e., in a public cultural sphere; beyond this, there is little to no discussion over institutional dependence on state funding and the absurd separation of politics and art currently being propagated.
I would like to explore how artists—as actors and witnesses—are currently dealing with this presumably definitive end of the West, its values and criteria of exclusion, its understanding of culture, law, and the state. Does artistic production offer perspectives beyond defensiveness and isolation? Is it able to cope with the current developments of authoritarianism, a shift to the right, and disenfranchisement? Of course artists continue to work—they did and continue to do so even under dictatorships. But are there spaces, formats, and infrastructures that can offer new perspectives? Is this still possible today, or are we all retreating to our bunkers and studios? And so my questions to you both are: Has your practice changed in light of the current political “backdrop”? Have you been able to preserve the studio as a safe space? What “art system” are you referring to, and do you believe that art is still a viable category for artists to produce and communicate?
Andrea Scrima: My work has certainly changed over these past few years. In the fall of 2023, I was invited to spend a year in Graz as the city’s writer-in-residence. Not quite a month into the residency, the attacks of October 7 put an end to my writing process, and I was unable to continue work on my two unfinished manuscripts. Like you, extreme events have often pulled me away from what I was doing and sometimes sparked entirely new lines of artistic or literary inquiry. Things felt very different with Gaza, however, as Israel made its intention to gut and cleanse the Strip clear from the very beginning, in language that was as brutal as it was unmistakable. The difficulty of bearing witness to a catastrophe of this magnitude—and knowing full well what was yet to come, because they told us—was soon compounded by the cognitive dissonance I witnessed all around me, particularly back in Germany, where people were quick to reframe Israel’s disproportionate actions as self-defense and any discussion over it became taboo, even among friends.
When I understood that I could not continue my work as though this colossal tragedy weren’t taking place, I began publishing essays and articles on the cancellation of exhibitions, prizes, and symposia and the criminalization of compassion for the people of Gaza. Watching the situation unfold, I returned to drawing because I had no idea what else to do; I then began writing short texts to accompany them, an ABC of terms that examines concepts such as dissent, pity, hypocrisy, and impunity. These texts eventually grew into “A Look in the Mirror,” a small book of moral philosophy that will be published next year. At its core, though, it’s essentially a reckoning with the West’s image of itself, which is in urgent need of more than just symbolic revision after Gaza.
Like you, extreme events have often pulled me away from what I was doing and sometimes sparked entirely new lines of artistic or literary inquiry.
Angelika Stepken: The political developments of recent years have shaken so many of the things we took for granted in the cultural sector, despite our skepticism and criticism. The belief in a cultural scene based on solidarity has collapsed, and various collaborations with individuals and institutions have become more than questionable.
Jeremiah Day: Yes, and it’s been disillusioning and painful for many, including those who themselves discovered that they were preferring to “go along to get along,” as they say in the US. Many relationships have changed.
I recall the “Former West” 2013 event vividly. That event—and much of the international (mostly European) “critical” part of the art world—embodied a sharp disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality of cultural practice in Europe, and for many years it became a kind of bubble universe, disconnected from the cities whose taxes pay for their institutions or the publics who visit them. My sense is that by 2023, the whole thing had been hollowed out.
There are some who say it was never “real”—in other words, that the promise of connecting civil society to contemporary art institutions was a fraud. To back up this argument they say that documenta never dealt with racism in Kassel, for example, as Hito S. talked about when she resigned from the last edition. I watch the videos of Catherine David’s 100 days of talks, or the documentation of Mike Kelley’s “Uncanny” exhibition in Sonsbeek in the Netherlands, or Clemens von Wedermeyer’s 2007 Sculpture Muenster work exploring terrorism, and I disagree. I would say that the space for reflection and debate that culture offers to the wider society can be very real. I guess like in other political projects/spaces, the line between living up to the principles and lying about them is really a battle line.
This battle simply continued into 2023, but now with some startling new discoveries: most of the people in the professional German art world were unwilling to confront injustice in any direct way, despite the fact that the entire community’s justification was supposedly our commitment to the greater good. Again, some aspects of this were clear already—that the role of state funding might actually not be to support culture in Germany but the other way around: building a culture that supported the German state.
There are some who say the promise of connecting civil society to contemporary art institutions was a fraud, was never real—I disagree.
