Art cries out to be used

Please find a Danish version of this article below.

Art should demonstrate alternatives to the status quo. It cries out for social significance and to be used to create change. Two new physical-digital plat-forms intend to make Denmark a ‘first mover’ in the arts, in the new reality in which the arts and every human being find themselves – both here and now while the corona crisis continues, and in the time that will follow.

By Anders Beyer, Director of the Bergen International Festival and Professor II at Bergen University

We are living in a new reality, and there is reason to believe that the world will never be the same as it was before COVID-19 turned everything upside down.

The consequences of having to keep our distance from one another and avoid large gatherings are far-reaching. Culture is far from the only area affected by the crisis and the reservations it has given rise to, but it is perhaps the area where the differences between before and after are greatest. Cancellations, commercial failures and desperate cries for help have affected art and culture since the crisis began, and the public is increasingly demanding cultural experiences that do not involve exploring yet another Netflix backwater.

Now, as we gradually begin to get the feeling that the crisis can go on for years, there are reasons to think deeply about how cultural life can not only survive but actually thrive in this new reality; a reality we can expect to persist in one way or another even when the crisis is officially over, because at the global level mankind has been so affec-ted and alarmed that our collective behavioural patterns will certainly be changed for a whole generation.

Fortunately the cultural life of Denmark is well placed when it come to exhibiting the famous adaptability that is so highly appreciated at present. We have seen this in a wealth of initiatives that range from drive-in concerts and live short-story writing to digital plays and artistic podcasts that put the whole extraordinary situation into per-spective.

These are exemplary initiatives that deserve praise, but are also to a great extent about handling the crisis here and now. If the wellbeing of art and culture is to be ensured in the longer term, this richness of ideas must unfold on brand new, visionary platforms that combine the physical and the digital in ways that can make Denmark a ‘first mover’ in this area.

Viewed in the international perspective, our starting point is strong. The world takes a view of our culture, values and art as something ‘Scandi-cool’. Denmark is perceived as a place where democratic ideals of freedom, equality and welfare for everyone lead to a release of creative and revolutionary energies that create everything from LEGO bricks, design classics and world-class architecture to an enduring insistence on sustainability and ‘green transition’.

Just look at the way Copenhagen and Aarhus end up time and time again on the pace-setting international media’s lists of ‘must-see’ places. We should use this for artistic purposes. At present Copenhagen is best known for gastronomy, furniture design, architecture and urban development, but not at all for a totally surprising artistic practice that integrates all the arts and makes art an impactful call to arms. Danish cultural actors can change that, if they want to.

The ideas, creativity, skills and visions are all there. We have the players, but they have to be brought into play with one another. True social development takes place through radical and generous cross-pollination of ideas. That is exactly what has laid the basis for the success of Scandinavia – and what helps Denmark to navigate through the crisis much more nimbly than many other countries: cooperation with others based on a strong community-based principle that what we do must also benefit others.

Art is in its very essence the most generous of activities.

Art is in its very essence the most generous of activities – opening up new horizons for meaning and making one’s interpretations available to the whole world. But art longs to be used – not exploited, but used – as a catalyst in the development of society. This is exactly where – thanks to our special mind-set – we have the best preconditions for making Denmark the advance guard.

Specifically, I hereby propose the launching of two initiatives that can make Copen-hagen the centre for an innovative artistic practice that makes a powerful contribution to the formation of the society of tomorrow.

In the first place a new, ambitious festival that could be called Augment Copenhagen, and which will constitute a platform that enables art to make the striking social mark that the individual cultural institutions have a hard time making.

Secondly, a Centre for Artistic Excellence, which will become a new foundation stone in this greater vision for the Danish arts sector and at the same time ensure permanent weight behind the festival.

Today, as we stand amidst a global crisis, we can learn from the period after World War II, when a number of cities across Europe turned the focus on establishing festi-vals. These have today become important international events, largely synonymous with city names like Salzburg, Edinburgh, Bergen and Bregenz, and which – even more importantly – have been able to move art to a new vantage point. Not only do they give the cities invaluable international branding and attract tourism on the grand scale; they also have a positive knock-on effect on cultural life and the impact of culture on the development of society in the cities as well as their whole catchment areas all year round, thus helping the surrounding regions to become centres for the arts, innovation and development.

