FREUNDESKREIS

FREUNDESKREIS LEARNING TO SEE AND TO UNDERSTAND – THE AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE, A PLACE FOR ART, CULTURE, AND SUSTAINABILITY!

A guest article by Uli Mayer-Johanssen

The world around us is changing. Temperature, drought, and flood disasters are no longer perils in faraway places. Climate change is beginning to change our lives and is steadily becoming part of everyday life. The silent mass extinction of insects and species is the writing on the wall for our own lives. Pandemics on a scale we have only known from history are forcing us to take measures that put our concept of personal freedom severely to the test. The war in Europe is spreading fear and terror and yet it is only one of many worldwide. Politics and diplomacy are no longer a guarantee of a peaceful, democratic social order. Yesterday we believed ourselves to be in a world in which our intelligence, technical innovations, and capital would enable us to realise all of humanity’s dreams, but today we seem to be increasingly thrown back on ourselves, on our being. And the achievements of civilisation are suddenly no longer assured.

Capitalism and global trade have left deep marks on our lives and on the biogeosphere. If we fail to recognise that “natural capital cannot be replaced by financial capital”, we are in for a rude awakening. What we have called growth for decades is not growth at all, but simply an increase in our consumption. “Economic productivity has been bought with ecological overexploitation and the destruction of the wherewithal for our survival.”1

The only things that seem to count are what is of immediate use to us and satisfies our personal needs. Faced with the sheer overabundance of crises, we evidently seek to shield ourselves from the omnipresent overload of disasters and data. Yet, at the same time, we seem to have lost touch with the world, a world that is out of kilter.

If we are not prepared to recognise and accept that we are putting the entire world at risk with our consumerist lifestyles and our faith in limitless growth on a finite planet, then we will not have the courage and the will to face reality and develop life-serving solutions. Ludwig Wittgenstein is credited with saying that the factual is in the line, the essential is between the lines. He acknowledged that it is not enough to rationally penetrate the facts; only when heart, mind, and intelligence come together and the issues touch us emotionally does a path open up making change and transformation possible.

Do art and culture – as Pablo Picasso put it – still wash the dust of everyday life from the soul? Art offers spaces of being, other perspectives, a different perception, and emotional access to the world. Art has always been part of a developing society. As early as 65,000 years ago, Neanderthals decorated steles and people have always felt the need to decorate messages, objects, and buildings – monuments to their existence and how they saw their immediate environment. Culture is part of nature and we are part of that nature. We seem to have lost sight of this realisation.

GIVING SUSTAINABILITY A VOICE WITH ART AND CULTURE

As John O’Donohue writes in his book Divine Beauty, has “our confidence in the future lost its innocence”? Have destruction, corruption, greed, and egoism caused the future to coagulate into an apocalyptic threat in large part and prompted us to turn away from events in resignation? Isn’t it precisely then that art and culture are called upon to engage with the issues of our future?

With its 325-year-old tradition and the diversity of its Sections – ranging from the fine arts and architecture to music, literature, the performing arts, and film and media art – the Akademie der Künste spans an arc that can give us a new perspective on our existence if we transcend the boundaries of genres and at the same time open them out to the humanities and natural sciences.

MODERNISM’S HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

The result of globalisation, digitisation, and neoliberalism cannot be seen as all good, to put it mildly. Open borders and open markets have ended up destroying our resilience. While providing worldwide access to knowledge and the dream of freedom and social justice, the Internet and social media have globalised manipulation and hatred. The dream of unchecked growth on a limited planet has been followed by over-exploitation, wastage, and the destruction of entire cultural areas. And, again and again the question remains: Why do we not act, despite having accumulated so much knowledge and expertise? Our cognitive dissonance coupled with a sinister tolerance of ambiguity may be justified in evolutionary terms, but is now putting us in a perilous position because the price is becoming ever higher. We shut out things that bother us, ignore the warnings, and thus justify our own preferences and needs. In addition, we are being incessantly urged to “keep going” by an army of lobbyists and other profiteers of this system.

In our restlessness, in a blind frenzy of activity, we are undermining our own living conditions, which, once destroyed, will soon only be left to be marvelled at in museums or archives. Hordes of scientists have set out to understand contexts and propose solutions to emerging problems, but they always fear that their hypotheses will leave them subject to criticism as alarmists. This is another reason why utterances made in private often diverge from public ones. But how are we to raise public awareness of the urgency of all these issues if we close our eyes and ears to the impending disasters? How do we muster the courage to face the daunting risks of our present?

