Agonistic Articulations in the 'Creative' City: On New Actors and Activism in Berlin’s Cultural Politics [1 ed.] 1138364630, 9781138364639

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Agonistic Articulations in the ‘Creative’ City

This book offers an empirically-grounded account of the emergence and political activities of a new collective actor in Berlin’s art field. Investigating the organizational and representative practices of Koalition der Freien Szene (Coalition of the Independent Scene) – a trans-disciplinary action platform assembling a wide variety of cultural producers in Berlin – the author unpacks the political organization of one of the most compelling contemporary art scenes, or ‘creative’ cities, worldwide, analysing both its concrete policy ‘success’ and the means by which it seeks to challenge and rearticulate the meaning of Berlin as a ‘creative’ city from the producers’ point of view. The book thus opens new opportunities for long-term transformations of the cultural political field. Theoretically sophisticated and based on empirical material including interviews with spokespeople and cultural administrators, Agonistic Articulations in the ‘Creative’ City presents a unique conceptualization of new modes of political collectivization, representation and legitimacy that imagine new avenues of political engagement at a time when political institutions, parties and regimes of representation are in crisis. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, political science and urban studies with interests in social movements and cultural activism. Friederike Landau is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Bauhaus University Weimar, and Associate Fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies in Berlin, Germany. Her research interests revolve around new forms of political agency and activism, urban cultural politics, collaborative governance as well as postfoundational political theory. She teaches undergraduate-, graduate- and Ph.D.level courses in urban sociology, urban planning and arts and design.

Routledge Studies in Political Sociology

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/sociology/ series/RSPS Performance Action The Politics of Art Activism Paula Serafini Agonistic Articulations in the ‘Creative’ City On New Actors and Activism in Berlin’s Cultural Politics Friederike Landau

Agonistic Articulations in the ‘Creative’ City On New Actors and Activism in Berlin’s Cultural Politics Friederike Landau

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Friederike Landau The right of Friederike Landau to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. The original manuscript to this book was submitted as a dissertation to the Technical University of Darmstadt on September 7, 2017, defended on December 14, 2017 to obtain a Dr. phil. with working title “A(nta)gonistic Articulations. On the Constitution of Post-Foundational Actors in Berlin’s Art Scene between Politics and the Political.” This book is an edited and shortened version of the dissertation. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Landau, Friederike, author. Title: Agonistic articulations in the ‘creative’ city : on new actors and activism in Berlin's cultural politics / Friederike Landau. Description: 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2019. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018054229 (print) | LCCN 2019007568 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429431258 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781138364639 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429431258 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Berlin (Germany)–Social conditions–21st century. | Berlin (Germany)–Social life and customs. Classification: LCC DD881.3 (ebook) | LCC DD881.3 .L36 2019 (print) | DDC 306.20943/155–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054229 ISBN: 978-1-138-36463-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-43125-8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK

Contents

List of tables List of abbreviations Acknowledgements

vi vii viii

1

Introduction: (Cultural) politics in a supposedly post-political age

1

2

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape

25

3

Articulation of an agonistic actor

52

4

Bridge: How to institutionalize agonistic agency?

140

5

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing in governance

152

6

Distillate and outlook

209

Appendix: List of conducted interviews Index

215 217

Tables

2.1 3.1 3.2 5.1 5.2 5.3

Genre-specific associations Conflictual Consensus Matrix I A(nta)gonistic Representation Matrix Conflictual Consensus Matrix II Agonistic policy outcome: Arbeits- und Recherchestipendien 2015 Synthesizing governance legitimacies

45 81 112 170 180 199

Abbreviations

Acronym

German

English

ARS

Arbeits- und Recherchestipendien Arbeitskreis Räume berufsverband bildender künstler*innen berlin Christophe Knoch Haben und Brauchen Koalition der Freien Szene

Working and research grants

AK Räume bbk CK H&B Koalition LAFT Network nGbK PAP Rat Senatskanzlei Senatsverwaltung SK ZTB ZPP

Landesverband freie darstellende Künste Berlin Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und -initiativen Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst Performing Arts Programm Rat für die Künste Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Sprecherkreis [sic], Sprecher*innenkreis Zeitgenössischer Tanz Berlin e.V. Zehn-Punkte-Plan

Working Group Space Professional Association of Visual Artists in Berlin To Have and To Need Coalition of the Independent Scene Regional Association of Independent Performing Arts Network of Berlin Independent Project Spaces and Initiatives New Society for Visual Arts Performing Arts Program Council for the Arts Senate Chancellery for Cultural Affairs Senate for Culture and Europe Round of Spokespeople Association of Contemporary Dance Berlin Ten-Point Plan

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a variety of beautiful people who have supported and inspired me in the completion of this book. First, I would like to thank my supervisors Sybille Frank and Alison Bain in supporting the twists and turns of this project. Alison, I have learned a lot about collective writing and living experiences with you. Thanks for Janet Merkel’s support, developing from mentor-like awe into a complex friendship. Thanks for inspiring trips to Chicago and San Francisco, learning that throwing a coconut out the window really helps academics think. I would like to thank Nikolai Roskamm and Oliver Marchart for thought-provoking conversations about the absence of everything, enabling me to write about anything. Thank you to Pierre Filion, Alice Salt and Neil Jordan for accompanying the actual production of this book. Moreover, I would like to thank the interviewees from the Koalition der Freien Szene and Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten for taking the time and energy to talk to me. I would like to thank the Center for Metropolitan Studies for a wealth of personal and material support without whom this whole experience would have been unimaginably different. Thanks to my brother Felix for providing an economist’s eye to make lofty political theory relevant to practitioners, and thanks to my parents Stefanie and Wolfgang who supported me in ‘doing whatever it is you do’ (whatever that is, my father keeps wondering). Last, but not least, I am grateful to Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung for their ongoing material and non-material support throughout my dissertation.

1

Introduction (Cultural) politics in a supposedly post-political age

Politics cuts across all areas of our lives. Diversely shaped and formed, implications of political decision-making concern the different ways we live, think and act. Hence, within and out of the inherent diversity of social life, a political dimension arises. The irrevocably political character of social and human relations evokes the question how and where multiple interpretations and practices of politics come to life. This book follows the assumption that, on the one hand, contemporary societies are caught in tensions between political disenchantment and people’s growing political indifference. On the other hand, societies across the globe witness a growth of new civil and social movements that redefine the meanings, places and faces of politics. This book sets out to explore interventions in or beyond traditional principles of political representation and decision-making. I argue that it is important to consider and study these newly emerging, informal actors, especially in times when people might think that their voices or votes do not really matter (anymore). In a state of crisis for international, national and local political institutions and organizations, citizens express skepticism and mistrust about the effectiveness, transparency, accountability and adequate representation of the will(s) of the people (Haus 2005). In response, classic representative modes (e.g., elections, public opinion polling) are increasingly challenged or channeled into alternative arenas of political expression and decision-making. If representational practices are seemingly decoupled from the causal origins of political rationales for large-scale decisions – political choices seemingly be made regardless of what was promised prior to elections – these disconnects elicit citizens’ lack of understanding or identification with ‘politics’. In short, people’s sense of having a say, or owning decisions politicians take, becomes compromised. Amidst this crisis of political representation, the alarming rise of (both left- and right-wing) populist political movements and parties across Europe and beyond can deform sentiments such as fear and discouragement into nationalism, racism and homophobia. Politically divisive movements can create conflicts that might manifest in low voter turn-outs or the ‘democratic’ election of political leaders or parties who matter-of-factly disrespect

2

Introduction

and threaten democracy and strong civil societies. In such scenarios, democratically elected leaders erode democracy with democratically conferred mandates. Opposing this new version of a ‘democratic paradox’, citizens who are dissatisfied with the defunct system might choose to exit and quit to participate in that very democratic system, leaving the criticized structures unchanged and unchallenged. While both options to exit the system or choose simplifying populism have problematic consequences for political cultures of engagement and participation, they urge us to examine the partial failures of existing representative political institutions. If the latter fall short of addressing controversies about their own political system within the structures they provide, we need to look elsewhere to track and trace new forms of political emancipation. Out of this critical diagnosis of contemporary liberal democracies, it becomes apparent that new forms of political expression and representation move center-stage to rethink, reinterpret and reconceptualize politics. In this vein, I set out to discuss new modes and actors of ‘politics’ in the narrow sense and in the wider sense of ‘the political’, asking how, where and by whom the inherent contestations of political life are articulated. While investigating new forms of political action and representation, questions about the legitimacy of these new movements and actors arise: Who are these new political agents? In what ways is their political behavior different or acceptable, especially if they question or challenge given political contexts? Why and how should their concerns, claims and ideas be considered in relation to existing political structures and agents? Are new political actors marginal enough to be ignored or do they represent significant populations or social groups? Does it matter who represents whom? Who and what makes new political actors powerful for how long? All these questions not only point to the necessity to empirically study new modalities of contemporary political life, but also draw attention to the need to conceptualize these forms of activism and social movement formation from a perspective of conflict rather than consensus. Following Belgian political philosopher Chantal Mouffe (2005, 2009, 2013), I align with the critique that contemporary (liberal) political discourse is centered around and aims for fully transparent and complete consensus. In accordance with Mouffe, I assume that notions of universal consensus are dangerous and detrimental to vital pluralistic democracies because they foreclose the active negotiation of diverging views, and thus bury potentially emancipatory ideas. Deliberative approaches, prominently advocated by Jürgen Habermas (1984) and others (Dryzek 2000; Lijphart 2008, 2012) might tend to reify consensus or idealize communicative rationality or deliberation as unquestionable bases of (liberal) democracy. Consequently, these approaches negate or underestimate the irrevocably conflictual nature of social relations. Put simply, liberal or deliberative democratic approaches can only inadequately address and explain conflicts in political decision-making processes. In contrast, the active embrace of conflict among controversial

Introduction

3

political parties or groups could stimulate ‘radical’ democracy, as proposed by Mouffe and Laclau in their classic Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (2001), pointing to the problematic implications of consensus-oriented democracy models. Since the consensusobsessed model assumes that social life could coherently pursue one idea of ‘the good life’ or society, this imprudent universalism runs the risk of glossing over or oppressing alternative understandings of good lives or politics. Ultimately, the reductionism of consensualist liberal approaches, epitomized in Margaret Thatcher’s slogan ‘There is no alternative’ (TINA), might depoliticize citizens’ counter-voices and preclude emancipatory ideas and actions. Critiquing the consensus narrative as (implicitly) positivist, rationalist and teleological (i.e., that ‘full’ consensus is considered achievable), this book considers new modes of political expression and representation as conflictual negotiations to contest notions of ‘politics’ as merely problem-solving, technocratic or crisis management operations. The TINA paradigm embodies what scholars have called ‘post-politics’ (Mouffe 2005; Rancière 2008, 2010; Swyngedouw 2005, 2009; Žižek 2009), announcing a condition in which politics becomes devoid of political rigour, foreclosing the ‘proper’ political moment of politics. As part of this post-political condition, Swyngedouw (2011, p. 373) points to the common misunderstanding that politics would be ‘something one can do without making [a decision] that divide[s] and separate[s].’ To the contrary, both politicization and post- or depoliticization are always incomplete, and can never be fully realized, because the human condition remains inescapably conflictual. Hence, when governments or political institutions portray overarching struggles such as poverty, injustice, spatial displacement, institutional racism or homophobia as given or immutable ‘facts’, and consequently present disembodied or neutral bureaucratic tasks as ‘solutions’ to these problems, these seemingly uncontroversial acts might trigger depoliticization and discourage citizens from actively engaging in ambiguous political attempts to fight these crises. In this supposedly post-political atmosphere, the perception of political institutions’ post-political or depoliticizing proceedings, and the inadequate representation of the people’s will(s), have sparked the emergence of new movements and modes of political mobilization and organization. Global and local protests like the New York-based Occupy Wallstreet, the Spanish Podemos movement, or Berlin’s Kotti&Co. tenant uprising, as well as the occupation of public places like Tahrir Square in Cairo or Istanbul’s Gezi Park, have materialized the dissatisfaction and politicization of citizens (Mayer et al. 2016). These public collective gatherings show a variety of novel forms of public encounter, community formation, decision-making and protest. Slogans such as ‘You do not represent us and you can never represent us!’ (Newman 2014, p. 93; emphasis original) illustrate how new social movements refuse (democratic) representation with exodus-like or anti-institutionalist rhetoric and collectivize via non-representational practices. However, withdrawing from or challenging representation might not

4

Introduction

be the final, but rather the initializing point of debate to discuss (democratic) emancipatory politics. This book aims to unpack the representational and organizational dynamics of a new political actor in its temporariness, incoherency, fleetingness and potential ‘impact’ or ‘success’ as an exemplary case to understand new paradigms that drive social movements in the 21st century. Considering new political actors as moving between manifestations of institutionalized ‘politics’ and wider expressions of ‘the political’, these activist groups allow us to reflect and rethink the potentialities of new social movements with regard to innovations in political representation and practice. Dikeç and Swyngedouw (2017, p. 10) assess the emergence of ‘the political’ as taking place when the few claim the name of the many (…) and are recognized as such. A sociological minority of activists takes on the generic political name of the people as a whole and becomes the stand-in for the many, the multiple. Anticipating the representative tension inscribed in the activities of this ‘sociological minority of activists’ to be explored throughout this book, my theoretical objective is to grasp and uncover new modes of political interaction and representation between state and non-state actors to refute the diagnosis that we live in a post-political age. The proclamation of the seemingly intractable presence of post-politics itself is a political act. In contrast, it is my aim to avoid the ‘post-political trap’ (Beveridge and Koch 2016; Davidson and Iveson 2014) and conceptualize the articulation of new political actors and their claims, critiques and collaborations with formal actors of politics as a means to repoliticize the debate about post-politics (Jessop 2014; Larner 2015; Uitermark and Nicholls 2014). According to Boonstra and Boelens (2011, p. 113), new social movements diversely organize to tackle pressing questions and formulate political demands via ‘processes of group formation and deformation’, which rely on the discontinuous making of networks and collectivities driven by self-organization. Attending to self-organized actors, they argue, helps to understand experiments with potentially emancipatory ways of policymaking and politics. In a similar vein, the case study of this book explores the relations between politicization and depoliticization and subsequent negotiations between depoliticizing consensus and emergent, potential politicizing of urban protest and conflict. Taking the city as an insightful arena to develop new forms of political dialogue and protest, Dikeç and Swyngedouw (2017, p. 2) identify an urgent need to rethink urban politics and urban political theory in ways that are much more sensitive to consider the city as an immanent site of nurturing political subjectivation, mediating political encounter, staging interruption and experimentally producing

Introduction

5

new forms of democratization that prefigure radical imaginaries of what urban democratic being-in-common might be all about. Their reference to the city as site of analysis to investigate the (un)making of political subjectivities resonates with the focus on Berlin’s contemporary urban cultural politics. Without essentializing ‘the city’ as a fixed entity (Landau and Roskamm 2018), Berlin’s material and discursive political terrain has evoked the specific politicization and collectivization of independent cultural producers. The Koalition transdisciplinary action platform, which assembles independent artists1 and cultural workers from all artistic genres pertaining to ‘the independent scene’, is examined with regard to the group’s self-organized activism, political representation and legitimacy. Kucher’s (2013, p. 7) preliminary definition of ‘the independent scene’ as [t]he totality of all freely producing, Berlin-based artists, ensembles, facilities and structures in free sponsorship from the realms of architecture, visual arts, dance, drama, performance, new media, music – ranging from baroque, electro, jazz, classical music to new music – musical theater, children and youth theater, literature as well as all other interor transdisciplinary forms undergirds this exploration. Out of a rich corpus of empirical data, gathered in qualitative interviews and participatory observation between 2013 and 2016, I demonstrate what can be learned from the internal organization and political representation of the Koalition with regard to new paradigms of representation and legitimacy enacted by new political actors.

Contesting the hegemonic narrative of the ‘creative’ city Berlin’s current cultural political developments and institutional transformations can be situated in the urban political discourse of the ‘creative’ city (Florida 2003; Landry 2008). This seemingly intractable paradigm has received noticeable attention in both academic and practitioners’ and policy-makers’ discourses. In the following, I unfold a critical dialogue between ongoing scholarly debates about the role of arts and creativity in urban politics and its concurrent criticisms (Byrne 2012; Gibson and Kong 2005; Hutton et al. 2009). Creating a nexus between discourses on urban cultural production, artists’ precarity and resulting counter-movements on the one hand, and the increasing political and administrative interest in arts and culture as marketable ‘resources’ in neoliberal urban politics on the other hand, I underpin the cultural political discursive ramifications of the Koalition’s emergence. Cognizant that the link between cultural production and urban revitalization has long been recognized (Bain 2013; Deutsche 1992, 2002; Markusen 2006; Markusen and Gadwa 2010; Zukin 2014), this book introduces an emerging contesting voice of the ‘creative’ city narrative. While Florida’s contributions

6

Introduction

have undoubtedly triggered hopes and expectations of cultural and urban planners, policy-makers, developers and city marketers in mid-sized and large cities around the globe, this investigation shows how the formation of the Koalition, and the subsequent reconfiguration of the city’s urban cultural governance arrangement, might provide opportunities to (re)write the story of a ‘creative’ city via interventions of its very producers instead of externallyordained marketable scripts. Opponents of Florida’s approach like Jamie Peck (2005) and feminist critics (Bain and McLean 2013; McLean 2014a, 2014b; Parker 2009) not only challenge the empirical or causal bases of Florida’s ‘theory’, but more importantly, they attack the neoliberal and exploitative backbone of the creative class approach. Peck illustrates the capitalization of creative atmospheres in ‘creative’ cities for urban development projects that seek to extract creativity as a resource to alleviate urban challenges such as economic deprivation and social fragmentation. Despite the promising potential ascribed to arts and culture (i.e., to foster urban transformation and growth), Peck (2007, p. 2) argues that creativity policies are not to be mistaken as automatically emancipatory because the former are ‘[d]iscursively downloading both risk and responsibility’, and thus potentially reinforce dominant orders of neoliberal urban politics. Criticizing the market-friendly creative city ‘script’, Peck (2012, p. 464) points out that the ‘creative’ city language is used to ‘rebadge and reframe extant commitments, legitimating “soft” economic-development policies in a (global) context in which municipal governments have been subject to far-reaching “responsibilization”, mostly in the absence of corresponding policy capacity.’ Accordingly, the mythologization and instrumentalization of urban creativity is sought to smoothen and legitimize liberal individualism, understanding everybody as creative producers and (self-)entrepreneurs (Mohr and Landau 2016; Raunig et al. 2011). At the same time, this hyper-individualistic notion fleetfootedly circumvents or overwrites conditions of precarity that often impede cultural workers’ private and professional lives. In other words, Florida’s growth-oriented theory oils the neoliberal machine which runs on the fuel of self-motivated and entrepreneurial individuals. Besides explaining why creativity is increasingly considered relevant, and exploited by policy-makers (i.e., alluding to the ‘good fit’ between the need for justifying policy action and offering the ‘solution’ of creative individualism), Peck points to the ‘policy vacuum’ or lack of programmatic policy innovation that enables creativity policies to occupy this void. In addition to this ‘filling’ function, Peck (2012, p. 474) contends that the real utility of the creativity meta-policy lies with its facilitative role as a flexible discursive frame – closely aligned with, and to some degree mystifying, already-existing ideologies, imperatives and practices – one that allows the expedient consolidation and repackaging of extant lines of policy.

Introduction

7

The reference to the meta political scope of creativity policies suitably captures the hegemonic position of the ‘creative’ city script in Berlin, which was reclaimed by stakeholders of the Koalition to take the ‘facilitative role’ of arts- and culture-related policies seriously (i.e., requesting substantial involvement in the design and implementation of cultural policies). While Peck’s general warning that urban and cultural policy-makers might exploit the ‘creative’ city script to commodify artistic and cultural practices and products is certainly correct, it is important to note that this narrative is never constructed by cultural planners, urban planners and policy-makers alone. In contrast, individual and collective cultural actors themselves – more or less outspokenly – contribute to making the ‘creative’ city, based on their own notions of the importance of cultural goods, values and products (Reckwitz 2011; Siebel 2016). Because the ‘stuff’ that constitutes the ‘creative’ city (i.e., material and discursive spaces, places, voids, atmospheres, impressions, ideas, dreams, hopes and paranoias) lies outside policy-makers’ and branding agencies’ realm of influence, these ‘official’ agents are necessarily reliant on cultural producers’ co-narrations of the ‘creative’ city. Bearing this in mind, in the following, I zoom in on the micro-level activist practices of Berlin-based artists to make and (re)appropriate the meaning of their ‘creative’ city. As Berlin has been singled out as a city that relies on urban branding via its creative citizens (Löw 2008, pp. 192–193), I take the Koalition as one empirical movement pushing for a different narrative of this ‘creative’ city and illustrate the procedural and material transformations leveraged by the group. By shedding light on the material and discursive changes coproduced by the Koalition as conflictual, partial ‘policy success’ (Landau 2017), this book attenuates Peck’s gloomy outlook that all creativity policies jump-start urban competition and entrepreneurialism. With regard to the case study, the privileged attention to the arts on the side of politicians and cultural policy-makers might be due to their realization that the ‘creative’ city script cannot be imposed or written by policy-makers alone. In the Berlin case, political leaders’ motivations to ‘include’ cultural concerns in policy or planning initiatives led to the actual involvement of the ephemeral political collectivity of the Koalition to leverage legitimacy regarding the ‘creative’ city narrative. In other words, the Koalition’s self-empowered intervention in Berlin’s cultural policy-making complex, which brought about a temporary collaboration with the Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten (Senate Chancellery for Cultural Affairs; cultural administration; Senatskanzlei), might have been successful precisely because policy-makers were open to forging new alliances to imagine and (co-)write the ‘creative’ city together with affected stakeholders.2 Consequently, the empirical investigation takes up the lingering discourses around the value and standing of arts and culture in Berlin’s urban politics to reveal how the emergence of a new artist activist actor reshuffled political interactions between formal and informal stakeholders in Berlin’s cultural landscape.

8

Introduction

Prioritizing the funding of artistic production as opposed to artistic presentation, and simultaneously arguing against the fleet-footed equalization of creative industries and culture, the Koalition has diversified, and continues to diversify, the meaning and enactment of the ‘creative’ city script in Berlin. By introducing an argumentative link between the city’s attractive artistic scenes and increasing urban tourism, the Koalition requested a share of the monetary benefits leveraged by the hype about Berlin’s art scene. When the 5 percent tourist overnight tax, the City Tax, was introduced in early 2014, the Koalition claimed that the tax income should be re-invested to increase financial support for the independent art scene, as the latter significantly stimulates tourism. The controversy which arose around the introduction and distribution of the City Tax lends itself to a critical investigation not only because it constitutes a tangible policy issue (i.e., to materially support the ‘creative’ city script (or not)), but also because it illustrates a unique policy collaboration between state and non-state actors. Understanding the Koalition as a collectivization against the rising precarity and capitalization of arts and culture in urban political discourses, the group has strategically amplified the urgency, validity and legitimacy of independent artists’ claims and in this way jump-started the conversation about what the ‘creative’ city means to Berlin artists in comparison to cultural administrators.

Tracing ‘the political’ in cultural policy and governance Various approaches around cultural and creative geographies (Gibson 2012; Grodach 2013), city marketing and branding (Kong 2012) or cultural labor (Banks 2007) discuss the economic ramifications of artistic work, as well as its situatedness in value creation and appreciation. This book engages with the political implications of cultural production by drawing on cultural policy and governance to conceptualize artists as policy-makers. Since the ‘creative’ city paradigm impacts outcomes of governance processes (Byrne 2013; Redaelli 2011), cultural policies materialize in a way the ‘creative’ city script. Based on Byrne’s (2012, p. 67) critique that instrumentalist approaches to ‘creative’ cities have intensified crises of legitimacy and credibility of cultural policy, I take an interpretive approach to investigate how and by whom the ‘creative’ city idea is used and contested in Berlin’s cultural policy-making to create new forms of legitimation for policy action. Following O’Connor and Shaw’s observation (2014, p. 170) that ‘one part of the creative city began as an attempt to add new cultural forms to the grammar of an older urbanity; another part suggesting these new cultural forms could provide the economic driver of this new city’, this book retraces the most recent cultural political inscriptions into Berlin’s cultural ‘grammar of urbanity’ to document how socio-political contestations in and of contemporary creative cities unfold. As a subfield of ‘traditional’ political science, cultural policy has not received great priority or attention in political scientific academic debates. Rather,

Introduction

9

cultural policy is considered a ‘soft’ policy issue with symbolical power rather than ‘hard’ topics such as security, trade or fiscal policy. Schematically characterizing methodological and epistemological approaches toward cultural policy, Gray (2009) subsumes ‘economics approaches’ as positivist, ‘political science approaches’ as realist (yet, as I would argue, most often equally positivist) and the ‘cultural studies approaches’ as interpretive. Aligning with this admittedly simplified distinction, other cultural studies approaches (Bell and Oakley 2015; McGuigan 2004; Schuster 2002) interpret and theorize cultural policy-making practices based on the specificity of the good ‘culture’, while the meaning and scope of the term ‘cultural policy’ remain contested (Gray 2016; Grodach and Silver 2013). I employ the term ‘cultural policy’ rather than ‘arts policy’ because the latter traditionally implies a narrower understanding of forms of cultural production (Mulcahy 2006). While it is necessary that cultural policy accommodates the variety of cultural and creative practices to be governed and funded, it is also important to avoid the term’s inflationary broadening. Craik (2007) refers to the ‘cascading relevance’ of cultural policy which incorporates social and economic concerns, evoking the risk of losing its own content-related contours. In search of defining ‘culture’, binaries such as ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, or ‘institutional’ and ‘independent’ culture, as well as terms such as ‘off scene’ or ‘underground scene’ illustrate the partially arbitrary, yet systemically ambiguous and political nature of the term. For me, three definitions of cultural policy stand out in the wealth of contradicting conceptions, illustrating the breadth of practices, people and places that engage with cultural policy. First, Ahearne’s (2009, p. 144) understanding of cultural policy as ‘strategic courses of action designed to prescribe and shape cultural practices’, highlighting the agentic dimension of cultural policy. Second, Miller and Lewis’ (2003, p. 2) claim that ‘cultural policies produce and animate institutions, practices and agencies’, activating the possibility of institutional transformation via cultural policy. Third, Cunningham’s (2003, p. 14) observation that cultural policy ‘embraces that broad field of public processes involved in formulating, implementing, and contesting governmental intervention in, and support of, cultural activity’, animating the participatory and interventionist dimension of cultural policy. Together, these definitional vectors outline cultural policy as agentic, strategic-relational and institutionally entangled practice that informs my investigation of cultural policy. Lewis and Miller’s (2003, p. 8) course of critical cultural policy studies, proposing to go beyond conventional approaches to engage with ‘progressive politics, and take its touchstone as much from social movements as from policy infrastructures’, resonates with the Koalition, understood as a social movement, and the cultural administration providing ‘policy infrastructures’. Within social movements studies, arts and cultural organizations have been largely understudied as emancipatory actors (Hollands and Vail 2012; Isaac 2009; Lee and Lingo 2011). Classic cultural sociological accounts (Becker

10 Introduction 1984, Bourdieu 2006, 2011) have not extended their power-related and relational analyses of the art world to the political organization of artistic actors to leverage political change and legitimacy (or not). Baumann (2007) theorizes ‘artistic legitimations’ but qualifies them with regard to the varying degrees of legitimacy of artistic and cultural products and goods rather than the legitimacy of political claims formulated by artist-led organizations. Not least because of the weak theorization of art and culture in social movement studies, the latter lack a clear understanding of the political impacts of artistled organizations and movements, and thus insufficiently capture concrete policy implications of their activities. To address this shortcoming, this book presents the Koalition as a new collective, informal actor which exceeds existing binaries between social movements and institutions to carve out the former’s activities as a new approach to organization-building and mobilization as activism in cultural policy-making. To conceptualize cultural governance, Anheier and Isar (2012) have bundled a variety of international case studies to portray the variety of multistakeholder alliances in the cultural field, yet they do not establish a greater analytical assessment of the term. Gugu and Dal Molin’s (2016) study addresses this gap to theorize cultural governance, introducing a structuring, empirical investigation of collaborative cultural governance settings with different stakeholders. In the underdeveloped state of debate and definition of cultural governance, it is important to note that my own engagement with the phenomenon does not place primary analytical attention on cultural governance, but rather on cultural governance (i.e., collaboration between diverse political stakeholders who do, however, interact in the cultural political field). While Bang’s (2004, p. 159) discussion of ‘culture governance’ points to the ‘expansion of self- and co-governance’, he concludes by categorizing these new forms of political interaction as a threat to representative democracy. Sensitive to the endangered status of the latter, this book explores whether and how cultural governance could, in contrast to Bang, challenge or provide new opportunities to transform democratic life. While I acknowledge the specific qualities of culture and cultural production, I refrain from essentializing ‘culture’ as a magical resource or good to be governed. Accordingly, I do not glorify ‘artists’ as a specific human species but scrutinize their particular practices in policy-making and activism. In other words, this book does not talk much about art in the narrow sense (i.e., artistic practices, projects or products), but brings to the fore the locally, temporally and historically specific political organization of independent art producers. While it certainly matters whether collaborative settings deal with working conditions of artists or other political challenges such as the housing situation of refugees or a shortage of funds for kindergartens and schools, this book examines governance processes in the cultural field for its potentially emancipatory modalities to organize collective political action and change. While governance studies (Ansell and Gash 2007; Bevir 2010, 2011; Fischer 2003, Fischer and Forester 1993; Griggs et al. 2014; Hajer and Wagenaar

Introduction

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2003; Pierre and Peters 2000) are informative to systematize interactions between state and non-state actors, these approaches miss an ontological conceptualization of their very ‘object’ of analysis (Landau 2017). Mainstream governance approaches rooted in public policy or political science might presuppose specific forms of statehood or political objectives, thus (implicitly) operating with normative preconceptions about governance. For example, assumptions that there is such a thing as ‘bad’ or ‘good’ governance (Hendriks 2014; Swyngedouw 2008) reveal a ‘normative bias’ which indirectly limits the analytical potential to discuss governance as conflictual practice, theory or process. Instead of aiming to get rid of normative perspectives on governance, the conflict-oriented framework developed here does not neglect the normativity of its own approach, but rather urges governance stakeholders to openly negotiate value conflicts. The negligence of considering normative implications on governance might stem from different disciplinary epistemological positionalities. For example, political theorists might reflect values such as ‘deliberation’ or ‘participation’ more carefully but might more easily disregard ‘governance’ or ‘policy’ as positivist terms. Inversely, political scientists as well as geographers and sociologists who research political behavior might not be interested in philosophizing about governance’s ontological state of being and thus neglect the consequences of ontological essentialism. However, the ontological status of ‘governance’ (or lack thereof) cannot be dismissed as lofty philosophical engagement in a Shakespearian question à la ‘to be or not to be’. Matter-of-factly, an underdeveloped understanding of the ontological origins of governance creates analytical blind-spots that may result in explanatory impasses that incapacitate understanding of both collaboration and conflict between governance stakeholders. Because the assumption of pre-existing features of governance, including the leap of faith in consensus, might preclude a radical analysis of governance and policy-making, the conflict-theoretical perspective seeks to address the normative or ontological dimensions of governance and policy. While the thorough conceptualization of an ontology of governance would exceed the scope of this book, a post-foundational understanding of governance, assuming the absence of final grounds or reasons, inspires the empirical analysis to reconceptualize and potentially challenge the normatively clogged bias of governance studies, which predominantly focuses on positivity/consensus and positivism. Again, while a post-foundational approach is equally normative, it directs attention to the impossibility of consensus and pushes for a recognition of the constitutive and necessary dimension of conflict in governance. In short, this book aims to repoliticize the study of governance by challenging its ontological foundations from a perspective of conflict. Literatures on artistic activism (Boyd and Mitchell 2014; Cauter et al. 2011; Chatterton and Pickerill 2010; Duncombe 2002; Felshin 2006; Fırat and Kuryel 2011) and artistic self-organization (Dockx and Gielen 2015; Hebert and Szefer Karlsen 2013; Mader 2013) portray artist activists’ interventions

12 Introduction in processes of political and economic transformation. They conceptualize strategies cultural workers employ to protest existing systems of cultural, economic and political oppression. Understanding self-organization not as reactionary exercise but as a self-determined practice of alternative organization (Bain and Landau 2017a, 2017b), it becomes clear that self-organized artists and cultural workers perform political agency and (counter)power in potentially innovative ways. However, the role of artists and art collectives as policy-makers has remained understudied. Woddis (2013, p. 496) highlights this gap by pointing to the ‘scarcity of sustained or in-depth discussion of arts organisations and artists as participants in the policy process.’ She critiques the lack of empirical and theoretical knowledge about practices of political interaction between artists and cultural policy-makers. Hence, this book addresses this predicament by discussing a case that exceeds its local political context to uncover novel forms of political mobilization and representation, as well as the (de)construction of political legitimacy in various stages of policy-making processes. The conceptual developments aim to enrich both academics’ and practitioners’ perspectives on how to work together in the face of conflicts. Interconnecting policy and governance concepts with cultural sociological approaches to study artists’ micro-level political practices, this book seeks to enrich the analytical vocabulary of collective political behavior and representation in contested contexts. I enter ongoing debates among urban scholars such as sociologists, geographers, critical governance scholars, policy and social movement researchers and political theorists, as well as activists, artists, administrators and politicians, who are interested in the impacts of new political actors and their claims-making. Situated in the political and power- and policy-oriented production of ‘creative’ cities, and the concurrent contestations of this very narrative, the book sheds light on an innovative collaborative policy design process between formal and informal, alternatively legitimized policy stakeholders. Abstracting from the Berlin example, the case study invites activists and administrators alike to imagine and engage in actualizing the ‘creative’ city in ways that reflect and support the living and working conditions of local artists rather than grandly proclaiming one-size-fits-all models of policy support. It unpacks shifts of both institutional and procedural dimensions of cultural policy-making to understand how to navigate multi-stakeholder collaborative processes entrenched by ineradicable conflict. Aware of the diverse and partially dubious impacts of informal civil or commercial actors in political decision-making, which might erode legitimacy of existing democratic political institutions, the theoretical abstraction of the Koalition’s political critique and activity might offer analytical and explanatory potential to understand why some political actions are considered legitimate and others are not. New political movements might illuminate alternative routes to political action to respond to the multiple crises of legitimacy outlined above. Moreover, by unpacking how self-organized collective actors challenge dominant decision-making, the hypothesis of the

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supposedly omnipresent post-political condition can be partially repudiated. Instead of concealing the endlessly diverse manifestations and places of citizens performing politics today, I present a collectivity that circumvents and reinvents representative modes of political expression and action to restitute the irrevocably political dimension of politics. By sketching and theorizing reinterpretations of ‘the political’, the book traces the invincible power of conflict to change politics and illuminates some of its concrete manifestations of articulation, agency, representation and legitimacy. After briefly laying out the qualitative, interpretative research methodology, I introduce the diverse and increasingly politicizing landscape of Berlin’s institutional and independent cultural protagonists prior to the foundation of the Koalition (Chapter 2). Revealing the complexity of the historically grown, highly imbalanced cultural funding landscape serves as a precursor to the examination of the group’s conditions of emergence and mobilization. I explore what modes of articulation the Koalition employs to constitute itself as collective actor in Berlin’s cultural policy-making field, and how legitimacy is constructed by and ascribed to this collectivity (Chapter 3). Subsequently, I provide a reflection upon the chances and challenges regarding the group’s potential institutionalization (Chapter 4). Next, I analyze the construction of the policy outcome of CityTax2015 and discuss how and at what stage of the policy-making process different kinds of legitimacies were constructed (Chapter 5). I synthesize the findings in a theoretical distillate which outlines features of post-foundational political representation, and lastly, give an outlook on the political and conceptual implications of the empirical case study (Chapter 6). Overall, the objectives of the book are two-fold: First, to provide an exploratory, empirically-grounded analysis of the emergence and establishment of a new collective actor in Berlin’s cultural political arena and discourse. The close investigation of the Koalition’s articulatory, organizing and decision-making principles, as well as its policy- and governance-related activities, reveals a unique mode of political collaboration that might provide insights for other political and geographical contexts. Second, it offers a tentative conceptualization of modes of political articulation, representation and legitimacy that span beyond representative and/or democratic forms to outline emancipatory forms of the political, grounded in conflict. Both objectives aim to enrich practical and theoretical repertoires of urban political scholarship and seek to disperse insights derived from empirical analysis into ongoing and future debates about political agency and change.

Theoretical prelude Situated in post-foundational or post-Marxist political philosophy, I spread out a variety of theoretical concepts to examine the formation and articulation of a new collective cultural political actor. I understand the development of theories as practically and analytically inseparable from real-world

14 Introduction observation so that the introduced post-foundational theoretical framework serves to better understand empirical phenomena. Simultaneously, the empirical analysis shall better illustrate the conceptual advancement of modes of post-foundational political representation. Ontology of antagonism My central theoretical assumption is that human relations are undercut by an ontological dimension of antagonism. Antagonism is considered constitutive of political life or ‘the political’. Antagonism is described by Marchart (2013, p. 228; emphasis original) as a ‘fundamental blockade that inhibits any kind of closure of the social with itself toward a self-identical totality called “society”, and still precisely as blockade stimulates efforts of closure or foundation.’3 This ‘fundamental’ non-closure, or impossibility of society, permanently renews negotiations of conflict to construct social and political meaning. Hence, antagonism reveals itself as an instituting and destituting practice attempting to establish a ‘totality’ (e.g., ‘society’ or ‘state’). Marchart (2013, p. 229) considers antagonism as a constitutive element to found and un-found political relations. Paradoxically, antagonism prevents the complete or exhaustive fixation of meaning, power or identity, yet it preconditions identity- and meaning-making. In other words, the attempt at (de)constructing identity interrelates with a ‘constitutive outside’, which blocks the identity of the inside, thus enabling and incapacitating the construction of identity at the same time. Every space, discourse or identity requires an ‘other’ to constitute itself. Hence, even though any identity (or social objectivity) remains fragmented, precarious and dependent on a constitutive outside, the latter’s existence is a necessary and irreducible feature of antagonism. Antagonism in its universalizing tendency presents what Laclau (1990, p. 17) calls the ‘limit of all objectivity.’ This means that there ‘is’ no ultimate objectivity, final rationality or halt to the attempt at turning ‘something’ into an ‘everything’ (i.e., universality, absoluteness, society), even though ‘everything’ is grounded in ‘nothing’ (i.e., negativity, absence, antagonism). This radical negativity points to the structural impossibility to fully constitute an order of meaning or objectivity. As Laclau (1990, p. 19) states, ‘the dimension of negativity penetrates and is latent in any objectivity.’ Importantly, the negativity of antagonism does not replace a logic of presence, positivity or any other theory of absolute grounds or Truths (e.g., metaphysics, religion, science). If antagonism did seek to substitute positivism or other fundamentalisms or foundationalisms, antagonism would constitute merely another fundamentalism. Instead, the post-foundational approach to antagonism transcends the logic of positivity/ positivism by asserting the ‘radical undecidability’ (Laclau 1990, p. 27) of negativity and contingency. Marchart (2013, p. 276) summarizes: A post-foundational strategy certainly holds on the principle of negativity, but only to radicalize it and to set free its ontological potential.

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Decoupled from the logic of necessity (…) is it not the last ground of social (or philosophical) order, but instead marks exactly its [negativity’s] absence. This radicalization of the negativity principle corresponds with earlier remarks that the conflict-oriented framework toward collaboration seeks to present a political and analytical alternative to mainstream consensus-oriented and positivist governance theories. Highlighting the importance of contingency, defined by Laclau (1990, p. 19) as ‘that being whose essence does not entail its existence’, the latter is just as necessary and constitutive of antagonism as negativity. Contingency is radical because it cannot be fully absorbed by a positivist logic of necessity, but remains structurally ambiguous, undecidable or open as part of contingent social and political struggles. In conclusion, the radically negative and radically contingent practice of antagonism – constitutive of and for (the impossibility of) a full identity or society – is inherent in every configuration of power (Marchart 2013, p. 368). Mouffe’s development of antagonism toward agonism, adjusting Carl Schmitt’s understanding of political encounters as annihilating friend–enemy confrontations, provides a navigational tool to describe the transforming interactions in Berlin’s cultural political field. Mouffe (2013, p. 7) positions participants of agonistic political struggle as ‘adversaries’ or individual or collective subjects ‘with whom one shares a common allegiance to the democratic principles of “liberty and equality for all”, while disagreeing about their interpretation.’ This reiterates both the ineradicable dimension of conflict in antagonistic theory and links the agonistic encounter to the principles of ‘liberty and equality for all’. Since the conflict of interpretation about what ‘liberty’, ‘equality’ or ‘justice’ mean persists, this definition encapsulates the ongoing struggle for recognition, political influence and legitimacy in agonistic exchanges. While Mouffe’s conceptualization of agonism partially tilts toward normative advocacy for European republicanism, thus constricting the theoretical development of radical post-foundational politics (Marttila and Gengnagel 2017, p. 115), Mouffe’s conceptual trope of agonism and antagonism lends itself to examine the Koalition, which temporarily transitions between antagonism and agonism. In this empirical investigation, I explore how political interactions unfold when underlying antagonisms are uncovered, whether agonism can prevent depoliticization and, ultimately, what agonistic political life could look like. Marchart (2013, p. 448) problematizes the ontology of antagonism by stating that ‘the ontological condition of antagonism never fully overlaps with the ontic space of the social.’ To differentiate between ontology and ontic, the latter circumscribes the realm negotiated via agonism, while the former captures antagonism. Antagonism and agonism are not neatly separable, but always interpenetrating. So, while Marchart is right to point out that antagonism does not overlap with the ontic space, the statement needs

16 Introduction to be reversed to highlight that ontic space also never fully overlaps with the ontological condition of antagonism. In practical terms, this dilemma points to the inherent tension between social scientific work (in the ontic realm) and theoretical engagement (in the ontological realm). This book negotiates the risk of banalizing or stretching theoretical claims, while conducting an empirical analysis can also only do or prove so much. While a structural indeterminacy of empirical phenomena persists, theory development is co-dependent on untamable empirical realities to uncover the constitutive antagonisms of any society (Hagemann 2014a). Drawing this overview to a close, the interactions between the Koalition and the cultural administration are captured as an agonistic encounter rather than an antagonistic clash between enemies. The differentiations between ‘we’ and ‘they’, necessary to construct individual or collective a(nta)gonistic subjects, simultaneously inhibit the full constitution of identity. As the dividing lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are multiple and contested, the Koalition’s approach employs ‘disruptive politics’ (Dikeç and Swyngedouw 2017, p. 14), which ‘invite[s] a reflexive withdrawal from the accepted givens, from normalized and repetitive practices, and from ordering principles of political communities by interrupting such structures and practices.’ It is precisely this ‘reflexive withdrawal’ from established, hegemonic orders, leading to agonistic insurgence, that will be sketched out. Politics and the political The conceptual trope of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ expresses one reflexive manifestation of the movement between antagonism and agonism. Notably, this distinction is analytical, and cannot neatly dissect empirically entangled political expressions. Mouffe (2005, p. 9) considers ‘the political’ as the dimension of antagonism which I take to be constitutive of human societies, while by “politics” I mean the set of practices and institutions through which an order is created, organizing human coexistence in the context of conflictuality provided by the political. In this distinction, ‘the political’ is understood as an ongoing precarious struggle permeated by antagonism. In agonism, the antagonism of ‘the political’ is reduced to an issue of ‘politics’ in a temporary and controversial passage. As specified above, agonism does not lose its antagonistic potential, but reconfigures political interactions among diverse actors. Just as the Koalition temporarily moves from antagonism to agonism, the group oscillates between ‘the political’ and ‘politics’. Taking their collective articulation as a moment or movement of ‘the political’, the cultural administration with its institutionalized practices and routines is respectively positioned as a collective manifestation of ‘politics’.