For many years Denmark has been able to boast a whole range of successful festivals. But they are mostly genre-specific, and the majority – with the Roskilde Festival as a striking exception – lack a powerful international impact. All the same we are aware of the great cross-aesthetic mark that can be made on the overall development of a whole city. Just think about Cultural Capital 1996 in Copenhagen and 2017 in Aarhus, which proved that extra resources for quite special events can produce fantastic results with cross-aesthetic collaborations, and lead to effects that also endure outside the world of art and culture.

According to COWI, for example, Aarhus 2017 created 1965 jobs, and DKK 392 million in public investments created a turnover in the private sector of DKK 1.2bn. As early as 2012 a report from Bergen estimated that the public at the Festival gene-rated a turnover of c. NOK 31m. Today this figure is thought to be considerably higher, and to this we can add the not insignificant factor that the Bergen Festival offers just under 2000 hotel bed-nights for artists in the course of the year, generating a substantial turnover in the city.

Could one gather cultural institutions, artists, media and the public to participate in an annual international festival in Copenhagen with a focus on how digital development and technology can transform the arts and people’s experience of them – and by extension transform our society and its future? Could artistic life seize this unique oppor--tunity to create a platform with global competitiveness that will brand Copen-hagen and Denmark as a natural gravitational focus for ‘the immersive arts’?

Yes, absolutely. A platform should be created that can present new works and modes of expression born at the intersection of the analogue and the digital, and dealing with exactly this aspect of our life: that for the whole of the future it will unfold in these two parallel but interlaced worlds. For the digital will of course not simply replace mankind’s fundamental need for the physical encounter around an artistic experience.

In an uncertain and technology-driven world the only thing we know with certainty about the future is that there will be a premium value in the creation of experiences that decidedly involve – or at least are meaningfully able to reproduce – shared human and physical values. The platform could take the form of a festival – and it is exactly such experiences that Augment Copenhagen should supply.

How can virtual reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) transform the experience of art, or itself become art? Symphony orchestras, theatres and museums should be invited to create projects that go all the way out to – or far beyond – the boundaries of the new possibilities that the digital gives us – technically, economically and artistically.

The model could for example be 59 Productions’ exhibition format Digital Revolution, which brings together musicians, artists, architects, game developers, designers and others with the proviso that they must shift and exceed their normal boundaries through the use of digital media. This ensures the artistic work a highly explorative nature, among other ways through the use of new methods and devices inspired by domains outside the world of art. Here the walls around the independent artistic modes of expression are torn down, which stimulates the intended cross-pollination.

Augment Copenhagen must thus be a serious playground for the leading Danish and international artists, but also for the underlying substrate of upcoming figures. The festival should be curated on the principle that the original idea is always a prism in which not only a narrow artistic practice but the future as a whole can be refracted. The pace-setting Danish cultural institutions should play a crucial role in the festival, but so should collaboration with international institutions in the initiation and realiza-tion of new productions and projects.

It is a basic requirement for the festival that it is experienced by everyone as a way in which – in the style of the Culture Capital years – new resources and possibilities are added. It is an umbrella event that can invite the participants to create new projects and contribute to the funding of ongoing ones for existing players. The festival is thus no substitute for the institutions’ core products, but offers new possibilities for deve-lop--ment on the shoulders of the fantastic potential the country already has.

To get staying-power and weight behind the festival, as part of the same process and in close contact with it, the aforementioned Centre for Artistic Excellence will be established.

This centre must be a powerhouse for artistic expression, where new, exceptional idioms are mobilized and borne forward by inviting collaboration among innovative players, call-ing for commissioned works and making space for experiments of high quality.

This will materialize in works which both support positive regional development and create experiences of international quality and relevance. Through bold, progressive and visionary commissions one can urge the artistic environments to realize ambitions that typify both the present and the future, and the criteria will be formed in close dialogue with the creative milieux.

