Ruhrgebietsweiter Appell der Kulturschaffenden im
Ruhrgebiet
Im folgenden geben wir den Appell der Kulturschaffenden
im Ruhrgebiet unverändert wider. Für Fragen steht der Initiator
Johannes Brackmann unter der Mailadresse brackmann@grend.de zur Verfügung.
Die Frage einer (von außen importierten) künstlerischen Intendanz
der Kulturhauptstadt 2010 – sei es als Doppelspitze neben der Geschäftsführung
noch als ‚Festivalleiter mit eigenem Budget’ – ist auf diesem Hintergrund
zunächst erst einmal zweitrangig. Darüber hinaus hätte sie
schon längst zu einem früheren Zeitpunkt moderativ und in Abstimmung
mit den regionalen Akteuren geklärt werden müssen.
Wir begrüßen daher die aktuelle Entscheidung, Dr. Oliver
Scheytt in die Geschäftsführung der ‚Ruhr 2010 GmbH’ zu berufen
und so den bisher erfolgreich begonnenen Prozess kontinuierlich weiter
zu führen.
Wir appellieren an die Verantwortlichen in diesem Prozess, Strukturen zu schaffen, die den hier dargestellten Anforderungen gerecht werden. Die Kulturhauptstadt 2010 kann nur dann ein Erfolg werden, wenn möglichst viele Menschen in der Region beteiligt werden, sich mit einbringen können und - auf Augenhöhe - mitgenommen werden. Kulturhauptstadt 2010 ist kein Festival und auch keine Verkaufsveranstaltung
– sondern viel mehr, als einige Verantwortliche sich vielleicht noch bislang
vorstellen können.
Es folgt eine Liste mit den Namen der 121 Unterzeichner.
This appeal by more than one hundred artists from
the Ruhr District is documented here for historical reasons. Its immediate
cause and immediate practical relevance, according to one source, does
no longer
Sources of the above text: http://www.netzteil.com/session/Appell%20der%20Kulturschaffenden.pdf http://www.ruhrwaerts.de/ruhrwaerts/index.nsf/url/A5AE0B0A4A07F92AC1257243008005AC?OpenDoc
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IS CULTURE MERELY ANOTHER "ECONOMIC FACTOR" IN THE CONTEXT OF "COMPETING LOCATIONS"? NO! IS IT, ABOVE ALL, SUCH A FACTOR?
The attempt to see the arts and the creative activities of artists in purely commercial terms can only fill us with despair if not disgust. Undoubtedly this worldwide tendency of increased and increasingly shameless commodification extending into the cultural arena was first noticed in the United States. In recent years, it has motivated radical political decisions of cutting back public expenditures for museums, theaters, art councils, cultural foundations etc. both in North America and the European Community. It has become fashionable to proclaim that "culture should pay its own way" rather than expect public "subsidies." We would like to ask the proponents of radical privatization and deregulation whether the great architecture of Classical Greece and Rome would have originated if profit-minded people had been responsible for the decision to build or not to build the great buildings of the Classical period we still admire today. We demand of the elected political representatives a new awareness of their responsibility to make culture accessible for all citizens. The recent course of privatization amounts to a policy that is increasingly making access to culture unaffordable to many citizens. At the same time, cutting back culture-related budgets makes economic survival more difficult for an increasing number of artists. Art, in this era of a new feudalism of politically influential multinational corporations, is becoming again an affair of the privileged few, certainly more so than is good for a democratic society. We asks whether this is not already turning back the tide of modest progress that was making art and cultural appropriation of the arts less elitist? Whether it isn't wiping out the relative headway made during the New Deal period in the U.S. and during the "Social Democratic Decades" of post-WWII Western Europe - a phase that has come to such a sudden end recently... Committed artists and art-loving citizens can only reject the new elitism implied in a policy of shrinking public culture-related expenditures. They detest those keen on exploiting the arts as a field of speculative investment. And they destest the spirit of sharp and merciless competition that sets city against city, region against region, country against country. Let's say NO, NO, NO to those who are eager to exploit the arts and artists for their own selfish, particulist gain. - Joan Chen and
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