Andrea Scrima: The question of state funding reveals a few interesting contradictions. Over the past year, I’ve acted as a liaison for a subsidized studio building; like everything else, the public funds needed to maintain these spaces have been drastically cut, and so I wrote hundreds of emails and met with members of the parliament and journalists and put together dossiers to mobilize support. To little avail—the demonstrations, newspaper articles, and radio interviews we made happen had virtually no effect on the actual budget negotiations. A group of us sat down with politicians from the Greens and the Left Party who were among the only members of government that had shown any interest in trying to save the 365 studios currently under threat.
In contrast to the other politicians we’ve been contending with, we didn’t have to try to convince them of art’s importance. We listened as they described, for our benefit, the internal workings of government structures so bureaucratized that it was a struggle to understand their connection to anything real. But they reported a shift in attitude across the political spectrum, something they’d never observed before: while for a long time no one dared call the idea of state funding for culture into question, it was no longer a given that art was indispensable and essential. The tide was turning, but in what direction they couldn’t say.
And yet I couldn’t help noticing that it was the artists who engaged in code-switching and not the other way around. We weren’t free to speak on our own terms—and these people are on our side. But what would I have said? That I’m not interested in the multiplication effect artists contribute to the economy, or in adding to Berlin’s power to attract tourists? If the point of art is to question the status quo and to call official narratives into question, what does it mean to bite the hand that feeds you?
I find myself in a double bind: I am unable to afford a studio at current commercial rents, yet because I’ve published essays on German guilt and the hypocrisy of the country’s stance on Gaza, this is quite likely the last form of public funding available to me in the foreseeable future. Serves me right? Is that the logic we’re operating with now? Or is this my own hypocrisy, and it’s only natural that I am forced to divorce myself from this support?
If the point of art is to question the status quo and to call official narratives into question, what does it mean to bite the hand that feeds you?
Jeremiah Day: I think the crippling of the cultural community’s recent response to the budget cuts comes from some core confusion about who we are and what is happening. If the reason culture deserves support is that we are part of a strong civil society, our recent track record makes it hard to rally around such a claim.
But, on the other hand, I do think the bond between cultural space and civic life is still strong in Europe. For example, I made a performance at an alternative space in 2024 in a small city in the US. I warned them in advance that it would deal with Gaza. They were confused: why would I need to warn them? In other words, this was no problem for them. This was no problem because most of contemporary art in the US is so marginal to the center of the society that—while it has meaning for those present—there is no wider space of recognition or attention. I discussed this example with Sami Khatib, and he agreed that in Germany the pressure around culture is confirmation of culture’s importance in the broader socio-political order. So in one sense, this re-confirms the importance of that work. For this reason, I do not agree that art is defenseless.
At the same time, I don’t want to underestimate the sense of collapse that we’ve experienced in Berlin and in Germany, producing an almost Orwellian situation in which basic facts must be continually misrepresented at every level, and dissent against this relentless cover-up is punished and then itself covered up. One only has to cross the border to Belgium and come back to get a vivid sense of how deep into a political project of “managed” reality we are in Germany. And, indeed, while there are symbolic gestures about Palestine, the underlying collapse has gone widely unremarked upon. There is a brutality to this that requires a constant effort to deal with, to ward off unpleasant thoughts and to re-focus on the tasks at hand, whose meaning now seems suddenly confusing. Why put on an open studio when the framework of professional development means to aspire to be the more widely recognized participant in a depressing confusion (the art world)?
Another consequence is that the “official” cultural scene—like the recent Berlin Biennial—seems just widely ignored by me and my peers. It was clear from the start that it would unfold into a delusional (or worse) parallel dimension. I only realized how much I was ignoring these things when on the tram I ran into colleagues from Athens whom I like and who were on their way to the opening of the Biennial—going had not even crossed my mind.
The sense of collapse that we’ve experienced has produced an almost Orwellian situation in which basic facts must be continually misrepresented at every level.
Andrea Scrima: Jeremiah, writing about the Berlin Biennale was my “welcome home” experience after nearly two years in Austria, and I think I funneled the sum total of my anger and frustration and alienation with Germany into this piece. I’ve also seen the general hollowing out of art you speak of, but I’ve long been suspicious of art that adopts a critical guise while failing to engage in a more concrete way with the themes it purports to address. But it was a true feat to pull off an entire exhibition that managed to ignore the most egregious and revealing thing happening then and now—the silencing of any support for the Palestinian cause and the criminalization of our horror and outrage at the killing and destruction taking place. What effect has all this had on your own work?