The aims of the Centre will be to:

• Initiate dialogue about what art is, its enabled forms today, and actively to speculate over what art can be in the future.
• Challenge and explore public attitudes to the placing of technology in new artistic settings.
• Erase the distinction between our digital and analogue realities and question what ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ are today.
• Inspire bold, out-of-the-box thinking along the lines of ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’ – among both artists and the public.
• Forge links among creative environments that have never collaborated before, to trigger explosive creative synergies.
• Constitute a platform for artistic experiments – an arts lab for relevant social debate and the creation of a new kind of audience involvement and innovation.

This kind of dual germination should be established in Denmark, because we lack accessibility and diversity. So that art can reach and involve a new and larger audience, including new talents. We must remember that new audiences are not only new users, but often in their private capacities are players from within quite different branches of society – for example the health sector, education or the sustainability industry.

In addition we lack an international reach. We must feature much more on the map from Shanghai to San Francisco and function as an international window with global brand-ing, and thus create new potential for Danish cultural and commercial life.

We are also behind with the use of digitalization: the way we consume art is changing all the time, and 3D, VR and AR technologies have given us new possibilities that we do not yet understand sufficiently.

Finally, cultural life lacks a platform for the optimization of synergies that can unite the many branches within the arts.

Together the festival and the Centre can constitute an incubator for new voices and digitally inspired and executed artistic expression. The Centre is a unifying architectural campus that encompasses stage, development and rehearsal spaces, a school and perhaps even living accommodation for a wide range of the many different talents and players.

The Centre should further be designed as a digital platform and a meeting place that can forge new links among the arts and – not least – with a public that can interact here with art, irrespective of where it lives in the country or abroad. The Centre will thus create meeting places, and develop and facilitate processes so that these linkages can take place, and this will in particular create unique opportunities for young talents who, outside the usual educational silos and admission procedures, can upload their works and give one another feedback.

The Centre will be able to function as an umbrella that can optimize the projects of existing players and operate in a rich and competent international network of artists, producers and institutions. Cooperation and a sincere wish to share ideas, concepts, artistic ambitions and values will be among the critical success factors.

The festival will then function as a principal stage for the Centre’s initiatives, and it will present the works in a way that brings Copenhagen to life in brand new ways. It can thus take the form of a distributed festival where the urban space, architectural frame-work and temporary installations will add new dimensions to the art arenas and help the arts with a new public. The Centre will also develop, ensure and maintain a succession of projects beyond the festival, in order to attract talents from all over the world. Funding must of course take the form of a carefully conceived patchwork consisting of the public sector, foundations and other private actors.

Revolutions are made by the sum of individuals’ courage to act.

Revolutions are made by the sum of individuals’ courage to act. We have already been facing the need for colossal social readjustment if we are not to leave our children with a planet that has been robbed of its natural resources, ravaged by violent wars and is full of exhausted human beings.

And now on top of this we have also been facing a pandemic that makes the readjust-ment even more massive. However, the aim must still be to avoid being reduced as human beings to columns and numbers in a spreadsheet that will never be able to account for what truly makes life worth living. Beauty. Solidarity. Love.

It would be seriously Scandi-cool if we could be the ones who make innovative art the catalyst for that transformation – and at the same time demonstrate how art and culture can thrive in the new reality.

? Anders Beyer 2020

This article was published as feature article in the daily Danish newspaper Politiken 4 June 2020.

_________________________

Kunsten skriger p? at blive brugt

Kunsten skal vise alternativer til det best?ende. Den skriger p? at f? samfundsm?ssig betydning og blive brugt til at skabe forandring. To nye fysisk-digitale platforme kan g?re Danmark til ’first mover’ p? kunstens omr?de i den nye virkelighed, som b?de kunsten og ethvert menneske befinder sig i – b?de her og nu, mens coronakrisen st?r p?, og i tiden, der f?lger efter.

Af Anders Beyer, direkt?r for Festspillene i Bergen og Professor II ved Universitet i Bergen 

Vi lever i en ny virkelighed, og der er grund til at tro, at verden aldrig bliver den samme som f?r, COVID-19 vendte op og ned p? alting.

