Some years ago, the city of Hamburg discovered that it could promote itself through its cool subcultural scene, which visual artists are an important part of. Even if there are much more important “light towers,” as city marketing calls them, like a new concert hall, this developing scene has gained more attention. In past years, there were a lot of struggles against gentrification, in which the artists were involved one way or another. Now the city has learned its lesson, and is inviting artists to comment on gentrification in a critical way, knowing that such a critique will never stop the process itself.

The most visible and, in the international art world, recognised project that had a certain impact against gentrification was Park Fiction, a park next to formerly squatted houses in St. Pauli (like the Hafenstrasse, which became famous in the late eighties). Before this, there were no parks, so when the authorities planned to build another office building next to the waterfront, an initiative started to claim the space for a park. Artists like Margit Czenki and Christoph Schaefer were involved and introduced a process in which the citizens and children of the quarter were asked what their wishes were.

Park Fiction started in 1993, and after that, parts of the city administration began to recognise that while this park was disturbing their planned development of the city, it could also be used as a very visible sign for Hamburg. Thus they prohibited some features of the park, like a well for two of the most fierce women pirates and an archive of wishes in a red container, on a Tatlinlike construction above the whole park. Now, with metallic palm trees on a green artificial hill (when asked what they wished to have in their park, most participants drew this lonely island with a palm tree), a sign for the claimed urbanity and coolness of the city. Nevertheless, Park Fiction was a real success, it is a great social place for the people who are living in South St. Pauli and even for people like me who are not living there.

I am telling this story since this kind of initiative is possible, and producing an interesting space is the most important reason to live and stay in Hamburg. Another example would
be the FSK, the free, listener-supported radio station where LIGNA, the group I am working with, could experiment for years and develop practices like the radio ballet. FSK is a legal radio, broadcasting twenty-four hours, seven days a week. Even if it is the weakest frequency within the ether of the city, even if it is often hardly receivable, even if (as in most self-organized projects) a lot of problems are at stake, FSK is still a functioning structure. It opens up a lot of possibilities, and is still a space for interesting, sometimes intervening social and political practices. Totally independent of all state institutions, it became a singular voice in all of Germany. And in cities like Berlin, such radio does not exist, even if there is a lively scene that has tried to get a frequency for years.

I will go on with some other inspiring projects, even if my list could easily be read as an ad from the city government, praising the vivid subcultural scene that gives the city a distinctive flavour for the enlightened international tourist. But spaces
like Rote Flora, a still squatted social center in a now totally gentrified quarter, became a kind of island that is still not very welcome. Regarding the politics of the city council, it is a little wonder that it still exists. The people who run this space have always tried to reflect their position against the process of gentrification, and have intervened once and again in the changing surroundings.

Even if the art scene is not directly connected to places like Rote Flora, there is some recognition and not just because of the parties. Web-projects like The Thing Hamburg, an internet platform that started a specific critical discourse on art and culture in Hamburg, is quite aware of what is going on. Artist groups like Geheimagentur (“Secret Agency”) are developing new situations in a theater that has always showed solidarity. And self-organized groups like Projektgruppe (“Project Group”) have once and again invited artists from several countries, consistently building up a very interesting network and publishing the Journal of Northeast Issues (Figure 1). Even rather glossy magazines like Kultur und Gespenster (“Culture and Ghosts”), which established an interesting connection between the aesthetics of Hubert Fichte (an author from Hamburg who was famous in the sixties for his explicitly gay and ambitious novels) and current art practices, does not like what Hamburg has become.

The city of Hamburg has always been rich. It is the city with the highest density of millionaires in Europe, but it also had St. Pauli, one of the poorest quarters in Europe. Thanks to the European Union, the latter is changing, but at the same time, all rather heterogeneous places, the twilight zones, are vanishing. In 2002, there was a trailor camp threatened by eviction that coined the quite nice slogan‚ Hamburg muß dreckig bleiben’ (“Hamburg has to stay dirty”). But unfortunately a bigger movement with a lot of demonstrations started only after the eviction. Thus, even if a lot of people tried to prevent this development, Hamburg is getting cleaner every day. For sure, and especially in the suburbs, there are still dirty places, and in some quarters no one cares.

But where the city council has some interest, it changed its strategy significantly and uses artists directly, to develop some of these quarters by supporting cheap atteliers and by giving money for projects. As opposed to the strong movement in the 80s, social deviance in these days is not strong enough to demand for other spaces, to take these spaces, and to change the social and political situation in the quarter and city as well. Living has became more expensive, so understandably the resistance is not growing as quickly as the right-wing mayor, first elected in 2001, says it does. And even if a lot of artists know the problem, they still have not found a strategy to face the situation or even to organize themselves in a lasting and effective way.

There are some starting points, like an international, nearly self-organized festival of artist-run spaces (Wir sind woanders – European Art Festival) that discussed the questions at stake. But since these spaces got (not very much, but some) yearly money from the culture administration, the critique was and is rather limited. Their main desire is to get more money for their spaces, stressing their important role for the vivid cultural scene. And while art and politics mix once and again, and even if a lot of scenes know each other and are connected, the desire to be distinctive is still less distinctive in this city.

Still, from my point of view, Hamburg has proved to be a great place to work. In the merchant tradition of the city, art doesn’t exist, and compared to the wealth of the city, the investment in art is quite low. Thus, after developing some work, from time to time we had to leave Hamburg for projects to make a living. At the same time, there are some interesting institutional places that financed LIGNA occasionally, like the art museum, the Schauspielhaus (one of the main theatres), and the off-theater space Kampnagel. These institutions casually provided spaces for experiment, were interested in new forms, and even supported things that had an unforseeable outcome. And for sure, they all got their money, not only because citizens were entertained and challenged, but because we produced an interesting cultural shape for the city. Years ago, this was a rather neglected side-effect, but now it has become a more important part of the economy.

One last example. This year, two of the institutions set up a kind of festival named Wir nennen es Hamburg (“We call it Hamburg”), trying to point out the specifities of the art scene. “It should not be city marketing,” they said, but what else could it be? They claim to be subversive. They subvert the art market by asking three hundred artists to contribute an original work to the catalogue. The consumer, always paying the same expensive price for the special edition, will not know which artist is contributing, whether it is a Daniel Richter or someone no one ever heard of. And neither Richter nor anyone else will get any money for his or her contribution. No reason to moan, though. Rather, it’s another good opportunity to analyze what is state of the art in the city of Hamburg.

Links of mentioned projects and groups
Park Fiction www.parkfiction.org
LIGNA www.ligna.blogspot.com
FSK www.fsk-hh.org (with live stream)
Rote Flora www.roteflora.de
The Thing Hamburg www.thing-hamburg.de
Geheimagentur www.geheimagentur.net
Projektgruppe www.projektgruppe.org
Kultur und Gespenster www.kulturgespenster.de
Wir sind Woanders www.wirsindwoanders.de
Kampnagel www.kampnagel.de

by Ole Frahm