Jeremiah Day: In the hippie world of Contact Improvisation, there has been a far more serious engagement: https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/an-open-letter-from-and-to-the-contact-improvisation-community-of-berlin-germany-and-beyond
This emerged from the wish that Contact Improv not become a space of escapism. The importance of this principle was confirmed for me when KW launched their fall publicity campaign with an Instagram video of a woman saying how much she loved KW because contemporary art was a place she could escape. Perhaps the pro- and anti-escapist factions are the underlying tension of today? There’s a lot of sanity in talking and working (at least a bit) with others around a shared frame of reference.
Andrea Scrima: Angelika, you wrote in a recent text that you don’t understand why everyone seems to be fighting their battles separately, because of course they’re all—culture, education, social programs—connected by a common context, which is the dizzying shift to the right in German politics.
Angelika Stepken: Yes, I wrote a text just under a year ago in which I attempted to compare the language, consciousness, and modes of action of cultural workers engaged in social struggle in Germany and Italy. Such comparisons are always imperfect, but they also help to highlight systemic biases on both sides. In Italy, the anti-fascist resistance (the partisans) was a founding narrative of the republic after 1945. To this day, this connection unites (almost) all anti-capitalist, environmental, and social movements. It created networks of solidarity, such as the thousands of ARCI circles in cities and rural areas—which can be mobilized quickly, whether in workplace struggles like the one at GKN in Campi-Bisenzio or in mass solidarity actions for Palestine. In Germany, the KPD was banned almost exactly 70 years ago, in part because the goals of Marxism-Leninism were deemed incompatible with the basic free democratic order. The process of coming to terms with fascism was already abandoned here in the late 1940s in favor of aligning with the Cold War and all its consequences, which led to a high degree of institutionalization and professionalization in the cultural sector. There is no history of (non-criminalized) resistance in Germany; the transmission of knowledge and infrastructure is lacking. The action alliance “widersetzen” (see Radar 2 below), for example, successfully builds on the networks formed around the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in 2007. The website skillforaction.noblogs.org shares knowledge through workshops, manuals, and fact sheets. This transfer of knowledge empowers both individuals and groups to take action, reduce fear, and make it possible to learn new things together. I believe we should continue working in this direction.
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RADAR:
Radar 01:
Gegründet wurde das Bündnis für geförderte Ateliers Berlin vor dem Hintergrund der im Jahr 2024 angekündigten Budgetkürzungen des Berliner Kulturetats, um die Produktionsbedingungen für bildende Kunst aktiv mitzugestalten. Gegen die Kürzungen in der Berliner Atelierförderung hat sich 2025 ein breiter Widerstand in der Künstlerschaft formiert. Die kulturpolitischen Entwicklungen legen aber nahe, dass es dabei nicht nur um Einsparungen geht, sondern dass diese gezielt zur Durchsetzung (kultur-)politischer Interessen dienen. Die Veranstaltung „Kultur unter Druck. Wie Kulturpolitik zum Machtinstrument wird – und was auf dem Spiel steht“fand im Kunstquartier Bethanien am 30.04.2026 mit Ingo Arend, Maria do Mar Castro Varela, Judith Siegmund, Simon Strick und Daniel Wesener statt. Organisiert von Susanne Ahner, Marisa Maza und Cornelia Sollfrank.
Bündnis für geförderte Ateliers Berlin: „Müssen wir uns Sorgen machen, vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Fördergeldaffäre, dass auch an anderen Stellen Gelder veruntreut werden, die Künstlerinnen zugesprochen wurden?“
Ingo Arend: „Es ist ein unverfrorener Survival-of-the-Fittest-Zynismus, wie die gegenwärtige Kulturpolitik – einer Szene, die auf der Basis des strukturellen Prekariats, also dem, was man so gemeinhin Selbstausbeutung nennt, arbeitet – erst den finanziellen und infrastrukturellen Boden unter den Füßen und das Atelierdach über dem Kopf wegziehen und dann auch noch mehr Leistung einfordern will, gleichzeitig ideologisch und gehorsam“.
Simon Strick: „Alle Strukturen, die jetzt in Gefahr sind, wurden vorher erkämpft: Frauenhäuser, Ateliers, Kultur, Arbeitsschutz und so weiter. Es ist also ein Rollback. Von den Menschen, die das erkämpft haben, kann man lernen, insbesondere was es bedeutet, Unmögliches umzusetzen: nämlich wie man in einem Vakuum, in einem Nichts, in einer Atmosphäre der Unmöglichkeit etwas schaffen kann, die, glaube ich, auf uns zukommt“.