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Swyngedouw (2011) discusses the passage from the political to politics as a ‘colonization of the political by politics’ which occurs when the ontological dimensions of ‘the political’ are reduced to elements of ‘politics’ as uncontroversial technocratic or managerial decisions. Against this colonization by ‘politics’, I seek to rehabilitate the vibrancy of ‘the political’ by keeping the ever-present possibility of antagonism open. Instituting lines of distinction in a field of multiple antagonisms, the hybrid constellations and transformations between politics and the political open analytical avenues to uncover new modalities of both the concrete and the more encompassing, value-driven ramifications of political life. (Counter-)hegemony and interlocked logics of equivalence and difference To draw this brief introduction of key theoretical concepts to a close, Laclau and Mouffe position a Gramsci-inspired notion of hegemony as a central pillar to understand antagonism as a constitutive force of social and political life. As a ‘response to a crisis’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, p. 7), the notion of hegemony lends itself to address the multiple crises of representation, identity or legitimacy outlined above. Hagemann (2016, p. 27) understands hegemony as ‘realized through domination, integration and dynamic adaptability. Discursive hegemony means (…) ruling of certain patterns of articulation and discursive formations.’ Highlighting the centrality of articulation for hegemonic rule, hegemonic articulatory practices may uncover transitions from ‘the political’ to (hegemonic) ‘politics’ (Hagemann 2014b, p. 100). In other words, the transition of the political to politics might rearticulate discursive meaning to establish new hegemonies. Laclau (2008, p. 57) defines four features of hegemonic relations. First, hegemony is constitutively interwoven with the unevenness of power. Second, hegemony comes into being when the dichotomy of universality versus particularity is transcended. Third, a hegemonic relation necessitates the production of an empty signifier, instituted by a position or agent who claims the universal (regardless of the impossibility of that attempt). Fourth, hegemonies are representative relations that influence the emergence of new political and social orders. Hegemony thus permeates negotiations of power via political representation, making the latter constitutive of hegemonic as well as counter-hegemonic relations (Vasilev 2015). Laclau (2008, p. 66) strengthens the link between hegemony and representation by stating that the representation of something unrepresentable institutes ‘terms of the paradox within which hegemony is constructed (…) we are dealing with an object which is at the same time impossible and necessary.’ This paradox of hegemony consequently becomes a paradox of representation, both of which are impossible to resolve. Laclau (2008, p. 81) ultimately describes hegemony as ‘the name for this unstable relation (…) our way of addressing this infinite process of investments which draws its dignity from its very failure.’ Qualifying hegemony as an ethical attempt to act in anticipation of transcending fullness, ‘only if the materiality of the investment is not fully absorbed by the act of investment as

18 Introduction such – if the distance between the ontic and the ontological (…) is never filled – can we have hegemony and politics (but, I would argue, also ethics)’ (Laclau 2008, p. 84). Within these disconnects between politics and the political, ontic and ontology, agonism and antagonism, the hegemonic order is relationally bound to counter-hegemony. Mouffe (2007, p. 3) describes hegemonic articulatory practices to institute social and political meaning, yet ‘[e]very hegemonic order is susceptible of being challenged by counter-hegemonic practices, i.e. practices which will attempt to disarticulate the existing order so as to install another form of hegemony.’ Two conclusions can be drawn from this. First, articulatory practices are hegemonic practices when they aim to transform the existing hegemonic order via dis- or rearticulation. Put briefly, Laclau and Mouffe (2001, p. 136) state that ‘[w]ithout equivalence and without frontiers, it is impossible to speak strictly of hegemony.’ The presence of struggle and conflict, as well as the fluctuating lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’, are empirically observable in the example of the Koalition. Second, any hegemonic order is stabilized and simultaneously called into question by corresponding (counter-)hegemonic articulations. Mouffe’s (2008) understanding of artistic practices as counter-hegemonic strategies lends itself to position the Koalition as a counter-hegemonic actor in Berlin’s cultural field who contests the hegemonic narrative of the ‘creative’ city advanced by the cultural administration and other civic leaders. With regard to the political potential of artist-led activism, Mouffe (2013, p. 104) states that counterhegemonic artistic interventions need to challenge existing hegemony by interconnecting new and old discursive elements into new configurations of hegemony. In Berlin, the Koalition forges for precisely this interconnection of new and old elements in its specific cultural political context. Within this assemblage of new and old components of discourse, logics of equivalence and of difference constantly rival. Laclau and Mouffe (2001, p. 128) understand equivalence as absorption of positive contents of discursive elements. Rooted in radical negativity, the absorption of positive features makes differential elements temporarily equivalent in their difference to a mutual, radical outside. Hence, if ‘all the differential objective determinations of its terms [have been] lost, then identity can only be given either by a positive determination underlying them all, or by their common reference to something external’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, p. 127). In the case of the Koalition, its ‘common reference to something external’ is constitutive for its collectivization, identity formation and articulation vis-à-vis the cultural administration (i.e., the common external difference). Stitching together differential elements in a chain of equivalence, however, means neither that the logic of equivalence permanently outweighs the logic of difference, nor that equivalence could ultimately hegemonize difference. Rather, equivalence and difference continuously subvert each other, and thus maintain the final ungroundability of either logic in processes of identity or subject formation.

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Coming full circle in the discussion of (counter-)hegemony and power, Laclau’s (2007, p. 101) understanding of emancipation as analytical counterpart and precondition of power explains that emancipation ‘must constitute itself as power, there will be a plurality of powers – and, as a result, a plurality of contingent and partial emancipations.’ Nested in the structural impossibility of both pure power and pure emancipation, both projects remain incomplete in their (re)claiming of (counter-)hegemonic spaces and narratives. Within this interconnectedness of power/hegemony and emancipation/counter-hegemony, the emancipatory (counter-)hegemonic actor Koalition is now introduced in its local political terrain.

Notes 1 I refrain from idealized or essentialist notions of ‘the artist’ as a subject with a specific ontological status or capacity. I define ‘artists’ via interviewees’ selfdefinitions. 2 Although creative city language has not penetrated Berlin’s cultural policy discourses as explicitly as other cities, Berlin’s (cultural) economic policy-makers have tried to capitalize on the symbolical resources of Berlin’s creative scenes (Landau and Merkel 2018; Merkel 2011). 3 I have translated/paraphrased German-speaking quotations if English translations were not available.

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22 Introduction Isaac, Larry (2009): Movements, aesthetics, and markets in literary change. Making the American labor problem novel. In American Sociological Review 74 (6), pp. 938–965. Jessop, Bob (2014): Repoliticising depoliticisation. Theoretical preliminaries on some responses to the American fiscal and Eurozone debt crises. In Policy and Politics 42 (2), pp. 207–223. Kong, Lily (2012): City branding. In Helmut K. Anheier; Yudhishthir Raj Isar (eds.) Cities, cultural policy and governance. London and Thousands Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp. 87–98. Kucher, Katharina (2013): Öffentliche Kulturförderung der Freien Szene Berlin. Eine Politikfeldanalyse. Unpublished masters thesis, pp. 1–74. Laclau, Ernesto (1990): New reflections on the revolution of our time. London and New York, NY: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (2007): Emancipation(s). London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (2008): Identity and hegemony. The role of universality in the constitution of political logics. In Judith Butler; Ernesto Laclau; Slavoj Žižek (eds.) Contingency, hegemony, universality. Contemporary dialogues on the left. London and New York, NY: Verso, pp. 44–90. Laclau, Ernesto; Mouffe, Chantal (2001): Hegemony and socialist strategy. Towards a radical democratic politics. London and New York, NY: Verso. Landau, Friederike (2017): Policy failure as conflictual consensus. An a(nta)gonistic approach to cultural policymaking in Berlin. Boston, MA: American Association of Geographers (AAG). Landau, Friederike; Merkel, Janet (2018): Mobilizing alternative modes of cultural governance in Berlin. In Jens Kaae Fisker; Letizia Chiappini; Lee Pugalis; Antonella Bruzzese (eds.) Enabling urban alternatives, crises, contestation and cooperation. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 109–132. Landau, Friederike; Roskamm, Nikolai (2018): [Un]settling the city. In Engagée 6/7 (Radical Cities), pp. 73–77. Landry, Charles (2008): The creative city. A toolkit for urban innovators. Abingdon and New York, NY: Earthscan. Larner, Wendy (2015): The limits of post-politics. Rethinking radical social enterprise. In Japhy Wilson; Erik Swyngedouw (eds.) The post-political and its discontents. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 189–208. Lee, Caroline W.; Lingo, Elizabeth Long (2011): The “got art?” paradox. Questioning the value of art in collective action. In Poetics 39 (4), pp. 316–335. Lewis, Justin; Miller, Toby (2003): Critical cultural policy studies. A reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Lijphart, Arend (2008): Thinking about democracy. Power sharing and majority rule in theory and practice. New York, NY: Routledge. Lijphart, Arend (2012): Patterns of democracy. Government forms and performance in thirty-six countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Löw, Martina (2008): Soziologie der Städte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Mader, Rachel (2013): Radikal ambivalent. Engagement und Verantwortung in Kunst, Kultur und Theorie heute. Zürich: Diaphanes. Marchart, Oliver (2013): Das unmögliche Objekt. Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Markusen, Ann (2006): Urban development and the politics of a creative class. Evidence from a study of artists. In Environment and Planning A 38 (10), pp. 1921–1940.

Introduction

23

Markusen, Ann; Gadwa, Anne (2010): Arts and culture in urban or regional planning. A review and research agenda. In Journal of Planning Education and Research 29 (3), pp. 379–391. Marttila, Tomas; Gengnagel, Vincent (2017): Die postfundamentalistische Diskursanalyse und die Engpässe kritischer Praxis. In Oliver Marchart (ed.) Ordnungen des Politischen. Einsätze und Wirkungen der Hegemonietheorie Ernesto Laclaus. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, pp. 103–127. Mayer, Margit; Thörn, Catharina; Thörn, Håkan (2016): Urban uprisings. Challenging neoliberal urbanism in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. McGuigan, Jim (2004): Rethinking cultural policy. Maidenhead: Open University. McLean, Heather (2014a): Digging into the creative city. A feminist critique. In Antipode 46 (3), pp. 669–690. McLean, Heather E. (2014b): Cracks in the creative city. The contradictions of community arts practice. In International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (6), pp. 2156–2173. Merkel, Janet (2011): Kreativität und Stadt. Zu Rolle, Wirkung und Formen horizontaler Kooperationsformen in der Beförderung der Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft. Unpublished dissertation. Mohr, Henning; Landau, Friederike (2016): Interventionen als kreative Praxisform: Die Suche nach Neuheit als gesellschaftliches Phänomen. In Julia-Lena Reinermann; Friederike Behr (eds.) Die Experimentalstadt. Kreativität und die kulturelle Dimension der Nachhaltigen Entwicklung. Darmstadt: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 59–76. Mouffe, Chantal (2005): On the political. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Mouffe, Chantal (2007): Artistic activism and agonistic spaces. In ART&RESEARCH: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods 1 (2), pp. 1–5. Mouffe, Chantal (2008): Critique as counter-hegemonic intervention. European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics (eiPCP). http://eipcp.net/transversal/0808/ mouffe/en. Mouffe, Chantal (2009): The democratic paradox. London and New York, NY: Verso. Mouffe, Chantal (2013): Agonistics. Thinking the world politically. London and New York, NY: Verso. Mulcahy, Kevin (2006): Cultural policy. Definitions and theoretical approaches. In Journal of Arts Management, Law, & Society 35 (4), pp. 319–330. Newman, Saul (2014): Occupy and autonomous political. In Alexandros Kioupkiolis; Giorgos Katsambekis (eds.) Radical democracy and collective movements today. The biopolitics of the multitude versus the hegemony of the people. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. 93–111. O’Connor, Justin; Shaw, Kate (2014): What next for the creative city? In City, Culture and Society 5 (3), pp. 165–170. Parker, Brenda (2009): Beyond the class act. Gender and race in the ‘creative city’ discourse. In Judith N. DeSena (ed.) Gender in an urban world. Bingley: Emerald, pp. 201–232. Peck, Jamie (2005): Struggling with the creative class. In International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29 (4), pp. 740–770. Peck, Jamie (2007): The creativity fix. In Fronesis 24, pp. 1–12. Peck, Jamie (2012): Recreative city. Amsterdam, vehicular ideas and the adaptive spaces of creativity policy. In International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36 (3), pp. 462–485.

24 Introduction Pierre, Jon; Peters, Guy B. (2000): Governance, politics, and the state. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Rancière, Jacques (2008): Disagreement. Politics and philosophy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rancière, Jacques (2010): Dissensus. On politics and aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury. Raunig, Gerald; Ray, Gene; Wuggenig, Ulf (2011): Critique of creativity. Precarity, subjectivity and resistance in the ‘creative industries’. London: MayFly Books. Reckwitz, Andreas (2011): Die Erfindung der Kreativität. Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Redaelli, Eleonora (2011): Analyzing the “creative city” governance. Relational processes in Columbus, Ohio. In City, Culture and Society 2 (2), pp. 85–91. Schuster, Mark J. (2002): Informing cultural policy. The research and information infrastructure. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research. Siebel, Walter (2016): Die Kultur der Stadt. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Swyngedouw, Erik (2005): Governance innovation and the citizen. The Janus face of governance-beyond-the-state. In Urban Studies 42 (11), pp. 1991–2006. Swyngedouw, Erik (2008): Where is the political? Antipode lecture, Institute of British Geographers/Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference 2007. London. Swyngedouw, Erik (2009): The antinomies of the postpolitical city. In search of a democratic politics of environmental production. In International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33 (3), pp. 601–20. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00859.x. Swyngedouw, Erik (2011): Interrogating post-democratization. Reclaiming egalitarian political spaces. In Political Geography 30 (7), pp. 370–380. Uitermark, Justus; Nicholls, Walter (2014): From politicization to policing. The rise and decline of new social movements in Amsterdam and Paris. In Antipode 46 (4), pp. 970–991. Vasilev, George (2015): The uneasy alliance between consensus and democracy. In Review of Politics 77 (1), pp. 73–98. Woddis, Jane (2013): Arts practitioners in the cultural policy process. Spear-carriers or speaking parts? In International Journal of Cultural Policy 20 (4), pp. 496–512. Žižek, Slavoj (2009): The ticklish subject. The absent centre of political ontology. London: Verso. Zukin, Sharon (2014): Loft living. Culture and capital in urban change. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

2

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape

Berlin’s diverse and internationally renowned contemporary art scene and its cultural political ramifications are investigated in an interpretive and postpositivist framework to ‘interpret interpretations’ (Howarth and Griggs 2012; Yanow 1996).1 Negotiating proximity and distance as a researcher of social movements, I consider research an ‘open-ended and speculative course of constructing subjects by simultaneously constructing the discontinuous contexts in which they act and are acted upon’ (Marcus 1995, p. 98; Melucci 1996). Via qualitative coding (Saldaña 2009), I condensed the wealth and multifacetedness of almost 1,000 pages of interview transcripts, abstracting from concrete, empirically-grounded to more theoretical or analytical framings that criss-cross the discussion of material. In reference to grounded theory methods (Corbin and Strauss 2015; Kelle 1994), I consider data and theory generation as non-binary deliberation between induction and deduction, subsumed as ‘abductive’ (Breuer 2010; Strübing 2005). Two analytical foci undergird this work: 1 2

Conflict | Consensus – sketching a(nta)gonistic relations between political actors; Particularity | Universality – circumscribing modalities of political representation.

I am following Bowen’s (2006) notion of sensitizing concepts, understood as navigational tools to approximate, organize and understand complex narratives. The first sensitizing concept pair is inspired by Mouffe’s (2005, p. 31) account of ‘conflictual consensus’:2 Consensus is needed on the institutions constitutive of democracy and on the “ethico-political” values informing the political association – liberty and equality for all – but there will always be disagreement concerning their meaning and the way they should be implemented. In a pluralist democracy such disagreements are not only legitimate but also necessary. They provide the stuff of democratic politics.

26 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape Without the minimal structuring lines of respecting ‘equality and liberty for all’, democracy cannot be established. Framing these values as contested, Mouffe emphasizes the necessary and legitimate dimension of conflict in pluralist democracies. The second sensitizing concept pair is sustained by Laclau’s (2007a, p. 28) assumption that the ‘universal emerges out of the particular not as some principle underlying and explaining the particular, but as an incomplete horizon suturing a dislocated particular.’ This becomes relevant in the Koalition’s entangled position as a collective representative who strategically places a discursive universality (i.e., ‘the independent scene’) as substitute for an empirical particularity. Both analytical themes serve to guide through, shape and sharpen the analytical depth of narratives, spanned between consensus and conflict, and particularity and universality respectively, among the constituent organizations of the Koalition, as well as between the cultural administration and artist activists.

Berlin, international contemporary art hotspot Berlin has gained a significant reputation as an international hotspot for contemporary artistic production. In addition to the artistic radiance, the city has brought forth artist-led political movements, whose self-organization has inspired other German and European artist-led movements. The local context and landscape of cultural political actors that existed prior to the Koalition are briefly delineated to introduce the atmospheres, discourses, opportunities (or lack thereof) out of which the group was founded. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, ‘free’ spaces such as empty lots, vacant industrial sites and unused or unrenovated residential buildings created a plethora of opportunities for artists. Intermediary or temporary use of spaces by artists and cultural workers was typical for Berlin’s cultural landscape in the 1990s up until the early 2000s (Groth and Corijn 2005). While Berlin’s urban activist context has been comprehensively summarized (Bernt et al. 2013), empirical studies of Berlin’s contemporary art scene and artrelated activism remain scarce (exceptions are Colomb 2012; Grésillon 2002; Institut für Strategieentwicklung 2010, 2011; Jakob 2009; Novy and Colomb 2013; Wöbken and Landau 2013, Wostrak 2008). Currently, approximately 40,000 to 50,000 independent local and international cultural producers and artists work and live in Berlin. More than 200 contemporary (commercial) art galleries (Wöbken and Landau 2014), over 175 museums and collections, about 150 artist-run project spaces (Marguin 2012, 2014) and a quickly growing start-up scene with co-working and other collaborative production spaces (Merkel 2015; Schmidt et al. 2013) contribute to Berlin’s creative fabric. With increasing international interest in Berlin’s art scene, the competition and pressure to maintain affordable studio and rehearsal space increases for Berlin-based artists (Mohr and Landau 2016). The (in)famous slogan ‘poor, but sexy’ (Spiegel Online 2014)

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 27 by former mayor and Senator for Culture Klaus Wowereit has become a lived yet bitter reality for many Berlin artists. Resulting from controversial events such as the top-down decision to abolish the art fair art forum Berlin in 2011 and the debate about a Kunsthalle (Art Hall), the landscape of local artist stakeholders has politicized since the 2010s (Landau 2016). Critiques around the performanceoriented Leistungsschau junger Kunst aus Berlin (Competitive Performance Show of Young Art from Berlin) as well as the controversial summit K2 (2012) illustrate attempts at creating dialogue between Berlin’s art scenes and the cultural administration. K2 was organized by the Senatskanzlei on the exclusive invitation of about 100 selected visual artists, art critics, journalists and representatives from prestigious cultural institutions. The cultural administration wanted to discuss the city’s cultural political future in workshops, led by professionals from the field, over the course of two days. Prior to the event, cultural workers had gathered to discuss their skepticism about the exclusionary politics of invitation, debating whether (or not) to boycott or ‘bust’ the event. Cultural administrators have described K2 as an ‘example of the un-coordinated waste of money’ (July 28, 2015), demonstrating awareness that the event was not well regarded among the targeted artist stakeholders. In another effort to institutionalize dialogue between the cultural administration and independent (visual arts) scene, the Senatskanzlei contracted artists to develop a concept for a longer-term dialogue between independent and institutional contemporary art actors (Haben und Brauchen 2014). These trials of multi-stakeholder collaboration neither produced material improvements for the independent scene nor did they increase trust or transparency. Bearing this prehistory in mind, the Koalition emerged in and out of an already conflictual atmosphere. Due to Berlin’s status as both Germany’s federal capital and a city state with limited municipal fiscal and legal tasks and responsibilities, the city’s arts and cultural funding context is multi-layered and complex. Funding stems from various governmental levels, which makes it difficult to determine the exact budget spent on arts and culture. The historical parallelism of former East and West Germany, each with their own cultural infrastructures of state theaters, communal art galleries, museums and heritage sites, brings about a diverse and dispersed landscape of cultural institutions. Museums and collections of national importance receive funding from the federal government, as well as partial funds from Berlin’s cultural budget, putting the latter under financial strain for nationally prestigious projects. Federal initiatives such as Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Federal Cultural Foundation) and Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital Cultural Fund) provide support for cultural projects between institutions and independent cultural actors, as well as arts education programs. Nonetheless, Koalition speakers have called the Hauptstadtkulturfonds ‘dysfunctional’ (January 28, 2015) for independent cultural producers. Furthermore, matching equity capital from European programs (e.g., the

28 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape European Regional Development Fund (EFRE), European Social Fund (ESF), Creative Europe) increases the available funding volume for Berlin-based art production. Apart from the Senatskanzlei, which mainly administers cultural funds, other senate departments fund arts-related projects (e.g., cultural education, public art, diversity initiatives). In 2013, Berlin’s Cultural Budget encompassed 415 million euros, rising to 441 (2014), 438 (2015), 468 (2016) and 508 (2017) million euros (Berlin Open Data 2018). Out of the general budget, which encompassed 22.5 billion euros in 2014/15 and roughly 23 billion euros in 2016/17, about 3 percent is spent on arts and culture (Zawatka-Gerlach 2012). Lately, the budget brought an additional 7.5 million euros (2016) and 9.5 million euros (2017) to the independent scene (Wildermann 2015). Besides these positive tendencies, the Koalition’s initial claim to leverage ‘fresh money’ for independent cultural production through the City Tax, first referred to as the City Tax for the Arts, was based on the stark imbalance between ‘institutional’ funding for cultural establishments (i.e., operas, state theaters, public libraries) and ‘project’ funding for independent projects. About 95 percent of public funds is spent on ‘institutions’, respectively 5 percent on projectbased funding or production grants (Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in 2011, p. 10). Within this inequity, it is difficult to pinpoint how many independent artists also work in cultural institutions as part-time or temporary employees, or how many producers self-identify as ‘independent’ artists while pursuing other (non-arts-related) jobs. While neither the number of employed cultural producers (estimated at 2,000) or independent artists (estimated at 40,000 to 50,000) can be statistically verified, Koalition representatives perceive the current funding imbalance to be ‘out of sync with reality’ (March 31, 2014). Speakers voice criticism that there is no political will to shift proportions of the overall cultural funding landscape toward the independent scene and reproach the one-sidedness of funding. Koalition representatives argue that the ‘institution-heaviness’ of the funding scheme plays out to the detriment of artistic production, privileging artistic presentation (January 21, 2015). Overall, the discrepancy between symbolical valuation and capitalization of Berlin’s independent art scene, and the material support for this artistic capital, is criticized. The Koalition’s original claim, geared toward attracting policy-makers’ attention to the significance of the independent scene, was compellingly linked to marking artists’ manifold contributions to the city’s tourist boom, and in that, reappropriating the instrumentalization of their input. Despite criticisms about the dominance of cultural institutions in the funding landscape, the Koalition does not act in direct opposition to cultural institutions or positions them as an antagonistic ‘them’. Rather, Koalition speakers identify commonalities in the shared lack of funding and sufficient resources. Long-pending tariff-related increases for employees of cultural institutions in the Cultural Budget 2014/15 were not ‘used’ by the Koalition to oppose or scandalize the numerically growing disparity between

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 29 cultural institutions and the independent scene (which received comparatively marginal increases). After providing insight into the material differences between cultural institutions and the independent scene, the heavy underfunding begs the question why Berlin’s independent cultural scenes did and do not receive more funding from cultural budgets. What (implicit) priorities or aesthetic trajectories are reflected in the current budgetary distributions? What (underlying) understandings of art and culture are imagined (and funded) to represent the ‘creative’ city of Berlin? Put simply, the material representation of culture – manifest in the large part of funds going toward cultural institutions and cultural presentation rather artistic production – might be indicative of a hegemonic notion of culture or the ‘creative’ city that has long favored cultural conservation or the presentation of cultural artefacts over contemporary cultural production. Against this backdrop, the Koalition addresses the partially imposed binary of ‘underground’ and ‘high’ culture to establish a non-threatening balance between institutions and independent production. In their agonistic approach, which neither demonizes nor blames cultural institutions as a money-sucking ‘other’ depriving the independent scene of urgently needed resources, Koalition speakers understand their mission as a ‘corrective’ or ‘counter-weight’ to the existing institution-heavy cultural field. They seek to extend their nonconfrontational approach toward the recognition of different modes of artistic production as pertaining to a unique cultural landscape characteristic of the city’s identity as a ‘creative’ city. In this agonistic logic, cultural institutions are just as much part of the cultural fabric as independent producers. Consequently, the reorganization of the funding landscape should not be considered in a framework of absolute gains where one party wins only at the price at others’ losses, a Koalition speaker states (December 17, 2013): ‘We don’t want to take from the ones to give it to the others, so we need fresh money (…) that is the very simple construction.’ This ‘simple construction’ goes beyond zero-sum thinking and embodies the Koalition’s understanding of the cultural funding landscape as an agonistic and interdependent constellation of artistic production and presentation rather than an antagonistic battlefield.

Collective cultural actors before the Koalition While the discussion of the great number and variety of arts associations in Berlin’s cultural field would exceed the scope of this book, two artist-led organizations have particularly shaped the cultural political terrain prior to the formation of the Koalition in early 2012. Gaining insight into their organizational structures and political goals hems the specific collectivization of the Koalition because they resemble, but also significantly differ from, one another. By first looking at the critical discursive interventions of Haben und Brauchen (To Have and To Need; H&B), and subsequently at Rat für die Künste (Council for the Arts; Rat), two differential elements or ‘constitutive outsides’ to the gap-filling position of the Koalition become visible. After

30 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape the schematic discussion of H&B and the Rat, I introduce the genrespecific ‘member’ organizations of the Koalition in ascending order of their institutional age. The tabular summary of the pre-existing organizational structures (Table 2.1) provides the groundwork to then reconstruct the Koalition’s articulation. Haben und Brauchen In early 2011, H&B made a striking first public impression with an open letter to Klaus Wowereit, ruling mayor and Senator for Culture at the time. Sharply criticizing the planned exhibition called Leistungsschau junger Kunst aus Berlin (Competitive Performance Show of Young Art from Berlin), the petition assembled over 2,000 signatories that openly disapproved of the exhibition’s neoliberal rhetoric as well as the instrumentalization and exploitation of artistic work for purposes of city marketing and the economization of art (Haben und Brauchen 2011; Jakob 2013). The idea of the performance-oriented exhibition ignited artists’ feelings of injustice (Marguin 2014, p. 10). Artists and curators sought to initiate a transparent, public discussion about the long-term effects of the planned temporary exhibition, which was to be held near Berlin’s main train station. After the first open letter, H&B published its Manifesto in early 2012, which has been continuously referenced by cultural protagonists in Berlin and beyond, including the Koalition. H&B members have been invited to national and international conversations about concerns of artistic self-organization. Speakers perceive the Manifesto to have emerged out of the ‘anger’ or ‘outrage’ from the independent scene (March 31, 2014). Criticizing the appropriation of artists’ input without them benefitting from the hype, H&B ‘speak[s] out resolutely against this construction of the success story “Art in Berlin”, a narrative which glosses over contradictions that are felt everywhere in this city, where cultural producers stay poor even though they work nonstop’ (2012, p. 4). Distinctive criteria of H&B are its lack of concrete political demands, lack of formal organization and few concerted actions in public spaces. Koalition speakers self-describe as more ‘pushing’ and ‘more proactive than H&B’ (September 5, 2014). Put differently, H&B is positioned as ‘them’ in contrast to the Koalition’s ‘we’. Overall, relationships between the two groups have been characterized as positive and constructive. Stressing the ‘collegial coexistence’, Koalition speakers view H&B as having indirectly helped them organize (March 31, 2014): It was great that H&B had set the pace already (…) because nobody had the desire to communicate on a completely different level (…) it took the pressure off such a self-definition [independent scene]. The different levels of communication allude to H&B’s initial gatherings, which had assembled the general frustration lingering in Berlin’s independent

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 31 scenes, so that the Koalition proceeded to build on these sentiments by articulating more concrete political requests. Another Koalition speaker states (December 14, 2015): ‘We could only afford this luxury to play this completely pragmatic game because H&B existed (…) both initiatives have always acted in relation to one another.’ Hence, H&B’s critical injections, providing a platform for discontent, not only created a forum of overarching critique, but also evened the path and accelerated the Koalition’s emergence as a pragmatic carrier of demands. In other words, the Koalition could appear less antagonistic or ‘ideological’ because that discourse had already been initiated (and is partially continued) by H&B even though some Koalition speakers view the group as having lost persistence and falling apart. In sum, the emergence of the Koalition is co-dependent on the ‘constitutive other’ of H&B, making room to position itself as not H&B. Rat für die Künste Both Koalition and Senatskanzlei actors confirm that the Rat has leveraged great policy achievements for Berlin’s art scene (e.g., a fund equipped with 1.5 million euros since 2008 to advance cultural education). Established in 1994, the Rat unites representatives from cultural institutions as well as independent cultural producers (which are usually a minority) and has given impulse to the establishment of the federal cultural treaty Hauptstadtkulturvertrag. The Rat’s working groups discuss thematically-distinct areas of expertise and engage in dialogue with policy-makers. A Rat spokesperson states there is a ‘positive, solidary relationship between us and Koalition, but not agreement on all points’ as well as ‘overlaps, but also conflicts’ between the two actors (February 9, 2015). The most notable difference between the organizations is their mode of democratic representation. While Rat members are elected in a public vote, Koalition speakers are not formally elected or appointed by Berlin’s artist population.3 While both associations assemble forms of artistic production in overarching ‘transdisciplinary’ organizations, Koalition speakers view the Rat as placing more focus on the mediation or depiction of art, rather than art production (January 21, 2015). With the missing representation of individual producers’ voices, this perceived representative deficiency of the Rat facilitates the Koalition’s appearance as stepping into what Hajer and Wagenaar (2003, p. 175) call an ‘institutional void’ assuming that ‘there are no clear rules and norms according to which politics is to be conducted and policy measures are to be agreed upon.’ In other words, the Koalition seeks to occupy the gap of political representation that the Rat does not cover. Comparing organizational strategies, a Koalition spokesperson observes that it is more persistent in its claims, while the Rat might be willing ‘to think about alternatives, about detours’ (February 13, 2015). Criticizing the temporary inactivity of the Rat, its loss of significance evokes complaints on the side of the Koalition (December 17, 2013):

32 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape Where is the Akademie der Künste, where is Rat für die Künste? They are not at all part of the discussion. They are not at all present (…) Koalition might not even have had to exist if the Rat had done its job properly (…) [The Rat] became so irrelevant that their involvement morphed into a right of proposal (…) We [the Koalition] are quicker with press releases, we are more effective with it; we find more acceptance with a broad public. This is not meant to be a relation of rivalry. It would be great if they [the Rat] would do their job right. Aiming to ‘fill’ the political place that the Rat left unoccupied, the Koalition describes its own constitution as necessary and compensatory to that lack (January 21, 2015): ‘Of course, the Koalition formed itself because the Rat could not be that body.’ In conclusion, the (perceived) absence of the Rat reinforced the Koalition’s presence, activity and representative offer as a collective artist-led actor for the independent scene. In the eyes of the cultural administration, the Rat is appreciated as a long-standing reliable consultative partner. Cultural administrators speak positively about its diverse and low-threshold, democratically elected form to represent both institutional and independent actors at various political levels (November 2, 2015): ‘It [the Rat] tries to paint a good picture of culture in Berlin (…) so we always showed ourselves to be very open.’ The administration’s self-acclaimed ‘openness’ importantly indicates the executive’s recognition of the group due to its assumed representative status. While the Senatskanzlei reveals a selective apprehension of the Rat as representative of independent cultural producers, thinking independent producers are already represented there, the factual underrepresentation of independent scene actors matter-of-factly differentiates the former from the Koalition. To conclude, even though both organizations share features such as transdisciplinarity and a non-confrontational exchange with politicians and the cultural administration, the Koalition demarcates its position by underlining the Rat’s shortcomings, such as a lack of organizational agility and the underrepresentation of artist practitioners’ needs. Genre-specific associations merging into the Koalition The genre-specific associations constituting the Sprecher*innenkreis (Round of Spokespeople, SK)4 of the Koalition display largely different political, institutional, financial, personnel and ideological resources. Examining these differences, which equalize into the agonistic collectivity of the Koalition, captures the individual cultural political pasts of existing organizations that shape the Koalition’s current and future political demands. I demonstrate how the differences regarding size, composition, funding situation, age of organization and (democratic) organization of membership base, preexisting relationships with the cultural administration and other artist-led organizations facilitate, reinforce and inhibit the construction of the group’s

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 33 overarching political claims and communicative practices. The systematization of the genre-specific associations summarizes their respective assets and challenges (Table 2.1). The equalization of differences is conceptualized by Marchart (2013, p. 316) as a ‘swinging’ of difference into equivalence (and vice versa): [T]he construction of equivalences along antagonistic lines of rupture [which] suspend[s] positions, distributions, boundaries or differentiated functions. In the moment of antagonism, formerly existing field rules and positions are revoked and made to be articulated anew. Every fight that wants to change the rules of the game must take the passage through antagonism. The ‘passage through antagonism’ sheds light on the different perceptions about consensual and conflictual relationships within and among the Koalition’s ‘member’ organizations. Interrelated with the tensions between equivalence and difference, I illustrate why genre-specific organizations have joined the Koalition, as well as who seemingly benefits or loses, who unifies and who divides the group. Visual arts | berufsverband bildender künstler*innen berlin (bbk) With over 2,000 members, professional Berlin-based artists, berufsverband bildender künstler*innen berlin (Professional Association of Visual Artists in Berlin; bbk) is the largest genre-specific member of the Koalition. Founded in 1950, bbk is the oldest institution to advocate for the needs and rights of professional visual artists in Berlin. A registered association, bbk has several subsidiary branches such as the self-administered, publicly funded educational training program Bildungswerk, and Kulturwerk, which organizes the supply and demand of the subsidized artist studio program. bbk hosts general meetings at least once a year and has a rotating board of directors, who have equal voting powers. Since 1989, Herbert Mondry has served as a member of the bbk board, and together with Bernhard Kotowski, bbk’s executive director, has represented visual arts in the SK until early 2016. Since then, visual arts representation in the Koalition has changed various times; to date, Kotowski is back as interim speaker, supported by painter Corinna Weiner as additional spokeswoman. Due to bbk’s general mandate to represent the broad base of an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 visual artists in Berlin, it often uses rhetoric reminscent of a labor union. However, bbk’s grassroots democratic principles are questioned by non-bbk speakers. bbk is described as a permanent critic and the most fervent proponent of administering cultural funding in the hands of artists, and not the cultural administration (January 21, 2015). This desire for self-administration is most explicit in the request for Zeitstipendien (Time Grants),5 which are envisioned to provide widespread and unbureaucratic

34 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape support for a great number of individual practicing artists. Despite the general recognition of bbk’s expertise in political advocacy and various policy achievements throughout the decades, Koalition speakers find bbk’s behavior challenging at times because it is ‘incredibly confrontational’ and expresses ‘very strong principal demands, and they [bbk] are not reaching the point to establish a good level of conversation’ (June 17, 2015). With regard to bbk’s approach to political bargaining, the latter is perceived as uncompromising, inflexible and irrational as opposed to being content with incremental successes. bbk’s absolutist stance to critique the economization and exploitation of the art world is portrayed by another speaker (September 7, 2015): They [bbk] technically present everything but a 100 percent fulfillment as a total failure. And psychologically, that is really difficult (…) now they do have these artist fees – big step – they got that, but it doesn’t appear in the discourse at all. Underscoring the frustration and lack of understanding Koalition speakers experience with bbk in processes of bargaining for collective benefits, bbk’s unwillingness or incapacity to acknowledge and communicate successes to its clientele is perceived as problematic. The uneasiness with bbk experienced by some Koalition speakers interrelates with cultural administrators’ impressions of the visual arts representation. Because conversations with bbk often end up in fundamental discussions, some cultural administrators as well as cultural politicians do not want to continue dialogue with bbk. Cultural administrators perceive bbk as ‘stubborn’, ‘disproportionately exaggerating’, ‘counter-productive’ and particularistic in its lobbying (October 28, 2015). With regard to generational cleavages between associations, Koalition speakers report that bbk sometimes seems to secure old privileges. Younger bbk artists state that the organization needs a ‘face-lift’ or a ‘rejuvenation’ to attract and better represent young and emerging artists (October 2, 2015). Similarly, younger Koalition activists criticize the fact that bbk keeps requesting (January 29, 2015) ‘things that have never worked and things that they [bbk] have been demanding for 20 years.’ Stating that bbk sometimes inhibits negotiations, one cultural administrator assumes that a ‘generational change’ within bbk would considerably facilitate the communication between visual arts and the cultural administration (October 20, 2015). To summarize, multiple opinions position bbk as partially backwards-oriented or stuck in past conflicts and point to the complicating influence of bbk’s antagonism for the Koalition’s overall rather agonistic bargaining style. bbk’s persistence in claims like the Zeitstipendien can create challenges for the entirety of the Koalition because the former’s position cannot be integrated into a broader formation of differential elements. As Laclau (2007b, p. 139) points out, some claims ‘cannot be incorporated into the chain of equivalences,’ because they clash ‘with the particularistic aims of demands

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 35 which are already links in that chain.’ Hence, the irrefutably differential element Zeitstipendien irritates the construction of a collective Koalition position. Resulting from bbk’s determination to fight for claims intransigently, a female spokesperson perceives bbk’s ‘two gentlemen’ as rather onedimensional (December 14, 2015). Another friction between bbk is stated by the ‘new’ Koalition member Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und initiativen (Network of Berlin Independent Project Spaces and Initiatives; Network), which was founded mostly by visual arts project spaces. Acknowledging bbk’s great political force, a project space representative states (March 23, 2015): We are the new ones (…) If you [bbk] are used to speak[ing] for the visual arts for years, and then, suddenly, somebody else comes – and they’re also artists and they think differently – it’s not always easy. Reinforcing bbk’s self-understanding as the sole representative of visual arts within the Koalition, its definition would include and cover project spaces. However, the attempt of incorporating the project spaces in the existing speaker framework as an independent position uncovered a representative disconnect and led to the Network’s separate entrance and representation in the Koalition. With regard to bbk’s controversial representative position, notably, all cultural administrators have either implicitly or explicitly questioned bbk’s legitimacy to ‘represent’ the totality of the visual arts scene. In summary, on the one hand, bbk’s long-standing experience and expertise in artist advocacy provides important organizational resources for the Koalition as a newly emerging actor. On the other hand, bbk creates considerable challenges for an agonistic collectivity due to its antagonistic rhetoric and approach to politics. Cultural production | Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (New Society for Visual Arts; nGbK) is one of the ‘anchor institutions’6 of Berlin’s self-organized artistic scenes, enabling independent cultural production by providing institutional support for working groups and projects from the independent scene. As one of the oldest grassroots artist-run centers, nGbK notably does not ‘represent’ a genre in the SK but speaks for the concerns of ‘cultural production’. In contrast to other organizations that receive (or request) institutional funding from the cultural administration, nGbK is funded by a lottery foundation, making the former financially independent from the Senatskanzlei. The ‘membership’ of nGbK in the Koalition significantly conditions the group’s overall constitution because of this anchor institution in general, and programming director and Koalition spokeswoman Wibke Behrens in particular. Behrens’ extensive network of cultural political protagonists such as parties, foundations, researchers, consultants and larger cultural institutions

36 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape has weaved the Koalition into the existing fabric of cultural political discourse. Moreover, Behrens partially mediated between controversial positions among visual arts representatives. After her resignation in early 2018, the speaker slot of ‘cultural production’ has not been refilled, leaving this non-genre-specific position vacant. New music | Initiative Neue Musik Founded shortly after the fall of the Wall, Initiative Neue Musik (Initiative New Music; INM) has represented independent musicians since 1991. INM self-administers an increasingly rising annual budget of 236,000 euros (2015) to 459,110 euros (2019), directly allocated via the cultural budget, out of which the largest part is dedicated to project funding in self-appointed juries. For more than 20 years, INM has been the only wholly self-administered genrespecific association in Berlin. Koalition speakers have explained this is due to close personal contacts between INM and the cultural administration at the time (March 24, 2015). This self-administered funding context plays a significant role today in the ongoing controversy of whether (or not) the Koalition should request the self-administration of funding (see Chapter 4). INM has repeatedly rejected ‘takeover attempts’, or a merging with Musicboard,7 expressing skepticism about the commercial orientation of the latter (ibid.). In contrast, INM joined the independent collective counter-organization DACH Musik (see below). Today, INM entertains ‘peaceful relations’ with the cultural administration (March 25, 2015), which are enhanced via its engagement in the Koalition. Latent fear of cuts for the project funding could have been alleviated when a budgetary line for INM was established in the Cultural Budget 2016/17 (Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in 2015, p. 82). Regardless of INM’s comparatively small operational budget, this policy achievement is considered a ‘historical change’ thanks to the overall advocacy of the Koalition (March 25, 2015). This gratitude stands in contrast to bbk’s lesser appreciation for incremental policy change. Cultural administrators consider INM a consistent and legitimate conversation partner of the music scene (October 20, 2015). Thanks to INM’s role as institutional project funding distributor, it is directly financially accountable to the cultural administration with regard to how it spends public money, which administrators assess as strengthening steady and non-antagonistic ties (October 28, 2015). INM was initially represented in the Koalition by musicians Klaus Schöpp and Christian Kesten, who have by now been replaced by INM board members Kerstin Wiehe and Thomas Bruns. Dance | Tanzbüro Founded in 2005 with public funds, Tanzbüro (Dance Office) is a project for public relations and communication, training and networking for Berlin’s independent dance scene. Serving as a point for consultation and information,

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 37 speakers describe Tanzbüro’s purpose as strengthening the conditions of contemporary dance in Berlin (February 13, 2015). The annual funding of 90,000 euros is received by Zeitgenössischer Tanz Berlin e.V. (Association of Contemporary Dance Berlin; ZTB), which is the carrier of Tanzbüro (Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in 2015, p. 102). For marketing measures, Tanzbüro has acquired additional European Union (EU) funding. In contrast to INM, dance-related funding such as individual grants and scholarships are administered by the cultural administration. With regard to the political interest representation of Berlin’s contemporary dance scene, the volunteer-run ZTB, founded in 2000, lobbies for the interests of an estimated 4,000 Berlin-based independent choreographers, dancers, dance companies and institutions. The organization currently has 73 members and a five-member board which is elected every two years. However, for the ‘representation’ of dance in the Koalition, the arms-length-funded Tanzbüro was assessed as more suitable to ensure long-term and continuous commitment in the Koalition’s activism. Notably, there was no official discussion, election or appointment of Tanzbüro employees as Koalition speakers for dance; ZTB is implicitly subsumed as part of the Koalition via Tanzbüro. The ZTB website (2017) states ‘As part of the Sprecherkreis and first signatories [of the TenPoint Plan – see Chapter 3], the Zeitgenössischer Tanz Berlin e.V., part of the network TanzRaumBerlin and the Tanzbüro Berlin are partners of this action platform.’ This indirect organizational extension of ZTB’s membership into the Koalition implicitly strengthens the group’s overall representative claim to speak for the independent scene. To build a bridge between the ZTB member base and Koalition speakers from Tanzbüro, a monthly Jour Fixe (a regular meeting) called TanzRaumBerlin Netzwerk, self-describing as a forum of debate and cooperation, seeks a continuous, informal exchange about Koalition activities or specific claims that should be advocated for on behalf of dance. Unlike purely producer-oriented associations such as bbk, Tanzbüro resembles the Rat in representing and advocating on behalf of both dance institutions and independent producers. With regard to Tanzbüro’s positionality as political advocacy organization, the latter is officially not allowed to engage in direct political lobbying, which is different from other associations engaged in the Koalition. Reiterating and identifying with the Koalition’s agonistic approach to political interest representation, Tanzbüro (February 13, 2015) appreciates that the Koalition does not work against the institutions but has this strong claim to speak for the independent artists in cooperation with the institutions in the city and to keep an eye on the overall landscape. And that is basically one of the preconditions for why it makes sense for Tanzbüro to cooperate, or yeah, why the work with the Koalition makes sense. Engagement in the collectivity is considered beneficial and effective because it reinforces Tanzbüro’s own political articulation and does not disturb or

