Parachutartists steatment on Subvision Kunst Festival, Off, Hamburg

We are an Off program of Subvision Off Festival.

 Subvision Festival invited us when we were still in the middle of our exhibition UNFAIR PROJECT as an off program of Amsterdam’s Art-fair, where we also invited and collaborated with Chto delat?  and Komplot.

We were interested in how Subvision described Off art: “Today, one usually uses the prefix off to designate forms of cultural production that deliberately delimit themselves from established and commercial business activities. This is frequently associated with subculture and underground, implying the notion of a counter-position to what is regarded as on, or mainstream.” Brigitte Kolle

And quoted from Tim Voss: “I am off, we are off – in the sense of a standpoint of assertion that sets itself off and comments on what is displayed.”

But it struck me that we are provided by shipping containers with logos of their shipping companies on them. As well the area of the festival and sponsors made me a bit suspicious and more curios.  

I do not believe in autonomy of art, the extraordinary free market policies do not allow any creative or non-creative autonomy whatsoever. The very mobility of capital and goods (something that a shipping container symbolizes perfectly) and globalisation of the capital and other markets, make it impossible for any business or human activity to decide policies without regard to the likely response of those markets. (Traders in New York and London, can punish any policy against their free market orthodoxy by betting against the value of any product and the currency of the countries)

This made me question the policies behind the festival:

 Is being critical and anti-mainstream a new trend? 

Is this a process of rebaptizing a tradition of a social democracy by simply proposing a renewal of the centre left or left?

Another important question here is if this festival would have any real effect on the democratic policies in Hamburg / Germany or is it just a cultural facade, a spectrum of official multiculturalism and democracy?

 Is Subvision supposed to create a platform for critical and underground art for sake of any change or is it just a temporary festival to be end up in the archive of museums and city-hall as evidence of democratic liberal polices who created a platform for oppositions? 

I would like to argue that perhaps this festival is more important for cultivation of an upcoming financial district area similar to Docklands in London.

 Referring to the history of YBA and Thatcherism privatization in London, YBA started their first show in a warehouse in Docklands and lifted up by Saatchi. A businessman you was running the world biggest advertisement company and campaigning for Thatcher at the time with a slogan: "labor doesn't work".  Docklands has been developed since then as one of the biggest financial districts and many decisions has been made their that changed the world radically.

I see this and many other art festivals and biennials in the neoliberal conditions as an instrumental and propaganda art, but what is to be done? 

Boris Groys in the introduction of his book “Art Power” has clarified that: “Contemporary art functions increasingly in the mode of ideological propaganda. By trying to create and demonstrate a balance of power between contradictory art trends, aesthetic attitudes, and strategies of representation. The prestigious international exhibition as the image of the perfect balance of power. The desire to get rid of any image can be realized only through a new image—the image of a critique of the image” and that image is what we are up to produce in this festival.