kunst is solidair / l'art, c'est la solidarité / art is solidary
Constant is solidary with more different forms of life instead of less, with imagining another future with technology, with an ecological movement that looks beyond their own privileges, with algoliterary experiments and less optimisation, with artists and others who have emigrated to Belgium willingly or involuntarily, with multiple identities and complex collectivities, with people welcoming refugees warmly, with those for who the future we fear is already present, with the socio-cultural sector, youth centres, associations of ethnic-cultural minorities and streetcorner work, with people who are unable to pay their hospital bills, with all those who are critically questioning Flemish masters of the present and of the past, with the consequences of a climate that is changing drastically, with feminist institutions and anti-colonial organisations, with a multilingual environment, with Queen Nikkolah, with hybrid artpractices, with local service providers taking a stand against platform capitalism, with queer activists and genderfluidity, in short with everything and everyone working towards a world that isn't homogeneous, machist nor colonial.
Constant is solidair met meer verschillende levensvormen inplaats van minder, met een andere toekomst voor technologie, met een milieubeweging die verder kijkt dan hun neus lang is, met algoliteraire experimenten en minder optimalisatie, met kunstenaars en anderen die gewild of gedwongen naar Belgie zijn geemigreerd, met meervoudige identiteiten en complexe collectiviteit, met hen die vluchtelingen een warm welkom heten, met diegenen waarvoor de toekomst waar we tegenop zien al een dagelijkse realiteit is, met de sociaal-culturele sector, jeugdhuizen, verenigingen van etnisch-culturele minderheden en straathoekwerk, met mensen die hun ziekenhuisrekening niet meer kunnen betalen, met iedereen die kritische vragen stelt bij Vlaamse meesters uit heden en verleden, met de gevolgen van een klimaat dat drastisch verandert, met feministische instituten en anti-koloniale organisaties, met een meertalige omgeving, met Queen Nikkolah, met hybride kunstpraktijken, met lokale serviceproviders die een standpunt innemen tegen platformkapitalisme, met queer activisten en fluiditeit, kortom met alles en iedereen die ervan overtuigd is dat de wereld van morgen niet homogeen, macho of koloniaal hoeft te zijn.
Solidaire avec d'avantage de formes de vie différentes au lieu de moins, avec l'imagination d'un autre futur avec la technologie, avec un mouvement écologique qui regarde au-delà de ses propres privilèges, avec les expériences algolittaires et moins d'optimisation, avec les artistes et d'autres qui ont émigré en Belgique volontairement ou non, avec les identités multiples et les collectivités complexes, avec les personnes accueillant des réfugié.e.s avec chaleur, avec celleux pour qui l'avenir que l'on craint est déjà présent, avec le secteur socio-culturel, les centres jeunesse, les associations de minorités ethniques et culturelles, les éducateur.rice.s de rue, avec les gens qui ne savent pas payer leurs factures d'hôpital, avec tou.te.s celleux qui remettent en question de manière critique les maîtres flamands du présent et du passé, avec les conséquences d'un climat qui change radicalement, avec les institutions féministes et les organisations anticoloniales, avec un environnement multilingue, avec Queen Nikkolah, avec les pratiques artistiques hybrides, avec les prestataires locaux.ales prenant position contre le capitalisme de plateforme, avec les activistes queer et la fluidité de genre, bref avec tou.te.s et chacun travaillant contre un monde homogène, macho ou colonial.
more / meer / plus:
Laura Nsengiyumva: https://www.vooruit.be/nl/agenda/1972/%27Queen_Nikkolah%27/Laura_Nsengiyumva/
Rachida Aziz, Christophe Callewaert: https://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artikel/2019/11/18/wie-nu-verbaasd-is-over-de-cultuurbesparingen-heeft-de-voorbije-jaren-niet-goed-opgelet/
Agnes Quackels: http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/alleennogmaarvlaamsemeesters
Constant is solidair met ...
Constant will solidair zijn met ...
Constant is solidair met kunst, met ...
Kunst is solidair met ...
... solidair met ...
