The Role of Self-Organisation, Protest and Lobbyism for the Cultural Policies in Berlin

Date: January 7, 2016 Thursday
Time: 18.00-20.00
Venue: santralistanbul Campus, Energy Museum Seminer Hall

Speaker: Stéphane Bauer (Director, Berlin Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien)

İstanbul Bilgi University Cultural Policy and Management Research Centre (KPY) organise 7th annual KPY Day Conference titled as “The role of self-organisation, protest and lobbyism for the cultural policies in Berlin” on 7 January 2016, Thursday. This year’s conference guest is Stéphane Bauer, director of Berlin Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. 

About: "To have and to need", "Coalition of the Independent Scene" and the "Council for the Arts"

Cultural policies in Berlin since 1945 have always been marked by historical turning points.The latest in 2010 has been marked by the appearance of the self-organisations by artists like "Coalition of the independent scene" and the movement of visual artists named "To have and to need". These two groups were reacting on a radical change in the city development of Berlin and on the economical situation of cultural production. These shifts ended the phase of the changes which occurred since the fall of the wall beginning of the 90s: the redefinition of the role of cultural institutions, the rebuilding of the eastern part of the city of Berlin and the construction of Berlin as the metropolis for cultural production in Europe. The key question today is: how will Berlin manage to remain attractive for artists facing the highly economical challenges in the competition of the metropolises of the world. It is a struggle about space, money and image production. Artists and there self-oragnisations play a key role in this struggle.  

Stéphane Bauer:
Stéphane Bauer studied Sociology, Political Science, Macroeconomics and Psychology at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität in Bonn and the Freien Universität Berlin. Since 1997 Stéphane has curated exhibitions at the Kunstamt Kreuzberg, Neuen Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst e.V. and in the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. Since 2002 Stéphane has been the director of the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. From 2002 - 2008 he has directed the annual two week seminar for international cultural mediators at the Goethe Institute in Berlin. Since 2006 he has been an instructor at the bbk (a publicly funded organization that supports the arts in Berlin) and has given lectures on exhibition management and organization.
He has been working at the Institute for Art in Context at the Universität der Künste in Berlin since 2008. Stéphane is also since 2008 a member of the organization for ‘Rates für die Künste’ (Council for the Arts) Berlin. He is also a member of ‘Jour Fixe Bildende Kunst’ for the city of Berlin.