38 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape threaten existing close and constructive relationships with the cultural administration. Choreographer and dancer Simone Willeit, who ran Tanzbüro since 2009 and now manages Uferstudios, an anchor institution for contemporary dance in Berlin, and Anne Passow, who previously worked for the independent performing art scene, were the first Koalition spokespeople for dance. In line with the non-formalized delegation of speakers, Willeit’s professional transfer did not affect her Koalition speaker role, which she occupies to date. In summary, Tanzbüro constitutes a resource-rich part of the Koalition, spreading its own agonistic advocacy approach within the group. Literature and poetry | Lettrétage The independent literature scene is represented in the SK by the transdisciplinary literature house Lettrétage e.V., founded in Berlin-Kreuzberg in 2006. In this location, many of the city’s diverse, multi-lingual and transdisciplinary literature and poetry producers come together for readings, literary performances and events. With project-related funding from local, national and international agencies, Lettrétage initially did not have stable institutional funding, and was thus dependent on donations and membership support. Since 2018, Lettrétage has received 150,000 euros annually in a fixed budgetary line, granting it significantly more financial and planning stability. Notably, Lettrétage is not an interest representation or professional advocacy association, but an anchor institution of the independent literary scene. Noting that the voices of independent literature producers were not present in the Koalition’s first meetings precisely because there was no collective interest representation, Lettrétage co-founder Moritz Malsch was asked in early 2015 to join the Koalition and the SK to fill this representative gap. While the commitment as a member of the Koalition is difficult to sustain as unpaid voluntary labor, it is considered beneficial both for the overall scene as well as for Lettrétage itself. The initial lack of political force is selfcritically assessed, a Koalition speaker points out that the independent literature scene is ‘not really raising a loud voice, which is technically a shame, and not really understandable’ (January 28, 2015). However, nonliterature Koalition speakers and the cultural administration observe that the literature scene has become much more visible, addressable and professional throughout the process of the Koalition’s collectivization. Besides internal organizational benefits for Lettrétage, the literature scene has taken up external impulses of political collectivization parallel to the Koalition’s development. First, the independent literature scene has institutionalized via the foundation of Netzwerk freie Literaturszene Berlin e.V. in 2013 (Network of the Independent Literature Scene). This association emerged out of a previously existing action platform of those estimated 10,000 independent authors, translators and editors working in Berlin, which is now articulating literature-specific requests in the Koalition. Board member Eric Schumacher has superseded Malsch as spokesperson. Having

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 39 overtaken the Koalition in turning into a registered association, the representation of independent literature production constitutes an organizationally young yet ambitious and stabilizing element in the collectivity. Second, the networking effect for the local literary scene has materialized into the foundation of Berliner Literaturkonferenz in January 2015.8 Consisting of Berlin’s five literature houses and literature festivals as well as independent literature spaces and other initiatives, these actors joined together to empower the diverse and internationally renowned literature scene with a forum for collaboration and political advocacy. When larger institutions were pushing to integrate Lettrétage into their circle, Malsch was hesitant and pleaded for a complementary composition including institutions and independent actors (January 28, 2015). This call for mutual comprehension and collaboration parallels the Koalition’s agonistic approach between independent and institutional actors. Performing arts | Landesverband freie darstellende Künste Berlin e.V. Founded in 2007, the registered association Landesverband freie darstellende Künste Berlin (Regional Association of Independent Performing Arts; LAFT) represents the interests of independent performing artists in Berlin. With roughly 300 individual and collective members – ranging from individual performers, choreographers, dancers, actors, stage designers, producers and ensembles to performance collectives – the organization is volunteerrun and reliant on the unpaid engagement of the board of directors and members, as well as membership fees for sustaining the office. The organization temporarily hired Anne Passow as office manager (2009–2012) to coordinate LAFT’s activities. To date, there are no permanent resources for an office structure. However, additional funding for the independent arts infrastructures has been leveraged through the EU-funded Performing Arts Programm (PAP). With its ongoing and outreach-oriented appearance, PAP provides a platform and organizational anchor to advocate LAFT’s claims. As one spokesperson puts it (January 7, 2016), ‘thanks to PAP, LAFT has gained a great upswing.’ Administrators rationalize the indirect funding of the lobby group LAFT via the newly introduced matching fund as legitimate because PAP fulfills a concrete task (October 20, 2015). Although LAFT’s extensive political achievements and increasing professionality are widely respected by Koalition speakers, LAFT has also been critically eyed as ‘becoming more and more an end in itself,’ revealing a sense of suspicion and potential rivalry among the differently equipped associations (February 4, 2015). The LAFT board of directors is elected every year in bi-annual general meetings. Currently, it comprises seven full and four ‘coopted’ members. These latter individuals have neither voting powers nor responsibilities comparable to the full members but are ‘experts for a field that the board itself does not cover and that the board consults this way’ (Koalition, January 7, 2016). Elisa Müller, former LAFT board member and initial spokesperson

40 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape for performing arts, later became a coopted member delegated by LAFT to engage in the Koalition. Vera Strobel, managing director of a children and youth theater, complemented the performing arts representation in the Koalition from 2016 to 2018. Currently, the spokesperson position for performing arts is occupied by Daniel Brunet. LAFT describes its approach to cultural politics as affirmative (ibid.): To never interrupt the dialogue with the cultural administration, with politics. Where something is going well, to reinforce that in a positive way and to say: “Yes, that is a good first step, but now this and that is missing.” Rather this way than a very confrontational way. From our side, there are never letters where everybody is being attacked in a drastic manner. That’s the way that we do cultural politics (…) seen from others’ point of view, one might be too tame in some formulations. LAFT reveals both an implicit distancing from more confrontational lobbying approaches, and self-reflexively discusses whether it might at times be not assertive enough. The reference to the ‘positive reinforcement’ of policy proposals by the Senatskanzlei illustrates LAFT’s general satisfaction with existing funding structures, which stands in contrast to other associations that heavily criticize their own funding streams. Other Koalition representatives have spoken highly of the diverse funding structures in the performing arts. Notably, these differing levels of satisfaction affect the negotiation of political demands, because organizations like LAFT might be less inclined to initiate confrontational requests to changing funding conditions. Despite its comparatively young institutional age, LAFT appeals to a ‘knowledge about communication’ that needs to be ‘backed up’ with precise numbers and facts, describing a learning effect that ‘is not independent from the development of the Koalition’ (January 7, 2016). As an individual association, LAFT entertains continuous relationships with the cultural administration in a Jour Fixe, where genre-specific issues are discussed. Because there is no other interest association for the independent performing arts, administrators consider LAFT as a legitimate and almost ‘natural partner’ (October 20, 2015). The cultural administration’s positive perception of LAFT even leads to a factually incorrect perception of its organizational age. Justifying the significantly larger budgetary allocations to performing in contrast to visual arts, one cultural administrator explains (July 16, 2015) that this is ‘because LAFT is just incredibly well organized and, I don’t know, looks back on 20, 30 years, and a lot of programs have developed there over a long, long time.’ This rationalization sits uncomfortably with the fact that associations like bbk are over 50 years old while LAFT celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2017. The administrator’s misperception implicitly equalizes LAFT’s high degree of organization with a greater legitimacy to receive large sums of funding. To conclude, within the Koalition’s organizational composition, LAFT stands out as a professionalizing

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 41 and well-networked organization, which reinforces the Koalition’s agonistic advocacy stance. Project spaces | Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und -initiativen The entrance of the Network, founded in 2009, significantly reshuffled the composition of the Koalition. Retracing the implications of the first and sofar sole ‘official’ enlargement of the SK, the singular account of the initial Network spokesperson, Tiny Domingos, is complemented by comments of other Koalition speakers about the Network. The project space network represents about 150 to 200 spaces in Berlin, out of which around 40 are said to be active in the Network’s regular meetings, events and exhibitions. Project spaces vary in their organizational features, being temporary, in flux or stable, with local or international appeal (Marguin 2012). According to its self-understanding, the Network’s activities are inter- and transdisciplinary, not market-oriented, self-determined and self-organized. Like nGbK, the project space network as an advocacy organization does not represent an artistic genre, but stands for the specific, transdisciplinary artistic practice of project spaces. Some project space organizers regularly attended Koalition plenum sessions from the beginning. However, some Koalition speakers view the Network’s initially distanced attitude with skepticism, imitating them by saying (December 17, 2013): ‘“We [Network] rather want to remain special. We do find this approach of solidarity quite nice, but we are so well-equipped right now.”’ The project spaces’ particularistic standing later significantly impacted processes of equalizing differences among the Koalition associations. Initially, part of the Network’s organizational selfconfidence might have stemmed from the fact that the cultural administration adopted its definition of what a project space ‘is’ in open calls for the first Auszeichnung künstlerischer Projekträume und -initiativen (Project Space Prize), which has been annually awarded since 2012 to seven to 14 project spaces, with 30,000 euros for each.9 While some view the introduction of the prize as a great success and achievement, others have complained about the cultural administration benefitting from their volunteer work (March 23, 2015). To secure the idea that only project spaces with a visual arts orientation are eligible for the prize, the Network introduced a ‘we’–‘they’ distinction which upset Koalition speakers (June 17, 2015, emphasis original): Now they [Network] notice “Oh, more and more are coming’, then, the tightest circle of project spaces gathers together and says: ‘But we are visual arts!” to have a distinction toward the outside. Because they turn against literature project space, and against the music project spaces (…) they are making an intellectual salto mortale: “We [the Network] are transdisciplinary within the visual arts!”

42 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape Vividly demonstrating the struggle arising about notions of art, the Network drew boundaries between ‘us’ (i.e., transdisciplinary visual arts-centric project spaces) and ‘them’ (i.e., not transdisciplinary (enough)), to secure its privileged position vis-à-vis other types of project spaces. To strengthen its organizational capacity, the Network has operated as a registered association since 2015. Like Netzwerk freier Literaturszene Berlin, the project space network has overtaken the Koalition in founding a legal entity. According to Domingos (March 23, 2015), the cultural administration expressed the wish ‘to talk to somebody, and therefore you need a person, a structure (…) we [the Network] knew about that readiness to engage in dialogue.’ Bearing in mind that the project space network joined the Koalition after an initial phase of distancing underlines the anticipated benefits of enlarged visibility, addressability or leverage of power to be achieved via collectivization. Anticipating the potential reproach of only wanting to join the Koalition for strategic, monetary or power-related reasons, Domingos fervently counters (ibid.): ‘We [the Network] can very well justify this (…) look what capacities we have. And the way that the Koalition looked like back then (…) that was a little chaotic, a bit broad.’ Besides the subtle mention of the Koalition’s lack of organization, the Network’s motivation to join might have aimed at countering its potential loss of political influence when the collective ‘we’ of the Koalition was validated by the cultural administration. In conclusion, with regard to the different elements forming the Koalition, the entrance of the project space network significantly reconfigured the already assembled differential positions. Creating representative conflicts with other Koalition speakers, the entrance of the Network has nonetheless contributed to an even more encompassing basis of artist advocates that strengthen the Koalition’s unique representative position. Domingos has been followed by Chris Bénédicte as spokesperson since early 2016. Jazz | Interessensgemeinschaft Jazz The Interessensgemeinschaft Jazz (Interest Representation Jazz; IG Jazz) comprises about 200 members out of Berlin’s estimated 1,500 to 2,500 jazz musicians. Founded as a registered association in 2011, IG Jazz consists of a small board of directors that divides labor between jazz-specific concerns (i.e., more broadcasting on public radio) and broader political activities such as the engagement in the Koalition. The initial spokespeople, Uli Kempendorf and Georg Hotz, have been succeeded by Bettina Bohle. The jazz funding landscape includes individual and collective instruments such as project funding, a studio prize, a jazz scholarship and touring funds (Interessensgemeinschaft Jazz Berlin 2012, pp. 3–4). Funding instruments with an overall volume of currently roughly 200,000 euros are administered by the cultural administration without elements of self-administration for the jazz community. IG Jazz’s organizational structure does not receive any financial support from the cultural administration. As IG Jazz membership was free of charge

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 43 until 2017, board members sometimes even paid organizational expenses out of their own pocket. In contrast to other well-equipped and partially staffed associations that engage in the Koalition, IG Jazz has significantly fewer organizational capacities. The jazz representation meets with the cultural administration in a bi-monthly Jour Fixe, often accompanied by members from INM, with whom they entertain close relations. Sometimes, these bilateral meetings between music representatives and the cultural administration are perceived as more efficient and constructive than larger Koalition meetings with the administration. Together, INM and IG Jazz organize the rehearsal space Die Wache or Vivaldisaal II.10 Setting up the idea, INM contacted IG Jazz and asked to collaborate in the organization and management of the space, illustrating positive synergies among musicians, sharing knowledge and applying for funding together. Hence, in the independent music scene, intra-genre collaboration was already functioning well prior to the foundation of the Koalition. Currently, music-related advocacy and collaboration has been taken to a new dimension with Haus für die Musik des 21. Jahrhunderts (House for Music of the 21st Century), a controversial proposal to create a central playing site of independent music in Berlin, which has so far been missing.11 In addition to stressing that she or he would rather be on stage instead of being a bureaucrat, IG Jazz spokespeople lack administrative capacity and knowledge to self-administer funding (January 29, 2015). Hence, selfadministration for jazz might not (yet) be as appealing and urgent as for other associations in the Koalition. Non-music speakers find that IG Jazz has remarkably professionalized over the course of, or within, the Koalition’s development (December 14, 2015): ‘They [IG Jazz] really used the time wisely and created attention and found out how little they knew about their genre as a structure.’ Against this backdrop, IG Jazz published a national study on the living and working conditions of professional jazz musicians in Germany (Renz 2016). With reliable data at hand, IG Jazz pursues a non-confrontational approach toward cultural policy and selfdescribes (February 12, 2015) as ‘doing nothing against anybody’, capturing again the agonistic premise of the Koalition. Despite the professionalizing development of IG Jazz, jazz speakers find it hard to communicate with their artist base. Few jazz musicians get engaged or attend IG Jazz or Koalition meetings, potentially because they lack an understanding about the purpose and activities of the latter. Besides this information deficit, it is difficult to convey how jazz musicians will be affected by the Koalition’s political achievements, because their claims are not perceived as very jazz-specific. IG Jazz joined DACH Musik – Freie Musikszene Berlin (Roof Music – Independent Music Scene Berlin), founded in 2011/12, together with new music represented by INM, the Vereinigung Alte Musik Berlin (Association Old Music Berlin) and Zeitgenössisches Musiktheater Berlin e.V. (Contemporary Music Theater Berlin).12 This concurrent organization of music

44 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape actors was founded as a ‘counter-structure’ to the development of Musicboard, which had been initiated by the cultural administration in 2012 without consultation with the involved music communities (Koalition, February 12, 2015). IG Jazz was one of the main initiators of a petition seeking to maintain separate funding mechanisms for the independent and commercial/popular music, which gained over 2,000 signatures. The initiative constituted a fight against independent musicians’ fear (ibid.) ‘to be integrated in the popular music funding stream, to be outsourced, and swallowed up.’ Some of the petition’s claims later found entry into the ten political claims pushed by the Koalition. Against the loss of specificity and concern about streamlining, DACH Musik represents an organizational response to this potential threat. Like ZTB’s rather unnoticed integration into the Koalition via Tanzbüro, DACH Musik is implicitly hypostasized as ‘member in the Koalition’ and co-author of the Zehn-Punkte-Programm (DACH Musik 2017). While only INM and IG Jazz formally delegate spokespeople to the Koalition, this way, the associations for old music and contemporary music theater are integrated into the collectivity via their affiliation with Koalition members without having formally joined (or requested to join) the group. This absorption of another differential element into the greater Koalition formation underscores their quasi-universal representative position, which DACH Musik seemingly identifies with.

Conclusions: small fish win more than big ones The depiction of assets and drawbacks of the individual genre-specific associations has highlighted the different positionalities that converge in the Koalition’s collective entity. Sketching the differing yet interconnected synergetic forms of organization and political articulation, there are relatively greater material and organizational benefits for younger, smaller and/or less organized associations to leverage from their Koalition affiliation, as it fosters their organizational development and advocacy profiles. Regarding the relative gains to be leveraged, for emerging organizations, small gains are not small, so these associations might be the ‘winners’ in the Koalition’s overall achievements (March 25, 2015). In contrast, larger organizations with more members, greater overhead costs, larger funding volumes or longer negotiating ties with the cultural administration might perceive the incremental increases the Koalition could achieve so far as not lucrative enough. This becomes problematic for both large and small organizations because the latter (ibid.) ‘are moving in the slipstream of the big ones, and we must have the goal to have them be successful, too.’ Hence, small sums make a relatively bigger difference to smaller fish, whereas these same sums might only make a small difference to big fish. Against potential dissatisfaction of larger institutions, however, the overall learning and legitimatory effects of the Koalition have been underlined by speakers from both larger

Literature / Lettrétage

2006

Dance / Tanzbüro 2005

1991

ca. 1,000

Cultural 1969 production / Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK)

New music / Initiative Neue Musik (INM)

2

ca. 2,000

1950

Visual arts / berufsverband bildender künstler*innen berlin (bbk)

Ca. 10,000 (independent literary scene)

None (ZTB: 73) Fluctuating between 1–2 (2018: 1)

2 (since 2016: 1)

120 collective 2 (internal and individual changes via election; since 2018: 1)

1 (2012–2018; since 2018: 0)

Number of speakers

Foundation Member base

Organization

Table 2.1 Genre-specific associations

Reported as uncontroversial

Reported as uncontroversial

Reported as consensual

Resignation of Behrens after temporary absence

Reported as disputed

Change of speakers

None from Senatskanzlei income from rentals and EU projects

90,000 for Zeitgen össischer Tanz Berlin

236,000, including funds for selfadministered project funding

None from Senatskanzlei funded by Lottostiftung

Kulturwerk 1,281,166 (2015); 1,307,649 (2016), 192,000 production grants

(Continued )

No bilateral relations prior to Koalition; increased exchange with Senatskanzlei since introduction of budgetary item

Jours Fixe; special dedication of funds for Roundtable of Dance (2018); agonistic relations

Bilateral relations in Jours Fixe; agonistic relations

Participation in Jours Fixe Bildende Kunst; partial independence from Senatskanzlei; agonistic relations

Jours Fixe Bildende Kunst (since 2013); failed attempts to create long-term dialogue; often antagonistic relations

Yearly budget from A(nta)gonistic relationship to Senatskanzlei (€) Senatskanzlei

1 (since 2017: 0)

1 (since 2018: 0)

N/A

Christophe Knoch N/A

Fluctuating between 1–2 (internal changes, election/personal reasons; 2018: 1)

Transdisciplinary art / Sandra Man

Ca. 200 collective and individual

2011

133 Fluctuating (October 2015) between 1–2 (2018: 1)

Jazz / IG Jazz

2009 Project spaces / Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und -initiativen

2 (internal changes, election and personal reasons; 2018: 1)

2007

Visual arts / Landesverband freiedarstellende Künste Berlin

Ca. 300 collective and individual

Number of speakers

Foundation Member base

Organization

Table 2.1 (Cont.)

15,000 for production grants (2015)

210,000 (2015); 655,000 (2016)

None from Senatskanzlei for office structure; EFRE and ESF funds for PAP

Resignation in April 2018; replaced by a rotatingspeaker system

None

Privileged and direct relations in context of Koalition; a(nta) gonistic relations

Bilateral exchange prior to Koalition; no continuation after resignation; agonistic relations

Bilateral relations in Jours Fixe; partially antagonistic relations in context of Haus der Musik / Alte Münze; otherwise agonistic

Bilateral exchange prior to Koalition; participation in Jours Fixe Bildende Kunst; partially antagonistic relations

Bilateral Jours Fixe; cooperative and dialogue-oriented exchange; agonistic relations

(Budget 2018/19); agonistic relations

Yearly budget from A(nta)gonistic relationship to Senatskanzlei (€) Senatskanzlei

Political reasons, None departure in 2017

Reported as uncontroversial

Reported as uncontroversial

Reported as uncontroversial

Change of speakers

Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape 47 and smaller associations to evoke the positive spillover effects for political mobilization. A long-standing cultural organizer sees the benefit of learning about other genres’ challenges, which might not have been known without the frequent exchange in the SK, which also helps in picking a collective fight (January 21, 2015). The summation of differences and equivalences between the genre-specific associations with their similarly precarious conditions, problems or demands creates a preliminary bond of equivalence. Learning processes not only push associations’ self-reflection about their own organization, and can thus improve organizational learning, but might also improve the chance to realize political demands for both individual organizations and the collective movement of the Koalition. Due to differing starting positions and resources, relative gains or ‘successes’ have different meanings to different associations. The perception of and communication about ‘success’ is not only an individual or genre-specific, but a collective concern to sustain the conviction that the organization, investment and effort of the Koalition is beneficial for everybody. In practice, the stated objective to create a shared notion of the group’s achievements reveals itself to be difficult because some associations are not as appreciative of their partial successes as others. Besides the materially differential effects the Koalition has accomplished so far, the more abstract perception and political communication of successes, which could transcend zero-sum thinking, could create a collective sense that everybody wins in the collectivization of the Koalition. To establish this, the Koalition both advocates for new funding instruments and engages to preserve and safeguard old funding conditions. Table 2.1 summarizes the different organizational components that form the Koalition. Distinct from pre-existing cultural protagonists such as the Rat or H&B, the Koalition attempts to fill a cultural political void which is co-constitutive of its own existence. As a new political collectivity, the group has emerged due to the rejection of existing offers of identification or representation, which simultaneously blocks the full actualization of its identity.

Notes 1 The data corpus consists of semi-structured qualitative interviews with 14 Koalition spokespeople (eight male, six female; active speakers during time of data collection in 2015, some of them interviewed more than once; two group interviews with two interviewees each) and four mid- and high-level employees from the cultural administration (two male, two female), written field notes from 12 Koalition plenum sessions I attended over the course of four years, policy and budgetary documents, press releases, Facebook posts and (informal) interviews with cultural protagonists outside the Koalition, including members of Rat für die Künste, Haben und Brauchen, AK Räume, the Zeitstipendien campaign team, cultural policy researchers, consultants and countless informal conversations with artists affiliated with the Koalition or attendants at plenum sessions. Interviews were recorded on audio device (60–105 minutes in length), fully transcribed with digital software and translated. Notably, the context-dependent nature of the interviews portrays a specific,

48 Mapping a conflictual cultural landscape

2 3 4

5

6 7 8

9

10

11

12

contingent narrative of political relations at the time. Quotations are anonymized, but clear names are occasionally provided in the cases of some individual speakers. I use generic female pronouns or ‘she or he’ for both female and male interviewees. Conflictual consensus is to be distinguished from ‘compromise’, which I consider analytically defunct because it omits the inherent conflictuality of consensus (Landau 2017). Knoch was asked to run for Rat office to strengthen ties between the organizations but rejected it because he argued that Koalition goals could not have been realized from within the Rat. The Koalition referred to the Round of Spokespeople as ‘Sprecherkreis’. I introduced the gendered German term Sprecher*innenkreis to raise awareness of the gender insensitivity, which led to the group’s more frequent use of more gendered language. Zeitstipendien should provide 350 grants of 7,000 euros for individual artists, administered by an artist-led jury. Only if the proposed volume, form and mode of distribution are realized does bbk consider the grant a Zeitstipendium, allowing little room for adaptation of this proposal. The term ‘Ankerposition’ (anchor institution/position) refers to playing sites or institutions of the independent scene (who may receive institutional funding or not) who are generally open and accessible to independent scene productions. Musicboard Berlin GmbH is a city-owned arms-length organization with an operational budget of 1.7 million euros to support and incubate music innovations from Berlin. Literaturkonferenz requests 3 million euros of additional funding to expand existing funding mechanisms and provide space for experimental independent literature production as well as to increase institutional funding for the literature houses, which in part has not increased since 1998. Notably, the project space network would have preferred a Feuerwehrtopf (Firefighter Fund) instead of a prize to hand out small funding sums on short notice. Due to the cultural administration’s opposition, the Project Space Prize came into being. Vivaldisaal I, administered by INM, was heavily overbooked, so jazz musicians would only sometimes be able to use the space. Vivaldisaal II is co-administered to be equally used by all musicians. The project was funded for one year by the cultural administration as a pilot project, and future funding remains uncertain. The lack of a central playing site for independent music has been critically discussed. The proposal to create a House of Jazz in Alte Münze in Berlin-Mitte under the leadership of star jazz musician Till Brönner without the inclusion of the independent jazz and music scenes ignited public protest in 2017. The proposal by IG Jazz and others counters the top-down concept of the House of Jazz. DACH Musik gathers Berlin’s diverse and internationally renowned institutionally independent music scene with its 5,000 individual musicians, performers, ensembles, composers and sound artists, curators and managers as well as music journalists, researchers and theoreticians.

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3

Articulation of an agonistic actor

This chapter engages with modes of articulation the Koalition der Freien Szene (Koalition) employs to constitute itself as a collective actor in Berlin’s cultural policy-making arena. I examine how the group constructs and legitimizes its own position and how external actors ascribe legitimacy to the group, and respectively how they withdraw these legitimations. In the knowledge that it is difficult to disentangle the construction of agency from that of legitimacy, I consider the articulation of the open action platform before engaging with its practices of legitimation. I begin by introducing theoretical concepts that guide and systematize the analysis of articulation and provide an illustration of the initial meetings of the Koalition and the creation of the Zehn-Punkte-Plan (Ten-Point Plan, or ZPP; see ‘Four vectors of articulation’). The internal dynamics and principles of organization and decision-making outline the character, agenda and particularity of the Koalition. Subsequently, I discuss the form and function of the main decision-making body, the Sprecher*innenkreis (Round of Spokespeople; SK), analyze occurring tensions along the lines of conflict and consensus and disaggregate multiple power asymmetries in the Round of Spokespeople. Then, the atmosphere and principles of the group’s collective gathering and open discussion forum, the Koalition plenum, are illuminated to unravel the representative dynamic between the SK and the artist base. The analytical core discusses the constructions and contestations of legitimacy via articulation (see ‘Unpacking modes of legitimacy’). Practices of self-legitimation are summarized in three apodictic dimensions. First, the self-legitimation ACT refers to the Koalition’s action-centric mandate. Second, the self-legitimation BOUND refers to the group’s multiple degrees of institutional and democratic boundedness via its constituent associations. Third, the self-legitimation REPRESENT refers to the Koalition’s seemingly universal approach to represent the entirety of ‘the independent scene’. These internal modes of legitimation are mirrored by three external perspectives on the legitimacy of the Koalition, contouring the exterior ascriptions and contestations of the group’s standing as a collective representation (see ‘External legitimations of the agonistic actor’). First, NETWORKED legitimacy is ascribed by the artistic scenes and cultural institutions via temporary alliances. Second, DELAYED legitimacy is conferred by politicians whose

Articulation of an agonistic actor 53 initial skepticism ultimately turned into appreciation of the Koalition, jumping a legitimatory bandwagon conducted by the cultural administration. Third, STRATEGIC legitimacy is assigned by the cultural administration’s (de)construction of the Koalition’s status as the unique or universal representative of ‘the’ independent scene. The presentation of these interconnected processes of legitimation is guided by the sensitizing concept pair of particularity and universality to systematize the legitimacy (de)constructions of the Koalition. Beyond the specific local context, these modes of political legitimacy and representation unravel new ways to explain what this collective actor is doing, not doing and doing differently from other forms of political expression. The chapter concludes by synthesizing linkages between articulation and legitimacy (see ‘Conclusions: articulating legitimations’).

Four vectors of articulation The concept of ‘articulation’ is activated to analyze the constitution of the Koalition as a new collective actor in Berlin’s art field.1 The term is disaggregated into four analytical vectors of articulatory practice employed to understand the making of new political (collective) subjectivities. As subordinate dimensions to the analytical tissue of articulation, I discuss concepts of agency and nonrepresentative and/or non-democratic political representation. Following from the agonistic framework of this book, the practice of articulation is understood as innate to a logic of hegemony. Laclau and Mouffe (2001, p. 93) state that hegemony presupposes articulation; hegemony acts as a logic of articulation. Subsequently, (counter-)hegemonic projects are constructed and deconstructed by practices of articulation, constituting a point of departure to investigate hegemony, or (counter-)hegemonic movements such as the Koalition. As articulatory practices are constituted by the materiality of discourse, discourse itself is articulated. Discourse is not understood merely as ideational construction of meaning and power; it is ‘a richer ontological category, which captures something about the complex character of all social relations and practices, as well as the ways subjects identify and are captured by certain meaningful practices’ (Howarth 2010, p. 311). Bearing in mind this ‘ontological richness’, a discourse theoretical approach considers meaning and social and political action as relationally and contingently constituted by agents that shape and are shaped by discourses. These constructions require acts of boundary-drawing and are thus related to (counter-)hegemony which evokes these boundaries. As Flügel-Martinsen (2017, p. 20) puts it, discourse itself is a struggle. Articulation is defined by Laclau and Mouffe (2001, p. 105; emphasis original) as [a]ny practice establishing a relation among element[s] such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice. The structured totality resulting from the articulatory practice, we will call discourse. The differential positions, insofar as they appear articulated within a discourse,

54 Articulation of an agonistic actor we will call moments. By contrast, we will call element any difference that is not discursively articulated. Four elements, which are of great importance for the investigation of the constitution of the Koalition, are abstracted from this definition. This operationalization serves to capture how new collective actors proceed to institute themselves into discourses as (counter-)hegemonic actors, or seize (counter-)hegemonic power. The focus on articulatory vectors serves to operationalize and understand the constitution of new collective subjects. First, articulation is considered a practice carried out by individual or collective agents; second, articulation seeks to create a totality (however partial or impossible it may be). Third, articulation seeks to produce a discourse; fourth, articulation transforms discursive elements into moments of discourse. Drawing on these four definitional criteria introduced by Laclau and Mouffe, I propose four apodictic vectors to conceptualize articulation: #1 #2 #3 #4

articulation as articulation as articulation as articulation as stabilization.

practice: agency; (attempting) totality: representation of universality; producing (or challenging) discourse: (de)construction; fixating floating elements as discursive moments:

The agency-centric approach to articulation places emphasis on action and decision in articulation (#1 articulation). Regarding the attempt to construct a totality via acts of exclusion and inclusion, articulation interlocks with the sensitizing concept pair of universality and particularity (#2 articulation). The universalizing effort is closely related to the (de)constructive dimension of articulation (#3 articulation), taking place by (re)framing discursive positions. Hence, the articulation of a new actor necessarily implies the rearticulation of existing logics, systems or discourses in acts of institution (i.e., construction) and dislocation (i.e., blockade or destruction). Lastly, the stabilizing dimension of articulatory practices points to the possibility of fixating socio-political meaning and power (#4 articulation), which remains temporary, contingent and precarious due to the inconclusive condition of negativity and antagonism in politics. #1 articulation: creating agency Leipold and Winkel (2016) discuss the interplay between agency and discourse and suggest an approach of ‘discursive agency’ that considers an agent’s ability to ‘make him/herself a relevant agent in a particular discourse by constantly making choices about whether, where, when, and how to identify with a particular subject position in specific story lines within this discourse.’ The discursive agentic approach opens analytical avenues to investigate the Koalition’s

Articulation of an agonistic actor 55 constitution as agentic articulation. Notably, ‘agency’ or articulation cannot be analyzed in binary opposition to ‘structure’. Because agency cannot be thought of as independent of discursive structures that determine and constrain individual and collective actors, discursive agency transcends the dichotomy of structure and agency and considers them as interpenetrating. Agency is not merely the effect of structural preconditions, but an active and co-constitutive component thereof. Abulof (2016, p. 379) further justifies a non-binary account as ‘structure is essential to agency. Actors become agents by confronting both their own inner (…) and outer structures.’ Hence, instead of divorcing agency and structure, processes of agentation influence and are influenced by structural/institutional settings surrounding them. Leipold and Winkel (2016, p. 4) assume that Mouffe and Laclau’s understanding of subjects is one-sidedly determined and constructed by discourses, which would result in disempowering agents to construct discourse. Laclau’s (1990, p. 30) own conceptualization matter-of-factly states the contrary: ‘[A]gents themselves transform their own identity in so far as they actualize certain structural potentialities and reject others.’ In addition, Laclau (2014) assumes subjects as neither purely external to structures nor wholly autonomous from them. This again resonates with Leipold and Winkel’s (2016, p. 16) understanding that actors’ own momentum in relation to discourse is rooted in their choices to (1) (not) self-identify with an existing subject position in a story line or to invent a new subject position, and (2) (not) support this position with what they say and do. Hence, the constitution of new subjectivities draws on the appropriation of both existing and new subject positions. Moreover, discursive agency relates to the second and third vectors of articulatory practice (i.e., totalization and subversion/construction). Agents’ choices and processes of subjectivation or collectivization depend on discourses and are simultaneously shaped by discourses. Acknowledging the different individual and collective ‘positional characteristics’ (ibid.) of agents, articulation appears as an agentic, positioned practice which is co-constituted by discourse and a constitutive lack of its own subjectivity. Despite or because of the subject’s constitutive lack, any constitution of identity is an act of power to both enable and block the formation of identity (Laclau 1990; Purcell 2009). Constantly open to contestation, and vulnerable to its own insufficiency, articulatory practice ‘set[s] in motion the game of partial identifications which orient themselves toward an object that could compensate for that lack’ (Marchart 2013, p. 385). While the lack in political subjectivity persists, the deficient and precarious attempts at subjectivization relate to the articulatory effort to bridge the gap between an actor’s own lack of being and her attempt at trying to ‘be’ a totality (#2 articulation).

56 Articulation of an agonistic actor #2 articulation: seeking to represent universality Understanding articulation as a social practice, articulatory processes actively design notions of society. Articulations create images of ‘society’; however, based on Marchart’s (2013, p. 320) assumption that society is an impossible, always partial totality, articulatory practices represent these impossible totalities. Despite society’s impossibility, society continues to present itself via its own absence. In short, society remains a necessary object to articulate itself as (a part of) an impossible totality. Understanding collective identity as a selective form of and within society, collective identity is as unrepresentable as fullness or universality, and necessarily partial (Flesher Fominaya 2010; Schmidt and Radaelli 2004). To unlock the political potential of collective actors’ articulation, any such collective formation needs a drive toward totalization or unity to exist. This aspiration for totality or universality is instituted via articulation. According to Laclau and Mouffe (2001, p. 65), the temporary unity or universality of a partial totality is ‘not the expression of a common underlying essence but the result of political construction and struggle.’ Rejecting an essentialist approach to identity formation, this understanding considers articulatory attempts as contingent practices to preliminarily construct ‘universal’ positions. Butler (2008, pp. 32–33) explains the universal as encompassing the ‘fragile, shifting, and always incomplete achievement of political action; it is not the container of a presence, but the placeholder of an absence.’ The centrality of absence leads to the attempt to temporarily and contingently ‘fill’ this absence with a necessary claim to universality. Butler reinforces the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of representing universality (2008, p. 39): When one has no right to speak under the auspices of the universal, and speaks none the less, laying claim to universal rights, and doing so in a way that preserves the particularity of one’s struggle, one speaks in a way that may be readily dismissed as nonsensical or impossible. Butler stresses that the claim to ‘preserve particularity’ would ridicule or subvert a particularity’s attempt to represent universality, because the particular would admit its own partiality instead of trying to occupy the universal. It might become apparent already how the Koalition as a concrete claims-maker and representative attempts to occupy and represent universal claims and meanings to legitimize and momentarily overcome its position as a particularity. While the aspiration to ‘just’ stay particular is doomed to fail, the self-aggrandizement or universalization of a particular group is equally impossible. In any case, it is within this struggle that political agency unfolds. Drawing on Gramsci’s notion of universality, Laclau (2008, p. 51; emphasis original) states that ‘the only universality that society can achieve is a hegemonic universality – a universality contaminated by particularity.’ With regard to the Koalition’s approach to constructing or representing universality, the group

Articulation of an agonistic actor 57 produces an irreducibly lacking totality. Despite the structural incompletion of the partial totality, attempts at producing universality nevertheless affect representation and change. To explore the effects of these universalizing movement, I study the Koalition’s oscillation between universality and particularity. As a counterpart to universality, Laclau’s (2007a, p. 13) relational understanding of particularity, considered as ‘particular in relation to other particularities and the ensemble of them presupposes a social totality within which they are constituted’, complements this discussion. The unavoidable tension between particularity and universality parallels the strains between equivalence and difference, so that negotiations between universality/equivalence and particularity/difference are retraced within the SK and with regard to speakers’ relations to the artist population. Furthermore, Laclau (2007a, pp. 14–15) assumes that the universal emerges within the particular, as the former has no content of its own. Universality constitutes itself by negating particular content. This resonates with the above-mentioned impossibility of a social totality, society or universality. In Laclau’s (2007a, p. 58) words, the universal is ‘an empty but ineradicable place.’2 At the same time, particularity cannot be instituted without an appeal to universality, so that the construction of universal meaning hinges on contingent parameters, just as the constitution of identities does. Consequently, both universality and particularity are interrelated and inhibited by respective constitutive outsides. Laclau (2007a, p. 26) concludes that the universal is ‘no more than a particular’ and calls universality (p. 34) a ‘receding horizon’ spanning across particularisms, which cannot be fully absorbed. These definitional approximations concerning the precarious and non-foundational status of the universal constitute the analytical groundwork for the conceptualization of collective, or supposedly universal representation, which is both theoretically and empirically barred by a lack and excess of its own subjectivity. To draw this overview on articulatory attempts at constructing universality to a close, Laclau’s (2007a, p. 28) understanding of the universal as a ‘symbol of a missing fullness’ illustrates the interrelations between universality, particularity and representation. The construction of a totality or universality through articulatory practice relates to political representation/non-representation. It follows that the pursuit of a political project or idea is never a standalone or transparent act. No individual or collective political agent can uninhibitedly ‘stand for’ the content of a specific political matter, but is contextually bound to enact existing ideas, institutions and actors. Hence, political and representative positions are relational, and actualized via (re)appropriations and (re)interpretations of what political positions could or should mean. With regard to understanding the representative dimension of articulation, Saward (2006) proposes to shift analytical focus from rigid procedural forms of political representation to practice-based understandings of representation. Giving a concise overview of the shortcomings of traditional or orthodox accounts of political representation, Saward (2006, p. 298) critiques some feminists’ narrow understanding of the legislative status of representation (i.e.,

58 Articulation of an agonistic actor primarily politico-administrative reforms or identity politics) and post-human representative approaches (i.e., imagining placeholder representatives for a trans-human future). Without going into detail with these approaches, or elaborating on post-modern non-representational theories (Thrift 2008), Saward’s conceptualization of practices of political representation partially challenges canonical accounts such as Pitkin’s (2013, p. 209) understanding of political representation as ‘acting in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them.’ The ‘acting for others’ claim, as opposed to Pitkin’s symbolical ‘standing for’ claim, will be considered with regard to the Koalition’s self-legitimation to ‘speak for’ the entirety of the independent scene.3 With regard to the links between representation and political demands, Saward (2006, p. 298) suggests ‘representative claims’ as drivers of political representation, as opposed to the immobile results of elections. Representative claims are enacted and reproduced by a variety of political actors, and thus might outweigh formal mechanisms of recognition via prescribed procedures. Locating ‘claims-making’ at the core of political representation, Saward (2006, p. 299) stresses its performative and micro-political character, which allows representation to construct a ‘space for creative and normative work on radicalizing our notions of who, and what, may count as representative politically, though without setting out a normative stall in the first instance.’ Moreover, Saward (2006, p. 302) finds that all claims-making is ‘contestable and contested; there is no claim to be representative of a certain group that does not leave space for its contestation or rejection by the would-be audience or constituency, or by other political actors.’ The emphasis on the element of contestation or conflict resonates with the idea of a(nta)gonistic representation developed throughout this chapter. The constitutive non-conclusiveness or imperfection of universality spills into representation. Considered by Saward (2008, p. 1003) as an ‘ongoing process of making and receiving claims – in, between, and outside electoral cycles’, representation is revealed as processual, as well as a spatially, temporally and discursively bound practice. Ultimately, Saward (2008, p. 1004) states that an open notion of representation can revitalize ‘conventional’ approaches of representative democracy (i.e., elections, formalized delegation, appointment) toward a ‘more’ of representation, diversifying the actors, forms, places, times and scales representation is enacted in. The appeal to the multiplicity of political representation corresponds with my introductory claim that contemporary political collectivities and movements need to be studied as potentially emancipatory and (re)politicizing modes of ‘the political’. If identities or interests are not ontologically stable, whole or given, claims-making constitutes new objects and actors based on the (constructed) interrelatedness between representatives and represented. Discussing the possibilities of ‘non-elective representative claims’, Saward (2009, p. 9) argues that ‘surrogate’ representation, which displaces the voting subject to another constituency, could be extended to cases of representation without elections:

Articulation of an agonistic actor 59 [I]f there are more, and more types, of representatives beyond the elected ones (…) alongside, or within, One for All? Consider for example One to Many; One to Some; or Some to Some; even Each to Each? In other words, we can think of different sorts of representatives speaking for different parts of us, of our varied interests, in a more fluid way than the (nonetheless crucial) One to All metaphor can capture. These multiple scenarios unpack the variety of which and how many representatives can represent how many represented, going beyond increasingly destabilizing systems of electoral democracy. Applied to the Koalition, and depending on the credibility of its universal representative claim, the group might engage in the representative condition of ‘One to All’ or ‘Some to Some’. Saward (2009) suggests different kinds of representative claims, which help to detect the Koalition’s modes of articulation. First, the ‘deeper roots’ claim refers to a claims-maker who appeals to a constituency’s implicit or hypothetical consensus in an ideal condition. Even though the agonistic framework operates with the logic of underlying conflict rather than assumed consent/consensus of the represented constituency, ‘deeper roots’ representative claims can be analytically activated in the case of the Koalition when reversed into a logic of negativity. With this theoretical inversion toward negativity the ‘deeper roots’ claim serves to conceptualize the relationship between the Koalition plenum and SK, the latter of which proceeds to act politically if there is no outspoken dissent from the plenum. Second, the ‘wider interests and new voices’ representative claim describes the Koalition in representational ‘mirroring’ (i.e., making claims for subjects in similar conditions) of artists’ shared precarity. Moreover, ‘stakeholding’ (i.e., requesting justice to be included in decisionmaking in which one has a (material) stake) becomes apparent in the Koalition’s request to be involved in the distribution of City Tax. The ‘grass-roots mobilization’ claim came to the fore in the Koalition’s public campaign in 2013, as well as in its continuous dialogue with the artistic scenes in plenum meetings. Lastly, the claim to struggle for ‘larger issues’ is reflected in the Koalition’s universalizing tendency to ‘speak for’ political issues that arguably concern everybody. Synthesizing the approaches to representative claims-making and the implications of a radical approach to representation, Laclau (2007a, p. 12) emphasizes that ‘all representation will be necessarily partial and will take place against the background of an essential unrepresentability.’ ‘Unrepresentability’ refers to the structural impossibility of ‘achieving’ or ‘attaining’ full representation. Representation is not only impossible as an ‘end in itself’; the means or modes of representation are equally inadequate. Laclau and Mouffe (2001, p. 119) vividly reinforce the impossibility of representation: Now, every relation of representation is founded on a fiction: that of the presence at a certain level of something which, strictly speaking, is absent from it. But because it is at the same time a fiction and a principle organizing

60 Articulation of an agonistic actor actual social relations, representation is the terrain of a game whose result is not predetermined from the beginning. Acknowledging the unfeasibility of ‘full’ representation simultaneously opens analytical pathways to investigate conditions of possibility and impossibility for practices of representation. The attempt to represent an irrevocably empty space of representation, as I will show in the following, leads to the construction of ambiguous (empty) signifiers, porous chains of equivalence and loosely legitimated collectivities. Despite the ‘essential impurity in the process of representation’, Laclau (2007a, pp. 98–99) notes that the framework of representation is inescapable. In this context, he (2007a, p. 103) observes that ‘democratic alternatives must be constructed that multiply the points from and around which representation operates rather than attempt to limit its scope and area of operation.’ Again, examining the Koalition as one of those ‘points from and around which representation operates’ might reveal new representative, emancipatory and potentially even democratic alternatives. Pointing to the problem of representation for (democratic) societies, Laclau (2007a, p. 99) creates a link between (‘representative and/or democratic’) representation and political legitimacy.4 To counter the logic of fully transparent political representation, Laclau and Mouffe (2001, p. 65) substitute the principle of representation with that of articulation. Hence, understanding articulation as representation, and representation as articulation initializes the conceptualization of articulation as a mode of representation beyond democratic modes to ultimately propose an approach to post-foundational political representation. #3 articulation: challenging discourse The productive dimension of articulatory practice becomes apparent in its translating or mediating function. No articulation can literally signify or directly express unity, discourse or social meaning. Rather, articulation can produce unity, or not (Marchart 2013, p. 379). For example, the public appearance throughout the first campaign, or its catalogue of demands, underline the Koalition’s attempt to manufacture collective unity. With regard to representative claims, the group produces an argumentative position to ‘be’ the representative of the inconclusive totality of Berlin’s cultural producers, which are not empirically or conceptually apprehensible. This discursive representative overstretching showcases the attempt to construct a ‘full’ object of representation, even though this is not possible. Simultaneously, Laclau (2007b, p. 108) declares the reverse moment of representation to unfold in a way that ‘never fully control[s] which demands they embody and represent.’ Capturing the inherent uncontrollability of representation both for representatives and the represented, this constitutive lack of decidability or causality permits the investigation of possibilities and impossibilities of representation. In partial overlap with the

Articulation of an agonistic actor 61 agentic (#1 articulation) and representative (#2 articulation) dimensions of articulatory practice, the production of a (counter-)hegemonic discourse (#3 articulation) underscores the interdependency of the articulatory vectors. #4 articulation: fixating discursive meaning Lastly, articulatory practice strives to fixate formerly dispersed differential elements into a discursive moment of temporary signification and (counter-) hegemonic power. Despite the dialectic between equivalence and difference in processes of equalizing differences, this interplay is never fully reconciled or resolved. An entirely positive system of differential/non-equivalent elements cannot be constituted. In this respect, the last articulatory vector captures the irrevocably contingent fixations of differential elements into discursive moments. The dissolution of all equivalence makes identity purely negative or ‘anti-positive’ (Roskamm 2017, p. 194). Yet, taking Purcell’s (2009, p. 312) understanding of equivalence as ‘simultaneously the same and different, unified and multiple’, and extending this precarious openness and non-exhaustibility to difference, the fixating attempt reinforces the structural undecidability of (counter-)hegemonic meaning, or articulatory practices more generally. In summary, the four vectors of articulation illustrate both their respective specificity and mutual interrelatedness in processes of constituting new collective subjects. Departing from Mouffe and Laclau’s definition of articulation, I teased out articulatory practices as agentic (non-representative) representational modes that rearrange (counter-)hegemonic formations in and of discourse. These articulatory vectors will repeatedly flag the interpenetration of articulation and legitimation in the following discussion.

