Pure Policy. EU Cultural Support in the Next 10 Years

Translated by Aileen Derieg

Raimund Minichbauer

The progress of EU plans for the future suffered two ruptures in June 2005 with the rejection of the constitution in France and Holland and the subsequent failure of budget negotiations for 2007-2013. The unsatisfactory alternative between a neoliberal constitution and neoliberalism without a constitution, in which formal rights are disregarded while economic liberalization and measures for "internal security" find other opportunities for realization, continues to remain open.

The area of cultural policies, which is to be examined here in terms of possible future developments relating to support for contemporary visual arts, is potentially affected by both of these ruptures. As far as the constitution is concerned, apart from the context of society as a whole, the annulment of the unanimous approval from all member states, which was previously required for cultural policy decisions and which has always resulted in a limitation (and delay) of possibilities for further development (a situation further intensified by the increase in the number of member states through expansion in 2004), was anchored in the draft of the constitution.

As far as the budget is concerned, at this time it appears that the fundamental debates on the budget structure and especially the amount of agricultural subventions will probably take place during the planning for the next budget period (beginning 2014). This means, however, that there will be no agreement for some time on the budget for 2007-2013, which is generally not expected before 2006. For cultural support and thus also for support for contemporary visual arts (as in all other areas of support) this means that in addition to the lack of clarity regarding the program budget, it is to be feared that the new programs coming into effect beginning in 2007 will be delayed and/or too hastily implemented.

Cultural Support and Contemporary Visual Arts

In the area of cultural funding, which is always only complementary to support from the member states and the regions, the EU does not pursue an approach with programs relating to special categories. In the first generation of funding programs, developed in the mid-nineties, there was a certain distribution according to sectors: in addition to the program Kaleidescope devoted to performing, visual and applied arts and multimedia projects, there were also the programs for heritage (Raphael) and books/reading (Ariane)1. These three programs were subsequently grouped together in the framework program Culture 2000, the current funding program that is still in effect until the end of 2006.

In Culture 2000 a kind of rotation system was practiced over the course of several years, in which the annual calls were dedicated to a certain sector. For instance, subsidies for 2002 were announced with a focus on visual arts2. This system was justly criticized because of its clumsiness and the fact that cultural producers in a certain field could practically only apply at very large intervals, and it was ended in 2004. Since 2005 applications have been equally possible every year in all (specified) sectors. In addition to "heritage", "performing arts" and "literature, books and reading", there are also provisions for the area of "visual arts"3. This specifically means that a special jury of experts has been installed, and that a contingent of projects to be funded is "reserved" for this sector.

The question of the future of EU funding for contemporary visual arts is thus primarily a question of the program to follow Culture 20004. This has been in existence under the title Culture 2007 since summer 2004 in the form of a proposal from the Commission5, and it was just being discussed in the European Parliament in a first reading while the present text was being written (early summer 2005). The essential features of the program are thus already known, but two important limitations remain:

On the one hand there is the currently ongoing process of resolution; amendments have been proposed from various sides, some of which have been introduced in Parliament. What is not yet definitive in several respects, for instance, is the budget framework (on the one hand specific motions for a budget increase, on the other the not yet resolved agreement of the Council regarding the overall budget, ...). In addition to proposals that could lead to structural improvements6, there are also more conservative proposals from the rapporteur of the Parliamentary Cultural Committee Vasco Graça Moura for a stronger emphasis on the heritage aspect and funding for translations of Greek and Latin classical works7, or an economistic proposal originating from the French government to set up a separate funding emphasis for the cultural industry8.

The second limitation applies to the structure of the funding program and the generality of the program texts, which primarily define a framework. The annual emphases are developed in a committee9 and characterize the annual calls for applications. This indeed applies to essential elements. For instance, the aforementioned rotation of sectoral emphases is not mentioned in the program text of Culture 2000, but is first determined in the calls.

Governance and User-Friendliness

Before dealing with the contents of the programs, a few remarks should be made about the development of the new program and the style of governance presented in the course of it. Whereas the Commission's work still conveyed an impression of a lack of transparency several years ago, and there was also criticism of the lack of publicly discussed program evaluations, there were intensified attempts in the discussion of Culture 2007 to practice/represent a more open style of governance: evaluations of all preceding programs have been published and presented/commented on by the Commission, seminars have been held, a forum convened, an expert group installed and an Internet survey started10.

