2010 No6
December / January
Where do you sytand with your art, colleague? Jörg Immendorff’s famous painting in the collection of the Van Abbe Museum has regularly been on my mind lately, whenever I am asked how METROPOLIS M views the current sweeping financial cuts in culture and the arts. I experience the dilemma Immendorff sketched by way of a modernist painter standing in his studio, looking at a canvas, as the protesters march past. Should METROPOLIS M stand up and take sides, joining the activists, or can we allow ourselves to keep to the sidelines?
The problem seemed even more compelling at a recent conference organized by SKOR, on the public role that art plays in society today. With some disdain, Mark Fisher spoke of observing ‘capitalist realism’, or the tendency of the cultural majority to go along with the neo-liberalist dynamic, something now apparently being injected into the cultural sector in the Netherlands. Fisher asked himself where the faith in other economic systems had gone. Why is everyone so resigned to it, as if there were no other options than joining the capitalist world order?
Resigned is not the right word. This specialized publication is simply not the appropriate platform for political activism. We do, however, engage in the debate, exploring the role and the meaning of art and the artist in today’s society. This issue continues doing so with articles about the philosopher Paolo Virno, cultural policy reforms in Sweden, how art is dealing with the environment, and the rise of the art institute in Russia and India, two of the so-called BRIC countries. None of this will change the policies of the Dutch government, but it does place everything that is currently taking place in art in a broader perspective.
-DR
31/01/11 Johan Lundh
Right-wing governments have come to power in several places in Europe this year, and they are cutting back cultural subsidies. Sweden has been dealing with a changed political climate since 2006.
07/01/11 Annet Dekker
Only by making themselves much more dependent on their public can art museums continue to exist. In the third and last part of a series on the future of the museum, METROPOLIS M offers an interview with Nancy Proctor, specialist in the area of mobile and digital strategies for the museum.
07/01/11 Viktor Misiano
The art world in Russia is modernizing itself according to the capitalist model, while leaving the old power structures intact. Good art is especially art that sells well. So far so good, but the question is, for how long?
07/01/11 Grant Watson
Business acumen and intellect are the two greatest talents of the art world in India. A report from the rapidly developing subcontinent.
Amsterdam
Annet Gelink Gallery
08/01/11 - 12/02/11
You could hardly call his art sculpture. Using a wide variety of materials and techniques, the British artist Roger Hiorns investigates themes such as human consciousness, ritual actions and erotic energy. In January, he has an exhibition at the Annet Gelink Gallery in Amsterdam.
COLUMN