Konsekvenserne af, at vi skal holde afstand til hinanden og dermed undg? at samles i st?rre forsamlinger, er vidtr?kkende. Kulturomr?det er langt fra det eneste, der er p?virket af krisen og de aff?dte forbehold, men det er m?ske det omr?de, hvor forskellene p? f?r og nu er allerst?rst. Aflysninger, falliterkl?ringer og desperate n?dr?b begyndte hurtigt at pr?ge kunsten og kulturen, da krisen startede, og med tilsvarende hastighed begyndte befolkningen at hige efter kulturoplevelser, der ikke blot handlede om at afs?ge endnu en afkrog af Netflix.

Nu, hvor vi efterh?nden begynder at f? en fornemmelse af, at krisen vil p?virke b?de kulturlivet og samfundet som helhed i ?revis, er der grund til at g?re sig grundige overvejelser om, hvordan kulturlivet ikke blot kan best?, men ligefrem trives i denne nye virkelighed. En virkelighed, der kan forventes at best? i en eller anden form, selv n?r krisen officielt er ovre, fordi menneskeheden p? globalt plan er blevet s? m?rket og skr?mt, at vores kollektive adf?rdsm?nstre givetvis vil v?re forandrede i en hel generation.

Heldigvis er Danmarks kulturliv godt stillet, n?r det kommer til at udvise den fam?se omstillingsparathed, der er i s? h?j kurs i disse dage. Det har vi set gennem et v?ld af initiativer, der str?kker sig fra drive-in-koncerter og live-novelleskrivning til digitale teaterstykker og kunstneriske podcasts, der s?tter hele den st?rkt us?dvanlige situation i perspektiv.

Det er forbilledlige initiativer, som fortjener ros, men som ogs? i vid udstr?kning handler om at h?ndtere krisen her og nu. Skal kunsten og kulturens trivsel sikres p? den lange bane, skal denne idérigdom udfolde sig p? helt nye og vision?re platforme, som kombinerer det fysiske og det digitale p? en m?de, der kan g?re Danmark til en ’first mover’ p? dette omr?de.

Set i det internationale perspektiv er udgangspunktet st?rkt. Verden skeler mod vores kultur, v?rdier og kunst, som er scandi-cool. Danmark opfattes som et sted, hvor demokratiske idealer om frihed, lighed og velf?rd til alle f?rer til en fris?ttelse af kreative og revolutionerende energier, som skaber alt fra legoklodser, designklassikere og verdensarkitektur til en vedholdende insisteren p? b?redygtighed og gr?n omstilling.

Se bare, hvordan K?benhavn og Aarhus gang p? gang havner p? de toneangivende internationale mediers lister over must-see places. Det kan udnyttes i kunstnerisk ?jemed. I dag er K?benhavn is?r kendt for gastronomi, m?beldesign, arkitektur og byudvikling, men slet ikke for en totalt overrumplende kunstpraksis, der integrerer alle kunstarter og g?r kunsten til at slagkraftigt opr?b. Det kan danske kulturakt?rer lave om p?, hvis de vil.

For ideerne, kreativiteten, kompetencerne og visionerne er til stede. Akt?rerne findes, men de skal bringes i spil over for hinanden. Reel samfundsudvikling sker gennem radikal og gener?s krydspollinering af ideer. Det er netop det, der har grundlagt Skandinaviens succes – og det, der bidrager til, at Danmark klarer sig s? langt bedre gennem krisen end mange andre lande: Samarbejde med andre ud fra et st?rkt f?llesskabsprincip om, at det vi laver, skal komme andre til gode.

Kunst er i selve sit v?sen det mest gener?se.

Kunst er i selve sit v?sen det mest gener?se – dette at ?bne nye meningshorisonter og stille sin fortolkning til r?dighed for hele verden. Men kunsten l?nges efter at blive brugt – ikke udnyttet, men brugt – som katalysator i samfundsudviklingen. Netop her har vi i kraft af vores s?rlige mindset de bedste foruds?tninger for at f? Danmark til at danne fortrop.