There is also a more extensive discussion of future evaluations in the Culture 2007 program text. The tendency here is not only to include evaluation with increasing attention in the program texts themselves. When one finds terms that are central to EU cultural policies, such as "European added value", "cultural added value", and "socio-economic impacts", for instance in the interim evaluation of Culture 200011, which was prepared by a Danish management consultancy firm, and they are not only phrases and catchwords as is usually the case in the official documents12, but are instead relatively clearly operationalized/defined, this also indicates the potential significance for the concretization of the contents and the further development of the programs.

On the way "towards a more-user-friendly program"13, an agency is contracted to conduct the program. The application procedure is to be simplified and the decision-making process more transparent. With SYMMETRY, software has been developed to take over certain information and monitoring functions for all funding programs of the Directorate General Education and Culture (DG EAC)14.

Apart from the question of the actual degree of realization, a governance style is evident here as an ideal image, in which potentially everyone can be involved in the discussion - although in subdivided and graduated forms: from participation in the Internet survey through inquiries in conjunction with the evaluation to invitations to join the expert group. The other ideal image here is that of a user-friendly program capable of reproducing itself from the feedback loops set up around it, almost without external content specifications.

Pure Policy

What is conspicuous about the new program text, in comparison with Kaleidoscope and especially with Culture 200015, is the reduction of political ambitions and a certain constraint of subject matter. A direct reason for this could be the budget situation. There has been little improvement of this situation in the past, and there are few indications that this is likely to change in the future. The much too limited financial means for the funding program has been strongly criticized from the beginning by cultural producers and their self-organizations. The budget proposed by the Commission for the new program (408 million € for the entire seven years) would mean an increase of barely 15% in comparison with the preceding program16. In comparison with this, the "70 Cents for Culture" campaign initiated by the European Forum for the Arts and Heritage (EFAH) and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) is based on a calculation of actual financial needs from 2004, for which ten times the current budget would be required to cover them17.

The evaluations of the preceding programs and the corresponding reports from the Commission point out - already in conjunction with Kaleidoscope and even more so with Culture 2000 - the discrepancy between the ambitious and manifold objectives of the programs and the inadequate financial resources18. The reaction in the program text of Culture 2007 is obviously to reduce the ambitiousness of the contents.

The consequences are by no means limited to reductions in the sense of reducing the extent of the contents, but are instead recognizable in a clearly more defensive basic attitude. This is already evident in the first paragraph as a striking difference. Whereas it is stated in Kaleidoscope that "in reality, the most tangible and influential aspect of Europe as a whole is not merely its geographical, political, economic and social features but also its culture"19, and in Culture 2000 there is a reference to culture's "important intrinsic value to all people in Europe"20, Culture 2007 starts with a more pragmatic objective and a possible functionality of culture for the EU citizenship: "It is essential to promote cooperation and cultural exchanges in order to respect and promote the diversity of cultures in Europe and improve knowledge among European citizens of European cultures other than their own. Promoting cultural cooperation and diversity thus helps to make European citizenship a tangible reality by encouraging direct participation by European citizens in the integration process."

Especially in Culture 2000 the intrinsic value of culture is emphasized, and on this basis normative statements are made, demands formulated to other policy sectors, the "growing importance of culture for European society and the challenges facing the Community at the dawn of the 21st century"21 addressed, and it is noted that "a better balance should be achieved between the economic and cultural aspects of the Community, so that these aspects can complement and sustain each other"22. Although references can be found in Culture 2007 (as in the preceding programs) to current general EU objectives and to cross-section policies such as gender equality and anti-racism23, there are no longer any comparable normative statements derived from an attitude toward the field of culture.

Following this further to the objectives of the new program, it is conspicuous that this approach is narrowed down to the fields assigned to the European level by the subsidiarity principle. Cultural policies belong to the policy fields in the EU that are primarily conceived to be covered by the national and regional level. Hence it is the member states that are primarily responsible, the EU is only responsible for tasks that the member states are not or substantially less efficiently able to deal with.

The specific objectives have been reduced from eight in Culture 2000 to three in the new program, which are all anchored in a subsidiarity framework: the "transnational mobility of people working in the cultural sector", the "transnational circulation of works and cultural and artistic products"24 and the "intercultural dialogue"25. In principle the reduction of the objectives and the exclusive reference to the transnational level can also be seen in a positive sense as a clarification. What seems to happen in this context, however, is that all cultural policy aims vanish that do not relate exclusively to the European level. In Kaleidoscope and Culture 2000 there were still general objectives such as increasing access to culture for disadvantaged groups in society, educating artists, and the use of new media, which were not limited per se to the European level. These references have practically vanished in Culture 2007.