Daniel Wesener: „Ein wesentliches Strukturmerkmal von Kulturförderung in unserer Gesellschaft ist, dass sie gesetzlich nicht normiert ist. Das heißt, dass es hier im Gegensatz zu so gut wie allen anderen Politikfeldern keine individuellen Rechtsansprüche gibt und Kulturförderung auch nicht als staatliche Pflichtaufgabe gilt. (…) Zugleich bricht gerade der politische Grundkonsens weg, der bislang von einer gewissen Autonomie des Kulturbereichs ausgegangen ist. Und davon, dass es im Interesse der Politik sein muss, Kulturförderung möglichst staatsfern, unter fachlichen und eben nicht unter politischen Gesichtspunkten zu organisieren. (…) Zwischenzeitlich gehöre ich zu denjenigen, die finden, wir müssen über diese problematische Entwicklung nicht nur diskutieren, sondern die künstlerische und kuratorische Freiheit in der öffentlichen Kulturförderung auch durch ein Kulturfördergesetz besser absichern“.
Maria do Mar Castro Varela: „Wenn ich mir das jetzt anschaue von einer Migrations- und Fluchtpolitik, zum Beispiel, dann sehen wir, dass die Kunst und Kultur auch ein Feld war, in dem Positionen gezeigt werden und diskutiert und zur Debatte gestellt werden konnten. Die Politik hat kein Interesse an den Feldern, in denen es möglich ist, diese Debatten zu führen. Wir hatten in der letzten Zeit in Berlin sehr viele Ausstellungen und Projekte, wo es darum ging, einen kritischen Raum eröffnen zu können über Kunst und Kultur, in dem sich mit diesen Grausamkeiten, wenn ich das mal so nenne, auch auseinandergesetzt werden konnte, und das war auch ein Angriff auf eine bestimmte Art von Politik. Das war auch der Raum, in dem Politik infrage gestellt werden konnte, und insoweit hängt das alles miteinander zusammen“.
Ingo Arend: „Ich glaube, wir erleben eben eine Art von Kulturkampf. Um eine bestimmte Art der Hegemonie und die Maßnahmen, die hier teilweise dilettantisch, teilweise strategisch angeleitet werden, dienen diesem Zweck. Ich glaube, auf dieser Ebene muss man auch den Widerstand denken und die alternativen Diskurse, die alternativen Narrative pflegen“.
Simon Strick: „Wir sehen gerade den Versuch, AfD-Politik zu machen ohne AfD. Das ist eine Art Gesamtkunstwerk, quer durch die Parteien. Was das bedeutet, AfD-Politik ohne AfD, ist, dass Kürzungspolitiken und Umgestaltungspolitik nicht nur bürokratische Vorgänge sind, sondern in Kulturkämpfe eingebettet werden. Diese finden in Politik, Medien, Internet und so weiter statt. Zur Verletzung durch finanzielle Kürzung kommt die Beleidigung im Kulturkampf dazu. Man sieht das bei Demokratie leben! – die Programme sollen nicht nur gekürzt werden, sondern die Kürzungen werden mit einer kampagnenhaften Denunziation von Zivilgesellschaft vorbereitet (zu links, NGO-Anfrage der CDU, Priens „Ich lehne Identitätspolitik ab“ usw.). Man sieht das in der Kulturszene, die neben Absagen und Kürzungen als propalästinensisch, antisemitisch oder linksextrem bezeichnet wird. Kürzungen und Kulturkämpfe hängen zusammen. Das ist es, was Metapolitik genannt wird: vor oder neben der politischen Kürzung der Kultur kommt die Denunziation der Kultur. Darauf muss man vorbereitet sein“.
Radar 02:
Der AfD in den Weg stellen
Organisiert Euch: Am 04.07. will die AfD ihren Parteitag in Erfurt abhalten, im Herbst die Landesregierungen in Sachsen-Anhalt und Mecklenburg-Vorpommern übernehmen.
Ein breites Bündnis von antifaschistischen und antirassistischen Initiativen kündigt zivilen Widerstand vor Ort an. Landesweit werden Busse organisiert, um massenhaften Protesten zu manifestieren, die Zufahrtsstraßen zur Messe zu blockieren und mit Demonstrationen demokratische Kräfteverhältnisse sichtbar zu machen.
Nur wenige Kilometer entfernt, in Weimar, hielt die NSDAP vor genau 100 Jahren ihren Parteitag ab und zog in das Deutsche Nationaltheater ein.
Weitere Infos zu Aktionen, Anreise etc. u.a. unter:
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