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NOTES
"The undoing of the plot does not start on bended knee, it does not begin with ballots or bullets, or with an address to the court, or with a petition, or with the demand for redress, or with the slogan: no justice, no peace. It begins with the earth under her feet. It begins with all of them gathered at the river and ready to strike, with all of them assembled in the squatter city, with all of them getting ready to be free in the clearing. They don’t say what they know: all things will be changed. The undoing of the plot begins with her runaway tongue, with her outstretched hands, with songs shared across the unfree territory and the occupied lands, with the pledges of love that propel struggle, with the vision that this bitter earth may not be what it seems."
Saidiya Hartman, 'The Plot of Her Undoing'
http://etherbox.local/images/kunstissolidair.jpg
http://etherbox.local/images/kunstzoom.png
in/out
undoing
http://vuur-werk.vlaanderen/blog/2019/11/20/open-brief/
https://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artikel/2019/11/18/wie-nu-verbaasd-is-over-de-cultuurbesparingen-heeft-de-voorbije-jaren-niet-goed-opgelet/
[in EN below]
structuren die sommigen stevig op hun plaats houden en anderen geen kans bieden
Milo Rau 'Jambon wil de avant-garde weg hebben'
KUNST = SOLIDAIR
KUNST
SOLIDAIR?
kunst is solidair / l'art, c'est la solidarité / art is solidary
What does it mean to say solidarity
What solidarity with solidarity
With what?
Alliance, accomplice
Art is solidary with
Artists are part of a world that needs remaking
Art is allied with
Artistic practice relates to
Art is solidary with everyone that has the courage to break canons
Artworks
Art institutions
Art collectives
Art schools
masters
artists as creators of conditions
independence -- interdependence
collectivity -- roles, spaces, talents, skills, groups
capacity. not closed / fluidity
maintaining the horizons
master
not conflating art and innovation
pronouns
hybrid languages -> 'standaardtaal'
complex collectivities
======================================================================
https://www.dewereldmorgen.be/artikel/2019/11/18/wie-nu-verbaasd-is-over-de-cultuurbesparingen-heeft-de-voorbije-jaren-niet-goed-opgelet/
Yes, we cannot hide the fact that we feel some excitement when we see 2000 angry artists in the Beursschouwburg. But it's also double. We ourselves are not angry with culture minister Jambon. Or rather, we have long since passed the phase of indignation. Cutting 60% away from the pot of project subsidies adds nothing to the pain. The bucket was already full.
It would be easy for us to let it pass. Anyone who is only now indignant has not understood Martin Niemöller's poem. Du warst jain kein Flüchtling. No woman with a headscarf, no inhabitant of Molenbeek, no Muslim, no sick person, no job seeker, no poor person, no person who is dependent on De Lijn to get from A to B.
We also get (remember?) those first reactions to the announcement that Prime Minister Jambon would be working as a culture minister not carved out of our memories. 'An important signal', said someone who is supposed to represent us. The fact that the Prime Minister has been given the power to do so has given rise to a small cry of joy, I will tell you frankly, it is certainly an added value', someone else said.
What Jambon is doing now is not austerity measures. This government is taking revenge on the cultural sector.
Read that once again. Those totally frivolous and unworldly statements were made after N-VA had sat down with Vlaams Belang for six weeks and had delivered a coalition agreement that seemed to be a wish list of the extreme right. In which refugees are punished financially, in which social housing is reserved for 'our own people first', in which poverty is seen as a lack of discipline.
Angry artists therefore resemble the silent film-cliché of that individual who tries to sip a drink in a bar where a massive fight is going on and who reacts with anger when a stray fist knocks over his or her glass.
Anyone who is now surprised by Jambon's carving in cultural subsidies hasn't been paying much attention in recent years. Bart De Wever already wrote it in 2011: 'Art must be the translation of how a community sees reality'. Today, art can barely touch the community', he added, playing wistfully. It was therefore written in the stars that N-VA would one day claim the cultural portfolio.
It fits in perfectly with the 'culture war' that N-VA has been waging for years. A war against everything that is alien to the people, against everything that does not fit in with the mythical 'gut feeling of the average Flemish person'. A cultural war is a war for the soul of the nation. 'Balls in tomato sauce in the canon', 'the disappearance of the last pieces of open space in Flanders is the fault of migrants'.
An ingroup is selected, which is then set up against the outgroup inside and outside the borders.
Every tweet, every statement and every provocation are phases in this war. Our cities, our culture and our country are recaptured from radical feminists and environmental extremists who consider insects more important than jobs', is how the homophobic white supremacist and forerunner of the alt-right, Pat Buchanan, described the war in 1992. With Jambon as warlord on Martelarenplein, this cultural war breaks out in all its intensity in this country.