On the whole, a tendency is evident that aims at a further development of governance and user-friendliness, whereby not only contents are lost, but the mechanisms of management optimization and the "abandonment" of content levels also seem to be interlinked to a certain degree. This also potentially opens up the framework for governmentality control mechanisms to function26.

Continuing this train of thought into 2015, the result is the image of cultural policies that do not operate offensively within EU policies. On the contrary, we see instead a situation in which cultural support is increasingly under pressure for justification with the foreseeable consequences of more emphasis on functionality, on visibility, flagship projects, etc. Under these circumstances, a possible restructuring of the budget (to take effect beginning in 2014), which would shift funding from agriculture in the direction of "knowledge-based economies", could benefit the cultural industries, but would hardly benefit the non-commercial field of culture. These kinds of developments are not inevitable, however, and largely depend on the extent to which the sector itself conforms or, conversely, how much political pressure it can create for different developments.

Cooperation Focal Points

In addition to the inclusion of the budget line27, previously independent from the programs, for granting support for the operation of organisations of European cultural interest, the most striking innovation introduced by Culture 2007 in the fields of action is the enlargement of support for cooperation projects over several years into funding for "cooperation focal points"28.

The two fields of action to promote one-year and multiple year cooperation projects, together with the "special actions" since Kaleidoscope, formed the core of the cultural programs (which are not principally oriented to direct support for individual artists29). Despite contrary demands from the cultural sector, the minimum dimensions / "entry thresholds" have been successively slightly increased: the minimum amount of support has been raised, a minimum extent of financial participation on the part of the most important cooperation partners has been made a condition, etc. The Commission's draft for Culture 2007 continues this trend, so that, for example, one-year projects in the future will have to involve cooperation partners from four states instead of three as before.

In addition to generally raising the threshold, the difference between one-year and multiple year projects has been significantly increased. Multiple year projects will not only require six instead of five cooperating organizations, the time period is also increased from three to five years. In the past, the three years only marked the upper limit. It appears that there will be no provisions in the future for less than five years - this is not only how it is formulated, but there are also stipulations to forestall a "practical" shortening of the project duration, and it is indicated that activities must take place in each of the five years30.

The passages concerning the "cooperation focal points" are clearly not formulated in the bottom-up vocabulary of networking31, and there are also certain signs of a break: in this context an explicitly degressive support model is introduced for the first time in the cultural programs - the proportion of funding sinks toward the end of the duration with the perspective that the focal points will be able to fund themselves differently after the five years.

With the focal points, multiple year funding is to be strengthened at the cost of one-year projects (for which it will also become a criterion whether they try out new possibilities of cooperation). Whereas 45% of the budget in Culture 2000 was still allocated to one-year projects and 35% for multiple year projects, the proportions have been reversed in the Culture 2007 draft: cooperation focal points 36%, one-year projects 24%.

On the whole it seems that the idea of the "cooperation focal points" works on the structure of a European cultural field - and thus also the area of contemporary visual arts - , in which "big players" are to be increasingly supported and/or created; this is accompanied by a certain tendency to make a localization of these players in the richer member states more probable, which are willing and able to continue financial support for the focal points after the end of the degressive support.

Other Policy Areas

For several reasons, the program should not be considered in isolation: the fact that the text of Culture 2007 appears to be a site of pure policy raises the question, first of all, of the politics inscribed in it and the content-based dynamics arising from these politics. Secondly, the direct influence of other policy areas on cultural policies appears interesting for further developments, and thirdly, there is the question of the internal overall connection or the fragmentation of cultural policies.

Cultural Diversity in an Area of Freedom and Security

If we look for a driving point of reference in the contents of Culture 2007, this is found primarily in the further development of EU citizenship and, in this context, the immediate reference to the citizens. These references appear heterogeneous and often even contradictory, especially in the "Explanatory Memorandum"32 supplementing the Commission's proposal:

On the one hand, it seems that the entirety of potential recipients are addressed with "citizens", whereby the infrastructure of the cultural field is sometimes seriously instrumentally foreshortened and concepts of "customer orientation"33 do not appear to be far away: "As the Commission indicated in a recent communication, 'European citizens are of course the ultimate target group of all EU actions in the field of culture. However, the European institutions need intermediaries in order to reach those citizens and to offer high quality cultural actions with a European dimension'. These intermediaries are theatres, museums, professional associations, research centres, universities, cultural institutes, the authorities, etc."34