Prologue: equalizing genre-specific differences This section sets the stage for the constitution of the Koalition as a collective actor in Berlin’s cultural political field. In February and March 2012, Jochen Sandig and Folkert Uhde from Radialsystem, a selfacclaimed transdisciplinary space for arts and ideas, invited artists and members of arts associations to discuss the current status quo of funding for the independent art scene. Attendees ranged from visual and performing artists to music and dance producers. Despite the open invitation, not all genres and forms of artistic production were present. As mentioned above, contemporary literary workers initially did not attend but decided to join the Koalition after an internal meeting. In the series of meetings at Radialsystem, Sandig is described in Berlin-Mitte as the dominant spokesperson who led discussions and voiced personal opinions (Koalition, December 17, 2013). Laden with a cultural political past as manager of Kunsthaus Tacheles, whose temporary usage as arts space came to an end in 2012, Sandig was soon identified as not the ideal person to lead or ‘represent’ the new coalition: ‘It would make sense to choose somebody who

62 Articulation of an agonistic actor was not marked by an institution’ (Koalition, March 31, 2014). Hence, attention shifted toward Christophe Knoch, a cultural organizer and former personal assistant of the controversial deceased filmmaker Christoph Schlingensief. Knoch had attended the first meetings as minute keeper and at some point was asked by the Radialsystem plenum to take over from Sandig, and agreed. Knoch’s newness to the Berlin art scene was considered favorable by Koalition representatives because he ‘did not already have a history with everybody. Not with all the politicians, with all the administrators’ (ibid.). Presumably, Knoch’s ‘untainted’ personality did not aggravate existing controversial relations among cultural administrators or politicians and artist stakeholders, but, to the contrary, his appointment was appreciated because he gave the Koalition a ‘face’ and was considered ‘the speaker of speakers’ (January 21, 2015). The initial gatherings were perceived by one Koalition speaker as a ‘protest event’ to voice discontent about a Hauptstadtkulturfonds funding decision attributing 215,000 euros to a laborious opera production (Creative City Berlin 2011). Another speaker identified this incident (December 14, 2015) ‘as a flagship [i.e., Staatsoper] that completely rushes past everybody’, expressing the general dissatisfaction that large and prestigious cultural institutions bypass funding procedures or receive large ‘funding gifts’ while the independent scene advances incrementally or not at all. Amidst the shared discontent, artist advocates noted that a common fight from the independent scene against this injustice did not exist to this point. Consequently, collectivization seemed like a ‘logical’ consequence, but the foundation of a new cultural political organization was met with initial skepticism by long-standing activists who assumed that the spontaneous gathering would implode again later. Due to the remarkable diversity, expertise and political determination of attendees, the gatherings at Radialsystem constituted an impetus to create knowledge exchange among artistic genres and bundle common problems and requests into an overarching political stance. This approximation was materialized into the group’s first written document, which channels members’ collective discontent and motivation to take action.

Unifying requests: the Zehn-Punkte-Plan The most tangible outcome from the initial meetings was the so-called Zehn-Punkte-Plan. The plan was officially released and presented to members of parliament on November 12, 2012 (Koalition der Freien Szene 2012, p. 1) after discussion in a plenum and a public debate shortly before. The ten requests are partially monetary, partially non-monetary, encompassing the request for payment of minimum artist fees for performing arts and dance (4.5 million euros), artist/exhibition fees for visual arts (1 million euros), project funding for visual arts (2.5 million euros), independent music (1.5 million euros) and literature and poetry (1.1 million euros). Transdisciplinary requests include an Eigenmittelfonds (matching fund; 1 million

Articulation of an agonistic actor 63 euros), a Wiederaufnahmefonds (revival fund; 0.5 million euros) and a fund for artistic research (1 million euros) as well as more district-level cultural funding (1 million euros), resources for office structures of associations that do not have administrative support (0.2 million euros) and lastly, the creation and funding of interdisciplinary anchor positions (4.5 million euros). Non-monetary claims include the request for cultural usage of city-owned buildings to sustain and expand work spaces for transdisciplinary art production; the request for more justice, solidarity and transparency; and a fund for cultural diversity. The total requested sum to address these needs was calculated at 18.8 million euros annually for the independent scene in addition to the existing funding portfolio. The ZPP was composed by an editorial group that came together after the Radialsystem meetings, bundling existing genre-specific claims, concepts and ideas. Tied to standing requests, some of which had been advocated for a long time, the plan was perceived as justified on grounds of aggregating and developing these demands. Moreover, it was intended to spark debate about the transferability of funding structures among genres.5 Dynamically interrelating new and old demands, the plan exemplifies the organizational diversity and necessary openness and reflexivity to manage different degrees of organization of respective ‘member’ associations. One Koalition speaker from a small association remembers that all organizations had different preconditions to calculate their needs but benefitted from the systematic preliminary work offered by well-equipped organizations like LAFT and Tanzbüro; they helped others concretize adequate estimates or calculations (February 13, 2015). A representative of a small genre-specific association points out (March 25, 2015) that ‘without reliable data, we cannot be politically strong in the long run.’ Despite the collaborative tendency, Koalition spokespeople from younger or less financially solvent associations felt under pressure to present statistical figures to justify their requests (ibid.): ‘They [SK members] griped at me in the beginning saying “Can’t you for once present accurate figures?” until they finally realized that this is a huge problem for me (…) really, from me personally, that cannot be performed.’ Offering a glimpse at the considerable organizational, financial and personal imbalances in the SK, the political demands of the ZPP constitute a variety of ‘democratic’ and ‘popular’ demands (Laclau 2007b, p. 74), the former standing for ‘isolated’ demands that are either satisfied or not, while the latter describe ‘a plurality of demands which, through their equivalent articulation, constitute a broader social subjectivity.’ The Koalition’s demands constitute a complementarity of the two. For example, the request to create matching and revival funds (i.e., democratic demands) was ‘satisfied’ by their immediate implementation in the Cultural Budget 2014/15. While these requests only partially provided the sum requested by the Koalition, they have both been reinstated as budgetary items ever since (Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in 2017, p. 54). Moreover, they are not purely ‘isolated’ because they interrelate with the realization of cultural productions (e.g., funds are matched with additional federal and European

64 Articulation of an agonistic actor funding). Similarly, borough-level arts funding, as requested by the Koalition, received 511,000 euros (Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen von Berlin 2014, p. 66).6 In contrast, the request for minimum artist payment speaks to equivalent needs (i.e., popular demands) among a broader artistic collectivity. In addition, Saward’s (2009, p. 15 ff.) ‘connecting’, ‘confirming’ and ‘untainted’ political claims help to specify the Koalition’s demands. ‘Connecting claims’ assume proximity to the democratic institutional apparatus. This institutional closeness is apparent in the Koalition’s request to benefit from public money such as the City Tax and illustrated in reform suggestions regarding existing funding streams. Even though the Koalition is not formally situated within the institutionalized decision-making apparatus, the group’s implicit acknowledgement of the system within which it articulates its critique is evident. The ‘confirming claim’ (i.e., testability, feasibility and acceptability of a claim) comes to the fore in the Koalition’s belief that the ‘constituency’ (i.e., total population of independent Berlin artists) would be responsive to, or supportive of, the claims it puts forth. Lastly, ‘untainted claims’ circumscribe demands that are excluded or marginalized in the formal democratic architecture. While some Koalition demands have been continuously discarded from discourse and implementation, most claims have at least been considered in multi-stakeholder discussions about future funding designs. Hence, although these claims could be considered ‘untainted’, they have been consciously excluded or marginalized. The ZPP has been updated over the course of the Koalition’s existence, reflecting the results achieved so far (Koalition der Freien Szene 2015). A significant shift occurred in the fall of 2016, when the inconsistently called Elf-Punkte-Programm or -Plan (Eleven-Point Program or Plan) was announced and introduced in a plenum session. Besides the noticeable abandonment of the established and widespread name Zehn-Punkte-Plan, the new plan shifts focus from operationalized, funding-related claims to more abstract, non-monetarized claims such as ‘funding justice’ as well as value statements like ‘art is no service’ (Koalition der Freien Szene 2016a). On the one hand, these modifications could be interpreted as a manifestation of the Koalition’s self-reflexivity and learning ability, which are crucial to social movements’ organizational development (Purcell 2009). Repositioning the agenda might have been considered necessary to adapt to changing political circumstances and to remain a relevant part of the political conversation. On the other hand, the semantic and content-related changes also bear the risk of unsettling the clearly communicated and communicable ZPP that characterized the Koalition from its foundation (Landau 2017). To summarize, even though some demands have been concretely materially realized, the Koalition agenda centers around unaccomplished funding-related requests that are continuously pushed forward by the group.

An open action platform The following (self-)descriptions and interpretations of mandates, objectives and scope of action stem from Koalition speakers.7 As the group’s controversial yet

Articulation of an agonistic actor 65 constitutive internal mechanisms of decision-making, organization and power significantly influence how it appears as an agonistic movement, these dynamics oscillate between particularity and universality, between openness and closure. Affiliates and speakers of the Koalition most often circumscribe the group as an ‘open action platform’, emphasizing a strong focus on activity and agility. This terminology of vividness and clout illustrates the self-framing and -legitimation ‘qua action’ or ‘per acclamation’8 (Koalition, December 17, 2013). Moreover, the Koalition understands itself as an emancipatory movement (March 17, 2015): Currently, the Koalition is not a space for discourse, but it is a political instrument. An action platform that seeks to establish a different understanding of the independent scene and consequently, a significantly different funding situation for the independent scene with various open opportunities. While the differentiation between ‘space of discourse’ and ‘political instrument’ might serve to underline the more policy-oriented approach in comparison to, for example, Haben und Brauchen (H&B), the distinction does not hold when the speaker specifies the group’s objective to introduce a ‘different understanding of the independent scene’. Notably, the establishment of such a new or modified conception of art is not independent of a discursive intervention or change. Mindful of the materiality to discourse, the Koalition’s concrete actions are certainly discursive interventions, too. Another speaker assumes the self-ascribed task as ‘restricting oneself to ten points and not develop 100 points, and not say “Hey, we wanted to talk about philosophy”’ (January 21, 2015). The exaggeration (‘100 requests’) demonstrates this speaker’s sense of responsibility to ensure that demands do not become too fragmented, diffuse or overwhelming, because that would hamper with the group’s intelligibility vis-à-vis external political stakeholders. Other Koalition members reiterate the view of the coalition’s instrumental character as a means or tool to achieve political goals. According to one Koalition representative (March 25, 2015), its pragmatic approach relates to the real-life conditions of Berlin artists ‘to always start from the status quo. We do not start from what we personally wish for, but from what is really available now.’ This ‘realistic’ self-understanding is echoed by speakers who consider the initial meetings as an opportunity to gain an overview about funding conditions, to gather and create facts, later turning them into concrete, self-determined political action. Besides the primacy of pragmatism, Koalition speakers are concerned about the potential stagnation of the group. Threatening the strong identification as action platform, some unpopular or ‘bulky’, mostly genre-specific claims, which might be difficult to communicate or evoke strong political resistance, could slow down the bustling Koalition. Requests like the visual artist fees, Zeitstipendien, are like ‘biting on granite’ where ‘smarter solutions’ or ‘detours’ could facilitate the realization in budgetary items (Koalition, February 13, 2015). The handling of such delicate and controversial requests is a balancing act between changing

66 Articulation of an agonistic actor strategy and remaining persistent. Notably, the suggested binary between ‘change’ and ‘persistence’ is not clear-cut. Yet, the Koalition is unwilling to ‘water down’ demands (ibid.). At the same time, the group demonstrates the potential to adapt; for example, when reconceptualizing the Zeitstipendien by shifting gears regarding the name and scope of the visual arts grants (see below). The Koalition’s persistence, following the motto ‘the constant dripping wears the stone’ (March 17, 2015) captures its aspiration to work continuously and proactively. When the group first sought public attention before and throughout the campaign in 2013, it arranged personal encounters with over two-thirds of Berlin’s members of parliament, independent of their party affiliation or interest/ expertise in cultural politics, to explain its requests. Conducting these visits in pairs of two or three speakers, individuals with little political advocacy experience learned from those who were already well versed on Berlin’s cultural political stage. The Koalition’s strategy to propose budget-item-specific funding requests in its ZPP has been considered one of its most distinct characteristics by both artist affiliates and administrators. This ‘effective’ placing of claims is reminiscent of approaches to ‘follow the policy’ (McCann and Ward 2012; Peck and Theodore 2012), suggesting engagement in those areas of political decision-making where the respective primary decision-making power for ideas and decision-making lies. To intervene in precisely these arenas, the Koalition assumes its responsibility to create and supply numbers, facts and figures to concretize demands and needs (January 29, 2015). Regarding the general lack of both qualitative and quantitative data in Berlin’s cultural political discourse,9 this self-responsibilization serves to create better arguments and definitions to alleviate the independent scene’s funding conditions. The assumed link between ‘good’ data and ‘good’ advocacy work highlights the group’s self-mandatation via action to gather information which would otherwise not be available. Thinking of data as ‘raw material for advocacy’ (Holden 2006, p. 46), the lack thereof disempowers the solidification of political claims, and generally impedes their articulation, validity, contestability and prioritization in public discourse. In contrast, the existence of more high-quality data could increase both processes and outcomes of policy-making. The concreteness of the City Tax debate facilitated the group’s entry into Berlin’s cultural political discourse. Having entered through the bottleneck of a (re)distributive debate, Koalition speakers view their standing as overall representatives of the independent scene as enhanced because it reconciles tensions between concrete and more overarching political issues (February 13, 2015). With this extensive agenda, the Koalition’s demand-driven profile revolves around ‘quite a bit of money, but it is really about a sociopolitical goal. It is about the bigger picture. And that is why I find it much more interesting than genre-specific lobbying’ (Koalition, January 29, 2015). The value of advocating for a structural socio-political objective is echoed by other Koalition speakers, further feeding into the self-legitimation to be

Articulation of an agonistic actor 67 addressing the entirety of Berlin’s independent cultural producers. The impression that the Koalition pursues a normative function and goal resonates with Senatskanzlei employees who view the latter in the position to ‘address topics that somehow concern everybody, that are a little bigger’ (October 20, 2015). Raising the question of ‘which city Berlin artists want to live in’ adds a new dimension to the political engagement to change funding structures, which was previously considered ‘not very sexy’ (January 29, 2015). A transdisciplinary actor between openness and lack of clarity The Koalition is often considered a ‘transdisciplinary’ coalition or project,10 which circumscribes not only the numerical diversity of spokespeople from various artistic genres, but also touches on the more wide-reaching debate about the meaning of artistic transdisciplinarity. To act as a transdisciplinary actor, different genres need to understand both their own and others’ respective logics, situations and positions of funding. Hence, reciprocal awareness, knowledge and openness of genres’ specificities need to be fostered via processes of inter- and intra-organizational learning. Nonetheless, ‘transdisciplinarity’ will continue to mean different things to different genres. Conceptions of the term – some opening definitional categories, some dissolving definitions altogether – are rationalized variously by performing artists, who have longer traditions of working transdisciplinarily than musicians or writers, where cross-disciplinary formats such as performance lectures and reading installations are just on the rise (Koalition, January 28, 2015). More generally, the transdisciplinary character of the Koalition can both amplify genrespecific positionalities and contribute to overcoming genre-specific thinking. In the hope that the Koalition could establish a notion of ‘the independent scene’ beyond specific modes of artistic production or organization, speakers do not consider the complete disappearance or ‘drowning’ of genre-specificities a probable scenario (March 24, 2015). However, with regard to the SK which largely maintains, aggregates and reproduces genre-specific positions of power and identity, the radically transdisciplinary character of the Koalition might be a future aspiration rather than enlivened reality. As the question ‘What kind of art does the Koalition stand for?’ remains unanswered, three tentative parameters shall circumscribe the group’s normative take on transdisciplinarity. A first indicator of a transdisciplinary understanding of art in the Koalition marks the latter not just as the mere aggregation or physical co-presence of different types of artists or artistic production in the sense of multi-functionality, but as something more or new, because the Koalition is a ‘whole that is more than the sum of its parts’ (February 12, 2015). One Koalition speaker claims (February 4, 2015): We [the Koalition] do not speak about one genre, about one working model, about one mode of thought and production, one model of

68 Articulation of an agonistic actor reflection and the way to do certain things, but we speak about the most different forms of that, the various artistic genres with all their hybrid forms that are in-between. As a second indication, then, the implicit parallelism of ‘difference’ and ‘in-betweenness’ of art forms not only rejects an aggregative model but emphasizes the ambiguity and hybridity of transdisciplinary art. Third, and maybe most controversial, Koalition speakers argue that ‘the state’ or administration should not interfere with notions of art, because this would lead to a ‘state-run art system’ (January 21, 2015). While this fatalist fear of the ‘nationalization of the independent art scene’ (Koalition, February 4, 2015) does not directly define one specific notion of art (let alone a transdisciplinary one), it foregrounds the opinion of some Koalition representatives that art should be unconditionally purpose-free or autonomous. Other speakers deconstruct the myth of the wholly autonomous and genius artist: ‘The classic, priest-like artist who sits up there and spreads the Truth, that doesn’t work anymore’ (January 28, 2015). In conclusion, an open (agonistic?) debate about what art means to the Koalition, and how it should best be funded, would shift the group’s focus on operational concerns to more normative, less concrete debates. While the underlying notion of art necessarily implicates both concrete funding requests and the broader socio-political objectives of the group, the discussion of the Koalition’s understanding of art has been pushed to the sidelines so far (see Chapter 5: ‘Conflict and consensus between agonistic policy stakeholders’). Negotiating conflict and consensus: the SK The following section examines the development and constitution of the SK and reconstructs narratives about the main decision-making organ, its internal structure and working environment, encompassing up to 15 individuals (see Table 2.1).11 The Round of Spokespeople meets bi-weekly in changing locations. Formed soon after the Radialsystem meetings, a steering committee for the Koalition was considered necessary. Consequently, a small selection of individuals (most of them officials from genre-specific associations) gathered to assemble expertise and experiences. It was expected early on that the SK should not only act or speak for itself but provide an open space to move the causes of the Koalition forward. While the narrative that ‘the Sprecherkreis has constituted itself almost naturally’ (Koalition, January 21, 2015) conveys the idea that it formed in an ‘organic’ manner, the reflexive verb ‘to constitute itself ’ omits both individual and collective agency with regard to who constructed the Round of Spokespeople (and who might have been left out), offering a glimpse at the partially non-transparent composition of this steering organ. There are no formalized entry mechanisms to join the SK. Processes of admitting or selecting spokespeople range from individual requests to join

Articulation of an agonistic actor 69 and ‘fill’ gaps of missing disciplinary voices to admissions based on previous engagement for the group such as the 2013 campaign (March 17, 2015). Enlarging the Round of Spokespeople for the first time after the original constitution in 2012, project space affiliate Tiny Domingos was announced as a new Koalition spokesperson in a plenum in February 2015. Notably, there had been no discussion or vote-like situation prior to this ‘appointment’ with the broader artist membership of the plenum. The non-systematicity of the SK extends to an inconsistent practice of genres being represented by one or two individuals. This personnel setting, which either diversifies or centralizes the ‘voices’ or positions that communicate genre-specific positions, is left for associations to decide, creating room for inequalities among speakers and genres. Propositions to split genre-specific representations from a single to two-tiered model usually receive the informal blessing of other speakers (Koalition, March 24, 2015). Yet, there are no tangible principles to formally request the withdrawal or change of a specific speaker. Several speakers describe their own entry into the SK as accidental, or because nobody else wanted to take on the task. Availability, time and personal will to engage are said to be requirements to become a speaker, but there is no systematic assessment whether these criteria are fulfilled or will be guaranteed while occupying a speaker role. Amidst the different ways to enter the group, many speakers came to join the SK via their professional position as board members of associations, thus often occupying a double role as artist advocate. Despite the dual workload, this practice has been assessed by speakers themselves as useful to strengthen communication back into the genre-specific artist constituencies (March 24, 2015). In sum, speaker appointment remains largely at the discretion of individual genre-specific associations. While, hypothetically, any artist could ‘represent’ the independent scene based on their artistic expertise, the seeming openness is contained by an implicit expectation that speakers should be ‘bounded’ to their respective scenes. Instead of formal aspirations to standardize or regulate the composition of the SK, there are informal practices of structuration. Even though Koalition representatives would consider the potential exclusion of parties interested in joining them ‘the greatest catastrophe’ (February 4, 2015), there are implicit access barriers. For example, the unspoken restrictiveness became visible when individuals from organizations such as H&B or the project space network expressed an interest in joining the SK, yet were not permitted to do so, without official reasons or a chance to appeal. The early request by H&B was brushed off by speakers because the Koalition is ‘organized via genres and not via initiatives’ (December 14, 2015). After a closer look, the differentiation between the representation ‘via initiative’ or ‘via genre’ does not hold as, for example, Behrens as representative of the Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (New Society for Visual Arts) is a founding member of the SK, and does not represent a genre precisely, but a mode of artistic production. In addition, Christophe Knoch also does not stand for a genre or specific artistic practice. Instead of incorporating everything,

70 Articulation of an agonistic actor or everybody, the Koalition speaker claims that ‘working next to each other and parallel (…) knowing about each other and referring to each other’ is more purposeful than ‘playing a “catch-them-all” game’ of representing everybody’ (ibid.). In sum, this attitude suggests maintaining genre-specific particularities and organizational separateness via productive dialogue rather than aggregating all independent art organizations. Nevertheless, this seemingly neat division of labor is permeated by personal incompatibilities or animosities between actual and aspiring speakers, further constricting the theoretical openness for new or additional speakers. New spokespeople would generally be welcome if they would (Koalition, February 4, 2015) ‘be engaged full-on, because otherwise, it is really more of a step back!’ Hence, the potential drawbacks provoked by new entrances could initialize debates within the already heterogeneous group and hamper with their informally and laboriously orchestrated mechanisms of decision-making. In short, the Koalition’s openness is conditioned, or contained, by the guard-rails of ensuring continuity and a constant workflow. The reverse of the paradoxical logic of ‘contained openness’ is stability. Considering some institutions such as LAFT, Tanzbüro or bbk as ‘anchors of stability’ (January 21, 2015), their steadying function nonetheless depends on organizational and personal capacities of individual speakers and does not underlie any democratic or systematic control. With regard to the democratic or representative mandatation of speakers, it remains disputed and inconsistent whether speakers are ‘delegated’ or not, or whether they are directly legitimated by their respective associations or not. Various Koalition speakers express a feeling of being legitimized by ‘their’ association. Other speakers rationalize their position due to personal commitment and expertise rather than an organizational affiliation (February 13, 2015). Explaining or self-legitimizing their mandates, speakers might have a mandate ‘which isn’t really a mandate’ (Koalition, December 14, 2015). While providing speakers with a degree of freedom and power to act, the vagueness of mandatation reinforces the lack of stability and systematicity with regard to the division of labor or responsibility in the Round of Spokespeople. Speakers view the absence of fixed procedures and agreements of how to work together as causing annoyances among the heterogeneous speakers and associations (January 28, 2015). For example, if an issue has not come up in SK conversations (yet), there is no arrangement for the resolution of the matter. Responses and approaches to conflict resolution are often crafted on an ad hoc basis. While lengthy conversations are considered useful in principle, arriving at a conclusion sometimes seems like an ‘infinitely long process and we [the SK] never achieved a status where everybody was happy with it’ (ibid.). Irresolvable conflicts aside, the tiresome proceeding and unreliably anchored positions of responsibility, as well as the omnipresent possibility of erupting controversies, can also lead to a loss of information or institutional knowledge. From the lack of formalized procedures, frustration and insecurity can arise because decisions or agreements that had almost been agreed upon can constantly be challenged anew (Koalition, February 12, 2015).

Articulation of an agonistic actor 71 In correspondence with post-foundational concepts such as absence or lack of foundation, there are at least two levels of absence or lack to be considered in the SK: the theoretical radical (i.e., ontological) openness of the group, and the practical ‘contained’ (i.e., ontic) openness. While the former institutes a collective actor on the grounds of radical negativity, making constant (re) articulation necessary, the latter concretely inhibits or fosters the day-to-day organization of the group. In other words, the ontological hypothetical openness of the Koalition is constrained by the practical selection and partial exclusiveness of the SK. While the assignment of roles, rules and responsibilities can only ever be temporary, contingent and contested, the practiced deliberate absence of some guiding rules in the SK in its current form does not constitute a ‘productive’ absence; it rather obscures how selection, entrance, mandatation and decision-making take place. Overall, this is challenging both among speakers and for plenum participants to understand the concrete decision- and meaning-making processes of the Round of Spokespeople. Despite its inconclusiveness, procedural and organizational norms could be provisionally introduced to build a transitory and transparent system of power. This contingent locus of power could make the reversibility of spokespeople’s power intelligible. To expand on the composition of the SK and the circulation and distribution of roles and responsibilities, I briefly discuss Christophe Knoch’s specific positionality as the ‘speaker of speakers’ which significantly conditions parameters of conflict- and consensus-making both within the group and vis-à-vis the cultural administration. An ‘empty signifier’ within the agonistic collectivity Christophe Knoch has played an important representative role in the Koalition since its early days. Investigating his (self-)assumed and ascribed leadership role further unpacks the multi-layered authority and (communicative) power of the Round of Spokespeople. Having obtained a degree of publicity via local, national and international panel discussions, radio and TV interviews, Knoch often moderated Koalition plenum sessions. Fellow speakers perceive him as a ‘figure of integration’ and element of ‘reconciliation’ in the group (January 29, 2015). While Knoch has garnered a positive reputation based on his two-fold independence (i.e., from genre-specific and institutional ties), this independence lacks external control, evaluation or sanction mechanisms on the part of genre-specific associations. The diverse prehistories between Koalition speakers and the cultural administration – be they cooperative or antagonistic – affect the propensity to cooperate (or not). Amidst the organizational, personal and rhetorical heterogeneity of the SK, Knoch’s position is generally viewed as instructive for the unification and partial pacification of the group. Many stakeholders attribute some of the Koalition’s success directly to Knoch’s personality, describing him as an ‘organic leader’ (Ansell and Gash 2007). With regard

72 Articulation of an agonistic actor to his resignation in April 2018, Knoch’s communicative and mediating role has been transformed into a new spokespeople model, which rotates among two ‘speakers of speakers’ from the existing array of speakers every three months. At this point, the new model has not yet received any concrete response from policy-makers or the Koalition plenum. To analytically scrutinize Knoch’s role within the SK, the transition of ‘floating’ to ‘empty’ signifiers sketches his representative position in and for the group (for an inverse analysis see MacKillop 2016). While Laclau (2007b, p. 133) understands empty signifiers to be aimed at constructing a ‘popular identity once the presence of a stable frontier is taken for granted’, floating signifiers ‘apprehend the logic of the displacements of that frontier.’ The reference to the (de)construction of boundaries relates to the logics of difference and equivalence (see Chapter 1: ‘Theoretical prelude’). Laclau (1990, p. 28) positions empty signifiers to hegemonize content and fix meaning as ‘nodal points’. These crystallizations of power and meaning consequently become crucial in explaining organizational change or development. Marchart (2013, p. 325) points out that empty signifiers are never completely, but rather ‘tendentially’ empty, and must be rid of their specific content: ‘To aggregate as many differences in the chain of equivalences of a system of signification – as the name of the chain itself – he [sic] must distance himself from its concrete content.’ Laclau (2007b, p. 162) reinforces the idea that empty signifiers transcend their operational character, being ‘something more than the image of a pre-given totality: it is what constitutes that totality, thus adding a qualitatively new dimension.’ Related to the representative tension or gap between universality and particularity, and the concurrent impossibility to ‘fully’ represent, empty signifiers engage in representing precisely that ‘fundamental’ lack or absence. Hence, nodal points or empty signifiers appear as privileged discursive elements knitting together differences or contradictions in formations of power or signification. Roskamm (2017) points out that floating signifiers assume structural transfer of demands toward ‘becoming part’ of the hegemonic power. Notably, neither the Koalition in general, nor Knoch in particular, pursue this desire to become hegemonic in the narrow sense of hegemony as synonymous with ‘politics’ (i.e., the formalized apparatus of cultural policy-making). Rather, the Koalition including Knoch, remains external to the institutional locus of cultural political power but intervenes intermittently in agenda-setting and policy design processes. Moreover, Koalition speakers’ fervent refusals to become a state-run lobby organization or their rejection to be instrumentalized in jury processes demonstrate that they maintain a critical distance to the hegemonic complex. Hence, Knoch does not aspire for a ‘structural transfer’ of power but contributes to challenge the existing (hegemonic) funding system via an ‘engagement with the institution’ (Mouffe 2008). It follows that Knoch appears as an individualized empty rather than floating signifier.12 Knoch’s position is ‘tendentially’ empty (i.e., no institutional affiliation and a ‘light’ cultural political past in Berlin), yet he is not a blank slate.

Articulation of an agonistic actor 73 Knoch appears as an agential empty signifier who represents general, arguably ‘empty’ political claims such as cultural funding justice, transparency or more substantial political involvement of artist stakeholders. While all discursive elements of a chain of equivalence are necessarily incomplete and agentic, Knoch sticks out not only because he interlinks differential claims of genre-specific organizations, but because his privileged positionality can further destabilize the chain’s already unstable elements. In that sense, while empty signifiers can centralize meaning, the ambiguous interpretive and representative space between the universal and the particular can also be enhanced by agentic empty signifiers. In this tension, Knoch engages and is being engaged in the challenge between representing both the temporary totality/universality as well as the concrete particularity of the Koalition. Knoch’s recently-ended leadership has irregularly oscillated between confirmation and contestation. While his institution as ‘speaker of speakers’ was comparatively uncontroversial (however, not formally voted upon), at other times, Knoch was threatened with no longer being ‘allowed’ to represent the entirety of the SK. Communicative strategies subsumed as ‘“Everybody shuts up, only Christophe talks!”’ were established in early meetings with State Secretary André Schmitz in 2013, with the aim to centralize power and convey one message of the Koalition brought forth by Knoch. This approach is said to have been aimed at not getting sidetracked by Schmitz’s conversational nonchalance and was allegedly supported by all speakers to ‘not divide attention’ (Koalition, December 17, 2013). In addition to this early communicative fixation on Knoch, which was continued in meetings with almost all speakers present, other gatherings between the cultural administration and the Koalition were attended only by ‘small delegations’ of spokespeople – always including Knoch – who were selectively recruited by him on the basis of their eloquence or generally ‘diplomatic’ stance toward the cultural administration, which in return, disqualified more confrontational speakers. The initial discussion of issues with a smaller group of speakers and the subsequent transference to the whole SK has been described as a common, assumedly more ‘effective’ practice, even though (or because?) it bypasses greater conflicts among speakers. While the ‘efficiency’ of the Koalition might have been a major legitimation to send selected delegations, it remains difficult to assess how other speakers (let alone plenum attendees) perceive these partially exclusionary communicative practices. While there has been no public controversy about Knoch’s leadership, speakers internally called Knoch’s ‘mandate’ into question, even though the latter was never formally ascribed. In one instance, internal conflicts grew so strong that Knoch was warned that he might be prohibited from representing visual arts any longer (September 7, 2015). The threat to ‘withdraw’ Knoch’s mandate, which was constructed to then be withdrawn, reveals that – in a state of seemingly irresolvable conflict – speakers resort to conventional representative formulas (i.e., referring to Knoch’s non-formalized position to question his legitimacy to ‘speak’ or ‘represent’).

74 Articulation of an agonistic actor Almost ironically, this crisis management uncovers a desire for formal mandatation when informal mandatation no longer seems to be considered legitimate, illustrating the ultimate unfixity of informal legitimation (see ‘Conclusions: articulating legitimations’). While Knoch’s leadership has partially been viewed as ‘ad hoc’ (Koalition, June 17, 2015), Knoch describes himself as having at times acted with ‘relatively large room for maneuver’ (February 2, 2016). When negotiations between the cultural administration and the Koalition almost burst into failure in late 2015, Knoch did not officially confirm all meetings with cultural administrators and politicians, but rather brought along other selected speakers (see Chapter 5: ‘Conflict and consensus between agonistic policy stakeholders’). Consequently, not all actions conducted in the name of the Koalition were formally approved by all members of the SK. Knoch justifies this proceeding with the argument that speakers without institutional affiliation can act better in the overall spirit of the Koalition than speakers who are genre-specific representatives, which is echoed by other speakers (March 17, 2015). Reminded of the idea that technically all spokespeople should be able to speak for the entirety of the Koalition, the actual practice of the transdisciplinary communication provided by the Koalition seems to fall short of its own expected benefit. Acknowledging the loose organizational nature of the Koalition, a cultural administrator points out that Knoch cannot make decisions wholly by himself and is not authorized to talk for the whole group without gathering with other speakers (October 20, 2015). Cultural administrators perceive this ongoing consultation as tiresome yet understandable (November 2, 2015): ‘The fact that the Koalition has had this one speaker [Knoch] for so long (…) he is somehow sitting between the chairs (…) acts as a balancing instance (…) that has also helped with the legislative.’ Despite recognizing Knoch’s difficult position, the administrator has limited patience when the SK takes too long to decide or fails to communicate a unitary position. Underscoring the unequal treatment and position of speakers, Knoch is both internally and externally responsibilized to depersonalize and negotiate controversial claims. In the attempt to construct a chain of equivalences within the Koalition, Knoch appears as a differently different discursive element in the equalization effort of differential speaker elements. Knoch’s overt presence and outspokenness within a chain of supposedly equivalent elements not only complicates but might also incapacitate the tipping from difference into (transitory) equivalence. While agentic nodal points (#1 articulation) of the Koalition can contribute to the temporary stabilization of discursive moments (#4 articulation) or soothe conflict and design preliminary consensus (#3 articulation). They can also disturb or manipulate the equalization because they are comparatively ‘emptier’ than other discursive elements which are inscribed in organizational contexts. Knoch can absorb differences, and thus represent more than particularities, but this universalizing tendency remains conflicted (#2 articulation). While empty signifiers are generally substitutable, Knoch’s personality matters in this specific context, and has contributed to produce specific successes (see below). It remains unclear how

Articulation of an agonistic actor 75 the new speaker model will affect the agentic (self-)empowerment of empty signifiers because a two-tiered or split agentic empty signifier (i.e., two rotating speakers) will complicate the occupation of the universal attempted by the empty signifier(s) even further. To summarize, the conceptual advancement to attend to empty signifiers’ individualization/agentation suggests an analytical differentiation to more clearly delineate and explain opportunities to stabilize and destabilize the constitution of chains of equivalences in heterogeneous collectivities. With regard to the notion of organic leadership, Ansell and Gash (2007, p. 555) view them as ‘stimulat[ing] creativity by “synthesiz[ing] the knowledge of diverse participants so the group can create new ideas and understanding.”’ In the SK, Knoch diversely applies ‘synthesizing capacities’ not only by merging knowledge and political demands to create common ground, but also by mobilizing these capacities in the larger policy community including the Senatskanzlei. A concrete example is the strategic displacement and reframing of the Zeitstipendien controversy. Working against politicians’ and administrators’ skepticism, Knoch rearranged bbk’s long-standing demand into a mechanism called ‘Factor Three’ which readjusted the existing model of time grants, multiplied it by three and suggested this ‘new’ claim to the cultural administration (February 2, 2016). This initiative later led to the policy outcome of visual arts research grants. Knoch has called this incremental, not-too-radical, agonistic achievement a ‘psychological step forward’ in the collaboration between the cultural administration and the Koalition (ibid.). With regard to the future of ‘organic leadership’ in the Koalition, the new speaker model will bring forth different signifying agents to renegotiate power, visibility and change. Power asymmetries in the SK: bonds and boundedness The Koalition’s diverse individual and institutional capacities have organizational, financial, personal and time-related implications. These differences are subsumed first regarding the personnel diversity of the SK and the resultant differential power positions between individuals/practicing artists and representatives of associations. Second, the resource capacity illustrates differing degrees of experience with political advocacy, including whether (or not) Koalition speakers are paid for their engagement. Third, the organizational capacity uncovers challenges negotiated between genre-specific/ fixed institutional positions and those who act from fluid or emerging advocacy positions. This analysis of power asymmetries deepens the understanding of how and why consensus and conflict are negotiated. Personnel asymmetry: individual (artist) versus association The dividing line between positionalities of individual artists and association representatives unlocks specific opportunities, freedoms and limitations for each respective speaker.13 While singular artists can offer more individual

76 Articulation of an agonistic actor perspectives to argue in favor of practicing producers, they face confines with regard to the impact of their propositions or might not be taken as seriously as representatives from resourceful organizations. Numerical support or legitimacy from specific artist constituencies might affect the weight of speakers’ input. In contrast, genre-specific representatives, who might primarily be assigned to represent the specific interests of ‘their’ scene, have to be careful not to overstep their mandate (February 12, 2015). Sandra Man, an individual transdisciplinary artist, embodies a crucial positionality in the Koalition’s original composition. Until early 2016, when she left the SK because of political disagreements with remaining speakers, Man personified the ‘transdisciplinary memory’ of the Koalition (March 17, 2015). Her temporary position is insightful because she is one of the few practicing artists, but also because she provided an articulate understanding of the group’s transdisciplinary, or not so transdisciplinary character. Man faces not only the challenge of doing artistic and political work at the same time, but also the structurally ambiguous position of transdisciplinary artists that find themselves ‘in-between’ in jury and funding procedures. However, transdisciplinary art is not an add-on or residual category, or the ‘left over thingy’ in funding procedures as well as jury decisions; which is partially produced by the ‘lip service’ commitment of jurors and genre-specific associations (ibid.). As a result, the fight for transdisciplinary production and funding becomes necessary in order to not fall under the table. While Man’s critique of associations’ additive logics addresses the potential rivalry among genres, it not only exceeds but potentially also endangers genre-specific logics (ibid.). In addition to advocating for a stronger orientation toward transdisciplinary art, Man could inquire about the Koalition’s accomplishments for individual artists (ibid.). In this distinct position, Man could ideally put marginalized concerns center-stage. Regarding the fact that the transdisciplinary position in the SK has not been filled by another artist to date, this already marginalized position vis-à-vis organizations seems to lose influence. Already during Man’s presence, her alliance-building capacity was limited (ibid.): Of course, I have less power in that sense, because I can never say: “But 5,000 members have, I don’t know, have confirmed me in my role or position.” For now, nobody has confirmed me (…) I operate more with a questioning mind, but at the same time, I am more flexible, or more agile or I can break open something which I could not as easily break open with 5,000 members in my backpack. Man’s partially limited impact alludes to a numbers-driven approach to legitimation, but also foregrounds the importance of voicing critique that potentially transgresses associations’ specific concerns. In sum, the ‘transdisciplinary memory’ is a persistent element within the SK, which is practically limited via a lack of organizational resources and

Articulation of an agonistic actor 77 legitimacy acquired by large numbers of supporters or members. Regarding Saward’s (2006, p. 305) observation about the reflexive character of representation, including both ‘(re)presenting a self ’ and ‘(re)presenting a something’, individual artists might get closer to ‘representing a self ’ while association representatives might be more constrained to ‘represent a something’ of their organization. However, even individual artists might be important contributors to ‘representing a something’ in that they do not strictly think within particularistic boxes. Besides Man’s exposed position, many in the Koalition are not considered ‘genuine’ artists, but rather ‘produce or organize art’ (March 17, 2015), which influences their credibility as a representative movement for and of artists. To secure this self-understanding, practicing/individual artists as part of the SK might leverage more trustworthiness in the eyes of artists aligning with the Koalition than representatives from organizations could. Hence, in the overall legitimizing dynamic of the Koalition, the presence and engagement of producing artists might provide a non-substitutable personnel credibility, which extrapolates into legitimacy for the entire group. However, individual artists might overall be less inclined to engage in the Koalition because they have trouble finding time to continue their artistic practice and because they might be discouraged by potentially being overruled by genrespecific professional advocates. The lack of a great number of supporters or members of a genre-specific association is partially ‘used’ or turned against speakers in moments of controversial discussion (Koalition, March 25, 2015): One doesn’t have to worry about proportions (…) when somebody doesn’t represent an institution, he [sic] is also a little bit “weaker” in the Sprecherkreis at first, in the sense that one can always say “Yeah, but who are you actually speaking for now?” While the first part alludes to the egalitarian principle ‘one speaker, one voice/vote’, the statement is subsequently relativized so that individual speakers ultimately do need to ‘worry about’ the considerably disparate numbers of artists that back up their positions (or not). Among Koalition speakers, the question ‘Who are you speaking for?’ seems to irregularly function as a tool to disempower or internally delegitimize other speakers’ positions. Despite the claim that numerical proportions do not guide the SK’s decision-making, the implicit assumption that more association members equal more support/legitimacy to speak shines through. At first sight, this quantitative logic of supposed (democratic) legitimacy or representation bars the potential of including individual speakers which would go beyond a numerical, proportional model of representation and legitimacy. In contrast, however, combining different modes of legitimation could add a qualitatively different, non-quantitative dimension to the collective bargaining. In practice, instances such as Sandra Man’s departure from SK mark the partial failure ignited by the personnel

78 Articulation of an agonistic actor power imbalance which is reinforced by larger genre-specific organizations asserting their power. Considering speakers’ more diverse contacts with parliamentarians and policy-makers and their different levels of political expertise (which is likely higher for professional advocates than individual artists), individuals might be more likely to break open conversations and argumentative stalemates, and disturb path dependencies, routines, expectations or hierarchies than institutional representatives because they have less to lose. To conclude, the unequally distributed symbolical capital in the SK is not openly problematized, let alone counter-balanced by rules to equalize and productively engage with these imbalances. While some spokespeople consider themselves as individual speaker personalities and rationalize their engagement as a personal decision or choice, others explain their position precisely due to their institutional affiliations. While the former might lead to underestimating or ignoring the necessity to justify speaker positions to a greater artist constituency, the latter responsibilizes representatives to account for their activities vis-à-vis their clientele, constricting an individual scope of action. The non-systematic delegation or recruitment of speakers underscores the problematic dynamic that some speakers’ personalities might outweigh or overrule that of others. While some Koalition speakers consider personal sympathetic matches conducive to explaining the modus operandi of SK, the reliance on these, again, individual connections might reproduce exclusionary practices. However, the collectivity of the Koalition has also introduced new individuals to the cultural political stage, lifting these individuals to unprecedented exposure to engage directly with the cultural administration. In short, the group provides both limiting and enabling personnel opportunity structures. At last, despite the danger to reproduce and thus potentially reinforce existing dominance of outspoken genre-specific association members in the SK, the novel conglomerate interconnects multiple voices which can suggest new paths of communication and action for the overall independent scene. Resource asymmetry: paid versus unpaid time and labor The second power asymmetry in the SK is related to the organizational and administrative backgrounds of genre-specific associations. Their largely divergent funding situations, as well as partial financial coverage for the activity in the Koalition due to employment in a genre-specific association (or not) influences speakers’ levels and intensities of engagement. Generally, labor in the Koalition has been described as resource- and time-consuming. Detailing the ongoing quarrels about the differently equipped funding situations of respective organizations, one Koalition speaker from a comparatively young organization states that there are some organizations who loudly request additional funds, while newer structures ‘don’t even come up with the idea that somebody could give them money for their engagement’ (January 28, 2015). Hence, there seem to be different generations of artist-led advocacy organizations with those

Articulation of an agonistic actor 79 who assume that they ‘deserve’ (an increase of) public funding, and emerging organizations who do not even anticipate public support. Because and despite of different assumptions to ‘deserve’ public funding, speakers worry that ‘functionaries’, who are partially remunerated for interest representation work (either via membership fees or as paid directors of associations receiving funding from the cultural administration), might be more likely to succeed in realizing their claims. They are nested in resource-equipped organizations and can engage in Koalition activities during their official work time. Especially with regard to individual cultural producers, the latter often sacrifice time they could spend on artistic projects to join SK or plenum meetings. In closing, even though there is no causal relation between engagement and remuneration, the highly resource-intense engagement in the Koalition might exacerbate the attempted equalization of unequal positions among (unpaid) artist speakers and (possibly paid) association speakers in the Koalition. Organizational asymmetry: fixed versus fleeting positions While established associations like bbk or LAFT have long-standing, solid political claims, a speaker from an emerging genre-specific association considers her own organization ‘still in the making, in the becoming’ which influences the approach to political advocacy – regarding the decade-long expertise of ‘functionaries’, younger organizations can ‘ride with them, so to speak, because this also helps us to develop own positions’ (February 12, 2015). Appreciative of the possible knowledge and capacity transfer between ‘older’ and ‘younger’ organizations, the former might inspire and codetermine the development of the latter. Despite the potential positive spillover effects, ‘learning from the old’ also runs the risk of instilling normative political demands and rhetorical styles that might be externally ill-conceived as stubborn or outdated or that might debilitate the articulation of autonomous positions. However, regarding the increasing professionalization of younger organizations in jazz and literature, the indiscriminate take-over of antagonistic rhetoric has not taken place. Emerging associations develop their own, agonistic routes to political mobilization and articulation, but feel partially constricted by a lack of organizational knowledge about policy procedures, which limits their formulation of ‘autonomous’ positions. Based on the assumption that younger organizations are necessarily more open and malleable in an early organizational state, representatives from younger organizations seem to temporarily internalize an inferiority complex in comparison to older, more ‘impressive’ organizations (ibid.). In that, they implicitly reproduce different valuations of speakers’ positions. Acknowledging this dynamic, another Koalition speaker with long-standing political expertise confirms that it matters who talks, who one is talking to, who represents what and who has what kind of internal power in the SK (March 25, 2015). To conclude, differential organizational powers crucially determine whose voices and positions are considered in the construction of collective demands and positions and whose ideas are less attended to in the conflictual dialogue of the group.

