The narratives that Cornelia Koppetsch develops, indeed narratives that are generally unfolded from sociological perspectives, are meta-descriptions of cultural developments as a whole. Relatively rarely appears art in concrete in these narratives, even more rarely specific examples of their own. If one speaks of the links between, for instance, the tech industry and creative-economic scenarios in which a certain artistic/cultural imprint has become the standard, then descriptions of artistic practices as a whole are not meant here. To put it another way: a statement that projects and artistic works have themselves become directly linked to transnational capital is even more applicable to the international art market than to artistic practices distant from the market. It was precisely these practices remote from the art market, which emerged in Berlin in the 1990s as they did in other places, that were the focus of Autonomie + Funktionalisierung during the three-year project research. How do they relate to the general terms such as innovation, culturalisation, lifestyle, creativity, etc. that are used to define the development of metropolises today?

At that time, i.e. since the 90s, artists almost as a matter of course said goodbye to the concept of autonomy of art and initiated dissolution of boundaries across the most diverse artistic genres, worked experimentally and at the same time on reflections and discourses on their own activities, they addressed the capitalist conditions of artistic work. How can these practices be summarised from today's perspective? Here is a proposal for an overview that I have already presented several times:

Firstly, many artists work today moved by political intentions. By this I mean the claim to intervene directly, critically and unprotected in social and political processes and thus to exert influence. Examples include activist artistic actions or, in general, art created in situations of social oppression and upheaval. It is interesting in this context that the dramaturg Hans Thies Lehmann speaks directly of an aesthetics of insurrection. Lehmann tries to take the artistic claim of political intervention seriously and not – as the aesthetics of autonomy has always done – to interpret it as a misunderstanding of the artists' self. In other words, it is possible for art in certain situations and under certain conditions to become politically relevant.

The second phenomenon I would like to mention here refers to the emergence of an entire genre of art whose effects are more social and territorial. In Anglophone discourse, the term Community Art or Social Art has emerged for it, in the German context one prefers to speak of Participative Art or Contextual Art. There are attempts to explain these developments within the framework of the autonomy debate. The art historian Claire Bishop, for instance, tries to do this. What Bishop emphasises about the works of participatory and contextual artists is the fact that they do not end up taking sides, but are "ambivalent and invite contradictory judgements, rather than trying to use art [for instance] to stop the devastation of the welfare state". Art, according to Bishop, must act paradoxically, should not be politically correct or [claim to] do good in society. Ambivalence, paradox, an self-evasiveness of art, but also its elusiveness and constant flux – are characteristics that meet the traditional demand for autonomy in art.

In a critical discussion of Claire Bishop's position, theorist Shannon Jackson doubts that the claim of artists to do good* can actually be rejected as naïve under any circumstances. She speaks of there being many ways for artists to profess heteronomy (according to Jackson), this heteronomy can be both "aesthetically precise and socially effective" at the same time. With such an account, Jackson positions himself in relation to a problem that arises for art from the aesthetics of autonomy: Art is thought beyond the realm of economics because the categories of "success" and "profit" cannot be used to describe its essence. However, the day-to-day life of many female artists is shaped by issues of economic productivity and survival and questions about suitable economic forms that open up the possibility of artistic work. Jackson gives this a theoretical level when she speaks of the heteronomy of art, meaning the reliance of socially engaged art on a broad range of sponsors in multiple settings.

Thirdly, I now come to the fact that more and more artists, mediators and politicians are suggesting that art – especially in the age of mass production – should be understood more as cultural or educational work. Understood in this way, it is about a cultural field that, through its existence, forms a kind of soil on which much can grow in the sense of democratic cultural climate. Art is thus not regarded as elitist, but as something that is shared among a large number of people, i.e. as a means of democratising art. This would be the democratisation of art. In this case, art institutions would have to be regarded as public institutions and funded publicly. In this understanding, art would have become useful and would therefore no longer be devoid of purpose.

Fourthly, I would like to point out the creative imperative to which many, one could say almost all people are exposed today. Freedom as a demand, even a compulsion, to act creatively and freely in order to remain globally competitive at all, according to the account of many authors, shapes the day-to-day lives of most people. A peculiar assimilation of strategies which were formerly reserved for the realm of art and artistic action has taken place.

Fifthly, artists today are increasingly claiming that art is labour in society. Regarding the statement that art is social work: if artistic activity were to be understood as social work, then a great deal would have changed historically. Because art and work have always been seen as opposites in history. For art, this meant that it could not be subjected to the laws of remuneration and valuation, the laws of utility and commodity exchange. Artistic (and craft) activity rather provided the contrasting foil for the generally alienated labour in the Modern Age. It could perhaps be suggested that women artists were concerned with a legitimacy that they could gain merely by claiming to work, because work provides recognition. In my opinion, however, it is about more than recognition; it is about the consequences and effects of art in society, which can be asserted qua the notion of labour.

I now come to the sixth phenomenon, the fact that artistic practices are described in much debates as the production of knowledge. Philosophically formulated, it is about a epistemological capacity of art. The question "what is artistic knowledge?" is currently the subject of a wide range of research. In a strict sense, the assumption that art produces knowledge cannot be reckoned through a conventional philosophical approach. For art, thought from that perspective, can only be (I’m afraid) something that thwarts, interrupts, questions knowledge. At best, it could be something that brings to life pre-existing neglected knowledge, if one wants to argue with Hegel, for instance. Many scholars however, point out that it is precisely the forms of artistic knowledge that evidence us to the urgency of a broader concept of knowledge. Thus, "experience" (Leibphänomenologie) should therefore likewise be taken into consideration as part of this "new" broad notion of artistic knowledge.

Artistic Action & the Functional Change of Art
Prof. Dr. Judith Siegmund

2 — Debates on self-conception: Tendencies of the integration of arts into the social realm.

* In Bishop (2006), "The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents" Artforum 44 pp. 178–83.