In another passage the artists and cultural producers themselves appear in their characteristic as citizens, where it is noted that "cultural operators, and therefore citizens, should be given more opportunities to create networks, carry out projects, be more mobile or promote cultural dialogue in Europe and in other regions of the globe."35

And finally the old problem that cultural policies are also always regarded as a possibility for PR for the EU and its institutions36 is extended in this context beyond the wish for representative projects or awards to the cultural policies themselves. When it is discussed in the "Explanatory Memorandum" that there are still two program lines that are not integrated even after merging the three programs in Culture 2000, there is a criticism of the lack of coherency in this situation, but the image problem is even more prominent: "This dispersal into three actions harms the Community's image with its citizens, who are unaware of the efforts to preserve and expand the influence of their cultures and the taking into account of the cultural dimension in the construction of Europe."37

The theme of citizenship refers directly to a communique from the Commission, which addresses various funding areas of the DG EAC38. In terms of political contents, however, it seems more interesting to go a step further to the "Financial Perspectives"39 for 2007-2013, in which the Commission outlines the political project for this period.

Locating cultural policies in the "political ontology" of this explanation would seem to be worth a separate investigation. The cultural area is assigned to priority b "giving full content to European citizenship", which is subdivided into three points: 1) the area of freedom, security, and justice; 2) access to basic goods and services, and 3) making citizenship work: fostering European culture and diversity.

The proximity of cultural policies to the border regime and internal security will need to be observed, and the question will have to be raised in the coming years again and again, to what extent the capability attributed to the cultural area, of being able to transform what is viewed as a constantly growing diversity into elements of an identity of a higher order40, also functions as part of the production of the ambivalent "super basic right"41 of security. At the level of pragmatic arguments, on the other hand, theses for cultural policies based on culture commons42 counter to economization and cultural industrialization could be derived from the proximity to "access to basic goods and services".

Foreign Policy, Trade Policy

One area that will certainly grow in significance also in terms of the field of arts and culture in the next years is that of foreign policy. For the new regional situation following the major round of expansion in spring 2004 the EU developed a new neighborhood policy, in which a certain importance is attributed to cultural cooperation43 among the so-called "people-to-people" issues. This is not limited only to the neighborhood policy, but also applies to foreign policy in the global context.

The topic is highly present, yet at the same time a truly tangible implementation does not seem to be imminent. A greater significance of this area is hardly to be read in the Commission's draft of Culture 2007, for instance. Although there have been announcements for cooperation projects - with Japan and India - in recent years, on the whole these appear to be individual measures44 with too small a scope, and it is evident that there is little system or longer-term perspectives behind them.

Explicit demands are audible, however. The amendments to EFAH that are called for, for instance, also include a more precise supplementary specification of the focal point "intercultural dialogue" with the dimension of "intercontinental" and mention of the external policy in Article 745. With the large-scale cultural policy conference "Sharing Cultures" in July 2004 the European Cultural Foundation devoted a separate panel to this theme46, which was based on a bilingual paper published in "Kulturpolitische Mitteilungen"47, and also pointed out the need for a comprehensive study of cultural aspects of a future EU foreign policy48 in conjunction with preparations for the Foundation's LAB (Laboratory of European Cultural Cooperation)49, scheduled to start in spring 2006.

Trade policy should at least be mentioned here with the wide-ranging problematic field of GATS50 and its counterpart at the level of the domestic market, the Services Directive (so-called Bolkestein Directive)51. Predictions are all the more difficult in this respect, since there is a twofold lack of clarity: the open political question of the extent to which economic liberalization can be prevented and, dependent on this, the question of the impact on the area of culture due to the liberalization that cannot be prevented.

Fragmentation

In Article 151 (Article III-280 of the draft constitution), which forms the legal basis for cultural policies in the EU in the treaties, it is stated in Paragraph 4 that "the Community shall take cultural aspects into account in its action under other provisions of this Treaty, in particular in order to respect and to promote the diversity of its cultures."52 On the one hand, this forms the basis at least for counter-arguments in conjunction with the aforementioned problem fields of GATS and Services Directive, and it is in any case the foundation for taking culture into consideration in other support programs as well.

The number of (theoretical) possibilities is substantial. For instance, the (German-language) portal "Europa fördert Kultur"53, developed by the German "Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft"and the "österreichische kulturdokumentation", covers about ninety "EU funding possibilities for projects with a cultural focal point".

