Ajouté au panierEsteemed members of the board, dear Cees,
Esteemed members of staff, dear Ankie,
Esteemed advising researchers, dear Mladen,
Esteemed researchers,
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, Chers amis francophones
Motto: “The answer is this: war on totality. Let us attest to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences and save the honor of the name.” — Jean-François Lyotard, 1982
They say that when writing a text, you always have someone in mind as your audience. If this is true, then who is this speech addressed to? To my parents, who produced and raised my brother and me? To my wife and child? To the people who appointed me as director of the Jan van Eyck Academy eleven years ago? To the staff with whom I have enjoyed such a good working relationship? To the researchers selected by the advising researchers and myself to spend a month to two years working on their own projects at the Jan van Eyck Academy? To my friends? To my colleagues, directors or board members? To the provincial governor, the mayor or city councillors? To civil servants? To the village idiot or the homeless noisy man? To the judge who decided in the Academy’s favour in a case against the city of Maastricht? If you were to write a text aimed specifically at one of these people, what would it look like? We’ll never know because I have decided to give a speech addressed to them all. To Omer Brams and Odile Wolfs, to Paula von Seth and Peter Pluymen, to Janicke Kernland and Anthony Auerbach, to Monique Vogelzang and Tonnie Lindt, to Suchan Kinoshita and Bert Nelissen, to Frans Pistorius and Lene ter Haar, to Mariana Castillo Deball and John Geelen – and to the anonymous thief who stole my computer ten months ago.
1
On the 25 th of June 2000, barely two weeks after starting my job as director, I gave a speech at Museum Het Domein in Sittard at the opening of the exhibition entitled Unfortunately last Sunday afternoon somebody left the door open…. Some time before I had received the proofs for the exhibition catalogue, compiled by Octavian Esanu, Franziska Lesak and Giselle de Oliveira Macedo, participants in the Jan van Eyck Academy who had had the audacity to write an alternative history of the institute.
This trio – two theorists and a designer – had delved into official policy documents and newspaper clippings. They had plunged into the institute’s archives and found documents which had not seen the light of day since being safely stored away. Octavian, Franziska and Giselle had also interviewed the people involved. They took announcements and stuck them in the book, including wonderful sentences like: “It was emphasized that the ping-pong table in the exhibition space is definitely not OK” and “If a ping-pong table in the exhibition space is o.k., then why not a washing machine downstairs?” and “Keep the door closed! Felix the cat should stay inside until October 1 st”, and “Unfortunately last Sunday afternoon somebody left the door open… and Knut’s mountain bike has been stolen”.
With growing astonishment, I became acquainted with the bizarre origins, erratic growth and present-day circumstances of the institute where I had just taken over the helm. Time and again I burst out laughing when reading about yet another bureaucratic manoeuvre on the part of one of my predecessors, the twisted reasoning used to justify a senseless measure and the arguments, so easy to deflate, for allowing one thing and prohibiting another. This was a marvellous initiation into the complex history of a still complex institute, one which directors, staff, artists, designers and theorists had tinkered with for decades. The Academy had undergone various metamorphoses, from large to small, sometimes involving a sledgehammer, but usually just the tiniest screwdriver. It had evolved from a Catholic art college, under the care of the Bishop of Roermond, into an international postacademic institute, initially only in the visual arts but later including design and theory. The story of Octavian, Franziska and Giselle – hilarious, exciting and poignant at one and the same time – revealed something that is often made into an abstraction: the fact that an institute is all about people.Thinking up a concept, setting up an organisation, the day-to-day business of different people within various hierarchical relationships – this is all the work of people.These concepts, types of organisation and human relationships are not there to begin with, they’re not there beforehand – they are thought up. What the exhibition and catalogue were suggesting was not only that these concepts, types of organisation and human relationships can be thought up, they can also be reconsidered.This implied the promise of the Academy as a ‘makeable’ institute. Would I succeed in reinventing the Academy once more? Would I accomplish this by avoiding the pitfalls of absurd measures, rhetorical dexterity and seamless contradictions? Having read Unfortunately last Sunday afternoon..., I would certainly never dare answer that last question in the negative.
