Racialised creative labour in cognitive capitalism
Berlin-Kreuzberg, Naunynstrasse, an old building, the “Ballhaus” at the house number twenty-seven, above flats, the walls at the ground floor covered with posters and street art. Since the reopening of the arts and culture centre “Ballhaus Naunynstrasse” in 2008, a lot has changed in Berlin’s cultural landscape. Asking questions about how the stories of migration could be retold from the multiple post-migrant perspectives of a new wave of Turkish and Kurdish German artists, the new programme of the Ballhaus not only reflects the zeitgeist of today’s Berlin, but also revises and tells anew the cultural heritage that the labour migration of their parents’ generation, the so called “guest workers” in Germany brought into being nearly half a century ago. For that reason, it is also no wonder that this new central institution for contemporary Turkish German arts is located in the Naunynstrasse, a street to which one of the first Turkish German writers Aras Ören had dedicated his book Was macht Niyazi in der Naunynstrasse in 1973. Ören’s book counts as the first piece of literature of the so called “guest worker generation” in Germany and one line of it is now, on this cold November day in 2008, written in big letters above the door of the Ballhaus: “The Naunynstreet fills with the scent of thyme, with yearning and hope, but also with hate” (Ören 1973).
What has changed and which themes remain from the past, when we look at the conditions under which Turkish German artistic work is realised in today’s Berlin? Whereas the first, the parents’ generation of Turkish labour migrants hoped for better living conditions by working in the industrial and service sector of the Federal Republic, yearning at the same time for “a home” as the years passed by, experiencing hate, discrimination and alienation in Germany, we know very little about the lived experiences of this new wave of Turkish German artists with regards to their living and working conditions. What characterises these artists and what role does a place such as the “Ballhaus Naunynstrasse” play in bringing together a new wave of Turkish German artists, supporting and promoting their cultural productions? Where are these new collaborations of artists of colour in the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse situated in Berlin’s cultural industries? Are they at the margins or do they move centre-stage in a city that describes itself as creative and culturally diverse?
Speaking about “cultural diversity”
The concept of “cultural diversity” in relation to the “creative city” literature that has emerged in the last years, have both gained significant attention in the areas of urban sociology, geography and urban planning. Authors such as Richard Florida (2005), Charles Landry (2007) and Alan Scott (2006), who came to prominence not only through their publications but also by taking on consulting jobs collaborating with urban policy makers, describe culture and creativity in the creative city and its cultural industries as a toolkit for neo-liberal labour policies in which the “creative industries” serve as a role model and “engine for diversity, growth and jobs in Europe” (Wiesand & Söndermann, 2005). Their research, hence, serves predominantly the development and promotion of so-called creative world cities as spaces of economic activity and competition within a global network of knowledge-led economies (Scott, 2006: 13), creating “centres of excellence” in the arts and sciences facilitated by a high skilled elite of national and international artists, designers and scientists.
Concurrent to the rebranding of cities, such as Berlin, as highly diverse world capitals with a vibrant international arts scene, one can also observe the effects of these creativity- and diversity-based urban policies in Berlin. Urban gentrification processes in poor and racialised districts of Berlin, such as Kreuzberg and more recently Neukölln, which are branded as the hip, multicultural districts of the city, led in the last years to the displacement of Turkish German working class residents by privatising and selling “easily affordable” council flats to members of the international “creative class”. Cultural diversity, in this process becomes valuable and a justification for urban regeneration programmes, including the promotion of cross cultural arts institutions such as the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse as adding to the diversity profile of the city..
This ongoing rebranding of Berlin as a cosmopolitan creative capital is promoted by UNESCO and EU programmes as well as more recently by state officials, such as the Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten who organised a symposium entitled “Be Berlin – Be Diverse” in November 2009. One has to understand and locate the art activities and working conditions of contemporary Turkish German artists involved in the productions of the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse within these trends as they shape their realities, experiences and possibilities for funding. It becomes more clear how the resignification of cultural diversity as a promoter for Berlin’s cultural economy evolved, when we have a look at the city’s official documents such as the cultural economy report from 2005 (Kulturwirtschaft in Berlin, 2005). Cultural productions of post- migrant artists appear in this report in connection to events such as the “Karneval der Kulturen” an example that is stated as a “best practice” example of cultural productions by “foreign” artists in the city (ibid: 13). The message “Mask yourself and you will be integrated” illustrates how racialised discourses in the context of the new significance of cultural diversity in Berlin’s creative economy can continue to exist without taking into account that nearly fifty years of immigration has changed Germany’s cultural and bodily landscape. The construction of racialised and precarious bodies of artists of colour takes place in a discourse in which talking about “diversity” and “hybridity” become part of processes of commodification and new forms of self-/exploitation. The urban display of cultural diversity, one could argue, risks to serve in this scenario, as bell hooks would say, as the “seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (hooks, 1992: 21).
