When Berlin’s “Red-Black” (SPD/CDU) coalition government announced massive cuts in certain areas of cultural funding last winter (studio spaces, exhibition fees, art in urban spaces, diversity funds), I followed the protests of artistic interest groups like the Council of the Arts and the BBK (Berufsverband Bildender Künstler*innen) from afar, in Italy. Coincidentally, I was in Berlin when ver.di called for a large demonstration on February 22 against the Berlin Senate’s austerity policy (which affected not only the cultural sector, but also social services, education, and science). After the BBK had carried culture to its grave in front of the Red City Hall in December with a coffin (an astonishingly hackneyed symbolism), I now dreamed of a broad, democratic, intersectional manifestation of resistance. About 5,000 people gathered at the Neptune Fountain on Alexanderplatz, and a Palestine bloc was not allowed to participate. The language of the speakers made me depressed; it sounded like self-incantation: Berlin needs culture. Berlin is culture. Was/is that the language of fighters?
This alarm at the lack of language, or rather its helplessness, accompanied me in the following months. All the more so because this disproportionate attack on the cultural infrastructure was preceded by two years of “silencing” cultural institutions: not a word to/with/about Palestine in institutions that receive public funding. And everyone obeyed eagerly—even though neither the raison d’état nor the Bundestag’s BDS resolution have legal status. Was the silence of cultural institutions regarding state censorship of voices critical of Israel and Palestinian voices after October 7 a symptom of a lack of solidarity in the cultural sector, or was it the result? In any case, deep disappointment and bitterness set in. Nothing in Berlin’s cultural scene is the same as it was before October 7, 2023.
And then, a year later, there were massive 12% cuts to the public culture budget. The austerity policy will negatively affect the working conditions of tens of thousands of cultural and educational producers in the city in 2025, 2026, and 2027. As radical cuts to the culture budget are set to continue through 2026, sites like Berlinistkultur announce various network meetings, actions and dates. On December 20, 2024, BBK issued a statement following the House of Representatives’ decision to cut funding: “We will continue to fight for the professional interests of artists: we will remain in dialogue with the administration, politicians, and cooperation partners and work to ensure that all studios can remain in the program, that diversity and variety can be lived out, and that art in urban spaces is secured.”
It sounds as if there has been a temporary rift between long-standing partners. This is apparently what grassroots artistic representation sounds like after decades of a consensual “cultural nation” whose achievements were envied by many colleagues around the world. Who speaks from what position when (massive) conflicts arise between the state and a hyper-professionalized and institutionalized cultural scene? Who speaks to whom at a demonstration? Is it about defending the status quo or about the self-empowerment of cultural producers in a phase of conflict, of attack? Is it “only” about interests or the common political space? Who shows solidarity with whom? Apparently everyone with “Berlin”. Der Rat für die Künste (the Council for the Arts) shared an open letter against the funding cuts, along with a comment: “Berlin is the city of art and creativity. Let’s not allow it to lose its artistic soul and future”—but is Berlin a label, a bubble, or the sum total of social conditions?
The structural situation of artists in Italy cannot be compared to that in Germany. State infrastructure has never become as broad and far-reaching here, contemporary artists receive little support, and independent projects are often dependent on a system of public competitions, alongside commercial operations and corresponding networks. For three years, the Meloni government has been intervening massively in the work of institutions and public media through personnel policy, placing post-fascist associates (some from the “Youth Front” of what was the fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano party) in the management of museums, theaters, biennials, juries, etc. After the election in fall 2022, the “left-wing” cultural scene was immediately targeted, which was to be disciplined, purged, and standardized in terms of identity (God, family, fatherland). The state-owned public broadcaster RAI was brought into line with “Telemeloni”.
Below the government level, the politics “from above,” however, there is a network “from below” in Italy that can be activated again and again and is writing its own unofficial history: from the partisan movement against fascism in 1943-45 to the traditional nationwide network of Case del Popolo, the activists of the Centri Sociali in the 1990s, local grassroots unions fighting for migrant workers, and ecological initiatives. Solidarity with the disregarded rights of the Palestinian people and opposition to Israeli genocide are loudly manifested in all villages and cities, and in voluntary initiatives from all sectors. In the political arena, this energy of resistance never finds institutional forms, remaining extra-parliamentary. At the grassroots level, however, the sparks of autonomous resistance continue to fly latently and intersectionally.