2
I spent the summer of 2000 both finishing off The Encyclopaedia of Fictional Artists, which I had been compiling, and working on my ‘policy plans’. Actually the Encyclopedia has been a companion during my entire directorship, with a German translation in 2003, and an English in 2010. Back in 2000 I was editing the Dutch version of the Encyclopedia and writing my ‘policy plans’. This was a marvellous combination: on the one hand a parallel universe in which jealousy and folly, lies and brilliance fought to gain the upper hand, and on the other the dry-as-dust story of an institution. The policy document and the book came out at about the same time, in autumn 2000. So what were my ‘policy plans’? I quote: “The Jan van Eyck Academy is a post-academic institute for research and production in the fields of design, visual arts and theory. I would like to interpret this description in two different ways. First and foremost, in a literal way: the Jan van Eyck is an institute that offers designers, visual artists and theorists an opportunity to carry out research projects and create productions. It is therefore not a training institute, but a place for reflection and production. According to my second, admittedly metaphorical, reading of the term ‘post-academic’, not only should the Jan van Eyck Academy offer opportunities to designers, visual artists and theorists who already have an academic training, it should also leave the academic behind (hence ‘post-academic’). If ‘academic’ refers to using a standard procedure, worked out to the tiniest detail, to disciplinary experiments, or to the carefully prescribed or formatted way in which research is presented, then the Jan van Eyck should offer an alternative. In my vision, research and production should above all involve a willingness to take as far as you can the specificity of the discipline (whether it be design, visual arts or theory) and the research project (and hence the designer’s, visual artist’s or theorist’s particular objectives). The academic model is too restrictive and often rules out precisely those possibilities that can bring the participant or researcher to a new understanding (and to artistic or intellectual enjoyment). Central to my vision for the Jan van Eyck Academy is respect for the specific program that the designers, visual artists and theorists wish to achieve by coming to the institute. From the participants as well as the artistic and technical staff I expect a huge commitment to the Academy’s entire program (in other words, to everything that is done and made in the Academy by the participants, and by the members of the technical and artistic staff).” End of quote.
These policy plans and the policy that arose out of them conjures up an opposition between academic and individual, between the pre-formatted path and the path of the artist’s own choosing, between ‘prescribed’ and ‘unwritten’ research projects. The fact that this policy allowed no room for the academic aspect was widely applauded. The urgent protest that was nonetheless directed at me from various quarters had to do with trusting in the independence of artists, designers and theorists. Is it a good idea to expect these people to rely on their own strengths to develop a practice, set up a project or produce a creation? Will anything actually happen if there is no compulsion, and if something does happen, in the absence of coercion or control, will it be worthwhile? I was met with scepticism, some of it implicit, some of it absolutely explicit. What happens to motivation if credits are not awarded? What happens to the desire to do something if there is no diploma at the end?
These doubts – whether held in check or clearly expressed – can be swept aside after eleven years. It is this knowledge that gives me the greatest satisfaction after my time as director: the fact that young, talented artists, designers and theorists can dream up their own projects and walk their own paths. I have been present at selection interviews and have seen how our successful candidates have forged their own way. I have been witness to the partnerships – impossible to predict in advance – between people who came to Maastricht from the most diverse geographical and intellectual backgrounds. I have seen hundreds of unforeseeable creations take shape – from videos to symposia, from books to workshops, from exhibitions to websites. It is a huge triumph that the programme at the Jan van Eyck Academy has proven so successful without having to resort to sanctions, to awarding credits or issuing diplomas. It is the greatest triumph that we have all demanded this ourselves and that we have had so much fun doing it.