So what Jambon is doing now is not a budget cut. This government is taking revenge on the cultural sector. Jambon and co want to jenge the cultural sector, disrupt it and use it as a punching bag.
The provocation is therefore dripping off. Chopping the project subsidies, but more subsidies for Bokrijk. Another saving of millions for cultural organisations, but emphatically opening the door to cultural subsidies for the port boss Fernand Huts. With the money he saves by parking his fortune in tax havens, he has already bought a painting. He puts these paintings in a foundation that, in turn, was also hidden in the tax paradise of Jersey. More specifically on the first floor of a small building on Mulcaster Street number 2. A P.O. Box, therefore, only useful to avoid taxes or to disguise the origin of the money flows.
Even more provocation: the 34.5 million euro subsidy from the climate pot (!!!) for mega-pollutants like ExxonMobil remains intact. That is ten times as much as the full pot of the project subsidies. ExxonMobil responded: 'Flanders is rightly compensating us for higher climate costs'. Do you see that? They laugh in our faces.
The fact that we are all somehow proclaimed as enemies is the basis on which solidarity can be built.
Last week writer Naomi Klein explained very precisely on a stage in Iowa how to interpret all this. Strong men like Trump, Bolsonaro or Modi follow an international script. An ingroup is selected and then set up against the outgroup inside and outside the borders. The ingroup is usually described as 'the real Americans' or 'the real Indians' or in our corner 'the hardworking Fleming'. They have to be protected from the intruders or the 'Other' by the strong men ('strongmen' in Naomi Klein's speech, 'Sterke Jan' in N-VA's tweets).
When an N-VA member talks about 'the community' they mean exactly that. That is their ingroup. The imaginary real Fleming who is opposed to migration does not care about the climate and every artist finds a world-familiar subsidy devourer. This imagined ingroup has to be created constantly. The strongmen do this by provoking opponents all the time. The ingroup on the one hand, the outgroup in the shooting gallery, every day again.
The Flemish coalition agreement closely follows the rules of the script. The refugees, the newcomers and the Muslims are the losers. They are deprived of their rights, brutally taking away money. This keeps the ingroup happy, so that behind that façade unabashed savings can be made in education, the care sector and public transport and housing is made unaffordable.
(c) Laura Herman
Now it is the turn of the cultural sector to present itself as the outgroup of the week. Should we, the Flemings, give money to actors waving their dicks on stage? It is an excerpt from the debate sheets of the N-VA troll army that returns to social media in all sorts of variations. The cultural sector is the enemy.
This is at the same time the possible cement between all these groups mentioned earlier. However heterogeneous we may be, we are all proclaimed enemies in one way or another. That is the basis on which solidarity can be built.
Anyone who is only concerned with their own little piece of cake is on the wrong side of the coin.
We will quote Naomi Klein again. 'In the rough and rocky future that has already begun, what kind of people are we going to be? Will we share what's left and try to look after one another? Or are we instead going to attempt to hoard what's left, look after "our own," and lock everyone else out? In this time of rising seas and rising fascism, these are the stark choices before us. It's going to take an all-out war on pollution and poverty and racism and colonialism and despair all at the same time.'
The world has exploded into two pieces. There is no middle ground, no easy path to self-preservation. Anyone who is only concerned with their own little piece of cake is on the wrong side. Of course, the budget for cultural subsidies must be saved. But if that is the end of the battle, the cultural sector will do exactly what we accuse the strongmen of doing: look after 'our own'.
At a time when the European Union is drowning 19,000 people in the Mediterranean Sea, when bogus companies are burning rainforests and when an asylum centre is being set on fire under chilling cheers, that is guilty neglect. You have just been declared the enemy of those who hand out the matches. Be there and reach out to all the other 'enemies' that preceded you.
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Agnes Quackels 11/11/19
So, let’s first agree that already before yesterday the situation was far from being ideal.
Not only our beautiful and internationally acclaimed Flemish field of performance was altogether very white, male and high-educated, but it was also composed of some people being paid for most of their work and some others being paid for only the visible part of it. And already back then we didn’t feel very comfortable about it: standing high on the unpaid labor of the artists, might it be mostly white and male, was not a position we were very proud of.
