I got to know Daniela during our time together in Landau and I was excited to hear about her project. A successful painter, Daniela gave up the “mechanism of saleable artwork often placed in inaccessible locations”* to make as many Nutcrackers as possible, the ultimate aim is a Nutcracker for every inhabitant of the world – the project’s official name is 6,829,360,438.
Her focus is not so much in the object itself – although the root is of course in the story by E.T.A. Hoffmann – rather in the act of giving, in the performance of creating and donating an object to random strangers. When asked the rather uninteresting question of “so why are you doing this? how do you earn a living?”, she promptly explains that this is not the point, much to the contrary the project is about doing something for nothing, something we all find very hard to grasp. If you define her process of making the Nutcrackers a waste of time, you are one step closer to understanding: Daniela wants to give value to wasted time and start changing our attitude towards one another (and towards the concept of gratuity and donating) by coming into our lives with a cumbersome, unpractical object.

The giving of the Nutcrackers can be seen as an invasion of someone else’s space but it is precisely because of this that the concept works so well.
Delivering them, now, that is another story.

I accompanied Daniela with another friend of hers on a tour of the city of Landau with the aim of delivering one Nutcracker at a time. The first attempt had been successful and a mother of two accepted the gift saying that one of her sons was just going to celebrate his birthday. Upon seeing the size of the object, someone had even called the husband, who reluctantly avoided any negative response and waited for us to depart.
The following attempts however were mostly source of increasing frustration. Whereas Daniela seemed accustomed to the negative and suspicious reactions, I thought that the mention of “art project” and “conference organized by the city of Landau” (we were creative here) would have sealed the deal. I was wrong. Inhabitants of buildings with security cameras spied on us while we were trying to convince the only person who even bothered to respond. When we were not greeted with plain contempt (“stop telling stories”), it was mostly suspicion that held people back. In the end, we had not managed to donate any more Nutcrackers and had to go back to the gallery.
What I found through this experience was that the problem was not so much our inability to convince the targets of the action, rather the fact that we basically were not listened to at all. We normally started by ringing a random door bell at the main entrance and when someone answered, we would briefly explain who we were, who the artist was and what she wanted to do. The moment the word “gift” was uttered, people would shut down. However, I am not even so sure that we managed to keep anyone’s attention that far into the sentence. By the fifth attempt I thought we had a pretty well practiced speech and I was starting to feel embarrassed that I could not help out, since Daniela was relying on us to translate her words into German. In the end we discussed the speech in terms of strategy (such as trying to figure out by the last name who was potentially Italian so that we could rely on cultural common ground), which brought out the complexity of the issue that the artist is tackling: you need to get all strategic even when genuinely all you want to do is deliver a gift.

*citing the leaflet given out by the artist

Exhibition in Landau

I spent five days in Landau (Pfalz), to attend the European Citizens Convention on volunteering. My presence at such event was mainly justified to exhibit “Structurally recyclable, basically disposable“, which represented a more critical take on the issue of volunteering, or more precisely, a statement on how internship is too often mingled with volunteering (and that, as you know, is very wrong).
Coming from the NGO world as I do, I was also naturally interested in the rest of the event, mainly the talks and seminars all around volunteering. Being skeptical by nature, I was a little afraid that the convention was simply going to focus on the great aspects of the volunteering sector without much attention to the context in which volunteering is inserted, that (to name one) is the realization that volunteers have basically become a self-evident reality without which no cultural event would ever take place.
I was very happy to have been proven wrong: this event had a lot of interesting content. However, fear not, you will have your share of critical analysis yet again.
As far as my exhibition is concerned, you can see a little video and read a full report as well (both by “Europe and Me“, media partner at the event).