3
The 13 th of September 2000. Laurens Schumacher, the deputy director, and I were met in Zoetermeer by Marlou Thijssen, an official at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. She guided us through a forest of bridges and corridors to the office of her boss, Maarten Asscher, director for the Arts. Never having met Asscher before, I didn’t know that he was a poet as well as a senior official. They took our coats and ushered us to seats in the salon. Did Asscher first pick up his pipe and start filling it or is my imagination getting the better of me? In any event, I do still remember his opening question. As he lit his pipe, he asked me: “So what do you plan to do?” Someone who asks a question like that is holding open the door to the unexpected. He is leaving open the possibility that he might be surprised at the response. “So what do you plan to do?” This is a question that doesn’t rule things out in advance, a question that implies that things are possible. It’s a question that reveals a positive bias. How did I reply to Asscher? I can’t remember any longer. No doubt I recited my ‘policy plans’, but I don’t recall. Eleven years later I can only recall the magical start to the conversation. It was the question that mattered; in every respect it was more important than the answer. The question was an echo of my experience while reading Unfortunately last Sunday afternoon somebody left the door open… An Academy is the work of people; it is a makeable institute. So make something of it.
4
I have set things up and torn other things down. The registration fee has been done away with, the open days were axed, the laureates – the Jan van Eyck diplomas – are no longer awarded, the departmental hierarchies have been dismantled, the list goes on… Instead of charging a registration fee, we have set up a fund to bring to fruition research projects and productions, which a board decides on autonomously and by simple majority. Instead of two open days, the entire programme – everything that is done and made in the Academy – is opened up to the public. Instead of awarding diplomas, we try to assist alumni actively to further develop their careers. Only one hierarchical division remains between the participants and advisors, with participants becoming researchers and advisors becoming advising researchers. This new structure and names convey the expectation that all participants in the Jan van Eyck Academy – researchers, supervisors and the director – will be involved in research projects. This has proved to be the most difficult but also the most important driving force behind the changes at the Academy. The most difficult because you cannot require someone to carry out their project or practice within a particular setting, and the most important because little by little it has become clear to the outside world what the Jan van Eyck Academy stands for. We have launched and developed countless projects. The future of the book, the intellectual property of the image, public spaces in the Euroregion, the work of Lacan and his intellectual descendants, the city as a communication platform and communication tool, nineteenth-century urban photography, design & populism, film & biopolitics – all these themes are just a handful taken from eleven years of research history. Whereas some people have dismissed this diversity as chaotic, I have always viewed it as extremely valuable. We have consciously gone in search of these differences because we have enjoyed doing so. We think it’s fantastic that someone can build an installation that makes reference to Michel Foucault in one studio, while in another someone else is reflecting on the impromptu market that has sprung up around a NATO checkpoint in Bosnia Herzegovina. We value these differences in themselves – they are a source of intense pleasure – but we have also seen that they can be made productive. Someone researching the house style of the Munich Olympics may benefit from a research project on how cities can at times create additional public space using their waste. Someone may decide to set up a museum in his or her studio and invite colleagues to exhibit there. Someone else can set up a Department of Reading and invite colleagues to join in reading texts together. In this way, different practices merge together.
It has been a genuine delight for me to have contributed several projects to the Academy’s diverse research portfolio. I worked with great pleasure on the history of the Maastricht artist initiative Agora, on Matt Mullican’s Work in residence and on the Belgian television work of filmmaker Jef Cornelis.This latter project is part of a much bigger project, an alternative history of art in Belgium, which I devised together with Dirk Pültau and which he and I will continue to enjoy working on in the coming years. But I can say with great conviction that I would never have devised, conceptualised and developed these projects without the fertile environment of the Jan van Eyck Academy, without the constant exchange of ideas, visions and arguments with researchers and advising researchers. It is impossible to pinpoint exactly what the Academy has managed to achieve with me and perhaps with others too, but generally speaking I can say without hesitation that I could not have accomplished my research projects without it. I can therefore only regard my time at the Academy as an enormous privilege. It has been of invaluable benefit to me to work here for eleven years together with all these clever, committed, inspired and inspiring people. I would like to thank the board, the staff, the advising researchers and researchers for their contributions to the development of this community. Without this community I would neither literally nor figuratively have been where I am today. For this I am especially grateful to each and every one of you.