Konkret foresl?s det hermed at s?s?tte to initiativer, som kan g?re K?benhavn til centrum for en innovativ kunstpraksis, der bidrager tungt til formningen af morgendagens samfund.

For det f?rste en ny, ambiti?s festival, som kunne kaldes Augment Copenhagen, og som skal udg?re en platform, der g?r det muligt for kunsten at s?tte det markante samfundsm?ssige aftryk som de enkelte kulturinstitutioner har sv?rt ved at g?re.

For det andet et Centre for Artistic Excellence, der skal udg?re en ny grundsten i den st?rre vision for den danske kunstscene og samtidig sikre en varig tyngde bag festivalen.

I dag, hvor vi st?r midt i en global krise, kan vi tage ved l?re af tiden efter Anden Verdenskrig, da en r?kke byer p? tv?rs af Europa satsede p? at oprette festivaler. Disse er i dag blevet vigtige internationale events, som n?rmest er synonym med bynavne som Salzburg, Edinburgh, Bergen og Bregenz, og som – hvad er endnu vigtigere – form?r at flytte kunsten et nyt sted hen. De giver ikke blot byerne uvurderlig international branding og tiltr?kker turisme i stor stil. De smitter ogs? positivt af p? kulturlivet og kulturens impact i samfundsudviklingen i byerne og hele oplandet ?ret rundt, og medvirker dermed til at g?re byernes regioner til centre for kunst, innovation og udvikling.

Danmark har i mange ?r kunnet bryste sig af at have mange succesrige festivaler. Men de er mestendels genrespecifikke og de fleste – med Roskilde Festival som en markant undtagelse – mangler st?rk international gennemslagskraft. Alligevel kender vi godt effekten af den store tv?rkunstneriske markering, der s?tter sit pr?g p? den samlede udvikling af en hel by. T?nk bare p? Kulturby 1996 i K?benhavn og 2017 i Aarhus, som har bevist, at ekstra ressourcer til helt s?rlige begivenheder kan give fantastiske resultater med tv?r?stetiske samarbejder og f?re til varige effekter, ogs? uden for kunstens og kulturens verden.

If?lge COWI skabte Aarhus 2017 eksempelvis 1965 jobs, og de 392 mio. investerede offentlige kroner skabte en oms?tning i den private sektor p? 1,2 mia. Allerede i 2012 estimerede en rapport fra Bergen, at publikum ved Festspillene genererer en oms?tning p? ca. 31 mio. NKK. I dag vurderes det tal at v?re betydelig h?jere, og hertil kommer den ikke ubetydelige omst?ndighed, at Festspillene i Bergen har sm? 2.000 hoteld?gn til kunstnere i l?bet af ?ret, hvilket genererer en betydelig oms?tning i byen.

Kunne man samle kulturinstitutioner, kunstnere, medier og publikum til at deltage i en ?rlig international festival i K?benhavn med et fokus p?, hvordan den digitale udvikling og teknologi kan forandre kunsten og oplevelsen af den – og i videre forstand, hvordan det kan ?ndre vores samfund og fremtid? Kunne kunstlivet udnytte en enest?ende mulighed for at skabe en platform med global konkurrencekraft, som vil markere K?benhavn og Danmark som et naturligt gravitationspunkt for the immersive arts?

Ja – s? afgjort. S?ledes b?r der skabes en platform, der kan pr?sentere nye v?rker og udtryk, som er f?dt i krydsfeltet mellem det analoge og det digitale, og som besk?ftiger sig med netop dette aspekt af vores liv: At det for al fremtid vil udfolde sig parallelt og sammenfiltret i disse to verdener. For det digitale erstatter selvf?lgelig ikke menneskets grundl?ggende behov for det fysiske m?de om en kunstoplevelse.

I en usikker og teknologidreven verden er det eneste, som vi med sikkerhed ved om fremtiden, at der vil ligge en premium v?rdi i skabelsen af oplevelser, som decideret rummer eller i hvert fald p? en meningsfuld m?de form?r virtuelt at gengive de medmenneskelige og fysiske aspekter. Platformen kunne tage form af en festival – og det er n?jagtig s?danne oplevelser, som Augment Copenhagen skal levere.