80 Articulation of an agonistic actor Disaggregating conflict: the conflictual consensus matrix In the following, I provide an analytical heuristic to review and systematize the different constellations of conflict and consensus detected in the SK along the lines of meta and operational levels of political decision-making practices. The former describes overarching discursive levels of political discussions (i.e., ontological/meta dimension); the latter describes day-to-day, technocratic levels of political interactions (i.e., the ontic/operational dimension). With this analytical grid, I uproot Mouffe’s (2005) notion of ‘conflictual consensus’ to make it fertile for a post-foundational analysis of collective, conflictual political representation beyond Berlin’s local context. Scrutinizing where and how conflicts arise, and where and how they can be negotiated into fragmentary ‘conflictual consensus’, helps in gaining a deeper understanding into how to design policies that are acknowledged by a great variety of heterogeneous state and non-state policy stakeholders. Since sources of conflicts are always numerous, I disaggregate the different interactional levels of Berlin’s cultural policy stakeholders. Because consensus and conflict can erupt on just one level or on both meta and operational levels, this analytical distinction allows one to conceptualize the emergence, ‘success’ and ‘failure’ of consensus leading to realizations of political decisions and policies (or not). Ultimately, the prismatic split into two analytical levels underscores the interwovenness of ideological and practical concerns to realize political decisions. By no means do I mean to reduce untamable empirical phenomena to seemingly clear-cut analytical categories or binaries, but I want to point out their mutual interrelatedness. The transitory distinction between operational and meta levels of conflict and consensus is analytically abstracted from a cultural administrator’s distinction between ‘measures’ and ‘goals’ (October 28, 2015). The depiction of the Conflictual Consensus Matrix (Table 3.1) systematically structures interviewees’ perceptions, experiences and references to conflict and consensus and integrates them into an analytical framework to detect scenarios of conflictual consensus. The four proposed conditions of conflict outline the contours of conflicts among Koalition speakers. Individual perceptions are spread out along the lines of conflict and consensus, revealing how initial references to consensus later uncover more wide-ranging or value-driven conflicts. With regard to the greater applicability of this framework, the Conflictual Consensus Matrix can generally be applied to understand conflicts among agonistic political stakeholders. Meta consensus, meta conflict and the ‘palaver principle’ Numerous Koalition speakers refer to a principle of (absolute) consensus in the SK as a ‘palaver’ or ‘consensus’ principle.14 Despite the noticeable inequality of voices, spokespeople commonly define their mode of communication as consensual (January 21, 2015):

Articulation of an agonistic actor 81 Table 3.1 Conflictual Consensus Matrix I

Meta conflict Meta consensus

Operational conflict

Operational consensus

Fundamental conflict (CC1) Internal controversy about Zeitstipendien Technocratic conflict (CC2) Distributive quarrels; empirically not detectable; morphs into CC1 or CC3

Conflictual consensus (CC3) Communicative approach to Senatskanzlei in CityTax2015 Fundamental consensus (CC4) Unconditional realization of claims; empirically not detectable; morphs into CC3 or CC1

Source: author

We [the SK] discuss as long as – either in the plenum or in the Sprecherkreis – until everybody reaches an agreement (…) if we don’t reach an agreement, we will not demand it. At least not collectively. While the last part of the statement highlights the divergence between particular and collective claims or interests, the ‘palaver principle’ is proclaimed to succeed when ‘everybody’ stays together until ‘everybody’ is of the same opinion. This procedure has been described as both pragmatic and tiresome. In contrast, simple majority rule for SK decisions is considered out of the question (Koalition, February 12, 2015): ‘It would be much easier to say, “majority rule, if most are in favor of it, we will do it like that”, but it isn’t like that at all. There is a very strong consideration if somebody has concerns.’ This ‘consideration’ of all opinions or reservations is seen as a strength because it brings a variety of perspectives to the discussion. The diverse challenges arising from this openness, which is implicitly contained, have been identified as productive yet unequal distributions of power. A speaker acknowledges the constructiveness of conflict (March 25, 2015): Sometimes sparks may fly a little, but it isn’t that bad. And one must see: open discussions also bring – within such an enclosed circle – the cause forward. Because in the moment one struggles, in the end, one comes to a better, a more durable position toward politics and the administration. ‘Open discussions’ are preferred to majority rule because the former is thought to better guarantee sustainable solutions. The positioning of the SK as an ‘enclosed circle’ reiterates the group’s ‘contained openness’, which ideally fosters critical dialogue and improves the overall quality of proposals then carried to the plenum or policy-makers. Besides these potentially positive aspects of the ‘palaver principle’, the latter also causes annoyance when it is communicatively abused or overextended (Koalition, March 24, 2015): ‘There are people who always talk and talk for a really long time and, that way, actually impede a discussion (…)

82 Articulation of an agonistic actor “It doesn’t lead to a discussion because you’re talking all the time!”’ Illustrative of the consequences resulting from the lack of formalized speaking arrangements, consensus remains difficult to establish. Yet it is considered indispensable to not ‘lose’ individual associations, who might threaten to resign entirely from the Koalition if their positions were overruled by a numerical majority. In case of the ‘exit’ of constituent associations, the Koalition’s loss would be two-fold. On the one hand, the general coherence would crumble, potentially initiating a chain reaction leading to the overall decay of the group. This would decrease the Koalition’s articulatory strength because fewer elements would be equalized in the discursive moment of the Koalition (#4 articulation). On the other hand, the Koalition’s representative and legitimatory claim to represent the totality of the independent scene would lose traction, corresponding with a decrease of (counter-)hegemonic aspiration toward universality (#2 articulation). Consequently, the group is viewed as not being able to afford the exit of individual, especially larger associations. While the ‘palaver principle’ has been proclaimed as an uncontroversial consensus, a Koalition representative cautions (March 25, 2015) that the search for ‘absolute’ consensus would complicate the group’s overall agility. Nonetheless, internal veto rights are not considered feasible formal tools for SK decision-making, and even less so for the plenum to interfere with SK proposals. Speakers report ‘unwritten’ laws or unequally distributed, informal veto practices (March 23, 2015): It is clear: If something is up for discussion where it is obvious, I don’t know, that LAFT or bbk would never agree, then, it will either not happen, or one must ask the question, “What does it mean if it is happening without the bbk?” Noting that a veto either results in inaction or fragmentation, it follows that the production of consensus needs to attend to recalcitrant issues among speakers. Put differently, irresolvable differences have to be accepted to move on. Looking at the collective communication of the Koalition, there has been no official activity or document that has been endorsed by only parts of the group. More explicitly, ‘what the Koalition represents to the outside, and toward politics, that is always consensus’ (Koalition, January 21, 2015). While the externally communicated ‘consensus’ is considered one of the Koalition’s assets, there are multiple layers of conflict underneath this carefully orchestrated consensus. Two conditions draw a wedge through the assumed condition of consensus. First, when money enters the game, complexifying the negotiation of consensus, and second, when the ‘palaver principle’ prevents political action. Regarding the first restriction, various spokespeople report that conflicts unfold anew when the collective political struggle needs to be operationalized in monetary terms (e.g., calculating requests for the City Tax

Articulation of an agonistic actor 83 distribution). Regarding the second inhibition, Koalition representatives criticize the fact that internal debates, which remain on a purely abstract level, can hinder the actual realization of actions. In other words, the group might not even enter operational-level discussions because it gets stuck on the meta level of discussions. The ZPP has been referred to as a document of consensus, constituting a reliable, official and common agenda. Koalition actors underscore its unifying function as ‘a little mantra one can always go back to’ (March 25, 2015) or something ‘almost holy’ (January 7, 2016). The approach to consistently stick to the ten points has been described as a rational decision, providing continuity in both the otherwise often controversial discussions. Reminded of the plan’s clearly stated objectives, SK members can define common positions. In addition to the re-centering character of the seemingly immutable document, the latter is perceived to prevent getting lost in detail. However, different understandings of how to interpret and approach the ten demands unfold in regard to whether the plan can only be approached in its entirety, as a ‘total package’, or whether it constitutes a starting point for the operationalization of measures and requests specified therein. While these two attitudes illustrate the recalcitrant divergence of overarching assumptions (i.e., meta conflict) within the SK, the ZPP overall might embody a materialization of conflictual consensus, producing strategic yet imperfect real-life translations of consensus which are undergirded by deeper divides among the Koalition’s components. To conclude, even if consensus is appealed to, this theoretically pure construct requires different interpretations and enactments, hence dethroning the possibility of full consensus altogether. Meta conflicts, apparent in the asymmetrical personnel, resource and organizational composition of the SK, revolve not merely around questions of style or procedure, but also about content and the meaning of the Koalition’s actions (Koalition, January 29, 2015). CC1: fundamental conflict | CC2: technocratic conflict The scenario of fundamental conflict (CC1) involves conflict both on the meta and the operational level. The scenario of technocratic conflict (CC2) is integrated into this condition, because the condition of meta consensus and conflict in the operational realm reveals itself as a theoretical option which cannot be detected in empirical reality. Briefly, assumed meta consensus sooner or later corrodes via conflicts on the operational level and thus morphs into the condition of fundamental conflict (CC1; or conflictual consensus (CC3) – see below). Hence, because the insurmountable dimension of antagonism and conflict is constitutive of political interactions, the axis of meta consensus remains a logical possibility within the four-field matrix but is barred by the ontological (and empirical) impossibility of full consensus. An example of fundamental conflict (CC1) is the Zeitstipendien controversy within the SK. If there had been meta consensus among all speakers

84 Articulation of an agonistic actor that the extent and scope of time grants was appropriate, only operational technicalities would have been subject to discussion. While a non-visual-arts speaker points out that there was a lot of willingness to compromise (January 7, 2016), the complete cancellation of talks with the cultural administration for the benefit of protesting in favor of time grants was not followed through. While she or he reminds one that politically charged claims such as the Zeitstipendien should not be judged pseudo-professionally by other speakers, particularistic claims should only be maintained if they do not initialize further conflicts and if they do not damage other genres. Considering the fact that the Zeitstipendien controversy almost burst the carefully orchestrated unity of the Koalition, the disputed understanding of just how relevant a particular claim is uncovers deeper-seated meta conflicts among the genre-specific associations. Throughout processes of strategic decision-making, seeming technocratic conflicts (CC2) morph either into fundamental conflicts (CC1) or conflictual consensus (CC3). While a Koalition speaker states (February 13, 2015) that ‘there wasn’t a general discrepancy about the amount of the demands, but instead about the strategy how we are trying to bring these demands to politics’, this approach precisely relegates assumed operational conflict to the meta level. It follows that this conflict concerning requested amounts and strategies complicates the construction of consensus altogether, hence resulting in a fundamental conflict (CC1). Another hypothetical technocratic conflict (CC2) arises in the ambiguous distribution of City Tax grants, which were controversially negotiated among the genre-specific associations. Even though the overall achievement was not to be tampered with because of distributive or bureaucratic quarrels, operational consensus uncovers greater cleavages over who should receive how much money. Nonetheless, in this case, the transitory settlement about how many grants to distribute to which genre produced a conflictual consensus (CC3) within the SK. CC3: conflictual consensus Conflictual consensus (CC3) constitutes the complex condition of negotiating conflict on the meta level, which nonetheless is channeled into a precarious, temporary and contestable consensus in the operational realm. In short, in conflictual consensus, stakeholders strike consensus despite antagonism. For example, despite the unsettled understanding of transdisciplinary art, illustrating speakers’ diverging notions of art (production), consensus can be momentarily stabilized in a mode of ‘working beyond differences’ (February 12, 2015). In other words, internal meta conflicts about art and artist advocacy are temporarily put on hold to make room for the provisional production of operational, conflictual consensus. While the latter can always break out into broader dissent again, the howeverfickle construction of conflictual consensus provides opportunities to leverage change and create collaboration.

Articulation of an agonistic actor 85 CC4: fundamental consensus The scenario of fundamental consensus (CC4) would be realized if all SK members would agree on both meta and operational levels. They would have to convey an uncontroversially shared understanding or full agreement about the general direction and formulation of demands, as well as having communicative and strategic unity at their disposal to address their identically defined struggle. As shown above, speakers’ references to absolute or meta consensus collapse either into the disregard of discussing or defining meta goals, or surface controversies when discussing the means to be used to achieve a political goal. Hence, the scenario of fundamental consensus (CC4) embodies another theoretical potentiality of conflict, yet shrivels into conflictual consensus (CC3) at best because the full closure of consensus remains barred by antagonism. Conclusions: the SK – an agonistic space for ‘everybody’? In summary, the SK does not possess formalized mechanisms of how to deal with either meta or operational conflicts. It remains unclear when and which members can ‘legitimately’ criticize specific claims or reject claims to be included in the collective catalogue of demands. Meta conflicts persist among artist advocates in more or less subtle ways. Yet the heterogeneous SK finds an agonistically disputed common ground to request the increase of public and financial support for the independent scene. The concrete interpretations and prioritizations of this goal will remain contested. Rather than being discouraged by meta conflict, one Koalition member considers ‘the basic conflict in a group as simultaneously its defining feature’ (Plenum, May 3, 2015). Accordingly, the group’s defining feature is the a(nta)gonistic negotiation of differential positions, ideas and claims to constitute a temporary agonistic cultural political collectivity. The variously outlined differences highlight how genre-specific associations and speakers deal with diverging positions of power, as well as differential opportunity and capacity structures. On the one hand, the plurality of perspectives and organizational path dependencies in the SK both enables and restricts opportunities to overcome particularistic claims or standing conflicts among or within genres. On the other hand, the executive organ might be prone to reproducing existing power hierarchies and communicative stalemates. Through the combination of well-known artist advocates and formerly unknown politically engaged individuals with new leverage powers and perspectives, the SK uniquely interconnects individual and collective actors in a novel constellation to mobilize political and institutional change. Christophe Knoch, imagined as an individualized nodal point or empty signifier, intercepts the equalization of differential positions in the SK, but can also foster the temporary equivalentialization of differential elements in the group. In sum, the contaminated and impure chain of

86 Articulation of an agonistic actor equivalences that is precariously constructed in the SK evokes prospects to produce conflictual consensus (CC3). However, the acclaimed openness and inclusivity of the Round of Spokespeople is contained by a (more or less latent) predominance of established organizations, their regulation and partial reservation to accept minoritarian voices that leverage different sources of legitimacy. Noticeable unequal personnel, resources and organizational capacities are little questioned by privileged associations vis-à-vis their weaker, less established or individual artist advocacy colleagues. Having introduced the Conflictual Consensus Matrix (Table 3.1), I have suggested a framework for the identification, discussion and systematization of tensions between conflict and consensus. The disaggregation of meta and operational concerns identifies origins and loci of conflicts, and subsequently (re)establishes their mutual interconnectedness. This framework politicizes any activist or administrative action to manufacture consensus (or not). The matrix shows that no practical attempt at political change can stand aloof from ideological concerns. Discussing the ontological blockade of the scenarios of technocratic conflict (CC2) and fundamental consensus (CC4), which alter into variants of fundamental conflict (CC1) or conflictual consensus (CC3), the horizontal axis of meta consensus has been revealed as a theoretical backbone to the Conflictual Consensus Matrix, but not an operational modality to assess scenarios of conflict. It is along the spectrum of meta conflict that real-life conflictual collaborations can emerge. The non-representable artist population: the Koalition plenum After introducing the diverse representatives of the Koalition, the represented artist population, which is fragmentarily portrayed by those who attend Koalition plenum sessions, is briefly discussed. Plenum sessions are hosted three to four times a year in different places, usually on weekdays around 7.00 p.m. Drawing an average of 30 to 60 attendees (including many of the up to 15 speakers, and some frequent visitors) from different artistic genres to various locations of independent scene production throughout the city, the Koalition’s spatial mobility underscores the diversity and decentrality of the independent scene. Since 2012, overall engagement in the plenum has decreased. Koalition speakers rationalize this development as somewhat ‘natural’ because long-term oriented advocacy work with little tangible output discourages artists, who are busy with their own projects (March 31, 2014). In comparison to the male–female ratio in the SK, which counted eight males and seven females during the interviews, more women than men participate in Koalition plenum sessions. With an average age between the early thirties and late forties, the group of attendees – much like the SK – is racially, linguistically and ethnically not very diverse. In the plenum, the Round of Spokespeople presents its activities of the past weeks and months and reports on meetings with the cultural administration, political representatives and progress achieved regarding budgetary negotiations

Articulation of an agonistic actor 87 and the renovation of funding instruments. Spokespeople may individually introduce topics, but Knoch usually moderated plenum meetings, sometimes interrupting other speakers to add exclusive information. Usually, there is no written protocol taken at plenum sessions. There is no outreach or deliberative advertisement for artists to ‘join’ the Koalition or attend plenum sessions. The irregularly held meetings are announced in the Koalition Facebook group,15 as well as in newsletters from genre-specific associations. With regard to the representative form and function of the plenum, Koalition speakers assume that the plenum is an open space for discussion for everybody to attend, participate and speak their mind. The realm of the plenum suggests a degree of informality that is permeable for external opinions and ideas. Those who show a general interest attend plenum sessions (March 17, 2015): ‘Whoever comes to these plenum sessions must already have some form of interest (…) people are not coming to these plenum sessions to tell us that we are full of shit.’ The plenum relies on the principle of self-motivation, assuming interested individuals will choose to attend. In that sense, it might create a positive ‘bias’ because those who support the Koalition’s general course of action will be more likely to attend. Overall, it is not considered speakers’ responsibility to enlarge the plenum audience, which implicitly reinforces the presupposition that the Koalition’s legitimacy is not bound to large numerical support from the represented artist constituencies. Regardless of the validity of this belief, it is important to note that those who are not expressing a general interest and consequently not showing up do not express their voices and opinions in plenum sessions. The systemic exclusion of those not present is not further problematized, but seemingly accepted as an inherent feature of the loosely organized movement of the Koalition. Participation and presence in plenum sessions differ across artistic genres. While some speakers complain that they never see artists from ‘their’ genre at plenum sessions, others perceive ‘their’ scenes to be actively participating. These divergent levels of engagement might stem from different perceptions of being personally concerned by the claims put forward by the Koalition (i.e., the less artists think they are personally concerned, the less likely will they be to attend the plenum). Amidst the different motivations to get engaged in the plenum (or not), attendees have publicly expressed appreciation, gratitude and respect for speakers’ work in sessions and the Facebook group. Hence, while there are signs to assume an overall supportive relationship between SK and the plenum, there are multiple layers of association and dissociation between the two groups. The assumed and actual accessibility and openness of the plenum varies greatly, and implicit and explicit modes of validation condition the overall acknowledgement and legitimacy of the SK. While the SK and plenum are similar in their lack or low degree of formalized decision-making procedures, there is a noticeable hierarchy in that the SK significantly constrains the ‘open’ space of the plenum as a forum for information-sharing, brainstorming and actual decision-making. Matter-of-factly,

88 Articulation of an agonistic actor plenum participants intervene or interrupt comparatively little, often just to ask clarificatory questions about speakers’ reports. Koalition speakers often present already-made decisions or internally developed proposals instead of engaging plenum participants in a fundamentally open debate. Hence, while opportunities for exchange and collective strategizing are theoretically provided, in practice, these potentials remain little actualized. With regard to the level of conflictuality in the plenum, discussions sometimes become controversial and personal, but these conflicts often erupt among speakers rather than between speakers and plenum participants. Hence, the general degree of contention in the plenum remains low in comparison to the internal cleavages in SK. A plenum session in the summer of 2015 ‘postponed’ controversy about a potential second campaign (which was ultimately not realized due to unbridgeable differences) and reframed the unsolved concerns about the campaign as the responsibility of speakers, not the plenum. The heated debate among speakers was dismissed by plenum participants as not very interesting. Instead of actively engaging in the wider debate, attendees wanted to ‘move on with the agenda’, and not collectively discuss the overall campaign strategy. One speaker was surprised and partially confused about the plenum’s lack of critical intervention (June 17, 2015). In other words, plenum discussions revolve less around meta concerns than about operational decisions. Certainly, participants’ comments and criticisms have time and time again revealed views about the purpose or relevance of art (i.e., meta concerns), but these interventions are not systematically integrated into SK internal discussions or the development of demands. This potentially involuntary disregard inversely might lead to a depoliticization of the plenum as a space of ‘merely’ informational, technical or operational concerns. To summarize, even though there is a physical space and real opportunity for exchange, the critical capacity of the plenum is not actively mobilized. The plenum has no official or formalized voice or tool to comment and co-steer the Koalition’s course of action proposed by the SK. The interlocked dynamic of the plenum’s assumed passivity and speakers’ assumed activity reinforces the latter’s position as preselective decision-making instance. Koalition speakers perceive themselves as facilitators and accelerators of processes to find common positions or strategies to act for the whole movement (January 28, 2015). By clarifying quarrels among genre-specific associations or individual speakers in internal meetings, the plenum should be spared tiresome and lengthy discussions. Speakers imagine SK as a structuring element between the scene and the cultural administration (June 17, 2015): Until now, we [the SK] could avoid letting the dissent get so big that we can say: “Guys [the plenum], this is where we are. What should we do?” Until now, we have always come to the point that we could lead discussions among ourselves [the SK] that we didn’t have to address the plenum with this dissent, but instead with a direction that we [the SK] want to take.

Articulation of an agonistic actor 89 Considering the internal resolution of conflictual consensus (CC3) and the non-consultation of the plenum as an accomplishment, the active engagement of the plenum implicitly appears as a last resort. Inversely, the spokesperson presents it as a success that Koalition speakers did not have to expose the plenum to internal conflict. ‘Taking a direction’ exemplifies speakers’ assumed responsibility to pre-select, pre-structure or ‘filter’ possible ideas and actions before interacting with the plenum, to whom ideas are subsequently presented. With regard to the relations between the Round of Spokespeople as the ‘representative’ of Berlin’s artist population more broadly, and the plenum as an artist base to ‘be represented’, the latter appears as an intangible, ever-changing entity. The totality of the plenum cannot be quantified, just like the number of independent artists pertaining to the independent scene cannot be grasped (Koalition, January 21, 2015). Despite (or because of ?) this difficulty to comprehend the ‘represented’ artist population, Koalition speakers consider the plenum the ‘base of legitimacy’ for the SK (June 17, 2015). However, this sits uncomfortably with the lack of operative mechanisms which would accord formal decision-making powers to the plenum. In fact, the plenum currently plays a conspicuously minor role in speakers’ actual proceedings. With regard to the legitimatory potential of the plenum for the SK, a speaker concludes (February 12, 2015) that veto or feedback is needed in case of getting stuck. While the necessity to receive confirmation or legitimacy from the plenum might be internalized by speakers, the acclaimed priority of the plenum as the crucial source of legitimacy misaligns with its actual decision-making power. Constructing legitimacy from absence | Absence of protest But how could the ever-changing, intangible totality of the plenum be a source of the Koalition’s legitimacy? How to gather approval, support or a binding mandate from an always changing, always different, always diffuse and fragmented ‘we’ of the independent scene? Since it is never clear or fixed who is part of the plenum and who is not, the radical openness of the plenum – as opposed to the ‘contained openness’ of the SK – challenges the constitution of the Koalition as a collective representative actor of the independent art scene. For one, the vague collective ‘we’ of both plenum and Koalition might provide an identity offer that is just not convincing enough for artists to support or engage in the Koalition. However, the overall nonrepresentability of ‘the independent scene’ also evokes new modes of representation to actively embrace this very non-representability. Put differently, the constitutive negativity of a collectivity or movement to be represented might evoke new forms of non-representative or ‘negative’ representation that outline new ways to take political action in the face of problematic democratic or literal representation.

90 Articulation of an agonistic actor In the context of this ‘negative’ representation, Koalition speakers construct a logic of legitimation from plenum attendants’ physical presence and argue that plenum decisions are made ‘in the form of presences’ (March 17, 2015). Approval is gathered by those who are literally there. The endorsement of those who are absent is assumed or extrapolated via those who are present. While the legitimacy construction via presence or visibility might appear as an utterly ‘foundational’ claim (i.e., assuming fullness or wholeness of a conclusive entity), the actual legitimatory attempt reveals the contrary. Precisely because the attempt to garner legitimacy stems from the acknowledgement that the basis of legitimation is marked by a radical lack/absence, legitimations can only be derived from temporary presence. Approval to represent a persistent, irreducible absence relies on the thing to be represented (i.e., ‘the independent scene’). This fragmentary, ‘unclean’ representation of larger collectivities might be nothing new to political scientists or social movement scholars. Yet the Koalition relates its own legitimacy to the structural negativity and inconclusiveness of its constituency. In consideration of the varieties of representative claims, Saward’s (2009, p. 11) ‘deeper roots’ claim might adequately describe the representative relationship between the SK and the plenum, the former acting as ‘represent[ing] the underlying interests of a group on the grounds that the group’s members would have agreed to a certain view of their interests in ideal decision circumstances.’ Arguably representing the ‘underlying interests of a group’ (i.e., the plenum, or the independent scene as a ‘whole’), the SK assumes the constituency’s approval or interest. Extrapolating ideas and opinions of the plenum or ‘the independent scene’, the SK enacts representation via the latent subsumption of ideas or opinions to propose a future course of action. This becomes apparent in speakers’ self-responsibilization to get things done for the greater community. Corresponding with this self-empowerment, Hendriks (2009, p. 704) points out that some social groups or movements might not even be [p]articularly concerned that they were excluded, precisely because they were able to identify with like-minded participants (…) often with more status and power. In other words, they celebrated an indirect form of representation where they felt that certain participants would reflect a perspective similar to their own. This categorization might suitably characterize some plenum attendants’ attitudes toward the SK. In the dialectic between presence (i.e., positivity to be represented) and absence (i.e., negativity to be represented), the conscious, contestable enactment of advocacy as a temporary ‘filling’ of a cultural political representative void illustrates one facet of post-foundational political representation. Amidst the non-formalization of approval or affirmation, there is no institutionalized form of disapproval or critique either. Halpin (2006) points out that it is difficult for affiliates of advocacy groups to refuse their belonging to representative groups, especially when membership is not fixed. In this diffuse

Articulation of an agonistic actor 91 situation, it is unclear how to demonstrate either alignment or non-alignment. In other words, in a system without rules, the ‘effective’ expression of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the representative is challenging (Stephan 2004). Similarly, Halpin (2006, p. 922) points to the ‘tenuous’ legitimation leveraged by loosely fixed movements and critiques the sharp dividing line between ‘affiliates’ and ‘constituency’ of social movements or groups. In the Koalition, these blurry lines are individually enacted by speakers who might clearly demarcate their privileged position, or others who understand their mandate very laxly, conveying the impression that basically any artist could represent the Koalition. Rehfeld’s (2006, p. 15) observation that the primary criterion of accepted representatives might not be their ‘coherence’ but general ‘recognition’ gains traction in the conceptualization of the SK. Its low degree of coherence, apparent in the internally diverse and partially divided composition, provisionally equalizes into a contaminated chain of equivalence. More importantly, the overall recognition and legitimation of the SK, or the entire Koalition, is contingent on actors from the cultural scenes and external cultural political stakeholders. This recognition resonates with substantial or qualitative aspects rather than formal aspects of representation (Rehfeld 2006), which might be generally more pervasive to understand the representative relation between plenum and speakers. With regard to the negotiation of conflict and consensus between the Round of Spokespeople and the plenum, Vasilev’s (2015) differentiation between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ consensus clarifies the modes of approval exchanged between the two Koalition entities. Describing ‘active’ consensus as built on conscious public approval, Vasilev (2015, p. 11) understands ‘passive’ consensus ‘as a taken-for-granted quality, present as a non-calculative adherence to a common position, rather than resulting from any conscious act of persuasion.’ This self-evident quality of passive consensus is manifest in speakers’ assumption of the plenum’s latent approval. Strikingly, the SK does not jointly seek active consensus, but contents itself to operate based on passive consensus, partially derived from the belief there is no general mistrust or resistance from the artist base. The assumption of passive consensus or an absence of protest unlocks legitimizing force for the speakers, and the Koalition more broadly. Illustrative of this legitimation, a Koalition speaker claims that the plenum’s non-disapproval suffices for speakers to proceed (December 14, 2015): OK, this is our [the SK] plan, do you [plenum] have anything against it? (…) if this dynamic doesn’t blow up to an absolute outbreak, to a withdrawal of trust, then we [the SK] are basically OK. So, we must be doing something right. The speakers’ ‘plan’, which is designed to be rubber-stamped by the plenum, exacerbates the assumed passivity of the plenum mentioned by some speakers. The lapidary reference to ‘do something right’ reinstates the

92 Articulation of an agonistic actor focus on action. Another Koalition actor echoes the assumption that the SK needs to (February 12, 2015) ‘first come to terms with itself, what one actually wants to put up for discussion’ before addressing the plenum. In conclusion, both with regard to forms and contents of political claims to be discussed in and with the plenum, the lack of democratic consultation has shone through. Conclusions: the plenum – the impossible totality Vasilev (2015, p. 16) argues that ‘non-conscious conformity does not mean non-conscious domination.’ Hence, the operation based on passive consensus or the absence of protest is not necessarily disempowering or anti-democratic, as these representational modes can provide preliminary components to develop a ‘negative’ theory of political representation. While the SK is characterized by low degrees of formality and coherence, it relies on both quantitative, numbers-driven and qualitative aspects of representation to be leveraged through the absence of protest and the non-substitutable representative power of singular speakers. Introducing the criterion of ‘good faith’ in the legitimation of passive consensus, Vasilev (2015, p. 18) qualifies that passive consensus urges agents to ‘com[e] clean on their desire to promote a want that is relevant to a narrowly defined constituency when attempting to sway public opinion.’ Taking Koalition speakers as agents of passive consensus who articulate a public opinion and promote the material and discursive claims of the ZPP, they publicly speak for a specific interest or ‘deeper roots’ claim in good faith, which potentially strengthens their legitimate representative position. This section has presented the plenum as an unfixed and fluctuating collectivity in relation to the SK, and the Koalition at large. Attempting to represent an intangible, negative or absent totality, the articulatory and (self-)legitimatory practices of new collective actors are revealed as depending on how to leverage active or passive consensus. While the constituency (i.e., the plenum) co-produces and thus contributes to articulate the representative (i.e., the SK or Koalition; #1 articulation), there are unaccountable parts of ‘the collectivity’ that do not partake in this articulation. While this can be used to expand the claim to represent a universality/totality (#2 articulation), this absent fullness, which remains non-representable, can also be occupied or represented by reference to a totality which has difficulties in revoking this representation. In the face of the structural lack of a final foundation for representation, representative claims that draw on quantitative and non-numerical categories (e.g., temporary presences, absence of protest, non-substitutable sources of credibility) are strengthened via interconnected, balancing sources of legitimacy. Overall, regarding new collective actors’ institution in discourse, their oscillation between the representation of presence and absence produces new discursive interpretations of who or what the collectivity to be represented ‘is’ (i.e., ‘the independent scene’). Within the greater context of articulation, the plenum constitutes another discursive component in a variety of differential elements to be knitted together

Articulation of an agonistic actor 93 into a discursive moment (#4 articulation). However, because the constituency to be represented is diffuse and relatively less stable than other discursive elements (i.e., genre-specific associations or speakers), the chain of equivalences called the Koalition, made up of all these ‘leaking’ discursive parts, acts in the face of the ungroundability of its first and final reason to act.

Unpacking modes of legitimacy After the descriptions of the Koalition’s internal dynamics with its constituent parts of the SK and the plenum, the following section analytically assesses how the group explains and rationalizes its existence, actions and political claims. I conceptualize the Koalition as a self-legitimizing collective actor in a tripartite scheme. Its self-legitimatory approach is subdivided, first describing the selflegitimation ACT, which departs from the group’s self-definition as an open action platform and teases out how the group seeks legitimacy via activity. Second, the self-legitimation BOUND takes on the Koalition’s appeal of being ‘bound’ to genre-specific associations and their respective artist populations, as well as the fluctuating plenum audiences, to legitimize its overarching representative claim. Third, the self-legitimation REPRESENT unpacks the argumentative position that the Koalition is ‘speaking for’ those parts of the artistic scenes, including those who do not directly engage.16 The partial paradox of the Koalition’s agency plays out precisely in the oscillation between the claim/ desire and a simultaneous withdrawal/rejection of representation. To situate empirically-grounded practices of legitimacy-making, I differentiate legitimacy from accountability by following Black’s (2008) definition of the former as less dependent on the latter. Accordingly, legitimacy can be more easily analyzed without a consideration of accountability. While accountability can be defined as the legal and performance-oriented obligation to account for one’s activities, Black (2008, p. 145) defines legitimacy as [a]cceptability and credibility of the organisation to those it seeks to govern (…) Legitimacy thus lies as much in the values, interests and expectations, and cognitive frames of those who are perceiving or accepting the regime as they do in the regime itself. This definition clears the analytical path for examining legitimacy rather than accountability, focusing on the obligations and expectations to be negotiated between various stakeholders of what Black calls a ‘legitimacy community’. In the interest of understanding the contested legitimatory practices of the Koalition, I unpack the implications of self-legitimation to challenge the existing cultural political hegemonic complex with its underlying notion of the ‘creative’ city to potentially unlock the creation of a new legitimacy community. As many approaches to accountability remain predominantly state-centric (Barker 2004) or within the principal–agent binary assuming that an agent (i.e., administration) reports and gives account to a principal (i.e.,

94 Articulation of an agonistic actor parliament), excluding civil society actors as potential principals (Maggetti and Papadopoulos 2017), these approaches are somewhat limited in grasping novel governance arrangements which draw on informal legitimatory arguments. More precisely, since I am interested in the erosion of the principal–agent binary rather than its reproduction, I consider both executive and legislative actors as potential principals and agents of governance and attend to the interstitial interventions of the Koalition as challenging any fixed position of mandatation or power. Classic accounts like Weber (1978, 1958) or Beetham (2013) provide traditional bases for empirical and normative understandings of legitimacy. Weber’s differentiation between traditional, charismatic and rational-legal legitimacy constitutes one of the first systematic engagements with the multi-dimensional notion of legitimacy. It serves to capture the Koalition’s interaction with the cultural administration. Especially charismatic legitimacy pervades via Knoch’s position as empty signifier within a complicated chain of differential discursive elements and claims. Traditional legitimacy is actively challenged by the Koalition’s request to reassess the legitimacy of policy-making procedures as mainly derived from long-standing, traditional and persistent rules, which do not attend much to substantial multi-stakeholder engagement. I discard rational legitimacy due to its dubious claim to a foundational value such as rationality. Easton’s (1965) differentiation between diffuse and specific support for political regimes, or ideological, structural and personal sources of legitimacy, contextualizes the Koalition’s self-legitimation as a quest for diffuse support in a given political regime, yet it also delineates the specific request to transform this hegemonic system. While scholars continue to differentiate legitimacy along the lines of ‘empirical’ and ‘theoretical’ engagements, or ‘rational’ and ‘normative’ discussions and the like, these overly simplistic, often binary depictions fall short in disentangling the cross-cutting legitimacy-making practices of complex movements such as the Koalition. The three intersecting self-legitimatory practices seek to transgress a dual understanding of legitimacy. More precisely, I employ Häikiö’s (2016) notion of ‘legitimation’ instead of ‘legitimacy’ as the former alludes to the discursive and agentic dimensions of legitimacy-making rather than discussing ready-made results of legitimatory processes. Since any notion or discussion about legitimacy is a normative one, positivist or rationalist political science and public policy accounts of legitimacy are to be modified on at least three grounds. First, to destabilize the fixation of legitimacy studies on national or international scales (Hurrelmann et al. 2007; Steffek 2003). While Steffek (2007) makes a generally radical claim to imagine citizens as ultimate agents to assess legitimacy, his claim further distances subjects and objects of legitimacy by relegating the primacy of legitimation to the level of international organizations. In the following theorization of legitimatory practices, citizens are conceptualized as legitimation agents on the micro level and urban scale of local (cultural) politics, outlining the immediate relation between political advocacy and political outcomes. In support of this, Kemper (2016, p. 74) argues against a container-model and nation-state-oriented approach to legitimacy because of

Articulation of an agonistic actor 95 its rationalist and disembodied tendency. Rather, multi-dimensional thinking of spaces of legitimacy in multi-level governance should be advanced (Lemke et al. 2016). Based on these relational approaches to legitimacy, the second modification in the analysis of legitimacy beyond territorially bound understandings of legitimacy attempts to transcend the spatially narrow conception of spaces of legitimacy as related to specific geographic scales. In this respect, the study of the Koalition presents not only an investigation of legitimacy-making processes at the urban scale, but also serves as an example of legitimacy construction beyond the state (i.e., revealing legitimation processes as deterritorialized practices). Instead, it foregrounds the agency-centric dimension of legitimation as the practice of self-authorization as opposed to a structuralist notion which would determine agents’ capacity to leverage legitimacy (or not). Third, the focus on consensusmaking, predominant in political scientists’ accounts of legitimacy (Steffek 2007), should be reversed to discuss any construction of legitimacy as derived from radical conflict. Theorizing legitimacy out of a radical condition of antagonism or negativity might transcend positivists’ limitations to understand and theorize new forms of political agency, representation and legitimacy. To sum up, I understand legitimation as a deterritorialized, micro-political agentic and conflict-based practice. Accordingly, the conceptual approach outlined in the following seeks to qualify legitimacy studies by attending to non-state actors’ informal and self-instructed legitimating practices. Drawing attention to ephemeral, yet incisive actors who reshuffle democratic decision-making processes, this conceptualization might underline the constant and necessary transformation of spaces of legitimation in times of supposed post-politics for larger debates in public policy, political science and urban studies. Guided by constructivist understandings such as Suchman’s (1995, p. 574) notion of legitimacy as ‘a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions’, the legitimacy-seeking narratives from Koalition speakers touch on both strategic and institutionalist aspects of legitimacy. The group attempts both tactical, high-impact political change and the long-term institutionalization of its acclaimed legitimacy. Following Suchman’s differentiation between the legitimatory aspiration to achieve ‘continuity’ or ‘credibility’, the Koalition’s investment in the latter is comparatively less contested than the former, as the group’s non-institutionalized character and controversy about institutionalization is still ongoing (see Chapter 4). To conceptualize the self-legitimizing practices or self-acclaimed sources of legitimacy as part of the Koalition’s articulation, the following insights triangulate the four vectors of articulation with legitimatory claims that fluctuate between universality and particularity. In other words, articulation is permeated by legitimatory dimensions, and legitimacy thus qualifies articulation as an analytical tool to study the constitution of new collective (legitimate) actors. Understanding legitimacy-making as a normative and justificatory exercise, Nonhoff and Nullmeier (2010, p. 32) view agents of legitimation as ‘the lifeblood