“When we share experiences, we create new spaces for thought. We need a sensitivity to the vulnerability of the world.”2 In the spirit of this insight, the aim must be to awaken comprehension and curiosity, to open up new vistas and possibilities. Of course, government must create the framework and set the course. But the Akademie der Künste, represented by its members, is equally called upon to articulate the urgent need to act if it wants to continue to live up to its self-conception as society’s avant-garde. Art and culture must forge the link from society to the political sphere: as a place of change, the Academy and its members as ambassadors and innovators, offer an urgently needed overview of the world. In The Arsonists, the gasometers explode. Biedermann doesn’t want to know about it and pretends that nothing has happened. It takes art, culture, and science along with some rethinking about a life-serving and life-enhancing time ahead to kindle a desire for the future and rekindle hope in a time of gloom. As a place of insight, the Akademie der Künste – communicative, creative, and collaborative – can itself contribute to this.

1 Daniel Dahm, “Co-Evolution im kulturellen Paradigmenwechsel”, keynote address to the symposium Culture is/ for/as Change?! (22 June 2022), https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=KBzj1FpU9a8 2 Hartmut Rosa, sociologist, in a podcast interview, 2020.

In over thirty years, ULI MAYER-JOHANSSEN has been responsible for hundreds of brand processes, whether for cultural institutions, international corporations, or regions. After twenty-five years as the boss at MetaDesign – one of Germany’s most renowned brand agencies – the company’s range of topics has expanded to include systemic sustainability issues. Uli MayerJohanssen was appointed as a member of the German Society Club of Rome in 2018 and elected to the Executive Committee in 2019.

JOCHEN GERZ has been working with new media since the late 1960s. After first realising collaborations in public space, he has since been creating photo/text, installations, performances, videos, and projects on the Internet. With Joseph Beuys and Rainer Ruthenbeck he represented Germany at the 37th Venice Biennale. Documenta participations (1977, 1987) and retrospectives in European and North American museums followed. From 1980 on, iconic memory works and counter-monuments emerge as social processes that develop over several years. The focus is again on civil society, its contribution and authorship.

Jochen Gerz is a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

www.jochengerz.eu

Photo of the cleared out Khanenko Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine, by Yurii Stefanyak.

pp. 4–5 photos Yurii Stefanyak | p. 6 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, photo Oliver Ziebe, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022; p. 7 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, inv.-no. KS-Gemälde MA 44; p. 8 photo Anna Schultz, 2022; p. 9 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, photos Oliver Ziebe | pp. 10–13 © Jochen Gerz / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022 | pp. 15–16 ill. Cem A. | pp. 18–19 ill. FONGWILKE; p. 20 ill. Sahej Rahal; pp. 21–22 ill. Aarti Sunder; p. 25 Natasha Tontey | p. 26 (left) photo SWR / Jürgen Pollak; p. 27 photo MDR / Jehnichen; p. 28 photo Arcaid Images / Alamy Stock Photo; p. 29 photo imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo; p. 30 photo Architektur-Bildarchiv / Thomas Robbin; p. 33 (top) photo Schoening / Alamy Stock Photo; (bottom) photo imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo | pp. 34, 38–41 stills María José Crespo | pp. 42–45 photos Nan Goldin, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, © Nan Goldin, p. 42 silver gelatin print, 51 x 41 cm; p. 43 silver gelatin print, 40.6 x 40.6 cm; p. 44 archival pigment print, 43.2 x 61 cm; dye destruction print, 40 x 59.4 cm | p. 49 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Magnus Zeller Archive, no. 61, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022 | p. 50 (top) Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Natascha Wodin Archive, without signature; (bottom) photo private archive Natascha Wodin; p. 51 (top) Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Foto-AdKW, no. 7551, photo Marianne Fleitmann © Akademie der Künste, Berlin; (bottom) Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Natascha Wodin Archive, folder 18 | pp. 53–55 ill. Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Hans Scharoun Archive, p. 53 no. 2377; p. 54 (top) no 1243 Bl. 53/12; (middle) no. 1233 Bl. 43/1; (bottom) no. 2441; p. 55 (top) no. 2471; (bottom) no. 2669 | pp. 56–57 ill. Uli Mayer-Johanssen | p. 58 photo Yurii Stefanyak

We thank all owners of image usage rights for kindly approving the publication. If, despite intensive research, a copyright holder has not been considered, justified claims will be compensated within the scope of customary agreements.

The views offered in this journal reflect the opinions of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Akademie der Künste.

The repurchase of the painting Mühlental bei Amalfi by Carl Blechen (see p. 9) was funded by the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States (Kulturstiftung der Länder) and the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung. Journal der Künste, edition 19, English issue Berlin, November 2022 Print run: 1,000

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