Affirmation Nº1

I Am Saying Yes to Being Rejected For Art Funding

Being an artist in Europe is quite unique. We are fortunate to have a huge public sector that is supporting art. The origins of this come mainly from our experiences with autocracy, emperors and dictators. Two sided coin, in most parts we were dealing with centralised authorities owning all the equity to fund art, so when the age of democracy hit the continent finally we decided it should be centralised like other social institutions such as health care and democratically orchestrated.

In Germany the freedom of the arts was specifically stressed in the creation of the Grundgesetz (de facto constitution) due to the devastating implications of fachist Gleichschaltung. Goebbels founded the Reichkulturkammer on September 27th 1933 consisting of Reichsfilm-, Reichsmusik-, Reichstheater-, Reichspresse-, Reichsschrifttumskammer(https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/ns-regime/kunst/schrifttumskammer), Reichskammer der bildenden Künste und Reichsrundfunkkammer with 250000 members.

After the war many institutions created during Nazi regime survived and were reformed in the newly democratic way in West Germany. Kunstvereine, Stiftungen and Institutions prospered in those years with new found freedom, an opportunity to confront and constitutionally backed funding In the West at least. We all know German Art after the art made its impact globally. Radio, the centralised propaganda machine per se had a special fund, the annual price of the war blinds which made radio plays a unique German genre until podcasts arrived and sort of took over that format.

the east however restructured and in some ways even perfected the former regimes centralisation and control of who was allowed to perform art or even what to perform of course as a socialist soviet Trabant (natural satellite like the moon) heavily regulated on the content level.

Artists engulfed into very abstract uncommercial forms of expression as a response and did their thing in the underground, which I believe spring an amazing DIY underground scene after the reunion in 1990 which made possible the techno movement until it’s independence slowly decayed and came to a full stop (with a few exceptions here and there) with the covid pandemic.

Austria has a strong centralised government as well, and due to its geography (everyone doing by art lives basically In Vienna ) and history (empire) arts received fundings through government (BMKOES) or city institutions (MA7) and other bigger players always connected to an agenda.

I get rejected 99% of the time, no kidding. Despite filling out buerocratic forms designed to filter out “the lazy” proposals taught me only to adopt a language, made me care about topics some morally and ideologically charged political agenda (which I can care about less), pretended to have finished idea without any process but the writing, and after wasting two or three month of my life time spit me out like it’s another spam mail newsletter they wish to cancel.

Things to add, I recently trolled some AI art open call on Instagram. Their claim was that they were basically disappointed that applicants used an AI chatgpt to apply for their AI arts funding. Their point: you are lazy and hide your individuality behind a text that does not show you made an effort to stick out. So they make it harder now and add more mind bending criterias so they can filter out those that do not work hard enough for their charity. My point: people were so happy about this short window of opportunity where one could type in the few bull shit objectives of the funding call, and hammer out a 2 page proposal. Often fundings require to describe the same idea from multiple perspectives so a few of those a required to produce (for formality)

The ones that piss me of the most

* Describe the relevance of the piece! Nobody has a fucking clue if they are relevant or not. Are you raising narcissists?

* describe how you are going to achieve your goal! Doah, look at my freaking portfolio and go figure.

* How does your work reflect a sustainable and inclusive (add any word here that is part of their agenda) world for the future of our planet! It simply doesn’t. It’s art. Art does not intend. I might entertain and make you think, but it does not change the world we life in. So go plant a tree!

* we encourage only serious people to apply, so describe with marketing measures you are doing in order to promote … (add the funders agenda here again)! I don’t. I hate marketing and it just adds another layer of wasting life time for something that is supposed to be part of life. The experience of life.

So i quote some people here and might get you on my side.

Gustav Mahler legendary said arts funding brings out mediocrity and obviously wasn’t a big fan either. Any scientists may please investigate this further. I hope i was able to spark some motivation.

Cineaste: do you think everything in art has to have a meaning?

David Lynch: if you could put words into the symbolic equivalent of most of my visual concepts, no one would want to produce my films. I don’t know what a lot of things mean. I just have the feeling that they or not right. My work is full of abstract ideas by they are abstract ideas I know about. My first inspiration is life, there everything makes sense because it is linked to life.

So my affirmation for 2025 (it’s been slowly developing because god know I tried.

It is the most liberating decision of my artistic life to kill this **LIFE TIME KILLING MACHINE** once and for all.

I use the time to mediate write random rants, write poetry instead of pseudo academia, draw stories instead of graphs, programme music in excel instead of planning hypothetical budgets that no ever wants to look at.

I turn to creation instead of description. I make art and that’s enough. Give me your money to make it happening, I might fail, and that’s okay. You might not like it, but others do. And that’s enough.

I might not suit your agenda, fuck your agenda. Obviously it didn’t manage to stop the reestablishnent of fascist regimes, or the return of patriarchs and machoism, it did not spark a new wave of anti consumerism or bridge a gap between the classes.

I had a chat with Ersan Montag some other night after his premiere of “Toto” from Sybille Berg in some after hour club Godman’s on Rechte wien Zeile (it’s a true abyss) and ORF OE1 journalist Christine Scheucher. Ersan Argumented Art and culture is a language you can learn, so it’s accessible, but applying for funding didn’t ever make sense to him, it’s more about convincing people to get your shit on stage. “Support your vision”, that’s how I would translate this for myself. Nevertheless it’s classism.

If you do art commercially your are getting involved into classism yourself. No arts funding is going to change that unless your fucking lower the bars. Here is an original thought how you can save us some life time:

Give everyone a fucking basic income. And pay them to write proposals for a change. Turn the proposals into 2-3 sentence pitches or image submissions like they do on fourchan, Reddit or megaworld.xyz, pick by lottery ( I mean serious, entire populous, imagine a random person receiving and arts fund, what would they do with it?). Remove your judges and ask my friend Lukas Rehm pointed out his morning in a Chinese dumpling restaurant, have an AI judge proposals you are not allowed to write yourself, with an AI itself. So turn it into a game that is fun to join and than forget about it, okay the next.

Final remark, you might work in the proposal industry, sucks for you! Take your legs out the door and life for just a short moment. Imagine your have wings? Yes, anything is possible in your imagination. Nothing is possible in an office!

Mic drop !