96 Articulation of an agonistic actor of the politics of legitimation, and such politics is essential to the cultivation and maintenance of an actor’s or institution’s legitimacy.’ Following this actor-driven understanding, the ‘lifeblood of the politics of legitimation’ is investigated by situating practices of legitimation in a post-foundational framework. Following Barker’s (2004, p. 35) assessment that ‘[i]dentification is the key to understanding legitimation, and legitimation one of the principal functions of identification’, I outline the processes of identification via articulation, and unfold practices of articulation as interrelated with legitimations. Put simply, any articulation implies acts of (de)legitimation, and legitimacy needs to be articulated. Hence, articulation and legitimation are constitutively interrelated. Barker’s (2004, p. 32) qualitative approach to legitimation highlights that ‘[i]t is in the first place persons not systems, rulers not regimes, who are legitimated,’ emphasizing the importance of both individual and collective actors’ interrelations that contribute to legitimations (or not). Assuming that legitimacy is necessary for all those who ‘seek to govern, either in whole or in part’ (Barker 2004, p. 104), the range of legitimacy-seeking actors encompasses both ruling or hegemonic actors, as well as counter-hegemonic agents who seek to ‘engage with institutions’ (Mouffe 2008). Emphasizing the agentic rather than essential or structural character of legitimation, Barker (2004, p. 28) urges one to look at legitimation as an activity that ‘involves creation, modification, innovation, and transformation.’ Distinguishing between four inner- and outer-directed aspects of legitimation, Barker (2004, p. 59) identifies actors’ self-legitimation as a form of assuring and cultivating their own confidence (1), to legitimate themselves to their direct surrounding of supporters and affiliates (2), to leverage collective legitimation of the governing community (3) and to assume legitimation of rulers vis-à-vis their subjects (4). The self-legitimatory claims of the Koalition especially relate to Barker’s first and second criteria by reference to their focus on the active responsibility to ACT (1), their reference to BOUNDEDNESS to the artistic scenes (2), and the appeal to REPRESENT ‘universal’ claims (1; 2). Barker’s third and fourth criteria of self-legitimation come to the fore in the governance arrangements which serve to stabilize the Koalition’s position in the multi-stakeholder governing community (3), and the self-legitimation of the cultural administration leveraged via stakeholder engagement (4). The actor couplings of legitimation between the state actor of the cultural administration and the Koalition as a fragment of the popular sovereign are grounded in Abulof ’s (2013, p. 81) understanding that the acts of legitimation of one subject or group simultaneously entail the delegitimization of another object, actor or position. Moreover, Abulof ’s (2016, p. 372) notion of ‘public political thought’, defined as the public’s reasonable and moral thinking about politics, highlights the idea that constructions of legitimacy include and reflect actors’ mutual normative understandings of each other as legitimate, agonistic adversaries. Holsti’s (1996, p. 84) differentiation between ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ legitimacy, which considers the former as the negotiation of norms and values between state and society,

Articulation of an agonistic actor 97 implicitly degrades ‘society’ to be positioned below the state. In contrast, horizontal legitimacy captures relations between society and polity (i.e., the territorial state). Despite the territorially narrow scope of these definitions, I conceptualize the Koalition’s self-legitimations as modes of horizontal legitimation with unclear positionalities of either polity, state or society to capture new legitimacy communities beyond state-centric or institutionalist understandings of legitimacy. This speaks to the problem that discussions of horizontal legitimacy can neglect to study the role of civil society actors or social movements (Haunss 2004). Calling for an analytical discussion of how social movements ‘ascribe or deny legitimacy to political institutions and actors, and how their ability to do so depends on their strategic choices or structural restraints’, Haunss’ (2007, p. 161) emphasis helps to position non-formalized actors or movements such as the Koalition centerstage in political processes that either build or challenge legitimacy regimes ‘almost by definition. Their claims are not only about changing policies or fulfilling demands, but also usually contain an element of criticism concerning the established procedures of decision making.’ Reminiscent of Abulof ’s (2013) remark that acts of legitimation and delegitimization are interrelated, agonistic negotiations of legitimacy imply a (counter-)hegemonic critique concerning the existing architecture of power. Bearing in mind Haunns’ identified lack of a careful conceptualization of legitimacymaking practices by social movements, and the above-mentioned neglect of arts and cultural organizations as objects of analysis in social movement studies (Baumgarten et al. 2014; Hollands and Vail 2012), the focus on legitimatory practices draws attention to social movements’ articulations. Moreover, the articulatory approach might complement studies of collective action framing (Benford and Hunt 2004; Benford and Snow 2000; Benford et al. 2014), and framing in social movements more generally (Johnston 2016; Johnston and Klandermans 1995), to reframe framing as a practice of articulation. The communicative construction and deconstruction of legitimacy relates to the variety of actors that shape, produce and reproduce discourses (Schneider 2007, pp. 132–133): (de)legitimation of political orders is, to a large extent, “done with words” (…) a body of shared knowledge, norms and conventions – a shared horizon of meaning – is more or less firmly institutionalized. The (re)production of discourses is, in turn, based on these individual discursive practices. Thus, citizens and political elites draw on, or contribute to, the set of benchmarks and arguments, frames and interpretations provided by legitimation discourses in forming and developing their own perceptions and legitimacy beliefs, and in expressing or withdrawing their regime support. In the case of the Koalition’s articulation, the group not only participates in ‘setting benchmarks’ for legitimacy, but also presents itself as a new object of

98 Articulation of an agonistic actor discourse, legitimation and discursive representation (#2 articulation) beyond a merely quantitative account of legitimacy. Dryzek and Niemeyer (2008, p. 482) reiterate that discursive representation should ‘ensure “that all relevant discourses get represented, regardless of how many people subscribe to each.”’ The rejection of legitimacy by numbers also links to Crivits et al.’s (2017, p. 4) discursive representative approach, assuming that ‘representing “discourses” instead of “individuals” or “groups” may circumvent some of the practical problems currently faced by deliberative democracy.’ The focus on the representation of discourses rather than individuals or groups in a trustee- or delegate-like representation resurfaces the systemic limitations of literal representation. The discursive approach to political representation as a practice ‘in which the object of representation and the grounds on which it is defended codetermine “who” and “what” is considered politically legitimate and how “interests” are to be represented’ (Crivits et al. 2017, p. 2) repositions both the ‘who’ (i.e., representatives/represented) and ‘what’ (i.e., claims/positions/discourses) of political representation and dialogue. Discursive representation reinforces Rehfeld’s (2006) assessment that discursive legitimacy leverages representation on grounds of recognition rather than coherence. Crivits et al. (2017) further point out that ‘institutional ambiguity’ can be reduced if discursive representation supports and is included in governance processes. This strengthens the claim that discursive, non-representative modes of representation and legitimacy can potentially alleviate the strenuous implications of not knowing where conflicts in multi-stakeholder governance arrangements originate. Drawing the conceptual discussion of legitimations to a close, Mulligan (2007) provides an important critique of communicative legitimacy by challenging the purposefulness to clarify and operationalize the concept of legitimacy. Mulligan (2007, p. 76) points out that there are ‘no grounds for this game’ of legitimacy. Resonating with the post-foundational framework of legitimacy developed here, the latter is considered as ungrounded ‘ground’ for the ‘game’ of legitimacy. Even though acts of legitimation refer to ‘grounds’ of legitimacy (i.e., reasons, rationales or justice claims of specific legitimating constructs), the norms on which legitimacy claims are transitorily grounded cannot be fixed, firm or definite. Consequently, any attempt to construct legitimacy refers to a ground of legitimacy which is matter-of-factly absent and ultimately ungroundable without contestation. After this glimpse at a post-foundational understanding of legitimacy, the following narratives unfold how the Koalition seeks to temporarily ground the ungroundable ground of its activism. The self-legitimation ACT The Koalition’s self-legitimating framing as ‘open action platform’, which can be understood as a mode of self-authorization, is widely used by speakers to explain the group’s existence and political propositions. Their activism is considered legitimate based on continued activity and engagement, because, as one

Articulation of an agonistic actor 99 speaker puts it (February 4, 2015), ‘the only form of legitimacy is that we keep on doing.’ Exploring these different arguments to ACT, the focus on action becomes apparent in the mobilization, problematization and production of political or policy-related results. The emphasis on the lively and active character of the Koalition is reinforced by appealing to the passivity of other artist-led organizations such as the Rat. Emphasizing the Koalition’s activity in opposition to the lack of action of other actors, the group amplifies its own positioning as a legitimate, acting ‘we’ versus a passive ‘them’. Speakers show sympathy for artists’ ‘disappointment’ and the ‘symptoms of frustration and exhaustion’ resulting from partial shortcomings of the first campaign, yet partially lack understanding for artists’ paralysis or disengagement (February 13, 2015). A changed zeitgeist, one long-standing artist advocate suggests, might have rendered political engagement more challenging today (January 21, 2015). Other Koalition speakers had hoped that the first campaign would have ignited a greater multiplication effect from the artist base to get people engaged. Since this hope was not realized, and the second planned Koalition campaign was not put into action, the assumption that the artist population is rather passive was perpetuated. Meanwhile, the SK continues to act for the overall artist population. On the one hand, speakers’ self-portrayal of sacrificing time and energy for the overall advancement of political conditions for the independent scene positions them as altruistic ‘do-gooders’. On the other hand, the partial self-devaluation (i.e., doing something nobody else wants to do) implicitly introduces the argument to ‘just’ be doing things that need to be done. However, action is never ‘just’ action. Any act has wider implications than its singular activity, just as ‘just’ doing nothing also implies an action in the form of non-action. Subsequently, both acting and non-acting have consequences beyond their literal or immediate content. This is especially prevalent when actions refer to or concern greater communities affected by these actions. Pitkin’s ‘substantive acting for’ claim underscores the representative implication of action, in contrast to ‘standing for’, which is considered rather symbolical (Saward 2006, p. 300). Nonetheless, these two representational modes are intertwined so that ‘standing for’ cannot be enacted without acts of ‘acting for’ and vice versa. Hence, the Koalition’s active appropriation of the representational model of ‘acting for’ other artists, which I circumscribe as ‘speaking for’, implies traces of representation from the ‘standing for’ claim. In other words, in the inherently representative dimension of ‘just’ acting, there lies a responsibility to treat action not ‘just’ as an inconsequential act. Assuming the overall artist population as inactive, the Koalition proceeds to self-legitimize via ‘acting for’ others who would otherwise remain passive, unheard or voiceless. However, the assumed passivity of the artistic scenes is not used to create a negative cleavage between the Koalition’s active ‘we’ against the passive rest of ‘them’. On the contrary, it is used in a non-confrontational way to position the Koalition as the agonistic yet legitimate representative of the passive, or passively consenting, independent art scene as the represented constituency to be ‘acted for’. In

100 Articulation of an agonistic actor addition, the self-legitimation via action underscores the SK’s perception as a reliable and responsible organ to get things done. This image is actively forged by speakers and sustained via their expectations that they should pre-select and pre-structure the agenda and course of action in plenum sessions. Speakers assume that the ‘preparatory brain work’ should take place in the SK (June 17, 2015). This self-assumed responsibility or mandate implicitly interlocks with the representative assumption to ‘act for’ other artists. The speakers might activate a ‘dispositional legitimacy’ (Suchman 1995, p. 578), defined as constituents’ rationalization or propensity to accord legitimacy to organizations that ‘have our best interests at heart.’ To artists who do not actively engage, the Koalition might appear as such a well-meaning institution. On the side of speakers, this assumed latent legitimation interlocks with their ‘deeper roots’ claims-making and their assumption of ‘passive consensus’. The underlying assumption of legitimacy stems from the absence of fundamental critique or explicit refusal or rejection of the Koalition’s activities. Speakers are confident that they would notice if there was opposition against their activities (January 7, 2016), so that their legitimacy is deduced from the lack of protest or critique. As long there is no complete rupture or withdrawal of trust, the SK proceeds with the temporary legitimations they acquire via plenum sessions, or generally uncontested passive consensus. Assessing the probability of outright critique or delegitimization as relatively low, ‘no protest/ critique’ is inversely interpreted as a sign of approval of the Koalition. This negative approval is conditional and needs to be reassessed in case the preliminary legitimation is contested. The temporary validity of its legitimation is applied to the group’s self-constructed legitimacy (December 17, 2013): Until now, nobody has said, “What kind of bullshit is that? Are you [the Koalition] crazy? Have you become completely megalomaniac?” And we are talking about 40,000 artists in Berlin without anyone really contradicting us (…) “Is there anybody who has something against? No? Ok, alright, then let’s do it!” Reiterating the practical challenge of representing the overwhelmingly large and undeterminable number of independent Berlin artists, this speaker reinforces legitimation via absence of protest and critique – nobody is against the group – which is subsequently taken to legitimize the seizure of action. In other words, legitimacy is constructed despite and because of the impossibility of definitively affirming the Koalition. The legitimation via absence of protest is grounded in the acknowledgement of an irreducible ungroundability underlying any effort at legitimation. Consequently, the Koalition does not hope or attempt to ‘fill’ this gap permanently, but operates on the principle that its representative position can be challenged at any time. In sum, temporary legitimations via action are irrevocably linked with the potential to be delegitimated. However, this risk might decrease when the self-legitimation ACT interlocks with other kinds of legitimation.

Articulation of an agonistic actor 101 Within its seven years of existence, the Koalition’s legitimation via action has been controversially discussed in plenum sessions. There have been questions from participants about why certain individuals are Koalition speakers and others are not. However, I never witnessed more explicit or confrontational forms of inquiry (let alone protest) in the plenum. In addition, internal debates in the SK have adjusted the logic of mandatation/legitimation since a closed meeting in January 2016. In this non-public gathering, speakers decided to act according to the principle of ‘free mandates’ for speakers, as opposed to ‘bound mandates’ which would oblige individuals to act according to their genre-specific, potentially constricting institutional affiliations. Despite this seemingly clarificatory decision, the interpretative enactments of ‘free mandates’ remain just as contestable as the previously even-less-specified enactments of speaker positions. More problematically, the fixation of ‘free mandates’ might even foreclose further debate about the loose mandatation of speakers. As contestation remains an omnipresent potentiality for the Koalition’s legitimation, the action-based self-description vacillates between presences and absences, recalling the ‘placeholder’ function of representing an absence (Butler 2008). More precisely, artists who do not engage with or critique the given setting of the Koalition in the form of the SK will remain even further excluded/absent from the fragmentary placeholder representation. Briefly, the absence of already absent artists can be exacerbated by seemingly clarifying ways to act or represent, disclosing a blind spot of the self-legitimation ACT. With regard to the articulatory dimension of action-centric self-legitimation, speakers describe their mandate with the image of ‘porte-parole’ (spokesperson; December 17, 2013), carrying claims, which have been passively agreed upon by the indeterminate ‘we’ of the independent scene, to the politico-administrative realm. Assumedly, because they do it, they articulate their agency as legitimate and legitimated (#1 articulation). Moreover, the Koalition seeks to define the urgency of political claims and problems in a preliminary meaning-fixating attempt (#4 articulation). While conventional modes of mandatation to represent are incrementally rejected, ‘acting for’ involves undeniable traces of representation. Taking into consideration that the mode of production of the independent scene is necessarily self-organized and -authorized, the self-authorization implicit in ACT might facilitate and resonate with artists’ self-empowered action, and political activism for that matter. The self-acclaimed professional understanding as artists might translate into an activist approach to occupy a representative position in an equally self-directed manner. In sum, considering self-instruction and project work as characteristic features of the independent scene (without essentializing either of these differential forms of labor), the Koalition’s articulation might resemble its mode of artistic production, constantly reconfiguring areas of engagement, action and responsibility.

102 Articulation of an agonistic actor The self-legitimation BOUND The narrative of being ‘bound’ or ‘communicating/carrying back’ to existing structures of political representation and decision-making constitutes another self-legitimatory practice. Terms like ‘boundedness’ (‘Rückkopplung’) or ‘communicating back’ occur frequently in descriptions of the relations between speakers and the plenum or general artist base. Exploring the meaning of boundedness, which has been identified as a quality criterion by Koalition speakers, uncovers the multi-layered organizational and potentially democratic degrees of legitimacy that are drawn from the Koalition’s constituent ‘member’ organizations. Adapting Schneider et al.’s (2010, p. 163) concept of ‘embedding’, which is regarded as a ‘relational strategy of relegitimation [which] is brought into play when a second institution or principle is invoked in order to contain and mitigate the initial delegitimation statement,’ the Koalition makes an initial self-legitimization rather than a delegitimization statement to embed itself into existing institutional orders to legitimize its representative position. Besides the benefits of transdisciplinary knowledge exchange among colleagues, being bound back describes the nexus between association representatives and their artist base. Boundedness is considered crucial for a ‘good’ spokesperson (March 25, 2015). Since much of the communicative, and in that way legitimating, approach to garner support for the Koalition’s activities lies at the discretion of individual speakers, the BOUND claim unpacks the rationales and strategies of who legitimizes their contribution to the Koalition on what grounds of legitimation. Since there is no systematic mechanism to mobilize support or approval from genre-specific artist populations, legitimacy is often indirectly pulled from genre-specific associations. Notably, the differing approaches to communicating back on the Koalition’s activities elicit diverse effects to sustain the general legitimacy of the group. To begin with, there is a communication from the Koalition back to genrespecific associations and their respective concerns and demands. This might increase the movement’s overall status as a legitimate representative or ‘umbrella organization’. However, the mere communication or notification about actions that have already been decided upon does not equal approval (let alone democratic participation), as it forecloses exchange about the adequacy and adaptability of those decisions. This practice reminds one of Saward’s (2009) ‘deeper roots’ claim, which simply assumes, but does not directly confirm, approval of the represented constituency. Ideally, speakers collect claims and concerns from their genre-specific exchange platforms and introduce them to ongoing debates in the Koalition or SK. This way, genre-specific claims can be addressed and potentially resolved via the Koalition’s concerted efforts. In any case, speakers play a decisive role as mediators who facilitate the two-way communication and boundedness between the overarching movement and the segmented artist bases (or not). Problematically, if speakers choose not to ‘carry back’ opinions of their

Articulation of an agonistic actor 103 respective artist communities, but overwrite them with their own ideas or requests, the Koalition has few means to correct, question or counter-balance these subjectively tainted positions. This might lead to a delegitimization of the Koalition in the eyes of individual artists who do not directly participate in the group as speakers, plenum participants or members of working groups. This disconnected boundedness could lead to artists’ understanding of the Koalition as exclusive, disembedded or nonbound collective entity. Surely, there are different assessments of artists (or plenum attendees) and speakers regarding what is beneficial to ‘their’ genre in relation to the overall Koalition objectives. On the one hand, genre-specific or particular claims can be extrapolated via the Koalition, broadening the basis of support and legitimacy for particularist claims (i.e., finding new alliance partners to collectively fight for claims previously represented by just one group). On the other hand, genre-specific associations might extend general Koalition claims to bilateral conversations with the cultural administration, emphasizing both the urgency of overarching cultural political claims and their relatively autonomous lobbying power. This latter aspect might reassure artists that align with genre-specific associations, who might fear that the Koalition overwrites specific claims and positions of power. In sum, the informal and largely unregulated positions of speakers and their communication back to genre-specific artist populations and the cultural administration can both legitimize and delegitimize the Koalition. Practices and capacities to communicate back to artist constituencies differ between well-equipped, formalized associations like the visual or performing arts and recently institutionalizing genres such as jazz and literature. Speakers discontinuously pass on information about what is happening in the Round of Spokespeople, or the Koalition more generally, in newsletters, posts or general meetings. Representatives from smaller associations self-critically reflect that information about the Koalition is not sufficiently brought back to their primary artist constituencies, sometimes remaining within internal debates of the board of directors. Transparency and communication are stuck involuntarily in pipelines of associations’ own bureaucratic works. Some speakers believe that to enhance the overall boundedness and legitimacy of the Koalition, they need to first strengthen their own ties with boards and only then should they communicate back to the membership base. In contrast, more formalized genre-specific associations might be able to more extensively intensify the Koalition’s embeddedness and legitimacy within artistic scenes by using existing communicative channels. Also, larger associations can potentially put the Koalition’s activities on broader and numerically larger bases of support, which would increase legitimation via BOUND. However, this line of argument reintroduces a quantitative notion of legitimacy, which stands in tension with the Koalition’s recognition-oriented and qualitative construction of legitimacy on the basis of passive consensus and the absence of protest and critique. If the quantitative logic of acquiring legitimacy was maintained, associations with fewer members, supporters or artists belonging

104 Articulation of an agonistic actor to their genre would respectively contribute less to the overall legitimation of the Koalition. This logic, however, is (if at all) only one component of the two-tiered legitimation, drawing on both quantitative and qualitative indicators for legitimation. As the numerical dimension to leverage legitimacy via boundedness is one factor among many, the BOUND self-legitimation reveals itself as multi-directional and non-exclusive ground for legitimation. Rather, the Koalition interrelates legitimatory energy from both large associations (i.e., quantitative legitimation) and formerly untapped sources of legitimation via emerging organizations, individual speakers (e.g., Sandra Man, Wibke Behrens or Christophe Knoch) or passive consensus (i.e., qualitative legitimation). In particular, individuals’ outreach to artist audiences might be more immediate, quicker, more agile or more credible with regard to responding to individual artists’ concerns than associations’ potentially rigid procedures. However, the different paces and practices to acquire legitimacy, depending on the size of the organization and its (grass-roots democratic) decision-making procedures, can also lead to frustrations within the Round of Spokespeople (Koalition, January 7, 2016). Despite significant disparities between genres, the Koalition as an ‘umbrella organization’ is enhanced via the diverse participation of the genres pertaining to the independent scene. In other words, the Koalition gains legitimacy because genre-specific associations and individuals make it as collective/representative/legitimate as possible, activating recognition for both individual associations and the overall movement. While approval or legitimacy via acclamation in plenum sessions does not directly leverage legitimacy from genre-specific artistic communities (because plenum attendees are not necessarily synonymous with genre-specific artist constituencies or members of associations), boundedness gains traction as a complimentary means of legitimation because it interlocks quantitative and qualitative bonds between artist bases, associations and speakers. However interrelated, boundedness is illustrative of the porosity of its own legitimatory potential, revealing the latter as precarious and discontinuous self-legitimation. Communicating back mediates between the potential and actual meaning of ‘transparency’. In short, boundedness can, but does not necessarily, stimulate legitimacy. Boundedness is dependent on spokespeople as brokers of communication/legitimation who leverage (or not) legitimacy for the Koalition within their genre-specific associations at the discretion and availability of their own time and other resources. On the one hand, if genre-specific concerns are addressed, and ideally resolved thanks to the Koalition, its overall activity might be perceived as a (more) legitimate collective representation of the independent scene. On the other hand, speakers can use their ‘free mandate’, reliant on individual responsibility, expertise or opinions rather than bothering to coordinate heterogeneous voices of ‘their’ artist bases. This appropriation of a ‘free mandate’ might consequently not only distance genre-specific artist populations from the Koalition, but potentially also delegitimize the group’s decisions in the eyes of individual artists. After

Articulation of an agonistic actor 105 sparking an internal debate about mandatation, representation and legitimacy, the paradox of rule by ‘free mandate’ has resulted in an individualization of decision-making and communication rather than a dehierarchization of the group’s representational and legitimatory practices. The announcement of the ‘free mandate’, which was notably not put up for discussion in the plenum, might, in a worst-case scenario, discharge Koalition speakers from substantially engaging with their representative obligation and opportunity to act. While the representation via ‘free mandates’ does not have to be democratic, it has to be legitimate. In summary, associations’ heterogeneous resources to communicate back influence the ways to leverage legitimacy for and from respective artist populations. While more organized or larger associations can leverage ‘more’ legitimacy (and lesser organized or smaller associations might leverage ‘less’ legitimacy), this numerical account of legitimacy-making is complemented by subtler personality-driven and qualitative sources of legitimacy coming from speakers without institutional ties. In short, larger associations or broader membership bases do not equal ‘better’ legitimacy. Nonetheless, the reference to existing mechanisms of decision-making might enhance the partially democratic or formal approval or legitimacy to act. Considering association-specific forms of boundedness (e.g., general meetings, votes) as first-order legitimacy constructions, the Koalition benefits from these genre-specific, formal and/or democratic legitimacies to acquire a second-order legitimacy, which is partially formalized and/or democratic, via boundedness. Boundedness especially resonates with the stabilization of discursive elements (#4 articulation). If boundedness is understood as fixation of legitimations, it represents a transformation of differential discursive elements into a temporarily fixed or bounded discursive moment. In sum, if legitimacy is instituted via articulation, and boundedness is a feature of that articulation, boundedness has been shown to contribute to leverage legitimacy. The self-legitimation REPRESENT The Koalition’s self-legitimatory claim REPRESENT negotiates the tension between genre-specific demands or positions (i.e., particularity) and overarching demands (i.e., universality). Terms such as ‘representing together’, ‘speaking with/for’, ‘thinking/acting for other genres’ or ‘carrying claims with/for others’ frequently occurred in interviews. An internal SK paper states (Koalition der Freien Szene 2016b, p. 6): What is coming or communicated from the Sprecherkreis [sic] or from the “Koalition”, is really consensus among the relevant actors of the “independent scene.” Here, the Sprecherkreis really represents “the” independent scene and notably not just itself (…) it is not even desirable to “somehow” represent the independent scene in a uniform organizational structure.

106 Articulation of an agonistic actor Capturing the ambiguity of the REPRESENT claim, the SK arguably ‘really’ represents more than ‘just itself ’, while the representation via a unified organizational structure or institution is deemed dangerous and undesirable. Implicitly, the assumption of a representative mandate is intertwined with skepticism or outright rejection to represent anything. From speakers’ allusions and references, tensions inherent in REPRESENT seesaw between particularization (i.e., forging genre-specific claims) and universalization (i.e., aiming to represent/achieve as much as possible for the assumed entirety of the independent scene). Because neither tendency can ultimately outweigh the other, questions of why and when to ‘act for’ the transdisciplinary Koalition uncover diverse rationales to support the coalition. When, why and how do genre-specific claims stand in conflict with the Koalition’s overall objectives? How to and why align with a claim that is alien, unpopular or detached from one’s own context or need? (When) Are divergences unbridgeable and what happens once we realize this? Koalition speakers see common features and conditions such as funding situations and needs, precarity or pressure to perform as a unifying bond between the diverse actors. The aspiration to accommodate and represent all genres has been constitutive for the group (Koalition, February 13, 2015): We as Koalition set out from the beginning to create demands together that are somewhat representable for all genres and that can be enhanced further in the respective genres. For the cultural administration, there isn’t that great an opportunity to break that. Underscoring the unity constructed among different genres or elements, this speaker highlights the strength or unbreakability such a coalition can temporarily establish vis-à-vis the ‘constitutive outside’ of the cultural administration. Similarly, Laclau (2007b, p. 78) understands the construction of commonality or collectivity to emerge through the assertion of a particularity – in our case, a particularity of demands – whose only links to other particularities are of a differential nature (…) through a partial surrender of particularity, stressing what all particularities have, equivalentially, in common. Understanding the Koalition’s representative approach as linking different particularities in a relationship of equivalence, the group chains together singular positions to be merged into a temporary agonistic collectivity. Addressing precarious working and living conditions in a shared space of political demands extends the reach of single-issue concerns, and networks them into a more encompassing framework of claims. In addition, a broader basis of support will attract more attention from politicians and administrators. Recognizing the benefit of bundling and condensing existing demands, speakers highlight that their catalogue of claims should be as

Articulation of an agonistic actor 107 inclusive as possible to create demands that are representable for all (February 13, 2015). This self-legitimatory practice to institute universally representable claims emphasizes equivalence in the face of a shared concern for the independent scene (regardless of different views on how to approach this concern). This upward-oriented representative claim reinforces the Koalition’s position and capacity to speak or act for the entirety of independent Berlin-based artists. Besides the aggregation of particular claims and positions, spokespeople rationalize the universalizing function of the ZPP because it concerns ‘the entirety of artists in the city’ and because positions stated therein gathered everybody’s support (January 7, 2016). However, seemingly universal agreements or positions like artist fees need to be operationalized for the specific funding context of each genre, hence forfeiting its alleged status as a universal claim. With regard to the collective appeal to universal claims, Hendriks (2009, p. 703) assumes informal actors or representatives construct a discourse of ‘collective problem solving, where participants transcend “the particular” and work toward “the general.”’ It is precisely this promise of ‘collective problem-solving’ capacity that the Koalition ties to its REPRESENT claim. The underlying universalizing tendency, based on the group’s representational inclusivity, is reinforced by speakers’ assurance that they do not act against anybody, but want to sustain the heterogeneity and complexity of the independent scene. This agonistic self-positioning is sought to even the path to be considered as a legitimate actor in the legitimate political struggle of the complex independent art scene. However, the unifying or universalizing drive is also perceived as a potential threat to associations’ positions. Fearing that the Koalition could level out specificities, or lump different artistic backgrounds into one centralized institution, one speaker imagines (February 13, 2015): Even though I [the Koalition] do naturally see a little bit of danger emerging on the horizon (…) “Koalition speaks for everybody” – so to say that individuals are not considered at all anymore, or respectively, that this effect of centralization emerges, so that particular demands fall under the table (…) too much desire for centralization, one should not accommodate that too much. I think that is always a balancing act between “together with one voice” and so on and “together, we are stronger and have synergies.” As a result, the universalizing tendency needs to be reconciled with a sensitivity to maintain particular interests or positions. The ‘centralization effect’ marks the anxiety that a universal entity would absorb particular positions and lead to a united but bland mass. The ‘balancing act’ between centralization, which multiplies representative reach and persuasive power (i.e., representing universality) and genre-specific differences which should not fall under the table (i.e., representing particularity) lies at the heart of

108 Articulation of an agonistic actor the Koalition’s representative and legitimatory dynamic. Within this tumultuous tension, some spokespeople argue that the general good of the independent scene needs to be considered before lapsing into interest politics, and that one should try to ‘act in the will of the Koalition’ (February 12, 2015). This implicit reference to a ‘collective will’ relegates genre-specific priorities to the background for the sake of ensuring the potential to REPRESENT. Notably, this non-particularistic attitude stands in contrast to other speakers’ statements that claim that they need to represent their genre first, pushing as much as possible for their respective organization, and then worry about collective goals (March 23, 2015). With regard to collectively representable positions or solidarity among the differential elements of the Koalition, genre-specific propositions cannot be ignored because this would risk stagnation or rupture of dialogue. In difficult situations, speakers expressed solidarity to not fully reject particular claims, while also not wholly supporting the issue because they were not directly concerned or not did agree unconditionally (December 14, 2015). The stated willingness to compromise relates back to the understanding that genre-particularities are generally accommodated in the Koalition (to potentially invigorate the encompassing portfolio of claims) as long as this particularity does not distort the overall construction of conflictual consensus. Solidarity has been described as a conditional approach to solidify both universal, overarching ideas for everybody and particular, genre-specific demands, appearing as an instrumental rhetoric bond to enhance internal cohesion and the REPRESENT position. In contrast, a cultural administrator views the Koalition as inconveniently (October 28, 2015) ‘stuck with a thought of solidarity that it can’t say anything but “OK, then we can’t agree with that.”’ This external assessment illustrates that solidarity can also inhibit or incapacitate collaboration because the overall movement could appear adamant or unwilling to compromise out of solidarity. Theoretically, if genre-specific associations know best about the validity and irreplaceability of their claims, and if there is no equivalent or substitute for a genre-specific request, the latter should be transferred into the ZPP (Koalition, February 13, 2015). In practice, however, the direct integration of irreducible particularities has often been put on hold; some claims were abandoned for the sake of greater Koalition objectives, making the persistence of genre-specific propositions conditional on the content and interceders of the claim. Regarding the balancing act between particularity and universality, Laclau (2007a, p. 65) assumes that identities undergo a structural transformation in processes of collectivization or universalization: Difference and particularisms are the necessary starting point, but out of it, it is possible to open the way to a relative universalization (…) This universalization and its open character certainly condemns all identity to an unavoidable hybridization, but hybridization does not

Articulation of an agonistic actor 109 necessarily mean decline through the loss of identity: it can also mean empowering existing identities through an opening of new possibilities (…) All this finally amounts to saying is that the particular can only fully realize itself if it constantly keeps open, and constantly re-defines, its relation to the universal. Laclau marks ‘relative universalizations’ as constructed out of difference and highlights the necessary alteration of all elements engaged in this universalization in a transitory state of discursive fixation (#4 articulation). In the Koalition, this means that all genre-specific associations and spokespeople will necessarily change and be changed by the collective agency of the group (#1 articulation). Notably, transformation is not the same as identity dissolution or erasure. Far from being a menace, Laclau establishes the unavoidable interrelatedness between particular, differential elements and newly created universals as an opportunity for collective identification, which resonates with the attempt to construct a totality, which is cautious not to overwrite desires for particularity (#2 articulation). Understanding universalization or collectivization as articulation, a new hegemonic ‘universal’ challenges the stage of discourse with new meanings and claims to power (#3 articulation). In addition to the reconciliation among existing elements, interests or organizations, the ‘relative universal’ Koalition argues to ‘speak for’ those who are not politically organized or represented at all. For these ‘unrepresented’ artists, the Koalition seeks to provide a novel space of political mobilization, identification and engagement to invite the participation of artists who were previously not affiliated with any cultural advocacy. While this extrapolation might intend to appeal to those who feel not represented, this self-institution as a compensatory actor and space for unengaged artists might problematically disempower those artists who do not want to be represented by Sandra Man, Wibke Behrens advocacy body, neither existing ones nor the newly proposed one of the Koalition. While ‘speaking for’ artists might be interpreted as the group’s concern to increase the (democratic) involvement of Berlin artists, in the worst case, the Koalition’s offer to speak and act for the formerly unrepresented could potentially exacerbate the exclusion and disengagement of formerly non-organized/non-represented artists or overwrite the latter’s wish to not be organized or represented. In this context, the Koalition’s self-legitimatory claim to ‘just’ ACT could be more appealing to artists who defy the principle of organization or (representative) representation altogether because ACT needs to be constantly actualized and legitimated anew. Within the attempt to REPRESENT, the status of both particular and universal elements or representatives has been called into question. Reminded of the quarrel between the project space network and the visual arts representation, and the question whether project spaces were adequately ‘represented with’ by bbk or not, the continuously contested nature of ‘relative universals’ becomes apparent. When the project space network sought to articulate its own particular representative position in the SK in addition to bbk’s representation, the former eroded

110 Articulation of an agonistic actor the latter’s position as ‘relative universal’ of visual arts, questioning bbk’s internal REPRESENT claim within the Koalition.17 In short, the (un)ease to feel REPRESENTED (or not) depends on the power differentials that representation entails. Moreover, it depends on whether the ‘acting for’ or representation is abstractly proclaimed (i.e., meta level), or whether concrete decision-making or redistributive capacities are attached to the representative claim (i.e., operational level). In the concrete distributive context of the City Tax income, the project space network was reported to have strongly disagreed with the incremental realization of its demands (Koalition, March 23, 2015). Upset by the project spaces’ harsh advance, perceived by others as disproportionate, however, the assumed universal Koalition could not proceed without transitorily reconciling the Network’s particular claims (Koalition, January 28, 2015). Hence, for a ‘relative universal’ to persist, it needs to counter attacks by resistant particular (representative) requests and seek to limit particulars’ range when the latter threaten or abuse their positionality within the overall attempted universality. In sum, the stabilization and destabilization of representative/legitimate positions within a ‘relative universal’ depends on whether and how concerned particular elements/stakeholders relate to the universal offer by the ‘relative universal’ or whether they undermine its position. Drawing the discussion on the self-legitimatory strategy REPRESENT to a close, the dynamic between absence and presence powerfully manifests both the material and discursive urgency to represent the independent scene and its inherent conceptual impossibility. With regard to achievements leveraged via the Koalition’s diverse self-legitimatory efforts, one of the most important contributions so far has been identified as the definition and rising consciousness and understanding of what the independent scene ‘is’ or, more precisely, what it ‘does’. While references to ‘visibilization’ in terms of strategic presences and absences to be represented might reveal a problematically positivist or foundationalist connotation of ‘making something visible’ (alluding to the recovery of a hidden essence or truth), matter-of-factly, in the context of the Koalition, the temporary visibilization of the independent scene has been described as having garnered more attention, relevancy, significance or impact in the eyes of cultural administrators, politicians and the culturally interested public. The first Koalition campaign sought to simultaneously appeal to the fleetingness of the independent scene as well as its contribution to a publicly visible cultural life (Landau 2015). Campaign tools ranged from temporary absences (e.g., a two-week black-screen strike to demonstrate what the city would be missing if ‘the independent scene’ was no longer producing art in and for the city) and temporary presences (e.g., a public protest march as well as temporary projections of the Koalition logo on prestigious cultural institutions). Leaving (material) outcomes or effects of the first campaign aside, a speaker claims (December 17, 2013): ‘Success or no success – the public perception has continuously risen.’ In sum, the Sandra Man, Wibke Behrens REPRESENT approach unites the evocation of more visibility, and the appeal to the inherent non-representability, or more fundamental absence, of the independent scene.

Articulation of an agonistic actor 111 Part of the self-defined goal to transform public consciousness, and the objective to deconstruct stereotypes about alleged amateur artists in the independent scene, the discursive presence of the Koalition might have momentarily outweighed its material presence or ‘success’ which would have been manifest in financial improvements for the independent scene. While many requests are tangible and representable (i.e., financial demands), the achievements, and potentially also the legitimacy of the group, cannot exclusively be measured by looking at which achievable claims were fully translated in policy (or not). In the process of claiming a policy stakeholder position, Koalition speakers find that they have done a lot of ‘educational’ or ‘conviction’ work to make parliamentarians understand that professional independent cultural producers are to be taken seriously (January 29, 2015).18 Besides overcoming stereotypes and strengthening the presence of the professionalized independent scene, one spokesperson points to the possible danger of collectivization or universalization, which might let the Koalition appear like an ‘illusionary giant’ (January 21, 2015). The image of a giant, who appears larger than she or he is, captures the anticipated fear of having to ‘speak for’ or REPRESENT too much or too many, or failing to live up to ‘gigantic’ expectations, or underperform to such enormous representative claims. In the face of all these labor-intense and partially frustrating efforts, Ströder’s (2016, p. 82) remark that ‘politics of legitimacy is publicly observable work of persuasion’ captures the Koalition’s practice of creating legitimatory links via persuasive actions (ACT) and the swaying appeal to speak for all concerned artists (REPRESENT). Conclusions: self-legitimations – agonistic representation The self-legitimatory strategy REPRESENT has revealed that the Koalition contributes to the visibilization or coming-into-being of ‘the independent scene’ as a discursive absent totality. By assembling genre-specific organizations and positions and formulating new, potentially universal claims, the Koalition transcends an aggregative model of organization which one-sidedly and definitively seeks to occupy a representative void. Instead, the group works in the impasse of the general non-representability of its own object of representation. However, political discomfort, regardless of how non-representable or ‘invisible’ the group may be, cannot be addressed without any representational mode. Hence, the Koalition sets out to articulate, and however imperfectly REPRESENT, the factually existing yet statistically and ontologically incomplete totality of Berlin-based independent artists. The Koalition simultaneously appeals to the absence and presence of a non-representable totality, or argues for and against the absence of ‘the independent scene’ at the same time. In short, the Koalition represents its own absence via both presence and absence. Gasché (2004, p. 30) claims that a ‘non-foundation is acknowledged as being present in the foundation, a non-presence without which the ground could not itself lay a claim to presence.’ Equating the artist population with the ‘nonfoundation’ of Berlin’s independent art scene, this impossible foundation or

112 Articulation of an agonistic actor absence reveals itself as constitutive of the emerging presence of the group. The political non-presence of the independent scene grounds the presence of the representative Koalition. Producing a new discourse about the presence/visibility of independent cultural production, the group challenges the existing hegemonic condition of significant underfunding of independent culture, which was sustained by the ongoing absence of a collectivity to protest this very condition (#3 articulation). The paradoxical discourse of presence and absence, activated by a newly arriving actor (#1 articulation), persists precisely because the coalition temporarily unites heterogeneous elements of the independent scene (#4 articulation), and temporarily creates a contingent universalizing discourse (#2 articulation). In line with Laclau’s (1994, p. 9) belief in the ‘political productivity’ of the ‘ambiguities and displacements of meaning’ between universality and particularity, the contours of these displacements have first revealed the self-legitimatory practice ACT as positioning of the Koalition’s activity/activation in relation to the respective passivity/passivation of other parts of the artistic scenes or existing artist organizations. Second, the reference to BOUNDEDNESS underscores the Koalition’s aspiration to (re)construct legitimacy from embeddedness into existing institutional and representative, legitimated and partially democratic structures of the constituent parts of the group. Third, the self-legitimatory claim REPRESENT aims to speak for the entirety of Berlin’s independent artists. The A(nta)gonistic Representation Matrix (Table 3.2) presents a schematic depiction of the Koalition’s modes of representation along the lines of universality/equivalence and particularity/difference. Aware of the simplified dimensionality of the matrix, in real life, these four representational scenarios are enacted as contested and interpenetrating conditions seesawing between universality and particularity. Table 3.2 A(nta)gonistic Representation Matrix Universality/equivalence high

Universality/equivalence low

Particularity/ difference high

Impossible representation (UP1) No collaboration/representation (irreconcilable rivalry between particularist and universal claims)

Particularity/ difference low

Agonistic representation (UP3) Temporary equalization of particular/differential demands (chain of equivalences; collective representation as ‘relative universal’)

Particularistic representation (UP2) Persistence of genre-specific positions inhibits construction of common claims (potentially ‘least common denominator’ representation) Full representation (UP4) Theoretical scenario; no representation because no particularity attempts to represent universality

Source: author

Articulation of an agonistic actor 113 Zooming in to the underlying logics of the four scenarios, when both the desire to maintain particularity/difference and the aspiration to represent universality/equivalence are high, collective representation is not possible. The scenario of impossible representation (UP1) shows the failure to construct a representative position, which could never enter the political communication and discourse. The scenario of particularistic representation (UP2) expresses the intention to maintain and prioritize genre-specific claims (high priority on particularity), which subordinates the quest for universalization. Conceptually, this scenario refers to the problematic prevalence of particular claims, which disturbs or inhibits the construction of collective claims or representative positions. In the Koalition, when member organizations value their own (differential) interests higher than the overarching universal, equivalence-seeking endeavor of the Koalition, the whole group cannot produce a however-contingent representative position. Full representation (UP4) would occur in the case of theoretically fully consensual collective representation. If both the desire for particularity/difference and universality/equivalence are little developed, collective representative force cannot unfold because there is no particularity which pushes for the representation of a universality. In other words, if there is no particularity trying to impose itself as a (counter-)hegemonic signifier to represent universality, there can be no collective representation. Due to the lack of a universalizing or hegemonizing drive, the differential elements cannot be knitted into chains of equivalence that would then (inadequately) represent a collectivity. This representational mode is described as ‘full’ because it would rely on ‘absolute’ representation or identity of a fullness or a fully transparent collectivity. While the latter has been revealed as impossible to realize, this imagined complete fullness is simultaneously completely empty because absolute fullness is just as impossible as an absolute void (even though the void remains radical in its ontological negativity). In sum, the theoretical scenario of full representation is conceptually anemic and not hegemonic because there is no attempt to temporarily occupy or stabilize a universal position within discourse. Ultimately, agonistic representation (UP3) encapsulates the condition of the logic of equivalence/universality temporarily tipping over the logic of difference/particularity to install a contingent representative fixation. Differential elements are linked into a chain of equivalence which enables the transitory institution of a ‘relative universal’. In agonistic representation, the desire or drive for universality-invoking representation exceeds the desire for particularistic positions, and thus facilitates the construction of a collective representative position. The interrelation of particular elements into a temporary logic of equivalence corresponds with Laclau’s ‘relative universalization’ because it inscribes particular identities and demands into a wider chain of equivalences. The simultaneous amplification of genre-specific claims and the creation of a common presence illustrate the Koalition’s appropriation as a ‘relative universal’ which temporarily dissolves genre-specific positions to establish preliminary internal collectivity, cohesion and credibility – as well as potentially legitimacy – for the collective representation of the independent scene. This strategic actor, which appears coherent vis-à-vis political or administrative stakeholders, provides

114 Articulation of an agonistic actor a representative ‘shell’ to the outside to stage less dividedness than its porous and conflictual insides might suggest. Even if conflicts or differences continue to persist in the background of SK and plenum meetings, agonistic representation (UP3) enables the Koalition to partake in political negotiations within one collective representative ‘relative universal’ position. ‘Relative universals’ co-constitute precarious political life (Gasché 2004, p. 23): [t]he universal is the effect of a pragmatic construction in the concrete fabric of social and political life (…) the universal, instead of bearing the stamp of necessity, is contingent upon this pragmatic construction (…) contaminated by particularity, and is thus a “relative” universal. Notably, the ‘relative universal’ in agonistic representation is never fully enclosed or stable, but ‘contaminated by particularity’. In short, the universal always carries traces of the particular. Universality is symbolically overdetermined by a number of particular/differential demands but also transcends them. The universal, then, is ‘necessarily, something exterior, other, or alien with respect to particularities or their community’ (Gasché 2004, p. 27). With regard to the Koalition, the group is both something more and other than the mere aggregation of particularities pertaining to the collectivity. A Koalition speaker summarizes (February 12, 2015): The actors, the harmony, the sum is more; the whole is more than the sum of its parts (…) I do have the impression they [the Koalition] have already survived several crises. And in that sense, they are, they know what they have in each other. The speaker reiterates the understanding of the Koalition as more than the addition of genre-specific associations and speakers in the group, and points to the ongoing conflictuality of agonistic representation (‘survived several crises’). Curiously, this speaker distances herself from the acclaimed collectivity by referring to the Koalition, which she is part of, as ‘them’. Nonetheless, in sum, the ‘relative universal’, which is more than the sum of its parts, is constituted via a hybrid, agonistic representation (UP3). As mentioned, hybridity, or universalization, does not automatically destroy or threaten individual or particular identities, but reshuffles new and old positionalities, transcending particular contents toward a newness that inheres traces of the old. Laclau’s (2007b, p. 79) understanding of the transformative potential of hybridization could soothe the fear that an institutionalization of the group would centralize and swallow up differential genre-specific identities. Rather, the relations between universality and particularity, or equivalence and difference, can productively coalesce without eliminating difference in agonistic representation. To connect the Koalition’s self-legitimatory practices with its reinforcement of articulatory practice, the group applies the self-legitimization ACT as

Articulation of an agonistic actor 115 a downgrading strategy, apparent in the assertion to ‘just’ ACT, without a seemingly representative aspiration. Self-legitimatory practices of BOUND operate as intermediary, integrating strategies, tapping into existing structures of political, partially democratic representation and legitimacy, creating a secondorder reference to existing legitimacies, thus indirectly validating the Koalition. Most extensively, the group engages in the self-legitimation REPRESENT as an upgrading, or universalizing endeavor, extrapolating its constituency and scope of representation to the non-representable totality of Berlin’s independent artists. Notably, the assessment of the Koalition as ‘relative universal’ is not to be confounded with an accusation of megalomaniac self-aggrandizement, but rather describes the conceptual approximation toward post-foundational practices of political representation that emanate from the structural undecidability of representation. The concrete decision to REPRESENT against the odds is enacted by post-foundational collective actors who are aware of the dilemma of decision and representation, which continues to persist in action.