The problem of gathering and presenting data

The convention was officially opened by a speech delivered by Dr. Peter Heuberger of the Staatskanzlei Rheinland-Pfalz, in which he reported on a lot of interesting data on volunteering:
- 3/10 of Europeans volunteer
- For every euro that goes into supporting of volunteering activities, 3 to 4 Euros are gained.
- Volunteering makes up 2 to 7% of the GDP of national economies (48 billion pounds in the UK)

Visitors in Landau

Citing data from a study commissioned by the European Commission, he then went on to say that volunteering is unevenly distributed: there is a high engagement rate in Scandinavian countries, to then descend all the way to the bottom, Italy.
From the same study, it appears that more men then women volunteer (40% vs. 32%), that families with many children dedicate more time to volunteering than singles, that people seem to be more active in rural areas than in cities and that there is still a huge potential because one third of those who don’t volunteer would like to do so. It also looks as though, whereas there has been a slight decrease in youth engagement, there have been increasingly more volunteers among those of sixty years and older. The main motivations to volunteer remain to “shape society and to meet people with similar interests”. However, if in the 60s and 70s the focus was more around doing charity work, it looks as if nowadays the motivation is more individualist in nature and revolves around doing something for others to feel better about oneself and to build a certain identity.
Dr. Peter Heuberger used much of these data on the following day as well, during the plenary session at the University of Landau, which preceded the working groups on various specific topics. During this presentation he highlighted the importance of volunteering “as a power for social integration” because of its high social meaning that is detached from the way a business works in that it is “trust based, takes place in the public sphere, it is transparent and solidarity driven and is consensus oriented”. Civil society is seen as a social sector and a collective subject and it gains more and more importance because, due to the current crisis within national parties politics which has been influencing the European institutions as well, lawmakers would not do without the citizens.
He then highlighted many of the problems and challenges around volunteering, mainly the lack of a legal framework, social protections, insurance and a proper code of conduct. There are also some legal constraints around volunteering which limit the time that some categories (retirees and unemployed) can devote to volunteering activities in some countries.

The problem of dealing with data that are then to be presented to the public, and a response to Dr. Heuberger’s speech, was addressed during the plenary session by Agnes Uherczky of the Association of Voluntary Service Organisations (AVSO), who shed some light on the mentioned study. She pointed out that the data introduced did not fully reflect reality as the study commissioned by EU had not been well funded. The researchers then had to do a lot of desk research, which resulted in stats that do not always take into account the different local realities. For example, she mentioned that the poor scoring of Italy in terms of engagement does not integrate the fact that volunteering is different in this country where it is not as common to ask for fees to participate into an association (in sharp contract to Scandinavian countries). As a participant pointed out during the discussion, in Austria firefighters in rural areas are mainly volunteers, and these are mostly men. Surely these local specificities were not mentioned.
She summarizes the problem by stating that “European politicians think that volunteering is free”. However, it is not.

The influence of the private sector on the volunteering sector

All this is nice and well, but Dr. Heuberger could not stop using the words social capital (volunteering creates social competences that are requested by companies) and productivity. Volunteering, he asserted, generates benefits and productivity that neither the State nor the economy can provide.
He then closed his first speech mentioning social responsibility and the need for a new social contract, because “if you’re not at the table, chances are you’re on the menu“.

This excessive (to me at least) focus on productivity and social capital, even when it is mitigated by the concession that volunteering needs more recognition and that its value is not and cannot be monetary, is an interesting indicator that even within the framework of a conference where no direct potential donors are present, we (as a collective) are constantly driven to justify the presence of an activity whose value and positive impact cannot be directly and quickly assessed.
As you might have guessed by the highlighted terms in the previous paragraph, the private sector has been slowly taking over many volunteering activities. Dr. Rosário Costa-Schott, a consultant and project manager, mentioned during the panel discussion that in Germany this has become a very professionalized and formal sector and many of the Big organizations (Caritas, Red Cross, Diakonie, etc..) seem to face problems in receiving, qualifying and accepting non-formal volunteering. These non-formal volunteering activities are not represented in the process and do not make into the study. If through the increasing popularity of “social responsibility” the private sector enters the process, is this really a good idea to leave it all to them?

The supposed self-evidence of the voluntariness in cultural activities

I then took part to a seminar titled “The supposed self-evidence of the voluntariness in cultural activities”, and I was also encouraged to share some of the problems that I have faced while looking for funding for my projects.
The seminar was led by a local arts professor, Mrs. Tina Stolt, and it started by acknowledging that “without Volunteering in cultural and art activities, education and exhibitions, there would be not much more than nothing”.

