Interview with Uta Lambertz curator (Germany)

Contemporary Culture and Cultural Policies2020
Programme of Lokomotiva in Kino Kultura – project space for contemporary performing arts and contemporary culture

Where are we now, and where are we going?
#ArchiveOfReflections

Facing these unpredictable times and our already fragile position in society, we found ourselves in need of urgent reflection with our colleagues, partners, and friends. Therefore, we decided to extend and dedicate part of our 2020 programme “Contemporary Culture and Cultural Policies” to reflect on the changing conditions brought about by the actual pandemic situation, which affected our programmes, working conditions, international collaborations, artistic production, production of knowledge, etc.

We wanted to create an archive of reflections on the mentioned conditions, and on the present and upcoming socio-political and economic effect on arts and culture in societies as ours, with fragile working conditions of cultural workers and artists, as well as in societies with a more organized system of cultural production and support.

Therefore, we invited our colleagues - cultural workers, artists, critics, civil society activists – to suggest, speculate, criticize - or think and reflect - on issues including culture of solidarity, production and distribution of knowledge in these times, new models of support for contemporary production, measures to overcome the precarious position of artists and cultural workers.

We want to think of these archives of reflections as an attempt to create a new public space since the existing one has been taken away by the virus.

All the invited collaborators gave their reflections on the questions below in a self-recorded video interview published on Lokomotiva’s YouTube channel for easy distribution.


QUESTIONS:

1. What is your take on culture of solidarity in these times of COVID-19 and how can we produce it?

2. What knowledge are we producing in culture and art now, and how should we produce and distibution knowledge?

3. What have we learned from the crisis? Can we develop different post-crisis modes and conditions of art and cultural production, which will allow basic sustainability and reduce the precarious position of cultural workers and artists?

4. Does the COVID-19 crisis bring forward the idea of social equality, social states and, perhaps, universal basic income? How can this be reflected in culture and arts?

5. What political and policy approaches you would foresee in your field of work, or how it should be changed in future? (For example, what the theatre has learned from this crisis and what political and policy approaches should be developed for its change? Or how the theatre should change in future?)

Optional - What is the future of ephemerality and materiality in arts?