by Safia Dickersbach
One has to remind them very loudly that Africa is not a country as the German Federal Cultural Foundation apparently considers the more than 50 countries on the African continent to be culturally homogeneous enough to
be able to entertain coherent “cultural relations” with Germany.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I would like to draw your attention to an open letter which critically
reviews the new programme TURN of the German Federal Cultural Foundation/Kulturstiftung des Bundes. It was initiated with the intention to develop “cultural cooperation between Germany and Africa”. This laudable goal is gravely impaired by a disrespectful treatment of the African side of this
cultural exchange programme as a consequence of political or cultural
prejudices which influenced the project’s structures and funding requirements.
The main deficits are:
1) The budget of 2 million EUR is totally insufficient to finance an
artistic exchange programme between Germany and the whole African continent for a period of two years. Compared with the overall budget of the Federal Republic’s state secretary for arts and culture of over 1 billion EUR per
year which includes the budget of the German Federal Cultural Foundation,
the money which is designated for TURN is embarrassingly small change
money. It’s ridiculous to call it a “policy focus on Africa”.
2) The funding guidelines of the programme prevent any active participation
of African art institutions and exclude the artists and art communities in
African countries from independently applying for the funds. The funding
requirements say in a roundabout way: In bookkeeping the Africans are not
trustworthy.
3) Such a lack of inter-cultural competence is even more surprising coming
from a board and its team of Western highly educated intellectuals with an
academic background in all kind of studies including cultural sciences and
even African studies. For an average person Germany’s TURN – Africa
programme as a whole might sound like a great initiative, but if you take a
more thorough look into some points of TURN’s structure you discover an
attitude which can only be summarized as rude, degrading and patronizing.
If already the elite circles of the art world in Europe deal with an easy
element of arts and culture policy like that, what does this reveal about
the way the political decision-makers will act when it comes to shaping the
really relevant policy actions for dealing with Africa in foreign policy,
development aid and other questions of human survival?
4) This disrespectful treatment is especially annoying because it was not
the arts and culture communities on the African continent who asked for
being included in some cultural exchange programme with Germany, but it was
the explicit intent of the German Federal Cultural Foundation to initiate
this programme.
5) One has to remind them very loudly that Africa is not a country as the
German Federal Cultural Foundation apparently considers the more than 50
countries on the African continent to be culturally homogeneous enough to
be able to entertain coherent “cultural relations” with Germany.
6) The German Federal Cultural Foundation responded to this criticism
surprisingly enough by admitting in an email exchange the flaws and
deficiencies of their own programme. They said that “unfortunately” they
were not able to “take into account all suggestions” they “might have
desired”. This was due to “statutory and administrative possibilities”. The
question is whether those statutory and administrative restrictions are a
consequence of the same subtle prejudices and patronizing attitudes which
characterize the whole structure of TURN and its funding requirements and
which were believed to have been buried for long in the past of
European-African interconnections.
For further details, please read the updated version of the open letter
critique HERE, also see attached PDF and WORD file in case the blog is not
accessible.
I would be grateful if you could look into this issue and publish an
article for your newspaper.I would appreciate very much, if you could look
into this issue and publish an article about this topic and the ensuing
debate in your news publication. Only an open and publicized debate
achieved through broad press reports about this topic will create
sufficient public pressure to influence the responsible decision-makers at
the German Federal Cultural Foundation to modify the actual execution of
their current “TURN” program for the countries in Africa.
The diversity and unique authenticity of African art should be recognized
and respected beyond the mainstream preferences of the Euro-centric art
establishment which definitely should not be mistaken for a global
perspective on art. Much more inter-cultural competence is urgently needed
in the way the German Federal Cultural Foundation deals with the art
communities in Africa in this current project “TURN”.
If there are any questions or you would like me to elaborate on certain
aspects or you need additional documents and information, please let me
know.
Many thanks in advance for your kind efforts.
————————-
Safia Dickersbach is the PR Director of ARTFACTS.Net™ Ltd.
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.
