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Auto*noom en un*titled [KT2010, i]

may 30, 2010.

The 11th - untitled - edition of the Maastricht Kunsttour opened on saturday May 22nd, 2010 in the Timmerfabriek's grand and dusty backyard with a public débat sans fin. Bathed in mid-spring early morning sunlight, René Gabriëls (philosopher and social scientist @ Maastricht University) engaged those present on the slippery path of discussing art and autonomy for breakfast, with sidekicks - on the left - Peter Peters (lector Autonomie en Openbaarheid in de Kunsten @ the Hogeschool Zuyd), - on the right - Nadya Bascha (Atelierhaus Aachen) and - on my side of the camera and therefore not in the picture - Lene ter Haar (B32, curator and more). Together with the also present members of the political and administrative eminence (like Maastricht's new alderman for culture, Jacques Costongs) I zipped my coffee while contemplating René's eloquent - and in this day and age again sort of refreshing - presentation of a predominantly neo-Marxist stance.

By the way, did you know that Karl Marx's sister Sophia used to live in Maastricht? You can of course find details on that fact of life in many places. But reading about it in David Patrick Columbia's march 13th 2006 entry of his NY social diary in which he describes his visit to the TEFAF, an annual Maastricht Art Happening of a rather different kind, forms too fascinating a counterpoint to both the Kunsttour's setting and its spirit to not score it here. (It is mentioned merely in passing: Last day in Maastricht, first night in Paris.)

I will not attempt to summarize that bright saturday morning's endless debate, which was as informative and entertaining as it was vague. For what can truly be said if we not first circumscribe what we mean by art, and then next what we mean by autonomy? Is Nadya's art the same art as mine? Can the alderman reconcile art on the TEFAF side with the Timmerfabriek art, where the former's autonomy greatly adds to, whereas (much of) the latter's autonomy heavily leans on the city's quickly narrowing budget?

During the discussion I sat right in between the alderman and Kaspar König, who regular viewers will know as a driving force behind ARM, the autonomous Artspace Rondeel Maastricht. Now ARM may be struggling to survive at its current location, it is hardly the navel-gazing artists' reservation that many politicians, especially in times of economic hardship, associate with the 'autonomous spaces' that local 'autonomous artists' demand the council to provide, preferably for free.

Far from it.

This year's Kunsttour saw ARM launching ARM400. Indeed, it takes artful strategy for independent artists' initiatives to survive. Thus Kaspar, Maja, Nora and other people working at ARM overlaid the Artspace's surface with a fine grid of square meters, and now invite all of us to become subtenants of one or more of these square meters of ARM, for the price of just 17 cents/m² a day. One obliges oneself for the period of one year, starting this July 1st. If by that date at least 400 of the ARM's square meters are sublet, the Artspace's landlord is asked to multiply the collected sum by 1.3, and to re-invest the money in other local cultural initiatives. If not, the collected sum will remain at ARM's disposal and be used for its re-location.

It's the sort of win-win strategy that politicians and administrators are very fond of. It is certainly a strategy that is written in their language, and I dearly hope that also alderman Costongs will soon dare to come out and rent his very own square meter of Maastricht artspace.
The picture above shows a gridded part of ARM, as viewed from square R9, of which, during this year's Kunsttour, I became the proud tenant and that in the afternoon of Tuesday May 25th I officially inaugurated by having a tea right there on that square with Maja.

...

2010 is the 5th year in succession that I participate in the Kunsttour. A bag full of tapes found in Maastricht led me there in 2006. In 2007 with the ookoi we staged Leve ookoi!, a wondrous exhibit & performance event in the Art Garage / Brandweerkazerne in the Capucijnenstraat and in 2008 the ookoi took its Raudio Mobile out into the Maastricht streets on an eventful Radio Raudio Kunsttour ( * ). Then last year, as part of the 'Best Before' Klankkunsttour, I once again brought the Found Tapes Exhibition to Maastricht.

...

As in 2008 and 2009, also this year the Kunsttour's beating heart was the vast space of the Timmerfabriek on the Boschstraat, which - many a tentative cultural (or even commercial) municipal plan notwithstanding - is still looking and functioning much the way it did three years ago.

Here are some pictures to start.

[ Central downstairs expo hall ]

[ Piece of industrial remainder + Stan Goes painting (first floor) ]

[ Pascalle Mansvelders - Angels ]

[ Liza Wolters, photographs (flickr) ]

...

next: A kitchen table and a game of cards

 

notes __ ::
(*) You can still listen to the 2007 and 2008 Raudio Kunsttour streams ('Leve ookoi!' and 'Radio Raudio Kunsttour'), which remain available in the Raudio 24hrs Streams Archives. They are, of course, also part of the 20 22 no beginning / no end audio art-streams that together make up our Raudio IIIII iPhone application, available on the iTunes appstore. [ ^ ]

tags: Maastricht, Kunsttour

# .365.

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