Hvordan kan virtual reality (VR) og Augmented Reality (AR) forandre kunstoplevelsen, eller selv blive kunst? B?de symfoniorkestre, teatre og museer skal inviteres til at skabe projekter, der g?r helt ud til – eller langt over – gr?nsen for de nye muligheder, som det digitale giver os – b?de teknisk, ?konomisk og kunstnerisk.

Forbilledet kan v?re eksempelvis 59 Productions’ udstillingsformat Digital Revolution, der bringer musikere, kunstnere, arkitekter, spiludviklere, designere med flere sammen med det bensp?nd, at de skal flytte og overskride deres normale gr?nser gennem brugen af digitale medier. Det sikrer det kunstneriske arbejde en st?rkt eksplorativ natur, blandt andet gennem anvendelsen af nye metoder og greb, inspireret af dom?ner udenfor kunstens verden. Murene om de selvst?ndige kunstneriske udtryk bliver her revet ned, hvilket stimulerer den tilsigtede krydspollinering.

Augment Copenhagen skal s?ledes v?re en alvorsfuld legeplads for de f?rende danske og internationale kunstnere, men ogs? for v?kstlaget. Festivalen skal kurateres stramt ud fra et princip om, at den originale idé altid er et prisme, hvori ikke blot en sn?ver kunstnerisk praksis men fremtiden som helhed kan spejle sig. De toneangivende danske kulturinstitutioner skal dermed spille en afg?rende rolle i festivalen, men det samme skal samarbejdet med internationale institutioner om at initiere og realisere nye produktioner og projekter.

Det er en grundl?ggende foruds?tning for festivalen, at den opleves af alle som en m?de, hvorp? der – i stil med Kulturby-?rene – tilf?res nye ressourcer og muligheder. Den skal v?re en paraply, der kan invitere til skabelsen af nye projekter og bidrage til at finansiere igangv?rende hos eksisterende akt?rer. Festivalen erstatter dermed ikke institutionernes kerneprodukter, men tilbyder nye udviklingsmuligheder p? skuldrene af det fantastiske potentiale, vi som land allerede har.

For at skabe varighed og tyngde bag festivalen b?r der i samme omb?ring og i t?t tilknytning hertil etableres det f?romtalte Centre for Artistic Excellence.

Dette center skal v?re et kraftcenter for nye kunstudtryk. Her skal der mobiliseres og l?ftes nye exceptionelle udtryk frem ved at invitere til samarbejde mellem innovative akt?rer, efterlyse bestillingsv?rker og skabe rum til eksperimenter af h?j kvalitet.

Dette vil materialisere sig i v?rker som b?de st?tter en positiv regional udvikling, og som skaber oplevelser med international kvalitet og relevans. Gennem modige, progressive og vision?re bestillinger kan man opfordre de kunstneriske milj?er til at realisere ambitioner, som er pr?gede af nutiden og fremtiden, og kriterierne skal udformes i t?t dialog med de kreative milj?er.

Centrets form?l skal v?re at:

• Starte samtaler om hvad kunst er, dens muliggjorte former i dag og aktivt spekulere over, hvad kunst kan v?re i fremtiden.
• Udfordre og udforske publikum i forhold til teknologiens placering i nye kunstneriske rammer.
• Udviske skellet mellem vores digitale og analoge virkeligheder og stille sp?rgsm?l ved, hvad sandhed og virkelighed er i dag.
• Inspirere til modig ud-af-boksen-t?nkning à la stay hungry, stay foolish – b?de blandt kunstnere og blandt publikum.
• Koble kreative milj?er sammen, som aldrig tidligere har samarbejdet for at udl?se eksplosive, kreative synergier.
• Udg?re en platform for kunstneriske eksperimenter – et art lab for en relevant samfundsdebat og skabelsen af en ny form for publikumsinvolvering og innovation.