The most important possibilities are found here, on the one hand, in the other funding areas of the DG EAC (audio-visual, media, youth, citizenship, education54) and on the other in the structural funds, in other words the EU funds for regional and structural policies55. Although this has the advantage that more funding can be acquired for visual arts and other areas of art, if there are no countermeasures through intensive linking, it also leads to an increasing fragmentation of cultural policies.

Thus the structural funds not only imply certain economicization approaches in cultural funding (which are interested in the economic potential and job creation potential of the creative industries, the use of cultural heritage for tourism, the development of "soft location factors", ...), they also follow certain concepts of space (developing the "endogenous potential" of regional and local entities56), political foundations ("competitiveness and cohesion reinforce each other"57) and governance models58, which threaten to become the dominant model of cultural policy as well, at least in some rural regions.

If we look at relevant indications in the Commission's draft of Culture 2007, the further improvement of the preparation of information and thus a tendency toward a further improvement of artists' and cultural producers' access to these funding possibilities appears to be a clear objective. On the other hand, however, the references to Article 151, Paragraph 4 and the objective of coordination with other funding programs, as they are included in the Commission's proposal, seem to be a reduction in comparison with Culture 2000. In other words, a further increase in the fragmentation of cultural policies may be expected from this basis.

Networking and Transversal Collaboration

The area of non-governmental culture political actors at the European level has been marked primarily by the European cultural networks, whose development indicates certain parallels (interplays) with that of EU cultural policies. In the 1980s and even more in the 90s, a large number of transnational organizations/cooperations with more or less formalized membership has arisen here in the most diverse areas - art education, residential art centers, cultural administration training, contemporary art centers, visual artists' organizations, contemporary theater, ...59

These networks have resulted in an infrastructure for transnational cooperation, its reflection and cultural-political self-organization, whereby networking as a manner of cooperation has also modernized and changed older international structures - such as existing international associations influenced by the counter-model of a-hierarchical flat structures of cooperation or the bilateral logic of cooperation among nation states and their cultural institutes abroad, which started to develop as a reaction to the working mode of networks in the direction of a more multilateral model of cooperation.60

Beginning in the late nineties the dynamics of new initiatives began to slow down, and a "consolidation" of the field set in, in which a kind of core of strong and lasting networks crystallized. At the same time, it seemed that the beginnings of a "change of paradigms" became recognizable, which would lead to a stronger focus on the nodes and centers than on the lines of networks (the formulations relating to the "cooperation focal points" in Culture 2007 may also be a consequence of this partial "change of paradigms").

Even though the dynamic has slowed down, and in some cases there may be tendencies to appropriate networks (to present a kind of "democratic" legitimization from the basis) or some changes may lead to an increased top-down manner of functioning, in the coming years the networks will form an important infrastructure for cooperation, reflection and cultural political self-organization. The fact that the budget line for support for the operation of organizations of European cultural interest, from which several networks receive basic funding, has been included in Culture 2007 and is thus much more visible as a funding possibility, will also lead to discussions about the extent to which the EU is prepared to ensure long-term basic funding for transnational infrastructures.

For the question of the further development of methods of self-organization and collaboration in transnational contexts, however, the cooperations among cultural networks that are usually limited to specific sectors will only be a special case. This must be seen in a much broader context. Innovative approaches are found here mostly in the context of visual arts, in the self-reflexive practices following from the traditions of institutional critique61; transversal cooperations conjoining the art field with political movements62, and new forms of cooperation that already reflexively include the insights of the governmentality concept.

For several years now, these practices have been exposed to a fundamental self-criticism, which questions the avant-garde role of the art field in the process of the increasing precarization of working and living conditions or the - in retrospect - far too easy way that artistic criticism can be coopted by capitalism to renew itself63. Important concepts such as participation, networking, performance, empowerment find themselves exposed to "generalization effects"64 and re-codings that seem to seal their compatibility with the developments of neoliberalization.

Following Gerald Raunig's thesis that after a more "liberal" phase, now a more "authoritarian" phase of neoliberalism will set in65, it is to be assumed that the field of arts and culture will increasingly be confronted with direct repressions beyond the incorporation effects of governmentality control. At the same time, it will be important that this field does not neglect self-criticism from the still "liberal" phase. It seems that in the years to come, a further development of critical practices and methods of self-organization and collaboration will be possible primarily in confrontation with this self-criticism.

For information and discussions about this text I would like to thank my eipcp colleagues Therese Kaufmann, Gerald Raunig and Stefan Nowotny, as well as Maria Lind (IASPIS) and Sabine Frank (EFAH).

This text is published under Creative Commons License:
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

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