I found this little (and not too well-attended) workshop very refreshing and down to Earth.
We started by highlighting the obvious contradictions that exist around art: on the one hand art is considered as a “volunteer job”, where artists have no economic security and are not expected to be making much money from their work. Most artists are in fact almost “forced” to be volunteers (let’s not forget that one of the defining characteristics of volunteering is the element of free will), and there seems to be a general “uneasiness” to talk about money when setting up an exhibition or working on a project (see here).
On the other hand, art is taken for granted, it is expected to be there. It is considered as a luxury, something to cut back on when economic crisis sets in, but still expected to work and mostly adapt to the logic of the capitalist market. This results in funding coming mainly from the private sector, which cuts out a large part of “non conventional” artists.
Not only are many governments cutting funding for cultural activities, they are at the same time spending an enormous amount of money setting up large exhibitions featuring some big names to display abroad. Artists are expected to compete into the market and no one seemed to know where this underestimation of art came from. The consequences: all is left to the private sector and to volunteers.
I have to mention that we had a wonderful guest during the seminar: a representative of the women artists association GEDOK (specifically the Karlsruhe branch), who told us a bit about the history of the organization and the struggle to get women into shows and exhibitions.

So the page has now been updated and there’s a link to the gallery, where you can see the results!

(…) debate on active Citizenship and volunteerig (and) opportunities for an exchange of experience and ideas

Since my work is a particularly critical take on “free labour”, which is erroneously branded as “volunteering” in many job descriptions, I am sure the exhibition will be a good opportunity to question some of these practices. I will give you more information on the opening, which should be on Thursday afternoon, and I will be surely tweeting and blogging from the convention.

Killing Us Softly 4 Trailer from Media Education Foundation on Vimeo.

In her documentary, Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne says, referring to the ideal of absolutely flawless beauty with which we are continually fed by ads:

“She never has any lines or wrinkles, she certainly does not have any scars or blemishes, indeed, she has no pores”.

This series could easily be called “find the same“, if you know what I mean.

“Men and women are told, in a myriad of daily ways, that being masculine is good and feminine bad. It sneaks into our daily language in ways that are so common that we fail to even see it anymore…”

The blog post in question was about gendered slurs at google and even though the concept of internalization of patriarchal structures to the point that it is not even noticed anymore is far from new to me, I have not, until now, actively documented this problem.
Do you walk by a window and see and advertisement that screams “sexism”? I am sure you do. As a matter of fact, this past saturday I was downtown Berlin to run some errands and I walked past THREE consecutive shops that were exploiting women in order to sell. I wish I had a proper camera with me to document this.
I was shocked and in disbelief and I turned around and asked myself (not too quietly): “what is wrong with you people?”. Why is no one saying anything? Why aren’t the others walking beside me as outraged as I am?

Maybe that sentence makes sense now: these images are everywhere and we are so used to them.

With this blog post I want to start a series on these images. Berlin is full of them and I happen to have a camera (multiple ones at that).
Who knows, maybe I will learn to be shocked again.

(This photograph was not taken with a proper camera. Forgive me)

Here are links to the posts:

>>>Series 1
>>>Series 2

Is going to museums a purely educational activity? Purely recreational? Is it about a very subtle form of social interaction, doing what is expected of us? How is this connected with our identity, the way we identify ourselves in terms of class, culture and gender?
There is enough material to write an essay, or a book, and plenty of articles have been written on this subject.
Many studies that delve into subject are deeply connected to marketing, that is, visitors’ reasons for visiting a museum are then used to adjust the way the visits are structured to make the experience more pleasant for “customers”.

For now, in the hope of making this topic into a series, I will leave you with some photographs from two museums I visited which I think offered a rather interactive experience to visitors, though in different degrees: the Sugar museum and the Computer Games museum. In the former, visitors could watch a demonstration of the making of ice (“the ancient Rome way”), while the latter is an interactive museum per se, where visitors can not only play a bit of the games, but get to listen and watch videos related to the different aspects of gaming.