Cultural diversity and the creative city
The concepts of cultural diversity in relation to the creative city vocabulary as promoted by Richard Florida and Charles Landry, makes several points of critique necessary that require further discussion with regards to the factual cultural policy implications they produce for artists of colour in Berlin. In Florida’s account, the economic potential of cities depends highly on the creativity and talent of its professional population. According to him, the “creative classes” of mobile and transnationally operating workers in local urban creative industries are the driving motor of economic wealth. In a similar manner to Florida, Charles Landry and Phil Wood (2007) argue that racial and ethnic diversity are of economic and social value for cities. Rather than concentrating on the “negative effects of diversity”, policy makers should foreground “how a “diversity dividend” or increased innovative capacity might be achieved” (ibid).
In a very simplified way, these authors’ work implies that applying their approach and using their rhetoric of inclusion, racial difference is no longer a “problem”, but becomes valuable, signalling change and a positive approach to migration and race. For many Turkish German curators and artists, using this rhetoric in funding proposals and for the promotion of their productions, becomes a vital part of public communication. This is a reality, with which research has to engage in order to understand how the positive resignification of cultural diversity by city authorities, artists, researchers and journalists in Berlin relates to new urban economic developments (Pecker, 2005) in which the labour conditions of Turkish German artists working at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, are negotiated. Nonetheless, there are several critical points regarding the proposed linkage of the concepts of the creative city and cultural diversity. They can be summarised as follows: a) the creative city concepts overemphasise an economic rationale for cultural diversity, b) both concepts do not engage sufficiently with local socio-economic and cultural circumstances, c) nor do they not take into account ongoing social tensions and labour divisions within the multiracial city and the urban creative industries and d) both concepts promote insufficient “top-down” policy approaches by not giving an account of the lived experiences of racialised, gendered, sexed and classed creative workers in the urban creative industries on which base policies concerning cultural diversity should be developed.
Re-thinking the relationship between race and creative labour
Therefore, is it necessary to draw upon other ways of analysing the relationship between race and creative labour. This re-thinking requires a sensibility for the transformations taking place through the introduction of the term “diversity” within policy, institutions and public debates. Cultural diversity, I wish to argue, has little to do with anti-racism. In recent years, “anti-racism” has actually been transformed into an entrepreneurial activity in which cultural diversity is saturated with business language and understood in narrowly economic terms. The current developments show that political empowerment, using cultural diversity, is perceived only in terms of individual financial gain, making it difficult to imagine other forms of empowerment. The result is the marginalisation of other, more radical or oppositional practices and histories.
Looking at the situation in Berlin, artists of colour, such as the contemporary Turkish German artists at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, an institution called “Leuchtturmprojekt” bei Berlin’s Commissioner for Integration, embody today diversity and class policies, as though diversity as a value is inscribed on the bodies of these artists and their very presence signals the visible success of “cultural diversity” in the “creative city”. Through performing the figure of the successful Turkish German artist, it seems possible to “make it” on the market, with all the connotations of entrepreneurialism and “self-made” individual achievement. The task of critical research, however, is to look behind the face value and to analyse the reasons and dynamics for the creation of such a performativity.
Onur Suzan Kömürcü
ist Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaftlerin. Sie promoviert und lehrt am Goldsmiths, University of London und ist als Forscherin an der University of the Arts London tätig.
Literatur
Florida, Richard (2005)
Hooks, bell (1992)
Kulturwirtschaft in Berlin (2005)
Landry, Charles (2007)
Landry, Charles/Wood, Phil (2007)
Ören (1973)
Pecker (2005)
Scott, Alan (2006)
Wiesand, / Söndermann, (2005)