External legitimations of the agonistic actor In response to these multiple self-legitimations, there are different ascriptions and acknowledgements as well as contestations and revocations of the Koalition’s legitimacy as a collective representation of ‘the independent scene’ from other cultural stakeholders. As conceptual counterpart to the previous section, the corresponding external perceptions of the Koalition’s legitimate representative position are structured along three lines. First, ascriptions of legitimacy to the Koalition from the artistic scenes and other arts protagonists are subsumed as NETWORKED legitimacy, revolving around the enhancement of legitimacy through strategic partnerships and alliances. Second, I discuss the somewhat reactionary ascription of legitimacy by (cultural) politicians as DELAYED legitimacy. Parliamentarians’ views of the Koalition are reconstructed as gradually transforming from initial skepticism about the independent scene as a political claims-maker toward a cautious recognition, tagging along with others’ appreciation of the Koalition. Third, the cultural administration’s approach of ascribing and withdrawing legitimacy to the Koalition via selected appeals to its universal representative status is conceptualized as STRATEGIC legitimacy. Overall, this section unpacks legitimations as constructed via intertwining of self-acclamations and external ascriptions of legitimacy. Notably, perspectives reconstructed from cultural institutions and politicians are synthesized from either Koalition or Senatskanzlei narratives as second-party assessments or indirect references rather than self-descriptions or first-hand accounts, and thus need to be considered with precaution. The NETWORKED legitimation: strategic approximations to the scene The discursive appearance and visibilization of the independent scene has been identified as one of the Koalition’s main achievements. In contrast, the

116 Articulation of an agonistic actor physical ‘weight’ of the group remains more contested. The group is not a ‘mass movement’, reiterating that large numbers or quantitative support are not primarily relevant to justify the group’s importance (March 17, 2015). In line with a discursive representative approach, the group additionally garners support and legitimacy based on qualitative, symbolical and non-numerical means of legitimation. Relations with relevant artist stakeholders serve to legitimize the Koalition’s representative position from the outside. For example, the changing cooperativeness of prestigious cultural institutions such as the Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts) are illustrative of the rising discursive belonging of the Koalition to the field of cultural protagonists in Berlin. A speaker notes that the Akademie der Künste increasingly recognized its presence and acknowledged its efforts in advocacy contexts. In comparison to the first campaign in 2013, there was an explicit alignment of the Akademie, manifest in the ‘lending’ of a slogan which was used as the Koalition campaign title ‘Nichts ist erledigt!’ (‘Nothing is done!’; Koalition, December 14, 2015). This way, the Akademie accredited the Koalition’s continuous and outspoken presence in cultural affairs, leading to a ‘clearer positioning’ of the Akademie in allegiance with the Koalition, so that the latter’s ‘we’ temporarily moved closer to ‘them’ (i.e., other cultural institutions). Put differently, the Koalition’s growing public visibility enabled or intensified support and alliances with established cultural players such as the Akademie. Besides the increasing public presence, the Koalition’s focus to ACT might have fostered concrete opportunities to align with established institutions. These strategic, temporary alliances might not only help to broaden the Koalition’s ‘we’ within the artistic scenes, but also underpin the group’s attempt to REPRESENT, which was affirmed by non-Koalition actors. Over time, cultural institutions responded to the self-legitimations ACT and REPRESENT by repositioning themselves closer to the Koalition. The initial distancing of some cultural institutions is interpreted in a partially positive light by speakers, who note that it helped to shape the Koalition’s self-understanding as relatively independent actor (March 31, 2014): Some people, who manage institutions, say: “We are not members in the Koalition der Freien Szene because it doesn’t make any sense! That weakens the whole thing, but of course, we are sympathizers.” Besides the narrated sympathetic alignment, distancing from the group inversely allowed the Koalition’s early ‘we’ to appear as unique and untainted by existing interest politics. Cultural institutions function as ‘constitutive outside’ to the Koalition’s articulation as a new collectivity. Simultaneously blocking and preconditioning the institution of the new agonistic collectivity, other actors are necessary to carve out a space that is not the Koalition to let their original representative position flourish.

Articulation of an agonistic actor 117 Moreover, the initial lack of active support for the Koalition was used as a legitimation strategy for its self-mandatation to ACT. The same spokesperson recapitulates (ibid.): ‘We [cultural institutions] know what you’re [the Koalition] up to, we couldn’t make it, we had our own stuff and so on, but you are doing it already!’ On the one hand, this unspecified support provides a kind of a blanket validation and potential legitimation. On the other hand, this rather lapidary, non-binding carry-over of responsibility to the SK loosely equips it with the ‘mandate’ to proceed to ACT. This implicit authorization resembles the model of ‘trustee’ representation, where trust is simply conferred rather than explicitly leveraged to account (Castiglione and Warren 2006). In other words, the implicit transfer of trust/legitimacy to the Koalition seems to outweigh the relatively more time- or resourceconsuming formal ascription of legitimacy which would have required active engagement on the part of cultural institutions. One Koalition speaker retells cultural institutions’ reactions during the early phase of the 2013 campaign (June 17, 2015): ‘Please, organize it! We [cultural institutions] don’t have the time (…) do your thing, make suggestions, we will be with you then, we trust you!’ This informal transfer of decision-making power and responsibilities to the Koalition encapsulates the responsibilization of the SK by cultural institutions. In a framework of leveraging legitimacy through the absence of protest, this responsibilization relies on the Koalition’s self-acclaimed power to ACT. Based on different experiences with individual components of the group, the latent delegation of trust and legitimacy might not be motivated by mere passivity, lack of time or capacity, but could also be explicable via already existing legitimate relations between genre-specific associations and larger cultural institutions (i.e., BOUNDEDNESS). Cultural institutions might more easily trust or confide in the new collective actor because it consists of established, differently legitimated genre-specific associations that they already know. Hence, through the loose validation by cultural institutions, BOUND unfolds another dimension of legitimation for the Koalition. While this contingent and tentative legitimation can be called into question at any time, repeated event-specific support, collaborations and alliance-building between the Koalition and institutional cultural players could gradually decrease the general precarity of legitimation to contribute to an ongoing (re)stabilization of fleeting legitimations. Interrelating the Koalition’s self-legitimation ACT and the NETWORKED legitimation conferred by other art stakeholders, the Koalition proactively enters strategic collaborations. As Ansell and Gash (2007, p. 555) put it, ‘[w]hen the collaborative forum is “the only game in town”, it is easier to motivate stakeholders to participate.’ Alluding to the transforming field of cultural governance, the changing ‘game of collaboration’ might require the building of new alliances, requesting that new networks are created among diverse artist advocates. Ultimately, these legitimating interactions reinforce the Koalition’s REPRESENT position as a ‘relative

118 Articulation of an agonistic actor universal’ by both expanding and renegotiating the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ within the artistic scenes. Inversely, cultural institutions’ strategical buy-in to the legitimacy of the Koalition acquired so far might also underscore their reputation as active parts of the cultural political debate. Lastly, the blurry ‘we’ of the Koalition puts the group in a mediating position between institutional and independent actors. Being plugged into networks of already legitimate actors, thus, leverages second-order legitimacy for the group. To conclude, the exchange and collaboration with already credible cultural actors ideally creates legitimatory spillover effects for both the Koalition and partially cumbersome or not-so-active cultural institutions. The DELAYED legitimation: politicians jump on the legitimating bandwagon In the beginning of the Koalition’s activity, speakers felt unrecognized as a political conversation partner by politicians (March 31, 2014). Despite politicians’ general lack of understanding about the independent scene’s production and funding realities, the Koalition had one advantage on its side because ‘everybody wants to talk about art, nobody wants to be a philistine,’ crediting a general appreciation for culture as a civic good to be discussed in public discourse (December 17, 2013). However, in relation to other pressing issues to be addressed in Berlin politics, culture seemed not to be a priority on all politicians’ agendas. Cultural administrators support the Koalition’s impression that the legislature was not very attentive to the political urgency of the independent scene’s claims at first. Interestingly enough, politicians’ distance might have further approximated the cultural administration and the Koalition, the former self-describing as more sympathetic and aware of the latter’s problems (October 28, 2015): ‘We as a cultural administration are much closer to you [independent scene] and we are likely more inclined than the funders [i.e. parliament] who have to have everybody in mind.’ Positioning the legislature as an external ‘them’ against the temporarily aligned collective ‘we’ of the Koalition and the cultural administration, this administrator alludes not only to the administration’s self-justification via multi-stakeholder collaboration, but also (involuntarily?) dislodges the legitimacy-building relationship between the Koalition and the legislature. The reconstruction of Koalition speakers’ interpretations of politicians’ actions (and lack thereof) offer insights into the collaborative and legitimacybuilding relations between multiple-layered governance alliances in Berlin’s cultural sector. Bearing in mind that the legislature is the democratically elected organ that formally decides on budgetary increases for the independent scene (or not), it is important for the Koalition that the legislature approves of its claims. Speakers have variously criticized Berlin’s cultural politicians, mostly those of the governing parties at the time, with attributes ranging from ‘useless’ to ‘brain dead’ to having ‘no sensibility’ for the concerns of the independent scene (December 17, 2013). In contrast, contacts with

Articulation of an agonistic actor 119 politicians from opposition parties have been described as helpful with regard to accessing information and gathering forces who fight in favor of the independent scene. Politicians’ perceived lack of energy, knowledge and understanding is captured by a Koalition speaker (February 4, 2015): The cultural politicians do not really keep working – they are too old, too little engaged. That is a real problem. So that they [politicians] are coming to us now is obviously great, but if we have the impression that we need to inform them, that is completely absurd. Showcasing not only that cultural politicians are perceived to lag behind in current policy proposals and budgetary negotiations, they are moreover viewed as hardly influential in their bargaining position in overall policymaking processes. Cultural administrators reinforce the impression that cultural politicians are relatively weak within parliamentary groups or political parties (October 28, 2015). In contrast, politicians who sit on the Budget Committee, the ultimate decision-making organ for budgetary decisions, are portrayed by Koalition members as open-minded to cultural funding requests from the independent scene (September 7, 2015). Hence, the lack of funding for the independent scene is not explained by a generally disapproving parliamentary milieu, but rather cultural politicians’ specific incapacity to propose budgetary items in time so that the conditions for the independent scene would be amended. Speakers mock politicians’ intimidation that the new State Secretary, Tim Renner, employed a new executive style,19 which alienated politicians from projects initialized by the Senatskanzlei (February 4, 2015). In light of new legitimation practices in the cultural governance arrangement, including new collective actors without a democratic mandate, the legislature itself might have anticipated and/or feared a loss of significance, leading it to be more skeptical of collaborative governance exercises such as CityTax2015 (see Chapter 5), which strayed from or circumvented strictly parliamentary decision-making. Since cultural politicians are perceived as ‘not very proactive’ and ‘amateurs’, the Koalition moved forward to briskly request legitimation via ACT and REPRESENT when parliamentarians remained hesitant, silent or inactive. Despite these complicated and often frustrating relations, over time and throughout the Koalition’s increasing public recognition, as well as through its ongoing collaboration with the cultural administration, parliamentarians opened up to the independent scene’s requests (Koalition, December 14, 2015). Koalition speakers identify the direct interaction with parliamentarians in personal meetings as having facilitated the approximation with politics (March 23, 2015). Paradoxically, politicians’ gradually increasing ‘acceptance’ was hampered by the simultaneously growing proximity between the Koalition and the cultural administration. Due to the close collaboration between the latter two in drafting propositions for the Cultural

120 Articulation of an agonistic actor Budget 2016/17, and the partial vagueness of proposals resulting from these preliminary exchanges, speakers report politicians’ suspicion or fear to lose parliamentary control (September 7, 2015): Due to communicative mistakes or a lack of communication from the cultural administration with the politicians, the latter now get the impression, the legitimate impression I would say (…) they [cultural politicians] feel poorly informed, and because of that, they get the impression “Now we need to take it in our own hands!” As a result of the unspecified proposals about how to distribute future City Tax income, parliamentarians requested that budgetary items should be more concrete to ensure the democratic and transparent structure of the budget. Out of fear of being excluded from policy-making, parliamentarians wanted to distribute the funds via parliamentary resolutions. Politicians were also opposed to the creation of a Freie Szene Board or a Freier Kulturfonds (Koalition der Freien Szene 2013), which would have introduced a funding body that could have administered funds from the City Tax. Fearing that decision-making would be moved even further from their scope of influence, parliamentarians were maybe overwhelmed, a Koalition speaker guesses, by the artists’ rapid and persistent lobbying (December 14, 2015). Due to the steady public presence of the Koalition, politicians might have potentially been under more pressure to respond to this new actor and its claims, which had formerly been easier to ignore because there was no collective voice criticizing the funding imbalance. In the face of the close collaboration between the Senatskanzlei and Koalition, parliamentarians started to increasingly refer to the group in parliamentary speeches and plenary debates, reinforcing the overall visibility of the artist coalition. A Koalition speaker recalls (March 31, 2015): Suddenly it was like, that this term “independent scene” basically had developed into a sort of terminology (…) everybody just thought the “independent scene” is so heterogeneous, not tangible, then, they can’t possibly formulate demands (…) if things are too diffuse, they just get lost in the political realm. Hence, addressability and substantiation of the term ‘independent scene’ resulting from the group’s collectivization led to a slow but comprehensive recognition by political stakeholders. Using abbreviations like Koa or Koalition, politicians demonstrated familiarity with ‘the scene’ and acknowledged the novel governance practice tested out in the distribution of City Tax funds, joining the governance arrangement from the outside in. Notably, parliamentarians’ recognition and legitimacy ascriptions are contingent and nested within the already existing legitimating bonds between Senatskanzlei and Koalition. While this relationship initially ignited

Articulation of an agonistic actor 121 skepticism and fear of exclusion on the part of politicians, a leap of faith – or leap of legitimacy – ultimately destigmatized the independent scene ‘so that the topic of the independent scene is no longer a taboo or a topic of disgust’ (Senatskanzlei, October 28, 2015). In sum, despite initial suspicion, the legislative ‘tagged along’ with the cultural administration to acknowledge the potential of a new collective voice to transform the cultural political context toward a more equitable distribution of funds and attention. The STRATEGIC legitimation: cultural administration (de)constructs universality The cultural administration most formatively ascribes legitimacy to the Koalition, coproducing and validating this new collective cultural actor (or not). By unpacking legitimatory strategies of the cultural administration in dialogue with the Koalition’s strategic self-universalization, the overall transforming governance dynamic illuminates how the emergence and integration of new governance actors initializes a shift of all concerned stakeholders’ roles. First, the self-instituted representative Koalition is assumed by the cultural administration as an exclusive interlocutor or negotiation partner, with whom one can ‘effectively’, and potentially ‘legitimately’, discuss cultural political issues. Besides this beneficial facilitating effect, Tim Renner’s (unsolicited) presentation as ‘advocate of the independent scene’ upon his entry into office in April 2014 self-legitimizes the cultural administration’s proceeding in a context of generally controversial cultural policy-making. Cultural administrators view the purpose and position of the Koalition quite differently. According to one Senatskanzlei employee, the Koalition is a self-initiated lobby group; others view the coalition as ‘being in a way the representatives or acting as representatives through the way in which they are organized’ (July 16, 2015). While the statement might reveal a slightly essentializing assumption that the Koalition ‘is’ a seemingly ‘natural’ representative, the modification of the wording to ‘act as representative’, which implicitly reinforces the Koalition’s legitimatory strategy ACT, also shows awareness of the agentic and performative dimensions of political representation. Hence, the cultural administration considers the Koalition not as a solid or homogeneous entity or association, but as an emerging representative, or a becoming representative (October 20, 2015). Instead of assuming a fixed status of ‘being’ representative or legitimate, ‘becoming’ representative points to the ontological impossibility of stable being, redirecting analytical attention to processes of articulation (i.e., processes of ‘becoming’). The Koalition embodies such an ever-emerging positionality, perceived as moving between a lobby organization, a consulting agency, an advisory body and an engaged civil society movement (Senatskanzlei, November 2, 2015). Another cultural administrator wonders about the boundaries between interest groups, social justice actors and consultancy agencies, the latter of which would potentially have to be remunerated for their work providing services to the cultural

122 Articulation of an agonistic actor administration (October 28, 2015). While there is some recognition that the labor- and research-intense activities of the Koalition cannot be carried out for free, the cultural administration categorically refuses to (co)fund a Koalition office structure and is strictly opposed to funding lobby activities (reinstating the understanding that the Koalition is a lobby organization). Hence, the consideration of the Koalition as a service provider is often disregarded, or not further problematized in discussions about its inclusion in policy-making. Since the Koalition itself remains unclear about its organizational state, this ambiguity indirectly serves the administration to not formally contract it but rely on informal arrangements and inclusion in administrative procedures as it sees fit. However, this lack of clarity also challenges administrators regarding how to legitimately include the policy stakeholder Koalition in the blurry terrain of policy or budget design (October 20, 2015). It follows that some legitimacy-building exercises are conditioned by organizational stability, fixity or the impression that the Koalition is a reliable political partner, while others are explained due to the group’s loose nature. Nonetheless, cultural administrators believe that the Koalition’s legitimacy could be enhanced if there was more organizational clarity or tangible mandatation (October 28, 2015). Similarly, the group’s own claim or aspiration to acquire legitimacy via BOUNDEDNESS acknowledges reliability and some degree of organizational fixity as a base to garner trust, recognition and legitimacy in the eyes of both administrators and other artists. Amidst the ambiguous representative and legitimatory standing of the Koalition, the cultural administration benefits from the group’s ‘relative universalization’ by gaining insight into and proximity to ‘the scene’. Cultural policy-makers express gratitude that they have found a conversation partner in the Koalition (July 16, 2015): It was insanely helpful, and will be, because we are still standing right in the midst of the whole budget (…) the Koalition, in my opinion, is a reliable and important partner, also to legitimize our demands and to say, this is also coming from the independent scene. Besides the explicit benefit of self-legitimation for the Senatskanzlei leveraged via stakeholder inclusion throughout budget-making processes, the administrator clearly acknowledges the Koalition as a sparring partner. The worst-case scenario would be the group’s fragmentation. To maintain fruitful exchanges, a Senatskanzlei employee considers it crucial that the Koalition remains open to reflect the quickly changing composition and form of the independent scene (November 2, 2015): ‘Otherwise, it [the Koalition] would vanish into thin air pretty quickly.’ Hence, the importance of organizational versatility, and the belief and expectation that the Koalition can enact or represent such flexibility, significantly nourishes the cultural administration’s ‘investment’ in the legitimacy-building relationship with the group.

Articulation of an agonistic actor 123 In this strategic relationship, the cultural administration temporally and instrumentally conditions its legitimation of the group. When the Koalition did not have a common concrete task, a cultural administrator perceived the group as more fragmented, resorting to particularistic thinking/representation. Consequently, in phases of actively pursuing a common goal, the internal cohesion of a collectivity would be higher (i.e., high universality/low particularity; agonistic representation – UP3). Accordingly, the cultural administration would be more likely to acknowledge this allegedly all-encompassing agonistic representation because it momentarily favors universality/equivalence over particularity/difference. Respectively, in times of less concrete goals or the absence of a common enemy, fragmentation would increase (i.e., low universality/high particularity; particularistic representation – UP2), making the cultural administration less inclined to acknowledge the group because of its dividedness and interest particularism. Briefly, the more universality can be ‘represented’, the more likely is the external recognition and legitimation by the Senatskanzlei and/or other external cultural stakeholders. This instrumental legitimation on the part of the Senatskanzlei remains valid as long as the Koalition can guarantee a constructive dialogue that improves policy design and contributes new insights and knowledge, which would otherwise remain inaccessible to the cultural administration. Treating the coalition as an exclusive sparring partner, the cultural administration not only reinforces the group’s self-legitimation REPRESENT, but also benefits itself with regard to short-cutting procedures or flagging them as ‘approved by the independent scene’. This succinct understanding of representation becomes apparent in Renner’s lapidary assessment that the Koalition represents ‘more or less everybody’ (Senatskanzlei, July 16, 2015). This recurring, incautious universalization or essentialization20 of ‘the independent scene’ is reproduced by administrators (October 20, 2015) who perceive the SK to be composed of ‘representatives of the associations. At least for the biggest part and there are two, three other players that are just there.’ Without further explaining or problematizing the presence of those ‘two, three other players that are just there’, the cultural administration accepts these actors in the overall organization of the Koalition with its very differently, democratically organized, bound or legitimated parts. While this toleration of the self-composed BOUND claim demonstrates the cultural administration’s openness to new forms of political organization and representation, it also disregards the deficient transparency and democratic organization of the group. The cultural administration’s latent legitimation accommodates the group in its unconventional representation, yet this sits uncomfortably with the cultural administration’s formal mission to pursue and defend the ‘collective good’, which would necessitate critically reflecting on whether the Koalition’s representative claim pursues this goal. With the objective of facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogue, administrative employees stress that a small number of conversation partners simplifies communication for them. Bearing in mind the administration’s privileged exchange

124 Articulation of an agonistic actor with Knoch, the former often fast-tracks discussions and opts for conversations with less controversially-minded Koalition speakers, while excluding and disfavoring other speakers (Knoch, February 2, 2016). Tapping into the Koalition’s diverse and conflictual composition where it functions best to push administrative processes forward, the cultural administration communicates with some parts of the Koalition more than others. If the overall collaborative advantage via individual or personality-centric channels is no longer guaranteed, the cultural administration might call the allegedly universal representation into question. This might correspond with bureaucrats’ desire to legitimate participatory governance engagements based on a selection of network partners (Gugu and Dal Molin 2016, p. 258). The Koalition as an already selective actor (i.e., pre-structuring contents and conflicts within the SK) appears as an advantageous sparring partner for the cultural administration, but also runs the risk of further disconnecting the artist population from direct exchange or consultation with the cultural administration. Reinforcing the construction of legitimacy through the absence of protest, a cultural administrator assesses (July 16, 2015): ‘To our knowledge, we don’t know of any greater consensus that speaks against the Koalition.’ While the double negation of ‘no consensus against’ does not equal ‘consensus for’ the Koalition, the absence of objections is qualified as an avenue to legitimacy. Because administrators have heard no complaints about the Koalition’s lack of legitimacy from other established associations, they proceed to entertain relations with the group. In the broader conceptual framework, the formula ‘no expression of no legitimacy means no problem’ might translate into a negativity-based understanding of legitimation. It is striking to note, however, that the cultural administration uses this logic of double negation from other cultural protagonists as a justification for its own legitimation of the Koalition. In a word, the cultural administration considers the Koalition as legitimate because other relevant artist stakeholders do (or at least do not object to the REPRESENT claim). This absorption or crossreference to already ascribed legitimacies reminds one of politicians’ DELAYED legitimation of the Koalition. The strategic short-cutting of communicative routes meets the partial understanding of Koalition actors (February 12, 2015): ‘Of course, for the political actors or the administration, it is easier to have a central point (…) who is legitimized by these countless artists.’ In direct response to the REPRESENT legitimation, the Koalition anticipates the mutually beneficial organizational synergies to legitimize collaborative governance. The shared appreciation of reconciling diverse opinions and positions appears as a condition of conflictual consensus (CC3) between the cultural administration and the Koalition where both parties find incremental agreement about the benefits of relative universalization. This ‘clientela’ governance relationship (Peters 2010, p. 181), which occurs ‘when an interest group, for whatever reasons, succeeds in becoming, in the eyes of a given administrative agency, the natural expression and representative of a given social sector,’

Articulation of an agonistic actor 125 means that the Koalition has been strategically ‘naturalized’ by the cultural administration as ‘the’ voice and representation of the independent scene. To summarize, on the one hand, the Senatskanzlei’s extensive validation and recognition for the Koalition conveniently simplifies negotiations for both sides within a field of controversial interests and representatives. This can potentially lead to more ‘effective’ or ‘efficient’, overall legitimately-perceived policymaking. On the other hand, this fast-track legitimation might brush over particularities and dissonances within in the Koalition, and thus potentially reinforce internal inequalities or problems under the label of legitimacy and collaborative dialogue with the independent art scene. It follows that if legitimacy is attributed too hastily or carelessly, it might foreclose further discussions about the generally ungroundable grounds of any legitimacy. Briefly, the cultural administration’s ‘rubber-stamp’ legitimation might, in the worst case, deepen democratic or power-related inconsistencies within the scene, which have admittedly not been administrators’ primary concern (October 28, 2015). Besides affirmative legitimations, the cultural administration reduces, questions and withdraws its recognition of the Koalition as a collective representative of the independent scene. For example, administrators partially relativize the Koalition’s standing as exclusive interlocutor in relation to actors such as the Rat (October 20, 2015): Exactly against the background that the Koalition der Freien Szene is not a legitimized association, an elected association, as opposed to, for example, the Rat für die Künste, who also still plays a role (…) one cannot speak about the fact that we are negotiating anything with the Koalition. The representative claim of the Koalition is devalued against other cultural advocates who are relatively more democratically constituted, and according to that logic, more legitimate. Notably, as mentioned above, the democratic deficit of the Koalition was not considered a problem or reason for delegitimization or dismissal in other instances where the exchange among artist and administrative stakeholders was considered beneficial. In other words, the Koalition’s legitimation depends on other more or less legitimate ‘constitutive outsides’. The statement that there is no such thing as a ‘negotiation’ between the cultural administration and the Koalition dismisses the myriad of meetings, phone calls and coproduced proposals and documents, which are expressive of such a ‘negotiation.’ Yet this drastic statement might seek to clearly underline the fact that the executive retains the exclusive decision-making power if disagreements among state and nonstate/non-legitimated actors such as the Koalition persist. In contrast to the relative advantage ascribed to the Rat, another Senatskanzlei employee prefers the Koalition as a sparring partner because it is ‘just a bit more thinking outside the box’ while the Rat would make it ‘a little easier for us’ due to its organization and assumedly greater reliability (October 28, 2015). It

126 Articulation of an agonistic actor becomes clear that, while some administrators appreciate the Koalition’s unconventional modes of thinking, which evoke new ways of legitimation and representation, others insist on formalized control mechanisms, legal addressability and reliability as criteria for legitimate artist advocacy stakeholders. Within this tension between experimental and conventional approaches to representation and legitimacy, Koalition speakers (February 12, 2015) criticize the idea that cultural policy-makers expect them to be representative and dismiss ‘this claim to representation, which we [the Koalition] do not even assign to ourselves, it is certainly happily enforced, which is obviously a little dangerous.’ Besides the Koalition’s own strategic revocation to REPRESENT, matter-of-factly claiming to NOT REPRESENT in some contexts, it becomes apparent that the ‘happy enforcement’ of legitimacy or a representative mandate on the part of the Senatskanzlei serves to justify the fact that the latter are speaking and collaborating with an adequately legitimized collective advocacy body. To sum up, the cultural administration has an interest in the Koalition being able to REPRESENT the independent scene, because it facilitates multiple administrative processes to interact with artist stakeholders. However, when these benefits do not materialize as extensively or quickly as anticipated, the executive can call off the contingently ascribed legitimacy by invoking its formal decision-making power. Unsolicited legitimation: Renner as ‘advocate of the independent scene’ In addition to the administrative channels that recognize the Koalition as a legitimate policy stakeholder (or not), Tim Renner’s self-ascribed representative claim to be the ‘advocate of the independent scene’ activated a legitimating dynamic which both augmented and complicated the Koalition’s representative status. After Renner’s ‘quasi-accidental’ appearance on the cultural political stage, he publicly voiced a clear interest and intention to talk to ‘the independent scene’ embodied by the Koalition. Through Facebook and Twitter posts, Renner positioned the group as his privileged interlocutor for future cultural political debates. Koalition speakers report that this strengthened the group’s self-confidence because it underpinned its REPRESENT claim. However, despite Renner’s openness for conversations, speakers also cautioned remaining realistic about what Renner really would and could do for the independent scene, urging plenum participants to consider him as ‘a new actor, but not a messiah’ (Plenum, August 13, 2014). Besides the Koalition’s boost of confidence, other artist-led organizations recognized the centralization of attention on the Koalition. Hence, the project space network accelerated its wish to join the SK, which now appeared as privileged interlocutor. Scaling back from their earlier skepticism against the Koalition, the

Articulation of an agonistic actor 127 project space network now argued that it ‘made sense’ to be part of the group (March 23, 2015): The Koalition has stabilized, has structured itself politically, articulated and then it is interesting (…) because something has established itself (…) it is easier to identify with something and communicate with an organized structure than with something that is in the making. Repositioning the Koalition’s validity in the eyes of other artist-led organizations, Renner (implicitly) reinforced the nodal point function of the open action platform. The narrow scope of Renner’s selected interlocutors not only valorized or legitimized the Koalition, but also drew otherwise excluded or less-legitimated actors such as the project space network closer to the coalition. While flattering, Renner’s self-designed favoring of the Koalition was not merely altruistic. Renner’s ‘going native’ with the independent scene created a positive spillover for him, too. In a way, the publicly staged collaboration with the Koalition smoothened and thus legitimized his own entry into a conflict-laden political territory. Moreover, according to a Koalition speaker (March 17, 2015), ‘new problems arise when one suddenly has advocates.’ That is to say that the unasked acclamation of advocacy of the new State Secretary reshuffled the delicate self-legitimating construction of the Koalition by shifting partitions of the group’s ‘we’ and the agonistic constitutive outside of ‘them’ (i.e., the cultural administration). Briefly, Renner’s offer to ‘represent’ the scene, or to integrate himself into their ‘we’, necessitated a renegotiation of distance and proximity between all engaged stakeholders. This constituted a ‘handicap’ for the Koalition to ‘oppose this claim’ because it would have made the artist advocates look ungrateful in the eyes of politicians (Koalition, June 17, 2015). Since Renner had proposed making himself part of the ‘we’, the Koalition was in part deprived of the opportunity to position the cultural administration as its clear agonistic adversary, because parts of ‘them’ had, unsolicitedly, infiltrated the already ambiguous ‘we’ of the independent scene. To summarize, the cultural administration oscillates between ascribing and withdrawing/devaluing the Koalition’s acclaimed position as a collective representation of the independent scene. Self-organization is appreciated in case it facilitates or speeds up communication and policy-making procedures. However, if collaborative exchanges start to grate and conflicts erupt, seemingly universal representatives can be relativized, suspended, omitted or downgraded due to the existing hierarchy of decision-making. In cases where the cultural administration’s expectations cannot be reconciled with civil stakeholders’ views, or conflicts cannot be channeled into constructions of conflictual consensus (CC3), the former resorts to its democratically conferred decision-making right. Due to their different democratically fixed positionalities (i.e., the Koalition as informal and loose civil society conglomeration, the Senatskanzlei as formal institution to implement policies

128 Articulation of an agonistic actor and laws), both stakeholders display significantly different repertoires of representation, action and opportunity to engage in collaborative encounters. Within the given democratic structures, the Koalition notably has more to lose in the legitimacy-building relationship with the cultural administration than vice versa. Since there is no definite binding or grounding to legitimation, agonistic collectivities, which already articulate themselves from ungroundable grounds, further engage in delicate balancing acts vis-à-vis conventional political actors. Conclusions: external legitimations – looping legitimations Different normative and instrumental motivations from different external cultural stakeholders contribute to coproduce and legitimize the Koalition as a non-formalized collective actor. Building on Mulligan’s (2007) postfoundational understanding that legitimacy is principally ungrounded (i.e., instituted from radical negativity), this absence of legitimacy can only be addressed by partial and temporary attempts at legitimation. Accordingly, acts to legitimate the Koalition have been revealed as investments to project the group as a collective representation of the non-representable totality of the independent art scene. Despite ongoing self-legitimation, the Koalition can never ‘be’ legitimate due to the constitutive lack of any foundation of legitimacy, but ‘becomes’ legitimate via intricately interrelated legitimations from multiple stakeholders. In the face of this irreducible ungroundability, legitimacy appears as if it emerges from quicksand. While all legitimacies or representations can generally be called into question, policy stakeholders’ positions of legitimacy differ in that the formalized parts are secured by socially sedimented and normalized institutions and laws, while emergent, informal and/or nondemocratic positions approximate legitimations in quasi-impossible struggle. The ascription of legitimacy can never safely establish legitimacy as intractable Truth. Yet it can unlock and stimulate debate about why new collective actors should not be considered legitimate in changing governance contexts, thus uncovering a realm for emancipatory politics and governance. These interrelated, partially ‘negative’ legitimacies could be conceptualized not as seemingly stable ‘chains’ of legitimacy (Böckenförde 1992), but as contingent ‘loops’ of legitimacy, which interlace different rationales of legitimation to enable the ‘becoming’ of new legitimate collective actors. The more self-legitimations are externally confirmed or responded to, the stronger are the legitimatory loops of the collectivity to be legitimated. In addition to this synchronicity of self-acclaimed and external legitimation, the more diversely looped the external legitimations (i.e., different stakeholders referring to others’ legitimations to legitimize their own legitimation, creating cross-sector or -actor concatenations of legitimacy), the more widely grounded are the legitimacy loops. In other words, if loops of legitimacy are many-layered (i.e., a legitimacy-seeking actor does not only rely

Articulation of an agonistic actor 129 on one legitimacy-conferring instance), the contingency and temporariness of looped legitimations sets out to ground legitimacy despite its systemic ungroundability.

Conclusions: articulating legitimations The analytical interwovenness of the two central concepts of this chapter – articulation and legitimacy – have been demonstrated in the example of the Koalition’s collectivization. The chapter has first systematized articulatory negotiations along the lines of conflict and consensus with regard to the group’s internal decision-making and collective claims-making processes. Second, it has retraced the institution of the Koalition’s representative position between particularity and universality. Following Purcell’s (2009, p. 306) understanding of collective agency as a ‘ceaseless process of fixing, unfixing, and re-fixing meaning and relationships, of creating fixity that can never be total or transcendental’, the dimensionalities of these fixing and unfixing processes have been uncovered. Even though artist-led organizations have existed in Berlin before, and continue to exist, no prior collective art advocacy body has achieved such transdisciplinary reach for or within the independent scene with concrete policy outputs.21 In other words, the Koalition has significantly bundled and stabilized formerly dispersed elements as a discursive moment (#4 articulation). Distinctly, the hegemonization or universalization of discursive elements from various levels of decision-making crystallizes, amongst other factors, in the position of an individualized ‘empty’ signifier or nodal point, occupied by an ‘organic leader’ (#2 articulation). With regard to the Koalition as a ‘relative universal’, the latter might similarly function as an ‘empty’ signifier for or within the non-representable object of the independent scene. Relating floating different, yet equivalent demands and advocacy approaches, the Koalition constitutes a new discursive formation occupying an empty place of power with porous boundaries toward both inside and outside. The Koalition’s objective of challenging Berlin’s cultural funding landscape and the resulting narrative of the ‘creative’ city as mainly driven by large cultural institutions plays out in the oscillation between challenging and rewriting the narrative of ‘the independent scene’ (#3 articulation). All these articulatory practices are unimaginable without the self-assumed agency of independent cultural producers (#1 articulation). Interrelated with the inductively developed legitimations presented here, the agentation of the Koalition (#1 articulation) strongly interrelates with the self-legitimatory claim of ACT; and to a lesser extent, with the group’s claim to REPRESENT the absent fullness of Berlin’s independent artist population. Second, the Koalition’s totalizing or hegemonizing move (#2 articulation) relates with the self-legitimatory practices to REPRESENT and external cultural stakeholders’ partial ascription of legitimacy to the (counter-)hegemonic project. Most visibly, the cultural administration’s STRATEGIC response effectively strengthens the ‘relative universalization’ of the group. Third, the discursive representative approach to re- or

130 Articulation of an agonistic actor disarticulate current cultural political hegemony (#3 articulation) is embodied in the group’s appeal to its REPRESENT legitimation. It resonates with external stakeholders’ legitimations in their NETWORKED, STRATEGIC and DELAYED forms and demonstrates their partial agreement with the necessity to reform the existing funding landscape and ‘creative’ city narrative. Hence, the Koalition’s counter-hegemonic rearticulation of this trajectory is granted. The cultural administration responds to the discursive intervention in the ‘creative’ city paradigm, and the request for more co-ownership in cultural policy-making, by opening up toward the independent scene. Fourth, the group’s claim to stabilize differential elements (#4 articulation) is put forward via the self-legitimatory claims BOUND and REPRESENT. The NETWORKED and STRATEGIC legitimations correspond with the Koalition’s claim to sometimes REPRESENT, and sometimes NOT REPRESENT. This analytical synthesis of articulation and legitimations reveals the two as constitutively interrelated in articulatory processes, or else, it shows that there is no legitimacy without articulation. Articulatory practices either actively seek to produce legitimacy (#1 and #3 articulations), or challenge existing hegemonic structures by trying to establish new (counter-)hegemonic formations (#2 and #4 articulations). Interrelated with the breadth of articulation, the range of representative claims is equally broadened. This becomes apparent in the rising scope of the Koalition’s representative claims. While the downgrading self-legitimation to ‘just’ ACT primarily relies on agency (#1 articulation), the integrating self-legitimation BOUND creates links with existing institutions, thus stabilizing their position as ‘relative universal’ (#2 and #4 articulations). The universalizing self-legitimation REPRESENT activates all vectors of articulatory practice (#1, #2, #3 and #4 articulations). To sum up, the more pronounced the articulation, the wider the representation and more pervasive the representative and legitimatory claims. Laclau’s (1994, p. 20) observation that articulatory moments are always transitory and contested lends itself to conceptualizing the Koalition as an exemplary post-foundational representative which fluctuates between the attempt at representation and the acknowledgement of the inherent failure of representation. This attempt is encapsulated in agonistic representation (UP3). In the face of the structural contamination of collective representation, both the means and objects or goals of representation will be somewhat impossible to achieve. Yet, instead of lapsing into political stagnation, Laclau (1994, p. 19) argues to acknowledge that [t]he impossibility of a universal ground does not eliminate its need: it just transforms the ground into an empty place which can partially be filled in a variety of ways (the strategies of this filling is what politics is about). It is precisely the ontological lack of ‘fundamental’ grounds which makes the imagination and articulation of new modes of political representation

Articulation of an agonistic actor 131 necessary. Žižek acknowledges failure as a ‘structural source’ of any political alliance (2008, p. 93; emphasis original): If hegemony means the representation, by a particular social sector, of an impossible totality with which it is incommensurable, then it is enough that we make the space of tropological substitutions fully visible (…) If the fullness of society is unachievable, the attempts at reaching it will necessarily fail, although they will be able, in the search for that impossible object, to solve a variety of partial problems. Reiterating not only the inherently representative dimension of (counter-) hegemonic articulation, but also the necessary failure to succeed at representing the universal, Žižek points to the ‘variety of partial problems’ that can be addressed via imperfect representations (i.e., agonistic representation – UP3). In this light, self-legitimatory practices of new political actors such as ACT, BOUND and REPRESENT function as ‘filling’ strategies that institute temporary meanings and prioritizations in dominant political discourses. Notably, these three dimensions have arisen based on the analysis of a locally, temporally and historically specific political movement, and might not apply to all emerging, legitimacy-seeking collective actors. For other movements, the main legitimatory axes might revolve around other identity-related, financial or symbolical claims. However, since non-formalized actors or movements can only ever leverage contextually valid legitimations, the latter are crucially entangled with respective legitimatory responses from official, formalized and democratically instituted actors such as executive or legislative protagonists. Beyond the Berlin context, the framing of transitory ‘loops’ of legitimacy might point out how legitimacy-seeking actors ‘become’ legitimate. Collective actors who work with or beyond representative democratic principles of election necessarily depend on concatenations of self-made and external legitimatory practices, just as hegemony necessarily depends on counter-hegemonic positions. Put differently, every new movement needs to attempt a temporary grounding (i.e., legitimation) from its impossible position or fundamental lack. When legitimating interlocutors, who mutually respond to self-designed articulatory and legitimatory attempts, can be found, new spaces, communities and ‘grounds’ to enact ‘the political’ among legitimate agonistic adversaries can be articulated. With regard to contouring a post-foundational theory of representation, collective actors operate in the face of the ‘fundamental’ absence or nonrepresentability of their own ground of representation by employing modes of agonistic representation (UP3) and striving to construct conflictual consensus (CC3). Regarding the interconnection of ‘relative universalization’ and legitimacy, Laclau (1990, p. 66) finds that ‘mere availability is on occasion enough to ensure the victory of a particular discourse (…) the mere fact that it presents itself as the embodiment of fullness is enough to ensure its acceptance.’ Hence, post-foundational representation attempts to both

132 Articulation of an agonistic actor express a concrete content (e.g., the Koalition’s ZPP) and to embody fullness (e.g., via the REPRESENT claim). However, not just any random particularity can impose itself as a ‘relative universal’ and claim legitimacy. Laclau (2007b, p. 170) makes clear that legitimation is interdependent with the allegiance to a (counter-)hegemonic struggle, concluding that only ‘legitimate claim [needs] to occupy that [empty] place.’ Making legitimacy a precondition for the transformation of hegemony, agonistic representation (UP3), which relies on the legitimate negotiation between particularity and universality, emerges as a practice to rearticulate hegemony. Before ending this journey of explaining the emergence of new collective actors via articulation and legitimation, Laclau’s above-mentioned ‘mere availability’ of occasions (or lack thereof) for (counter-)hegemonic discourses to succeed shall be brought in dialogue with social movement studies’ debates about political opportunity structures (Diani 2009; McAdam et al. 1996, 2001; Tarrow 2011). Regarding factors that influence availability or ‘success’ of (counter-)hegemonic discourse, Fuchs (2006, p. 107) observes that ‘the conditions for protest are best when political systems are opening up and when there is a balanced mixture of political opportunities and political constraints.’ Hence, new collective actors often enter the political discourse when conventional decision-making contexts are under construction and/or face democratic or legitimatory impasses, limitations or deficits. McAdam’s (1996) criteria of determining political opportunity structures insightfully describe the entrance of new actors in discourse. The ‘degree of openness’ (or not) of the institutionalized political apparatus (1), the ‘stability of the system in power’ (2), ‘presence or absence of elite alliances’ (3) and the state’s ‘capacity and propensity for repression’ (4) determine whether (or not) new collective representatives or legitimacy-seeking actors can enter or establish themselves within existing governance architectures. In Berlin, the unprecedented policy experiment of the City Tax confirms the relative openness of the cultural political system (1), allowing for the temporary involvement of an informal policy actor within the institutionalized political apparatus. While the Koalition pressed to enter decision-making processes in a self-determined manner, the general cultural political system was considered stable (2). Maybe, it was even due to the general stability that made the conditional inclusion of a fragmentarily legitimated representative possible. The Koalition functions both as a subversion of, and simultaneously, as an addition to, the ‘elite alliance’ of cultural political decisionmakers (3), while it is debatable if one should speak of cultural elites in the context of the independent scene. The capacity for repression plays out, if at all, in the retention of the exclusive decision-making right by the cultural administration in the case of unbridgeable conflicts (4). It follows that specific political contexts and temporalities of Berlin’s conflictual cultural political opportunity structure favorably conditioned the emergence and positioning of a new collectivity. More generally, political opportunity structures which provide attention and openness to new ways of discursive representation and legitimation might ultimately enable new ways of emancipatory politics.

