AStA der HFBK Hamburg

RESULT OF THE SENATE VOTE ON ENDING THE FINKENWERDER KUNSTPREIS
SPONSORED BY AIRBUS

7 votes against,
2 Abstentions,
3 for ending the price (including 2 votes by the student representatives)

Background:

24/10/2024

On October 24th the university senate voted against the student representatives’ motion to end the Finkenwerder Art prize sponsored by Airbus, one of the biggest arms manufacturers in Europe. A company which profits from the violation of human rights around the world and is one of the market leaders in the militarization of borders. This came despite the dozens of students filling the room, who attended the senate to show their opposition to such a partnership.

The argumentation that the administration (together with some professors) put forward for continuing the prize over the last few semesters ultimately came down to the following points:

An alleged separation between the civil and military divisions within the Airbus Group, which was supposed to make financing by the Hamburg-based company Airbus Operations GmbH (subsidiary of the multinational Airbus Group) unproblematic.¹ A separation that does not stand up to scrutiny: Airbus Operations is involved in the manufacture of military products and cannot be separated from its parent company.²
The necessities of a German Zeitenwende and the resulting ‘re-evaluation’ of the arms industry by some members of the Senate, which we find problematic and deeply worrying.
The specific character of the location of Hamburg Finkenwerder (where Airbus Operations GmbH is located) and its residents. An argument that wasn’t elaborated and that is hard to take seriously, since, as far as we can see, the residents of Hamburg Finkenwerder have not actually benefited from the art prize. And incidentally, doesn’t this argument itself take on the “arrogant” and paternalistic attitude towards “the people in Finkenwerder” that the students were accused of in the senate - namely by claiming that such an art prize would enable them to have “contact” with so-called “high culture”?
The patronizing suggestion that the students should focus their energy on making art instead and that they could problematize this topic in their artistic practice rather than in the senate. So ... there is no need for the senate to stop this partnership, since art students can make critical art about it. Couldn’t the prize - so the argument goes - finance an artistic position, which deals critically with the practices and businesses in which Airbus is involved? A critical Airbus exhibition, financed by Airbus --- we don't really see the point in helping Airbus with this kind of self-reflection. Not only is this an insulting attitude towards the students, who are effectively told to keep out of the school’s politics, but also a problematic understanding of political art. We reject this outsourcing of problems to the “critical art” of students. This means that the students’ criticism of an increasingly normalized militarization is not taken seriously at all; and it only serves to incorporate student opposition into the school’s image as a diverse and critical institution.
The leftist truism that there is no innocent position, no outside, which could escape being entangled in the system. But shouldn’t this argument and its history really be understood as an appeal to ongoing and self-critical struggle? That is, as an appeal not to make ourselves comfortable with our opinions, knowledges and positions? And which would therefore inherently be opposed to the way this argument is here put forward as a kind of drab self-awareness of ‘how the world works’, sticking with business-as-usual. We don’t think that this attitude is especially hard-nosed or realistic, but on the contrary much too abstract and undifferentiated, if not naive. And so, ironically, first the main argument for the continuation of the prize was that there would be a separation between the civilian and military divisions of Airbus, so that funding by the civil department would therefore be unproblematic - but then, as soon as it was shown that this separation doesn’t really hold, suddenly all separations disappear and everyone is helplessly entangled in the capitalist system. An impossible attitude: because despite its apparent anti-moralism it reinforces a situation where everything is limited to individual decisions that are always predetermined to lead to an individual moral dilemma. But from the very beginning, AStA’s argument was not really concerned with questions of guilt and innocence, but instead with a problematization on the structural level: that it is institutional conditions that create these constraints and dependencies and thus moral dilemmas in the first place. And that goes hand in hand with what is essentially our central demand: that HFBK sets limits as to which organizations it enters into partnerships with.
A general fatalism, according to which the decision to end the prize would not change anything anyhow, wouldn’t prevent any wars or reduce arms production by a single bullet. Of course, this is a self-evident fact. But that doesn’t mean that a symbolic act, such as not giving publicity to an arms company, is any less political as such.

Lastly, two remarks were made during the discussions, which we found interesting as well: on the one hand that the presidium of HFBK has nothing to gain from the prize and on the other... that the Airbus Group has nothing to gain from it either. But who is then left to profit? Of course, only the students, who could win the prize (but haven’t), yet they are the ones protesting against it. But HFBK does profit from the fact that renowned artists are exhibiting at ICAT every two years (even if perhaps not in an immediate, monetary way). And even more so from the fact that they are doing it together with a HFBK alumni. In this way HFBK simultaneously establishes itself in Hamburg's cultural politics (through the partnership with a Hamburg company and a cultural association, the Kulturkreis Finkenwerder) as well as in the art scene (by hosting a renowned artist), while legitimizing its own teaching, i.e. that in this institution artists are being trained who are able to successfully compete on the art market. So it is HFBK as a business, which profits from the prize, much more so than its students (after all it is only one alumni every two years who is awarded). But then the question is: what kind of art school is it that we want to study in? What position and what function should our art take in the politics of this city? What kind of art do these prestigious events make possible, what kind of art do they make necessary? And what does that do to the way we relate to each other in the school?

¹ See for example, the arguments put forward in the public social media presence of the HFBK; also the arguments in the university senates of 23.06.2022, 23.05.2024 and 20.06.2024.

² See Airbus Operations GmbH Hamburg: Annual Report 2023, p. 51f.: “A330 family [...] The aircraft is also offered as a cargo and military aircraft”, “The A400M is designed as a new-generation, highperformance military transport aircraft. The A400M meets the requirements of today's air forces and is continuously being prepared for future needs” (available at: https://www.lobbyregister.bundestag. de/media/03/92/343494/AOG_JA_2023.pdf). From the beginning our problem was not the artists, who accept such prizes (many of us would, too). But rather the institutional decisions by those in (minor) positions of power, who would recognize no other possibilities of political expression in the school besides artistic practice, who in turn do not take this artistic critique seriously and then use it as an excuse to remain uncritical themselves.

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