5
The 27 th of January 2010. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science drummed up all the directors of the various Dutch cultural institutes for a symposium entitled Basic Cultural Infrastructure, which was held at Ottone, on Kromme Nieuwegracht in Utrecht. “What do changing demographics, digital innovation, competition in the leisure market and economic changes mean for the cultural sector? What new opportunities are there? What does the cultural sector have to offer and how can we keep one another on our toes?” The agenda was certainly impressive: greater ethnic diversity in the streets and neighbourhoods of the Netherlands, Facebook & Twitter, the ever-increasing commercialisation of the leisure industry, and the credit crunch. At the very least, you would expect a demographer, an anthropologist, a designer and an economist to be called upon to shine their light on these complex issues. And why not toss in a philosopher as well? But who did Monique Vogelzang, Director for the Arts, and Judith van Kranendonk, Director General for Culture and Media at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, invite to keep us directors on our toes? The following four speakers: Gerlach Cerfontaine, chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Onze LieveVrouwe Hospital in Amsterdam, Johan Wakkie, director of the Royal Dutch Hockey Association, Jildou van der Bijl, chief editor of Linda magazine, and Bart de Boer, chairman of the board of directors of the Efteling theme park. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, they had assembled this unique foursome in order to teach the directors the ins and outs of the issues I’ve just mentioned. Judith van Kranendonk sat in on the proceedings and was visibly delighted to hear the brilliant suggestions from the head of the Efteling. He boasted how he had managed to entice more people to his theme park by building a higher and bigger roller coaster. With a spring and an autumn programme, the Efteling was running like a top. But all his best intentions to involve the cultural sector in his plans had invariably come to nothing. Why did stage actors and opera singers turn up their noses at appearing at his amusement park? Hardly had he stopped speaking when a woman with a Limburg accent offered her services to remove the whiff of elitism that was just discernible.The problem was immediately sorted: from now on there would be plenty of singing and dancing at the Efteling.That afternoon in Ottone was a shameful spectacle. We were treated like grant-dependent pariahs who were completely out of touch with reality. From now on we would have to seek our inspiration from the hockey association, an amusement park, Linda de Mol and a hospital for Pete’s sake, not from Rembrandt, Mondriaan, Wim T. Schippers, René Daniëls or Marjolijn Dijkman. I thought back with sadness to my visit to Asscher, the official-cum-poet who had received me without the slightest prejudice. After barely ten years the dream of the makeable art institute was shattered. We had to be kept on our toes. Instead of asking us what we wanted to do and how we would achieve this, they held up to us as examples a woman’s magazine, a rollercoaster, an intravenous drip and a hockey puck, while a slippery consultant was given the job of initiating us – the directors of art institutes – to benchmarking, as we poor fools had probably never heard of it. With great excitement, Monique Vogelzang introduced us to the joys of comparative statistics. As a parting gift we were given a booklet filled with figures which we could use to measure ourselves against one another.
But the grand finale, on Wednesday 27 January, was an address by Judith van Kranendonk. To keep us – the directors of the Basic Cultural Infrastructure – on our toes, she impressed upon us the spectre of a coalition government involving Geert Wilders’ party. Four months before the general elections, the most senior official in the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science entertained the notion that a Cabinet with the PVV was not unthinkable. I was dumbfounded. Coming from a country that has patented the cordon sanitaire and where, as a result, an extreme right-wing party has been kept from power for decades, I could scarcely believe that a senior Dutch official was openly speculating on the consequences of having a populist and xenophobic party in a coalition government. Then we’d really have something to complain about, Van Kranendonk warned us. Wouldn’t that make us descend from our ivory towers to pluck the ripe fruits held out to us by Bart de Boer of the Efteling? Wouldn’t we then be eager to take Johan Wakkie’s wise counsel to heart? We would soon see where we stood if Geert Wilders came to power. Van Kranendonk didn’t want to have it on her conscience that she hadn’t warned us. Was she aware that simply by imagining the possibility of a coalition government involving a xenophobic and populist party, she was in fact preparing the way for that party? In the meantime we have found out the answer to this question, because she and the rest of her crew have acted as willing henchmen to transform Wilders’ dictates into an unprecedented decimation of the Basic Cultural Infrastructure.
