Kultur Kosmos e.V.

Self-determined Life

The ideological goal of our conjoint action is the attempt to approach our ideal of a self-determined life aloof from capitalistic restraints and exploitation interests and to make utopias for us a real life experience by turning model experiments into actually viable options. A very high standard that constantly turns out to work it’s self off due to arising inconsistencies and incapacities, but that also collectively keeps us on track.

Contribution of time, aid money and dialectic contradictions

In general, the association does not get financed by any public funds or governmental aid money, which, not only makes us independent but also a little proud. In the last years, the only field in which the Kulturkosmos got supported by governmental funding at all was in theatre and performance, however, mostly in a pretty meek dimension.
2006 the association, for the first time, received a financing by the fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation with the amount of 50 000€, which was used for the formation of a new, independent theatre festival. With that, the at.tension was born, which has, with its three fist editions, come to be an internationally well-known theatre festival that in the short period of it’s existence already has gained quite a bit of recognition and many enthusiastic fans. The governmental funding in fact permitted to get the at.tension-Festival started, but again, the festival was only made possible by the non-paid and voluntary work of the entire crew and helpers and the disposition of the enacting companies to only charge minor salaries.
To ensure the future of the festival and because we believe that the mutual contribution of time helps in creating an egalitarian collective, we already decided in 2008 to make the principle of honorary work a condition for the collaboration in the project for all helpers and co-workers. This demand at a future at.tension-Festival therefore, not only includes the creation of an international, fascinating and multifaceted festival at an exceptional site, with an extraordinary audience. It also implies a group dynamical process that emerges when every person involved pitches in, to ensure the best possible outcome. Because, we believe that exactly this process enables a movement to achieve great things. A collective process that will never emerge in established, hierarchically structured and subsidy dependant culture projects.
Concerning the question of how to proceed, we repeatedly discussed the problems and contradictions of public and governmental funding. With that, the Kulturkosmos has to pose the fundamental question, if a subvention-child like the at.tension can be kept alive depending on the arbitrariness of financial funding by governmental and public means, or, if we can find a way to take over responsibility and search our proper strategy to finance the festival independently. Particularly facing the fact that subsidy always needs to be requested and accounted as indicated in the giver’s guidelines. Those, for the most parts, are disproportionately bureaucratic and unrealistic, so that the assumed blessing mostly turns out to be an actual malediction. The budget comes along with guidelines that indicate what can be done with the money and so you end up fiddling everything together so it actually fits the demands. This, in fact, doesn’t have much to do with the actual reality of culture work.
To once lay out the dimensions that we are actually talking about in our case: The At.tension#3 had a total budget of €171 000,-. Thereof, the Kulturkosmos had to come up with own resources of around €72 000,-. Income from entrance fee and food and beverage came to around €68 000,-. The governmental funding covered about €28 000,- and donations were made with the amount of €3 000,-.
These are the official numbers of the cost and financing plan. Everything beyond that had to be provided additionally by the Kulturkosmos. The boarding of around 300 honorary helpers, in parts over weeks, can’t appear in the cost plan, thus can’t be covered by the financing plan and therefore, had to be paid separately by the Kulturkosmos. That much for the topic of political acknowledgment of honorary work and the restrictiveness that comes along with public aid money. The honorary office, by politicians all too willingly called “the motor of the society”, is expected to function as Perpetuum Mobile and honorary workers might bring their own sandwich to eat and water to drink instead of sponging off governmental means. Self-supply might work in a classical bourgeois milieu, where volunteering often results from a bad conscience owed to a material prosperity which is out of scale and mostly not even self-made, therefore, returning something to society is understood as a relief. But, in small cultural projects and initiatives especially on a subculture level, mostly people from precarious circumstances get involved and dedicate their time. To request self-supply of those people is not only cynical but also shows how far off subsidy practice lies from actual conditions of any culture project. Here, political action is desperately needed and we are hoping for a rethinking and a political initiative by the Federal Culture Foundation.
To get the € 28 000,- aid money the past year, we had to file different applications. Thereby, constantly planning with the uncertainty that the financing might brake away and that we have to cancel parts or rearrange everything, to at least be able to realise part of the programme. At the end, when, our application got declined by the Federal Culture Foundation, we actually had to cancel several parts of the programme and raise our own contribution, so the festival could actually take place after all. Altogether, we had to summon up quite a bit of time, energy and nerves for the acquisition and accounting of subsidy funds that we would also have loved to put into creative work instead.
The accounting of the € 50 000,- funding by the Federal Culture Foundation on the one hand, marked a new experience, but also, considered afterwards, came to be an unbelievable impertinence. It turned out to require an actual “pea-counting-contest” at the highest stage of accountancy with people that assumedly never had anything to do with culture events and only have an eye for numbers, pinching every penny.
A procedure that is so nerve-wracking that it actually only pays off, if the subsidy amount also allows the employment of a professional accounting clerk. Culture projects that cannot provide such structures, always run the risk of failing in accounting correctively and therewith might have to face back payment requests on the part of the Federal Culture Foundation. A certainly not totally unintentional barrier, to keep subculture or free and small projects as far away from the bigger pots as possible. We therefore, seriously pose the question, to what kind of compromises we want to be disposable. Also regarding the fact that public means are always tied to political interests. This starts with the focus of the subsidy guidelines and often concludes with the decision about favour or disfavour of the applicants, taken by committees filled with party political interests.
We don’t want any guidelines to dictate us, from which country or about what themes our programme comes or talks or which co-operations we may accelerate and expand, only because they currently describe the European tenor or conform with the subsidy emphasis of federal politics. Beyond doubt, compared to most of the other culture projects, we find ourselves in a privileged situation, because we belong to those few exceptional cases within Germany that do not depend on public or governmental funding and that can dispose and operate independently. We are willing to preserve this position and if possible even expand it. Therefore we have decided that in future we will finance the at.tension-Festival to the greatest possible extent with our own resources.
We consider the reputation of the Kulturkosmos association as that well-established, regionally as well as nationally and internationally, that we can abandon the option of public funding to gain political recognition, above all if it merely depends on the barometer of public opinion (in 2007 the community of Lärz summoned up, believe it or not, a total of € 100,- for the at.tension-Festival).
However, we certainly do not have any kind of money printing machine to our disposition and our income from the Fusion-Festival also is limited, in particular, since in 2010, for the first time, we limited the tickets and therefore didn’t and don’t want to register any increase of the attendance figure in the years to come. Thereby, the income of the festival in 2010 only just covered the total expenditure of the association. To guarantee the financing of all the important projects of the Kulturkosmos prospectively and despite inevitable cost increases, we will not only have to handle our available resources attentively, but will also have to make deductions in our propositions and intentions.
At the same time, 2011 we didn’t get around increasing the entrance fee to the Fusion-Festival. Only with that we can, next to other projects, also secure the taking place of the at.tension-Festival in 2011, 2013 and the years to come.
We assume that our little theatre festival will continue to grow in the next years and that the increase of the attendance figure will compensate the prospective cost increase, next to a consistent subvention by the Kulturkosmos. In 2009 the at.tension counted around 2500 visitors, of which the majority attended more than five different productions and performances.
Next to all the criticism passed on culture subsidy, we still want to thank the Federal Culture Foundation, the Ministry of Culture Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Rural District Müritz, as well as the Communities for their support. Because, if we hadn’t been funded in the past years, we also wouldn’t have accepted the challenge of organising our own theatre festival and probably would have misjudged the complex opportunities offered by this project. Also in the future, the Kulturkosmos will work on new and exciting projects that will require external funding. Herewith, every potential financer is dearly invited to support this initiative and project as best as possible.