Colloquium of the Fonds - 2018

On November 02, 2018, as part of the festival "Politik im Freien Theater" (Politics in the independent theater), the Fonds invited all the interested parties, members of the Fonds, festival visitors and invited speakers to the public panel discussion "Hauptsache es knallt! Förderung von Aktionsformen in der Kunst oder künstlerischen Formaten in der Aktion (Main thing is sparks fly! The funding of forms of action in art or artistic formats in action) at the HochX theater.

After input from Wolfgang Schneider, who raised the question of how funding institutions can deal with this spectrum of art and whether public funding makes sense or is even counterproductive, panelists Dr. Sebastian Brünger (Federal Cultural Foundation), Jean Peters (The Peng! Collective), Felizitas Stilleke (curator and activist), Professor Hans-Joachim Wagner (Cultural Capital Nuremberg), and Sophie Becker (Spielart Festival) shared their experiences – both from the point of view of activist artists and from the perspective of cultural funding institutions.

Jean Peters reported on the topics, working methods, and consequences that The Peng! Collective deal with in their actions. The recognition of their art is not always comprehensible for outsiders, but awards such as the Aachen Peace Prize increasingly draw attention to the ambiguity of these actions.

Dr. Sebastian Brünger, representing one of the group's funding bodies, reports on the difficulties involved in funding actionist forms in art. What should the funding guidelines look like for such projects if they sometimes act in a flash mob-like manner and cannot be described in advance in funding applications? Are there categories in which one can and should think of this kind of action art? Is this at all conducive?