Der b?r etableres en s?dan todelt knopskydning i Danmark, fordi vi savner tilg?ngelighed og diversitet. At kunsten kommer ud til og inddrager et nyt og st?rre publikum, herunder nye talenter. Man skal huske p?, at nyt publikum ikke kun er nye brugere, men ofte i deres private karriere er akt?rer inden for helt andre grene af samfundet – eksempelvis sundhedssektoren, undervisningssektoren eller b?redygtighedsindustrien.

Hertil kommer, at vi mangler internationalt reach. Danmark skal i h?jere grad p? landkortet fra Shanghai til San Francisco og fungere som internationalt vindue og branding, og herigennem skabe nye muligheder for dansk kultur- og erhvervsliv.

Desuden er vi bagefter ift. udnyttelse af digitaliseringen. Den m?de, vi konsumerer kunst p?, ?ndrer sig hele tiden, og 3D-, VR- og AR-teknologier har givet os helt nye muligheder, som vi ikke forst?r tilstr?kkeligt.

Endelig mangler kulturlivet en platform for optimering af synergier, som kan forene de mange grene indenfor kunsten.

Tilsammen vil festivalen og centret udg?re en inkubator for nye stemmer og digitalt inspirerede og udf?rte kunstudtryk. Centret er en samlende arkitektonisk campus, der rummer scene, udviklings- og pr?verum, skole, administration og m?ske endda bop?l for en vifte af de mange forskellige talenter og akt?rer.

Centret b?r tillige designes som en digital platform og et m?dested, der skal etablere nye koblinger mellem kunstarterne og – ikke mindst – med et publikum, der her skal kunne interagere med kunsten, uanset hvor de bor i landet eller udlandet. Centret vil dermed udforme m?depladser og udvikle og facilitere processer for at disse koblinger kan finde sted, og dette vil s?rligt skabe unikke muligheder for unge talenter, der udenom de g?ngse siloer og optagelsespr?ver kan uploade deres v?rker og give hinanden feedback.

Centret vil kunne fungere som en paraply, der kan optimere eksisterende akt?rers projekter og operere i et rigt og kompetent internationalt netv?rk af kunstnere, producenter og institutioner. Samarbejde og et oprigtigt ?nske om at dele idéer, koncepter, kunstneriske ambitioner og v?rdier vil v?re blandt de kritiske succesfaktorer.

Festivalen vil s? fungere som hovedscene for centrets initiativer, og den skal pr?sentere v?rkerne p? en m?de, som v?kker K?benhavn til live p? helt nye m?der. Den kan s?ledes tage form af en distribueret festival, hvor det urbane rum, arkitektoniske rammer og midlertidige installationer vil tilf?re nye dimensioner til kunstarenaerne og hj?lpe kunsten med at n? et nyt publikum. Centret vil tillige udvikle, fastholde og varetage en lang r?kke projekter ud over festivalen, for hermed at tiltr?kke talenter fra hele verden, og finansieringen m? naturligt tage form af et m?jsommeligt patchwork best?ende af det offentlige, fonde og andre private akt?rer.

Revolutioner skabes af summen af enkeltindividers mod til at handle.

Revolutioner skabes af summen af enkeltindividers mod til at handle. Vi stod allerede over for at skulle gennemf?re en kolossal samfundsm?ssig omstilling, hvis vi ikke vil lade vores b?rn overtage en klode, der er ranet for sine naturressourcer, pr?get af voldsomme krige og fyldt med udmattede mennesker.

Nu har vi s? f?et en pandemi oveni, som g?r omstillingen endnu mere kolossal. M?let b?r imidlertid fortsat v?re at undg?, at vi som mennesker bliver reducerede til at v?re kolonner og tal i det regneark, der aldrig bliver i stand til at g?re rede for det, der egentlig g?r livet v?rd at leve: Sk?nheden. F?llesskabet. K?rligheden.

Det ville for alvor v?re scandi-cool, hvis danske kulturentrepren?rer var dem, der gjorde den innovative kunst til katalysator for dén transformation – og samtidig demonstrerede, hvordan kunsten og kulturen kan trives i den nye virkelighed.

? Anders Beyer 2020

Denne artikel blev trykt som kronik i Politiken den 4. juni 2020