But at least, until not so long ago, we had some instruments to help us navigate in those troubled waters and they were more or less working correctly: projects funding, commissions, production offices, workplaces, arts centers etc… were there to provide an ecosystem where, if you also had access to the social welfare, it was eventually possible to work and live in almost decent conditions (if an average of 1500 euro/month/ individual artist is what we dare to call it).
But today our new minister of Culture is punching us in the face. 3% will be taken on the budget of the Flemish Institutions, 6% on all the others and 60% on the projects.
As many people within this field, I’ve been sitting and working on almost all the branches that come out of this trunk that are the projects. And, as many people, I know that the projects fundings are not only meant to facilitate the work of the new comers and more experimental projects but mainly to provide content to our entire ecosystem, at large. If you strangle the projects, it’s the entire system, us all, that chokes – and die.
Besides, we know already that, in order to realise their current programs with those cuts, arts institutions will have no other choice than to abuse the long term (and now systemic) precarity of the artists. And no matter if the public programs of those institutions will still address questions related to social justice, solidarity and cooperation, they will reproduce harsh scarcity on a large and structural scale. (Thank you Bojana Kunst for your prophetic analysis).
But maybe even more problematic is the fact that the plan that is forced upon us today is obsessed by its own history, language and aesthetic canons. It’s a politic where there is, in its own essential definition, no room for The Other – who might it be.
I believe that in our reactions, we should not forget that, as a field, we were finally ready to question our patriarchal and male-dominated power structures. We were asking ourselves How can we have arts institutions that are not reproducing the dominant models of exploitation, arts institutions that are proposing alternatives, on a structural level, where essential questions of social justice and accountability would finally be part of our agenda? After years of talking about other possible models, social imagination, and a fairer system, we were ready to act.
I believe these questions should absolutely stay our compass in the coming days and weeks. The agenda that is imposed on us today, is not ours. We, as field, have been advocating for a fairer, more feminist and inclusive system, for years. And this should not stop today.
So yes, we are talking about percentages and the impact of those cuts on all levels. But let’s do not forget to pay constant attention to How we are doing what we are doing, and to keep this aligned with the values we were and are publicly standing for.
Even on those time of crisis, let’s keep on talking about the urgent need for a broader systemic change that is involving the very foundations of our field, in its deeply rooted oppressive power structures. Any other way to go about this will reinforce them.
The future should stay absolutely feminist, and our field should care for everybody working and being involved there. no matter the cuts that affect us all.
good night.
===============
After many talks, debates, articles and opinions, we feel that we urgently need to agree on one thing: the current Flemish government is making radical cuts in the social and cultural sphere according to a dangerous and protofascist ideology. The attack on culture and the arts should function as a late wake-up call to join a broader struggle, against the fear and violence that the current government is forcefully installing. We need to develop a long-term vision and strategy to deal with these drastic changes and understand how we, as cultural workers, can reinforce the broader struggle we are part of. We can only get somewhere if we join other sectors, groups, people in their resistance. On the streets, on social media and amongst ourselves, we are shouting the word ‘solidarity’, as a promise to others and as a demand to ourselves. But a mere shout is not enough. We need to act upon this solidarity. In order to receive it, we first have to give it.
That is why, two days ago, within a small group of concerned artists and thinkers, we started talking about concrete proposals for ‘radical action’. We believe that it is not enough to gather in front of the Flemish parliament when the culture commission is in session, desperately hoping to save our own funds so we can “showcase the greatness that Flanders bears within itself”. More than that, we should gather where-ever the future we fear is already someone else’s daily present. Where-ever fictional constructs such as borders and identity leave violent marks on people's lives. Therefore, we suggest that on the 28th of November we gather in Bilzen, where a planned asylum centre was burnt down to cheers and applause, without the minister of culture - who also happens to be the minister-president - publicly condemning it. We will gather there to relocate our priorities. We will gather there not to ask our money back, but to demand an official denunciation of this violent attack on human dignity, given license by an increasingly racist and exclusive political discourse. We will gather there to focus on co-developing tools of radical criticality, resistance and cooperation in this struggle.
Love,
Robin, Petra, Thomas, Einat, Christoph, Esther, Jelena, Moon, Maarten
radishroot@protonmail.com