The most prominent example is the collective of the former GKN factory in Campi Bisenzio, which has been occupying the former auto parts factory for four years to protest job losses and demand a self-determined ecological conversion of production. From the first day of the occupation, neighbors and colleagues from other companies showed solidarity with the strikers. Agricultural collectives brought food, and—in the opposite direction—the collective sought national and international alliances with Fridays for Future, local youth initiatives, flash mobs for Palestine, migrants in the neighboring textile industry in Prato, and other groups. They issue public shares to finance an alternative cooperative, organize an annual festival of workers’ literature, and have a combative, radical, solidarity-based language, trained by the tradition of the metalworkers’ union.
“Vogliamo tutt’altro” (We want everything different)—under this slogan, resistance flared up in Rome at the beginning of this year against another identitarian personnel decision by the Meloni government for the general management of Rome’s theaters. An open letter from the movement declares: “We are artists, workers, and employees in the theater sector. We are mobilizing to denounce the poor state of our country’s cultural institutions and the gravity of the events of recent months: public offices filled through maneuvers bordering on illegality, riot police guarding public theaters, an inconsistent and incompetent city administration in Rome, structural job insecurity, and a lack of places dedicated to research and artistic production.” An Instagram page and a blog were immediately set up to communicate all demands, protocols, and actions (e.g., online meetings with thousands of participants).
In early summer, the next disaster struck: the partially reappointed jury of the national competition for the spettacolo/danza sector, an essential source of funding for many independent groups in the country, announced its decisions: the ratings of numerous renowned performance groups and festivals had suddenly fallen below the required score. The evaluation criteria had been changed, and contemporaneity and artistic risk were suddenly no longer decisive criteria. Many groups across the country are facing closure. Actors from the field of lavoratori della spettacolo (theater workers) expressed frustration with changes to their working conditions, with one person stating that “we are currently experiencing a violent delegitimization of art.” On July 21, a meeting was held in 16 cities across Italy. Here are some short excerpts from the extensive minutes:
“We are angry, toxic, and furious, and we want this anger to be translated into political action.”
“We have all been excluded since our training; there is a problem of structural elitism in our world—it is not just a question of fascists in government, but a classist and racist system that has grown over decades.”
And declared actions:
“Strengthen the power of dissent and continue to imagine another world.”
“Organize study and self-education groups.”
“Be intersectional, connect struggles with each other.”
“Open up a supranational level: In Europe, these issues are already being considered, especially the connection between armament and cuts in public spending; create connections.”
A first national assembly took place in Rome on September 8.
I am not comparing the actions and rhetoric in Rome and Berlin in order to idealize one side over the other, but rather to learn from them. Why are cultural workers in Berlin, Cologne, Munich, and Dresden isolating themselves from one another, even though they are all affected by the same political strategy of cutting funding for the cultural sector? Why are there no intersectional actions and solidarity movements in Germany with those affected in the social and education sectors? Why do demands focus only on their own field, without including parallel developments—right-wing violence in the Berlin area, ecological rollback, militarization, “culture war”—in their arguments?
Why does the cultural scene ignore social antagonism in order to (futilely) preserve the status quo? Why is there no political language that reflects society, the common good, and possible alliances? Why is there never any talk of “work”?
According to Hannah Arendt, power is not that of the rulers, but the ability to communicate collectively and agree on collective action. It is the potential for the public shaping of the community, i.e., the political. Political responsibility is not a moral obligation, but an existential necessity that arises from participation in the political sphere. The public sphere is the space for discussion, debate, and decision-making. The public sphere is a space of conflict.
In her reflections on infrastructural critique, Marina Vishmidt speaks of the “conditions of possibility” within and beyond the artistic field, of the necessity of transforming self-sufficient cultural logic into antagonistic logic and of engaging with the space of social struggles and the world of work, i.e., of developing a materialist theory of the “conditions of possibility.”
Daniel Baker, artist, curator, and art theorist of the GRT (Gypsy, Roma, Traveller) community, said years ago in a conversation that the idea of art as a tool of everyday life “is less about art and design as a way of improving life and more about a way of living, in which creative practice is integral—a bottom up process rather than top down”. He continued that “the idea of a closer alliance between the practices of art and of living has implications too in terms of the reclamation of art from the privileged arena of the museum and the art world where emphasis is placed upon market interests and hierarchies of knowledge—the segregation of intellectual, cultural and financial capital”.
The art “bubble” is part of the infrastructure of platform capitalism, as is the flexible personality of artists, their suitability as soft ambassadors of politics in neoliberal times.
In order to be able to think and speak politically again, we need collective self-empowerment, a different understanding of power, that of the collective sovereign, not that of the dependent.