6
On the 10 th of June 2011, Halbe Zijlstra published his policy letter, carrying the cynical title Beyond quality: a new vision of cultural policy. This so-called ‘new’ cultural policy is the product of extreme neoliberalism and rabid nationalism. Extreme neoliberalism places full control of wellbeing and prosperity with the individual. Thus, and I quote State Secretary Zijlstra, “after leaving education, it is up to the artist to find his or her own way” and “the development of proven talent should no longer be encouraged by separate institutes, but by the artists themselves”. This proven talent should be able to buy “services in the field of in-depth practice or further training” and grants should only be used to stimulate entrepreneurship. On the basis of these policy proposals aimed entirely at the individual, starter stipends will be reduced and restructured. In keeping with this neo-liberal model, post-academic institutes (like the Jan van Eyck Academy), production houses and other training grounds will be shut down. After all, from now on it is up to individual artists to purchase “services in the field of in-depth practice or further training”. According to the State Secretary, “the cultural sector itself is responsible for further training or in-depth practice, as is already the case in other sectors, such as the legal profession, building and technology.”
What the State Secretary does not say in this particular passage is that this Cabinet is at the same time pushing through lower taxes for the business sector, is recruiting 3,000 new police officers and is buying two Joint Strike Fighters. These are the investments that the Cabinet is paying for with our grants. This is not the first and certainly not the last paradoxical twist for this cabinet, which is supported by the PVV. Consider the following: while extreme neoliberalism and maximum deregulation lie at the heart of the largest banking crisis ever and this huge financial catastrophe has prompted a ruthless cost-cutting plan, we are expected to welcome liberalism and deregulation with open arms! The entire financial sector has been whitewashed, while we are being asked to pay the debts they leave behind with our meagre grants and to embrace the causes of this financial nightmare. Indeed, even more so than in the past, we are expected to view this as good and ethical practice. This is an invitation that can only be described as perverse.
We all know what the consequences will be if this policy is implemented in full or in part. We know that many institutes will disappear and that with them will go valuable expertise and heritage of great value, as well as national and international networks that have been painstakingly built up. We know that many of us will be without work and that from now on we will only be able to devote ourselves to our art, our passion, in poverty. We know that we are about to be struck at the very heart of our greatest wealth, which is our culture and our civilisation.
Listen to what Zijlstra and Wilders have to say about the policy on cultural diversity – and I quote: “The new basic infrastructure will no longer offer room for development institutes in the field of cultural diversity”. And I’m sure you can guess the consequences of this policy proposal already and I quote: “The Cabinet believes that this is the task of the institutes themselves and it will not implement any specific policy on this matter.” This xenophobic, ultraliberal policy that is hostile to both culture and civilisation must be resolutely opposed.
We should derive courage in this battle from the immense ill-will with which Wilders’ PVV and Zijlstra’s VVD have dealt with art & culture. The fact that art & culture are treated with such hostility demonstrates their power ex negativo. And what does this power consist of? Of the critical ability to take apart and comment on social processes, the unifying power of enjoying something in the company of others, the strange ability to present something intangible, the beauty of the pointless.
I would like to wish my successor Lexter Braak, the board, the staff, the researchers and advising researchers every success in the battle for the preservation of art & culture in general and the Jan van Eyck Academy in particular. I place myself at your disposal to make a contribution where I can. The Netherlands may be done with me, but I am not done yet with the Netherlands.
7
The 9 th of September 2011. In closing, I would like to say a word of thanks. I wish to thank the board of the Jan van Eyck in general and Cees Hamelink in particular for our inspiring, productive discussions. I would like to thank all the staff, researchers and advising researchers for their valued work. And for their support, I wish to thank my friend Bart, Dirk, my ‘partner in crime’, my parents, my brother, his wife and their children, my wife Cateau and our daughter Liska.
Thank you.