Conditions for funding of contemporary art have changed rapidly, but we are rarely aware of exactly how. Lack of knowledge and misconceptions about these issues abound, making constructive discussions difficult.Where lies the land in terms of public and private funding for contemporary art, mainly within a European context, and what repercussions this has on art production itself?
View "Shifting ground: An artist's unrequested inquiry into European agricultural policies" by Goldin+Senneby
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CONSTITUTING ALMOST HALF OF THE EU'S BUDGET, agricultural subsidies have long been (in)famous for their production of excess; mountains of butter and lakes of wine. Today the grounds are shifting. A new agricultural paradigm is taking form in which subsidies have been decoupled from production. Farmers no longer receive support to (over)produce, but to reinvent themselves as environmental entrepreneurs and guardians of the landscape. No longer asked to provide food, but to provide open fields.
Goldin+Senneby proposes that these reforms have something to tell us about the fundamental (power)relations between funder and funded, as applies to the entire field of cultural subsidies, not only agriculture. The drama explored plays out in the space between the image of landscape and the usage of land. But in the tension between policy maker and practitioner, what is at stake is as much the survival of the artist as that of the farmer. The work takes the form of a 20 minute scripted speech (downloadable here).
