To be skilful administrator is something funding and project orientated artist has to learn during production periods. More funders means bigger amount of time spent on administration, but can also mean bigger autonomy and chance to hack. Also it can mean bigger autonomy on artist idea, where one funder, especially if it is a big company, will easily create certain systems and boundaries, if not rules where art process should go.

ART01 in Berlin was depending a lot on Ministry of Culture Croatia co-funding. But as situation with global crisis is wide spread excuse this days, and with national debt similar to Greece, political elite got a good idea how to take measures to stop crisis: give less money to culture. So, from original sum, a 10% was donated to ART01 project. This sum is not enough to even bring one participant to Berlin. This situation calls for administrative funding actions on all fields. Run for cash has started! Instead of looking for one bigger source ART01 will look for more smaller ones. Problems arising from this tactics is that all funding bodies are giving money for similar costs: travel and accommodation. As one has to prove with bills all the cost, some hacking and art-ministration will be required to get funds for other expenses such as costs for other participants, production, per-diems, etc.

Following two diagrams show what are good value vs. bad value funders, and what is stressed when writing applications with what funder. Another diagram shows how applications will be written but cash will flow to other costs.

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One has to take in consideration low budget when thinking about self organized event. ART01 strives to bring core group of mediators from different countries that requires more hacking concerning funding. For ART01 a complex system of events that can co-fund ART01 is strategically organized. Sets of different approaches are considered for creating a TAZ from resources already available. One has to keep in mind that non of this resources (funders) had TAZ in mind.

This is the general idea of what might be interesting to have as open processes during ART01 in Berlin:

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To organize such an event people from Berlin and other countries are invited to help. It is a loose network created by trust and mutual trust from people who collaborated in this or that way.

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To create funding for core people to be part of ART01 this is envisioned time-line and events that are creating opportunities to share knowledge in the context of art events and gallery exhibitions:

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This is time-line in more details:

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One of EU cultural funding institution is European Cultural Foundation (ECF). From their web-page: “We believe that culture engages and inspires people to transcend boundaries. The connecting power of culture is essential for creating open, inclusive and democratic societies, and is invaluable for building Europe.”

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Both positive and suspicious criticism can be turned to question of boundaries and to connecting power as it seems by the overview of granted projects from the past that projects envision “barbaric”, “primitive”, “outlandish”, “fringe”, or in most cases “exotic” cultures showcasing in dominant one: Roma, Balkan, etc. in EU.

Is ECF creating a showcases for cultures that have been, or will be included in EU dominant one so as to create atmosphere for domestic/dominant cultures to acknowledge them and thus make less space possible for nationalist forces build up on preconceptions? Maybe that would be the entrance point for ECF grant? There is no explanation what are the boundaries, so one has to envision them according to information on ECF in order to transcendent them accordingly.

“Connecting power” can be loosely interpreted as networking structure of actors in cultural scene: artist and cultural workers. Personal impression is that the artist here is portrayed as “aesthetics design worker” that will create representation according to the cultural worker visions (management in the cultural world where artist becomes a meager discussed by Brian Holmes, Gerald Rauning and others springs to mind). So it is not connections of the artists, but connection of interest groups specified by the cultural managers and cultural industry.

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If autonomous art system is envisioned, than a valid question is where the money comes from and how it influences a project. In this diagram a positive way to give back value to the public for their tax collected money is drawn. Giving back to the public trough involving them inthe project or giving information on how to and creating space for workshops where knowledge transfer is happening are some of the options.

What is in question here is how to negotiate and how to recognize positions of systems that apply for funding: what is agenda of their system, what is systems background? Simply, are they following structure that funder requires to obtain funds or is their focus to retur public welth in the sphere of public.

As ART01 would be collaboration between members of EU and Balkan countries, it occurred to me that ECF funding would be in place for such a project. Researching their web pages I have found that, lucky, they are opening something called “Balkan Incentive Fund for Culture”. By reading summaries of artistic project that applied, went trough the process and won the funding I realized that ART01 will have to adjust to ECF guidelines.