Articulation of an agonistic actor 133

Notes 1 I acknowledge Stuart Hall’s theory, method and practice of articulation as insightful tool in cultural studies, yet I contest the reductionist claim that Laclau’s (and Mouffe’s) approach to articulation is merely discursive, non-agential and thus potentially depoliticizing (Slack 1996, p. 121). 2 Laclau (2007b, p. 166) despatializes Lefort’s ‘empty place of power’ by establishing emptiness as a ‘type of identity, not a structural location.’ If emptiness is constitutive of identity, any representative/signifier carries and partially ‘represents’ this emptiness. 3 In recognition of Spivak’s use of the term ‘speaking for’ as well as Alcoff’s (1991) and other feminists’ epistemological problematizations of ‘speaking for others’, the term here will be employed to conceptualize a specific mode of collective representation to speak for an absent presence. 4 Notably, political representation is not necessarily democratic (Rehfeld 2006). Democracy and legitimacy are not causally interdependent or synonymous but depend on the notion of democracy applied to discuss legitimacy. Consequently, the conceptualization of legitimations provided here is not strictly concerned with democratic legitimacy as the Koalition often pursues a selective approach to represent the (democratic?) constituency of Berlin’s artists but does not explicitly advance the democratization of policy-making for ‘everybody’. 5 The claim for ‘systematization’, ‘transferability’ or ‘harmonization’ of funding instruments has come up frequently in conversations with affiliates of the Koalition. While some believe this creates greater transparency and funding justice, others argue for the continued necessity of genre-specific funding because of the incomparability and non-universal applicability of funding instruments. In 2018, the cultural administration responded to this debate by reviewing and evaluating existing funding structures via the creation of a Fördermatrix (Funding Matrix). 6 Ausstellungsfonds kommunale Galerien (Fund for Communal Art Galleries) provides 500,000 euros to Berlin’s 29 communal art galleries. First collectivized in 2010, Kommunale Galerien Berlin (KGB) unites heterogeneous communal galleries, differing greatly with regard to programming, reputation, frequency of activities and the degree of professionalism of artists on display. 7 The synonymous usage of Koalition and Sprecher*innenkreis (SK) slightly misaligns the units of analysis. While ‘Koalition interviewee’ automatically implies that the individual is an SK member, statements from ‘the Koalition’ are not synonymous with the collectivity of the Koalition because the latter is unspeakably more than the sum of its spokespeople. Within this methodological impasse, SK interviewees fragmentarily reflect opinions about ‘the Koalition’. 8 The term originates in Roman ritual shouts of greeting and approval and is used to describe the practice of gathering consent on SK proposals in the plenum. 9 Although the Senatskanzlei assesses some of the socio-demographic data about funding applicants and recipients, there is little designated effort or personnel and financial capacity to conduct research to critically analyze this information (Senatskanzlei, July 16, 2015). Some self-organized research initiatives have received incremental funds (e.g., Haben und Brauchen 2014; Institut für Strategieentwicklung 2011). Since the lack of knowledge about the complex administrative procedures has repeatedly caused frustration, annoyance and seemingly irresolvable conflicts, more capacity-building for civil stakeholders and open data approaches could facilitate trust, procedural transparency and mutual agonistic recognition. The ongoing review process of the Funding Matrix in the context of the Evaluation und Überarbeitung der Förderprogramme und Fördersystematik (Evaluation and Revision of Funding Programs and Funding System, 2018)

134 Articulation of an agonistic actor

10 11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

points to a first sustained attempt to create both quantitative and qualitative data about the overall funding portfolio. The terms ‘spartenübergreifend’ or ‘transdisziplinär’ are translated as ‘transdisciplinary’. ‘Interdisciplinary’ is used less frequently due to its potential connotation of bilateral rather than cross-border artistic exchange. The SK has undergone several personnel changes, some peaceful and planned due to elections or changes in boards of directors (e.g., INM or IG Jazz) and without much public debate. Changes in the visual arts representation were more controversial and characterized by a high fluctuation of visual artists delegated to the Koalition. Laclau (1994, p. 16ff.) has conceptually reframed empty signifiers in the case of Argentinian president Perón ‘incarnating the moment of universality in the chain of equivalences which unified the popular camp’ prior to election. It follows that in contexts where an individual embodies a ‘moment of universality’, empty signifiers can be individualized. While Perón’s political radiance certainly exceeds Knoch’s, the individualized empty signifier Knoch partially explains the multilayered constructions of conflict and consensus within the group. There is an apparent cleavage between genre-specific and non-genre-affiliated speakers in the SK: One-third of speakers represent ‘open’ forms of artistic practice as opposed to two-thirds from genre-specific associations with potentially particular interests. The ‘palaver principle’ reminds one of Habermas’ ‘communicative rationality’, which assumes that (rational) consensus can be established through deliberation in ‘ideal speech situations’. This teleological approach to consensus does not align with the negative conception of consensus underlying this work. The Koalition Facebook page is an important communicative outlet (8,400 members; January 2019). There is a mailing list with 700 to 800 subscribers. While the digital realm is seen by some as a space to express opinions about the group freely, creating openness and transparency, other spokespeople caution that the Facebook group is not representative of the base of supporters or ‘members’. As the number of Facebook group followers does not reflect the number of actual supporters (e.g., not every Koalition supporter has access to Facebook), many might passively follow the activities but not actively engage by attending plenum sessions or joining working groups. Since 2013, many posts and comments were authored by Koalition speakers rather than individual artists. Announcements for artistic projects/exhibitions are strictly discouraged by SK moderators because the group is intended for political discussions only. The semantic of ‘representation’ is not necessarily used directly by interviewees, potentially due to their reservation, partial rejection or dismissal of being a fully-fledged representative in the sense of conventional representative democratic delegation. As proxies, expressions such as ‘speak for’ or ‘represent with’ circumscribe appeals to political representation and legitimacy-making. The Zeitstipendien campaign, subcontracted by bbk to a group of three female artists, and the public artistic persona called Avatara Plenara Zeitstipendia, temporarily destabilized the Koalition’s legitimatory attempt to act as a ‘relative universal’. As the Zeitstipendien campaign misapplied former Koalition protest tools, it inconveniently blurred the lines between the Koalition and ‘them’. The initiative did not receive unconditional support from the SK, because it reactivated politicians’ annoyance with the independent scene (Koalition, September 7, 2015). Criticisms about the lack of knowledge and understanding about the independent art scene differed among politicians. Some emphasized the priority of other policy issues in need of public funds (e.g., deprecating schools, refugee accommodation) over cultural political concerns. Besides resource-related arguments, some politicians

Articulation of an agonistic actor 135 were assumed to have little personal contact with independent cultural productions and would assumedly rather consume ‘high’ culture, if culturally interested at all (Koalition, January 28, 2015). 19 Due to the tax-fraud-related departure of State Secretary Schmitz in February 2014, Renner was the Koalition’s main interlocutor during the main production phase of this book (2014–2016). Schmitz’s approach to the Koalition serves as an illustrative foil to demonstrate a different administrative culture than the one employed by Renner. Early on, Senatskanzlei staff reportedly tried to convince Schmitz of the importance of collaborating with the independent scene, yet Schmitz perceived the Koalition as rather ‘suspicious’ and was ‘not really open’ to the Koalition (November 2, 2015). 20 Exemplary of such universalization, in the case of the Arbeitsraumprogramm (Work Space Program), bbk’s studio space delegate was addressed and assumed capable of responding to the overall space-related concerns of the independent art scene. In light of the functionally different spatial needs, the visual arts-specific studio space delegate had neither the knowledge nor the capacity to ‘speak for’ other genres. Unaware of this, the cultural administration assumed a part of the Koalition (not knowing that the studio space delegate was not even a Koalition speaker) to be synonymous with the independent scene. This combination of responsibilities and mandate was of no apparent concern to the cultural administration until the artistic scenes criticized the imprudent universalization, and alternatively requested the introduction of genre-specific space delegates. 21 While both H&B and the Rat partially activate the self-legitimations of ACT, BOUND and REPRESENT, and receive incremental legitimations from cultural policy-makers, politicians and other artistic stakeholders, the resulting overall legitimations lack either in variance of genres (in the case of H&B) or the voice of individual and independent producers (in the case of the Rat).

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Articulation of an agonistic actor 137 Jens Steffek (eds.) Legitimacy in an age of global politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 156–172. Hendriks, Carolyn M. (2009): The democratic soup. Mixed meanings of political representation in governance networks. In Governance 22 (4), pp. 689–715. Holden, John (2006): Cultural value and the crisis of legitimacy. London: Demos. Hollands, Robert; Vail, John (2012): The art of social movement. Cultural opportunity, mobilisation, and framing in the early formation of the Amber collective. In Poetics 40 (1), pp. 22–43. Holsti, Kalevi J. (1996): The state, war, and the state of war. Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Howarth, David (2010): Power, discourse, and policy. Articulating a hegemony approach to critical policy studies. In Critical Policy Studies 3 (3–4), pp. 309–335. Hurrelmann, Achim; Schneider, Steffen; Steffek, Jens (2007): Legitimacy in an age of global politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Institut für Strategieentwicklung (2011): Studio Berlin II. www.ifse.de/artikel-und-studien/ einzelansicht/article/studio-berlin-ii-studie-zur-situation-berliner-kuenstlerinnen-voll text.html Berlin. Johnston, Hank (2016): Culture, social movements, and protest. London: Taylor & Francis/Routledge. Johnston, Hank; Klandermans, Bert (1995): Social movements and culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Kemper, Ulf (2016): Erfolgsbedingungen neuer Institutionalisierungen in multiplen Räumen jenseits des Nationalstaates. In Matthias Lemke; Oliver Schwarz; Toralf Stark; Kristina Weissenbach (eds.) Legitimitätspraxis. Politikwissenschaftliche und soziologische Perspektiven. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, pp. 61–77. Koalition der Freien Szene (2012): Zehn Punkte für eine neue Förderpolitik. Berlin: KFS. Koalition der Freien Szene (2013): Freier Kulturfonds Berlin. Berlin: KFS. Koalition der Freien Szene (2015): Zehn-Punkte-Plan. Berlin: KFS. Koalition der Freien Szene (2016a): Erläuterung zu den 11 Punkten für eine neue Förderpolitik. Berlin: KFS. Koalition der Freien Szene (2016b): Zu einer neuen Struktur der Koalition der Freien Szene. Berlin: KFS. Laclau, Ernesto (1990): New reflections on the revolution of our time. London and New York, NY: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (ed.) (1994): The making of political identities. London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (2007a): Emancipation(s). London: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (2007b): On populist reason. London and New York, NY: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto (2008): Identity and hegemony: The role of universality in the constitution of political logics. In Judith Butler; Ernesto Laclau; Slavoj Žižek (eds.) Contingency, hegemony, universality. Contemporary dialogues on the left. London and New York, NY: Verso, pp. 44–90. Laclau, Ernesto (2014): The rhetorical foundations of society. London and Brooklyn, NY: Verso. Laclau, Ernesto; Mouffe, Chantal (2001): Hegemony and socialist strategy. Towards a radical democratic politics. London and New York, NY: Verso. Landau, Friederike (2015): Tagging the city. Berlin’s independent scene rising for a city tax for the arts. In EdgeCondition, Placemaking Issue, pp. 118–121. Landau, Friederike (2017): Konfliktuelle Kollaboration – Die Koalition der Freien Szene im fünften Jahr. In Koalition der Freien Szene, ‘Nichts ist erledigt – We ain’t

138 Articulation of an agonistic actor done yet! 11 Punkte für eine neue Förderpolitik’, pp. 1–6. www.koalition-der-freienszene-berlin.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/KONFLIKTUELLE_KOLLABORA TION_DIE_KOALITIO.pdf. Leipold, Sina; Winkel, Georg (2016): Discursive agency. (Re-)conceptualizing actors and practices in the analysis of discursive policymaking. In Policy Studies Journal 7 (3), pp. 1–25. Lemke, Matthias; Schwarz, Oliver; Stark, Toralf; Weissenbach, Kristina (eds.) (2016): Legitimitätspraxis. Politikwissenschaftliche und soziologische Perspektiven. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. MacKillop, Eleanor (2016): How do empty signifiers lose credibility? The case of commissioning in English local government. In Critical Policy Studies 12 (2), pp. 187–208. Maggetti, Martino; Papadopoulos, Yannis (2017): The principal? Agent framework and independent regulatory agencies. In Political Studies Review 31 (3), pp. 172–183. Marchart, Oliver (2013): Das unmögliche Objekt. Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft. Berlin: Suhrkamp. McAdam, David (1996): The framing function of movement tactics. Strategic dramaturgy in the American civil rights movement. In Doug McAdam; John D. McCarthy; and Mayer N. Zald (eds.): Comparative perspectives on social movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 338–355. McAdam, Doug; McCarthy, John D.; Zald, Mayer, N. (1996): Comparative perspectives on social movements. Political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and cultural framings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McAdam, Doug; Tarrow, Sidney G.; Tilly, Charles (2001): Dynamics of contention. Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. McCann, Eugene; Ward, Kevin (2012): Assembling urbanism. Following policies and ‘studying through’ the sites and situations of policy making. In Environment and Planning A 44 (1), pp. 42–51. Mouffe, Chantal (2005): On the political. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Mouffe, Chantal (2008): Critique as counter-hegemonic intervention. Vienna: European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics (eiPCP). Mulligan, Shane (2007): Legitimacy and the practice of political judgement. In Achim Hurrelmann; Steffen Schneider; Jens Steffek (eds.) Legitimacy in an age of global politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 75–98. Nullmeier, Frank; Nonhoff, Martin (2010): Der Wandel des Legitimitätsdenkens. In Frank Nullmeier (ed.) Prekäre Legitimitäten. Rechtfertigung von Herrschaft in der postnationalen Konstellation. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, pp. 16–45. Peck, Jamie; Theodore, Nik (2012): Follow the policy. A distended case approach. In Environment and Planning A 44 (1), pp. 21–30. Peters, Guy B. (2010): The politics of bureaucracy. And introduction to comparative public administration. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Pitkin, Hanna F. (2013): The concept of representation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Purcell, Mark (2009): Hegemony and difference in political movements. Articulating networks of equivalence. In New Political Science 31 (3), pp. 291–317. Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in (2017): Haushaltsplan von Berlin für die Haushaltsjahre 2018/2019. Band 8 Einzelplan 08. Berlin: Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in. Rehfeld, Andrew (2006): Towards a general theory of political representation. In Journal of Politics 68 (1), pp. 1–21.

Articulation of an agonistic actor 139 Roskamm, Nikolai (2017): Unbesetzte Stadt. Postfundamentalistisches Denken und das Urbanistische Feld. Basel: Birkhäuser. Saward, Michael (2006): The representative claim. In Contemporary Political Theory 5 (3), pp. 297–318. Saward, Michael (2008): Representation and democracy. Revisions and possibilities. In Sociology Compass 2 (3), pp. 1000–1013. Saward, Michael (2009): Authorisation and authenticity. Representation and the unelected. In Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (1), pp. 1–22. Schmidt, Vivien A.; Radaelli, Claudio M. (2004): Policy change and discourse in Europe. Conceptual and methodological issues. In West European Politics 27 (2), pp. 183–210. Schneider, Steffen (2007): Exploring the communicative dimension of legitimacy: Text analytical approaches. In Achim Hurrelmann; Steffen Schneider; Jens Steffek (eds.) Legitimacy in an age of global politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 126–155. Schneider, Steffen et al. (2010): Relegitimation strategies. Countering threats to the legitimacy of political systems. In Steffen Schneider; Achim Hurrelmann; Zuzana Krell-Laluhová; Frank Nullmeier; Achim Wiesner (eds.) Democracy’s deep roots. Why the nation State remains legitimate. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 155–183. Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen von Berlin (2014): Band 3 – Einzelplan 03 (Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in) 2014. Berlin: Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen von Berlin. Slack, Jennifer Daryl (1996): The theory and method of articulation. In Stuart Hall (ed.) Critical dialogues in cultural studies. London: Routledge, pp. 113–131. Steffek, Jens (2003): The legitimation of international governance. A discourse approach. In European Journal of International Relations 9 (2), pp. 249–275. Steffek, Jens (2007): Legitimacy in international relations. From state compliance to citizen consensus. In Achim Hurrelmann; Steffen Schneider; Jens Steffek (eds.) Legitimacy in an age of global politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 175–192. Stephan, Mark (2004): Citizens as representatives. Bridging the democratic theory divides. In Politics & Policy 32 (1), pp. 118–135. Ströder, Martin (2016): Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Legitimität: Die Legitimitätspolitik der Europäischen Zentralbank (EZB). In Matthias Lemke; Oliver Schwarz; Toralf Stark; Kristina Weissenbach (eds.) Legitimitätspraxis. Politikwissenschaftliche und soziologische Perspektiven. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, pp. 77–95. Suchman, Mark C. (1995): Managing legitimacy. Strategic and institutional approaches. In Academy of Management Review 20 (3), pp. 571–610. Tarrow, Sidney G. (2011): Power in movement. Social movements and contentious politics. Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Thrift, Nigel J. (2008): Non-representational theory. Space, politics, affect. Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge. Vasilev, George (2015): The uneasy alliance between consensus and democracy. In Review of Politics 77 (1), pp. 73–98. Weber, Max (1958): The three types of legitimate rule. In Berkeley Publications in Society and Institutions 4, pp. 1–11. Weber, Max (1978): Economy and society. An outline of interpretive sociology: Band 1. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Žižek, Slavoj (2008): Class struggle or postmodernism? Yes, please! In Judith Butler; Ernesto Laclau; Slavoj Žižek (eds.) Contingency, hegemony, universality. Contemporary dialogues on the left. London and New York, NY: Verso, pp. 90–136.

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This chapter engages with the dynamic, ongoing debate about the advantages and disadvantages of organizational institutionalization of the Koalition. Since there are no ‘objective’ benefits or drawbacks of institutionalization or institutions per se, the following discussion is situated at the analytical crossroads between the constitution of the Koalition (Chapter 3) and the governance and policy-related activities of the group (Chapter 5), tied into the debate about the interconnectedness and mutual influence of legitimacy and institutionalization (Suchman 1995). Arguably, in the quest to stabilize a position of legitimate representation, increasing institutionalization might affect and reinforce self-acclaimed and looped legitimations. Discussing imaginaries about the Koalition’s institutionalization in relation to the implications for the group’s self-ascribed and outerassigned legitimations, I introduce three brief excursuses. First, the degree of (de) personalization within the Koalition; second, the group’s spin-off institutionalization of Arbeitskreis Räume (Working Group Space; AK Räume); and third, the debate about the self-administration of cultural funding by genre-specific associations. Again, the discussion about institutionalization is not to be confounded with the professionalization or professionality of the independent art scene because their modes of artistic production are already professional, regardless of specific legal constitutions or organizational status. Rather, the institutionalization debate evokes questions of whether more legal or organizational formality would enlarge or constrain the group’s scope of action, representation and legitimacy. Following Seippel (2001), the investigation of structural, normative and cognitive characteristics of social movements’ institutionalization encompasses both ‘differentiation’ (i.e., division of labor and functional organization of differences) and ‘formalization’ (i.e., emergence and development of clear rules, routines and patterns of social interaction). As the criterion of ‘differentiation’ has been discussed as resource- and power-related differences among genre-specific associations (see Chapter 3: ‘Power asymmetries in the SK: bonds and boundedness’), in this chapter, institutionalization is considered with a focus on ‘formalization’ and flexibility, conceptualized as the rear of formalization. Contrary to linear or deterministic assumptions of the supposedly inevitable institutionalization of social movements, I consider institutionalization as the outcome of

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strategic considerations under specific socio-political conditions rather than an inevitable result of cooptation or depoliticization (Suh 2011). Retracing reservations and rationales for and against institutionalization relates to the perceived advantages and disadvantages of a precariously legitimated group. As part of a larger debate about artistic (self-)organization (Bain and Landau 2017; Dockx and Gielen 2015; Hebert and Szefer Karlsen 2013), this chapter aims to fertilize academics’ and activists’ discussions about formal institution-building among artist stakeholders. Conflict and consensus navigate through diverse opinions on institutionalization to reveal which proposals are agreed upon and which ones are disputed at which level of political decision-making. Numerous organizational models for the Koalition have been discussed over the course of time, ranging from founding a registered association as an umbrella organization, a foundation for the independent scene, to the creation of a Koalition organization within which associations could dissolve completely. One speaker imagines that the Koalition could cease to exist in a case where all claims are accomplished (January 28, 2015). The creation of a formal status has been disputed among the genre-specific associations from the beginning. While speakers from literature and cultural production are advocating for an association, genres like dance, visual arts and performing arts are against the establishment of a Koalition-related legal entity. While clearer rules might increase transparency and facilitate the division of labor, speakers voice skepticism that more formality would really reduce speakers’ workload (March 23, 2015). Imagining the creation of a new organization, one speaker has even called the future existence of the Sprecher*innenkreis (SK) into question, potentially allowing for a different kind of democratic organization or democratization of the Koalition (December 14, 2015). However, since the group’s self-ascribed goal is not primarily to democratize artists’ influence on policymaking, the internal reflection about institutionalization does not directly relate to the quest to intensify the group’s democratic character.1 Notably, chains of equivalences can be, but are not necessarily, democratic (Laclau 2007, p. 166). Hence, more institutionalization, formalization or organization does not automatically bring about either more democratic or more legitimate decision-making conditions. Requested early in the Zehn-Punkte-Plan (Ten-Point Plan; ZPP), the Koalition seeks funds to enable self-administration structures of the independent scene (Koalition der Freien Szene 2015a, p. 5). On the one hand, these requested funds for self-administration should be handed to constituent associations which to date do not receive operational funding to strengthen their administrative efforts. On the other hand, such funds could support the Koalition as a collectivity to sustain their common organizational activities, which would potentially reinforce their claim to REPRESENT. However, this administrative initiative could possibly also weaken the legitimation via ACT because it would institutionalize the mandate per acclamation unsolicitedly. Speakers express concerns about the potential incision of their self-understanding as ‘open action platform’ if they turned into a more formalized organization (February 4, 2015). This widespread

142 Bridge self-identification should not be tampered with because the group’s acceptance relies on accomplishing tangible results such as the City Tax artist grants (see Chapter 5: Materializing conflictual consensus (CC3): CityTax 2015). The assurance of legitimacy via ACT continuously states the primacy of content/ action over form/organization, the latter of which might gain the upper hand in a case of institutionalization. Encapsulated in a speaker’s imagination that the group exists ‘not as a structure that seeks out for its contents, but rather in the sense that it remains necessary through and via its contents’ (February 13, 2015), the focus on concrete, operational concerns and a legitimation via action confound arguments in favor of institutionalization. While institutionalization does not necessarily diminish or constrict the group’s agility, speakers fear that more formalization might captivate or overwrite the Koalition’s laboriously constructed self-legitimation ACT. To avoid this erosion of identity and precarious legitimacy, institutionalization should, if anything, complement the movement’s development rather than replace its strong action focus. In contrast to the concern of losing credibility via institutionalization, the latter could also positively affect the Koalition’s claim to ACT because it could create a material base of resources for future action. In a case of more formalization, the Koalition could then amplify infrastructures that already leverage public exposure and impact. In addition to the current mobilization of BOUNDEDNESS via genrespecific associations, institutionalization could not only maintain but also enlarge the group’s scope of action. On the downside, the BOUND legitimatory effect of a new Koalition organization with legal status could uproot genre-specific forms of embeddedness or boundedness into artistic scenes, which have been carefully constructed between the associations and their respective artist constituencies. This displacement or overruling initialized by the flagship Koalition could annul past accomplishments of genre-specific organizations. Also, it could obscure associations’ carefully nourished grassroots democracy. In the worst case, this would make individual associations less influential and potentially less legitimate for their genre-specific constituencies. Ultimately, the loss of importance as individual association could create new conflicts among genres or perpetuate existing power cleavages (Koalition, December 14, 2015). However, the uprooting of existing forms of boundedness could also liquify, and potentially break open, standing imbalances and injustices within the group. While the establishment of a new umbrella organization could risk ruptures in conditions of laboriously arranged conflictual consensus (CC3) toward new fundamental conflicts (CC1), it could also create opportunities to strike more conflictual consensus (and less fundamental conflict). In addition, institutional lethargy could negatively affect the BOUND legitimation. Taking organizational ‘ossification’ as a kind of distorted boundedness, Koalition speakers voice concerns about the potential rigidity or ‘ideological cementation’ elicited by institutionalization, running counter to the priority to leverage legitimacy via ACT (March 17, 2015). Being opposed to sustaining organizations for their own sake, speakers name the Rat as a bad example of institutionalization, having become too stiff. The worst case would be if the Koalition became ineffectual and nothing but ‘another layer of fat that embraces

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the state budget’ (Koalition, January 28, 2015). Another speaker fears institutionalization might result in ‘pseudo-actions which do not have a body underneath itself anymore’ (December 14, 2015). The references to the ‘body’ and ‘layer of fat’ vividly illustrate speakers’ self-assigned mandate to remain organizationally ‘fit’ via ACT. Moreover, they allude to the changing legitimatory relations between their ‘body’ of advocacy (i.e., Berlin’s independent artist population/ plenum) and the institutionalizing ‘head’ (i.e., Koalition/SK). Some Koalition speakers desire stronger and more systematized relations with the artist base, which could intensify the action platform’s legitimate representation of the independent scene. For example, plenum decisions could be made binding for the SK, putting an end to getting decisions simply ‘checked off’ (Koalition, January 28, 2015).2 In that sense, a more organized inclusion of plenum voices in the SK’s operation could reinforce the NETWORKED legitimacy from the artistic scenes. However, in a case of institutionalization, the Koalition’s REPRESENT claim needs to be substantially revaluated. If there were no formal mechanisms to sustain, control, affirm or contest allegedly ‘universal’ REPRESENT claim, the artist base might turn passive consensus into active dissent, speaking up against the non-consultation of their actual opinions. Moreover, the increasing institutionalization could irritate or interrupt artists’ latent legitimacy ascription via the absence of protest, and inversely effectuate protest in the wake of institutionalization. Also, if the Koalition overemphasized the self-legitimatory claim to REPRESENT, its unique representative offer to those artists who do not want to join any formal political organization or association might be discredited. Brief, the creation of an association could scare artists off. Besides potential benefits of more formal role attributions (e.g., speaker appointment or election), which could increase transparency and legitimacy, these institutionalizing initiatives could also evoke new exclusions. Put simply, a formalized organization makes the distinctions between ‘we’ and ‘they’, between ‘in’ and ‘out’, more visible and definite. Hence, artists would have to make a more resolute choice than now whether (or not) to be ‘in’, and thus decide whether (or not) to legitimize the Koalition. In addition, administering material resources, or consistently remunerating individuals for their activities in the SK, might reshuffle the legitimacy of the group’s claim to REPRESENT. While it would even out power imbalances among speakers, the Koalition’s overall current legitimacy might be contingent on the fact that speakers are generally not paid and do not derive personal advantages from being a speaker. Accordingly, precisely because speakers do not personally profit from their advocacy engagement, they might be considered credible or legitimate. In case this changed, legitimacy would have to be renegotiated and reinstalled via new modes of legitimating speaker mandates. Regardless of the concrete legal ramifications, formalization or institutionalization could leverage both material and immaterial benefits (Gugu and Dal Molin 2016). The former in particular currently remain inaccessible to the non-formalized action platform. Reminded of the cultural administration’s expectation that the Koalition should establish a ‘reliable’ structure to fortify its

144 Bridge REPRESENT position, institutionalization could stabilize the legitimatory relationships with cultural administrators and politicians. A Senatskanzlei administrator considers institutionalization beneficial for the group to stay independent from political election cycles (November 2, 2015). To foster longterm stability of collaborative relations between civil society actors and the administration, institutionalization could serve as a medium to ensure continuous multi-stakeholder exchange, which is not reliant on specific personalities, political coalitions or priorities. In a case where collaboration is not institutionalized, a change of political climate could undo the accomplishments and trust acquired through stakeholders’ informal exchanges (ibid.). While more institutionalized forms of interaction with the cultural administration could increase the Koalition’s dependence on the latter, thus incapacitating the group’s ability to voice critique, this unsolicited reliance could effectively be alleviated if funding to the Koalition institution came from a politically independent source (Koalition, December 14, 2015). In accordance with a focus on action, Seippel (2001, p. 132) argues that less formally organized actors tend to be more oriented toward action. This evidently applies to the Koalition. However, the subsequent hypothesis that more formalized groups who seek institutional power are necessarily less political is controversial. Despite the Koalition’s manifest requests to be substantially engaged in procedural concerns of institutional power, the group does not become less political or a(nta)gonistic. From the above, the most interesting question appears to be whether the transformation of an action-focused group into a formal institution would necessarily undermine its political orientation, or whether institutionalization could also support a political action focus. Considering the group’s actual institutionalization, which has not advanced into a concrete form of organization to date, the real-life implications of weighing and reshuffling the group’s legitimations remain subject to future debate. To conclude this discussion of the implications of institutionalization on collective representative and/or legitimating claims, values and requests such as transparency, access to material resources and symbolical recognition, they respectively require different mechanisms of institutionalization to affirm or withdraw legitimacy. Reconciling the intricate balance between organization and openness, or formalization and flexibility, recovers the legitimatory implications of institutionalization. Bearing in mind that the totality of ‘the independent scene’ cannot be represented uncontroversially, institutionalization could force the Koalition to one-sidedly represent the absent fullness of the independent scene, restricting itself to a foundational logic of ‘being’ representative rather than maintaining the reflexivity to articulate the irreducible non-representability of representation via ‘becoming’ representative/legitimate. This positivist shift, which could be initialized via institutionalization, would limit opportunities for agonistic representation (UP3) which reconciles particularity and universality. Put simply, institutionalization/formalization could ‘suffocate’ some of the Koalition’s negativity-based representative claims and runs the risk of turning the group into just another formal organization without representative agility.

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In sum, the institutionalization debate surfaces multiple concerns of becoming too rigid, too bureaucratic, too exclusive or powerless, to name but a few challenges. Making sure to not fetishize organization-building for its own sake, the Koalition seeks to establish continuous yet changing modes of communication and legitimation that allow them to stay in the political conversation. The simultaneous desire and skepticism about institutionalization mirror widely articulated complaints about the tiresome and often frustrating decision-making processes in a heterogeneous collectivity. Notably, the ongoing plurality of styles and procedures to solidify decisions persists because the lack of formalization continues to exist. Because there are no evident rules about how to change the rules, the reign of no rules continues. Regardless of a concrete form, most Koalition speakers consider their continued existence indispensable because the demands they fight for are nonexhaustive; new tasks are continually arising. In that sense, despite fears of ossification or paralyzation, speakers seek to establish mechanisms to keep grounding their actions in contingent loops of legitimation. An organization, which would accommodate both the attempt at grounding and the definitive ungroundability of any representation or legitimacy, needs yet to be built.

Interlocking institutionalization and (de)personalization The controversy about institutionalization reignites the discussion about the resource- and labor-intensive work carried out by the Koalition. Especially with regard to discharging pressure for individuals like Knoch, the (de)personalization of the SK reveals one facet of institutionalization. One advantage of a depersonalized structure would be that individual speakers can resign and detach themselves from the group while the ‘institution’ would continue to exist (Koalition, December 14, 2015). Depersonalization would make a personalized ‘face’ of the movement no longer indispensable to ensure addressability of the entire, institutionalized movement. Hence, visibility, presence and a personality-driven appearance would become a complementary rather than a necessary feature for the ‘survival’ of a group, even though it certainly matters who represents an organization, or the Koalition, more specifically. The push for depersonalization can be interpreted as an attempt to disconnect the group’s ‘successes’ from individuals and thus decrease the group’s dependence on specific personalities. According to a proponent of depersonalization, if Knoch would have left the Koalition in 2015, the group would have been seriously weakened because of the loss of his ‘personal capital’ which crucially facilitated negotiations with the cultural administration at the time (ibid.). Notably, when Knoch did resign in April 2018, the depersonalization debate did not publicly resurface. The announcement of the two-tiered rotating spokespeople system, introduced in a plenum in early 2018 (presumably unrelated to Knoch’s exit), points to the organizational focus on depersonalization rather than the continued centralization of personality-driven communication.

146 Bridge In general, speakers should enter and exit the SK on a flexible basis so that the group’s course of action is followed regardless of personal projects and agendas. This is to avoid the centralization of power in the hands of individuals. This assertion stands in partial tension with the ‘free mandate’, which is supposed to allow speakers to speak on behalf of their own personal opinions instead of representing positions prescribed by ‘their’ associations. According to one speaker, personnel fluctuation and flexibility should productively interrupt the SK and prevent the institutionalization of power imbalances (December 14, 2015). However, in light of the many subtle and unspoken inequalities amongst speakers, this ideal is only partially realized. The proposal of a written preamble, imagined as the institutionalization of the Koalition’s political agenda, could manifest the group’s principles. It could, for example, guide jury decisions to ‘act in the spirit of the Koalition’ (ibid.). Notably, this document would constitute the first conceptual, meta-level declaration of the Koalition in comparison to the so-far lone-standing concrete, operational-level ZPP. In sum, the concerns about the structuration of the ‘organically grown’ composition of the Koalition reflect the group’s reliance on content, rather than organizational forms or people, but also underline its co-dependence on cultural political agents who steer and engage in agonistic encounters to initialize political change beyond particularistic interests.

Spin-off institutionalization: Arbeitskreis Räume The foundation and organizational development of AK Räume has emerged as a visible and autonomously operating form of subinstitutionalization from the Koalition. The relevancy and urgency of the scarcity of space for the arts has been widely acknowledged (Haben und Brauchen 2012; Institut für Strategieentwicklung 2011). The topic of artistic production space was prioritized by Renner, so that AK Räume’s development and initial ‘success’ occurred in a relatively uncontroversial cultural political context.3 AK Räume reveals remarkable differences in comparison to the mother organization with regard to monetary resources and proximity to political stakeholders in budget negotiations. Emerging out of the Koalition, or ‘outsourced from the Sprecherkreis’, AK Räume was formally founded in October 2014 (Koalition, February 12, 2015). The working group comprises up to ten members from all artistic genres, ranging from speakers occupying ‘double mandates’ as SK and AK Räume members to activists from genre-specific associations represented in or even outside of the Koalition. According to a member of the working group, the founding idea was to consider the topic of space from a Koalition perspective (April 16, 2016). Regarding the organizational differences between the Koalition and AK Räume, the latter reveals additional leverage capacity to entertain collaborative relations with the Senatskanzlei and operates as more formally institutionalized.

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AK Räume entertained separate and immediate negotiations with the cultural administration in the process of introducing the new Arbeitsraumprogramm (Work Space Program) with a budget of three million euros and the establishment of genre-specific space delegates in the Cultural Budget 2016/ 17 (Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in 2015, p. 92). As this material accomplishment is considered one of the Koalition’s most tangible policy outcomes to date, AK Räume appears as an additional organizational unit to multiply and accelerate claims- and policy-making. Connected to the Koalition via AK Räume, different individuals interact with the cultural administration to advocate for space-related cultural funding. In some instances, the cultural administration’s incautious equation of ‘collaboration with AK Räume’ and ‘collaboration with the Koalition’ has positively reflected on the latter when the grander coalition was divided and could not effectively communicate with the Senatskanzlei. In this respect, AK Räume has partially functioned as a stabilizing institutional element within or in proximity to the Koalition. While cultural administrators viewed the continuation of collaboration with the working group as desirable and worthy of funding in 2015, the working group had fallen into relative disgrace by 2018 because of controversies about the effectiveness of the Arbeitsraumprogramm, manifest in significant cuts (245,000 euros per annum; Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen 2018, p. 52). In late 2018, the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa (Senate for Culture and Europe) introduced a proposal for a new Kulturraumbüro (Culture Space Office), imagined as a follow-up of the Arbeitsraumprogramm or Arbeitsraumprogramm 2.0, which was to be administered by an arms-length real estate management fund. In response, independent cultural producers voiced the reproach that they were insufficiently included in the re-making of the Arbeitsraumprogramm. Operating with a functionally narrower and more concise scope of political issues, AK Räume is perceived by Koalition speakers as an efficient, task-oriented body (December 14, 2015): It is obviously very enviable that, so that we [the SK] all the time must think about all these big connections and they [AK Räume] took the most concrete and most pragmatic part out, which is completely right (…) they can obviously work much more precisely. Highlighting AK Räume’s focus on operational issues, this speaker implicitly attributes the engagement with meta concerns (‘these big connections’) to the SK. While the Koalition generally self-identifies to focus on concrete, operational claims, AK Räume pursues relatively more concrete concerns. Notably, AK Räume received incremental funding from the cultural administration to organize a workshop discussing spatial infrastructures of artistic production in April 2015 (Koalition der Freien Szene 2015b). Noting the material recognition of AK Räume’s work in the Cultural Budget 2016/17, the issue-specific engagement with a pressing policy problem has accelerated

148 Bridge AK Räume’s institutionalization as opposed to the Koalition’s overall institutionalization, but the Koalition’s preliminary work might have also fueled the path for this rapid provision of funding. The collaboration with the cultural administration and other urban actors in the context of the Arbeitsraumprogramm puts AK Räume organizationally and financially ahead of its parental organization. While this fasttracking of policy work is beneficial for the overall Koalition, there is also a chance that the work of AK Räume makes the Koalition relatively less indispensable in the eyes of policy-makers because it is now more convenient to ‘just’ discuss single-issue priority areas as opposed to broader and structural critiques about the overall funding landscape. Nonetheless, because the cultural administration is also reliant on an addressee for overarching, meta-level issues which concern the independent scene at large, the Koalition solidified its REPRESENT claim and impact via the partial and conscious segmentation into other Koalition-inspired and -affiliated advocacy bodies. Strategically, a Koalition speaker views AK Räume as a ‘concrete hook around and out of which one could develop an office for the Koalition’ (September 7, 2015). Illustrative of the interdependent, yet partially autonomous structures, this logic reflects the Koalition’s clever approach to institutionalize without really institutionalizing.

Institutionalizing to self-administer funding? The reflection about institutionalization is not synonymous or causally linked with the self-administration of funds by artist advocacy bodies such as the Koalition. However, many Koalition representatives connect the organizational future of the group with their personal opinions about the necessity or (un)desirability of self-administering cultural funding resources. Despite the strong normative interconnection between institutionalization and self-administration, this relationship is unequal. While the selfadministration of funds via artist organizations necessarily needs some institutionalized entity eligible to manage public funds, an institution could well operate without a mandate to self-administer funds. The request for self-administration of funding is internally contested. The debate broadly divides into two camps: genre-specific associations and individual speakers who want to handle funds themselves, while others prefer to leave the distribution of funding in the hands of the cultural administration and peer-to-peer juries. Koalition actors pertaining to the former faction point out that one of the most significant benefits of institutionalizing the Koalition would be the opportunity to access and administer funds. If the independent scene had a legally accountable and manageable form, the representative body Koalition could not only benefit from operational funding from foundations, national funding agencies or local corporations (Koalition, January 21, 2015), but also lay the groundwork to assign cultural funding themselves. Proponents see the advantage for artists to take funding

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into their own hands (ibid.) or administer their own means of production (March 17, 2015). Strikingly, the allusions to independence gained through the self-administration of funding omits that these ‘means of production’ are in fact public monies or tax income to be invested in the funding of arts and culture (or not). While some view self-administration to be less bureaucratic, other speakers have cautioned that self-administration would double existing (personnel) structures that already exist within the cultural administration. Skeptics of self-administration from dance and performing arts are concerned that self-administration could lead to new redistributive conflicts among colleagues, thus potentially initializing further fundamental conflicts (CC1). Moreover, one Koalition speaker worries that self-administration would put the group in a ‘strange double position’ of clientelism, pointing to the ambiguity between lobbying for better funding structures and simultaneously benefitting from them directly. Other speakers wonder ‘why would we [the Koalition] need a constitution?’ as long as there is no agreement about the self-administration of funding (March 25, 2015), considering institutionalization as an instrumental means to achieve the self-governance of funds. Overall, the controversy about self-administration reveals another element of contestation and a potential source of fundamental conflicts (CC1) within the Koalition, hence not advancing, but complicating the debate about institutionalization.

Conclusions: what kind of institution, and for whom? To draw the discussion of the various facets of organizational institutionalization to a close, the Senatskanzlei, while outspokenly opposing the selfadministration of funding by artist advocacy bodies, considers an overall institutionalization of the Koalition beneficial to entertain a long-term successful collaborative dialogue with the group. With an instrumental understanding of institutionalization, the cultural administration expects the Koalition to guarantee openness, attractiveness, versatility and flexibility to reflect the rapidly changing ramifications of Berlin’s art scenes. If the Koalition were organizationally enclosed and impermeable, it would quickly lose its standing and legitimacy in the eyes of administrators (November 2, 2015). Thus, formalization and flexibility are to be balanced within an organizational construct. Buttressing the administration’s strategic legitimatory approach, the appreciation of the Koalition is based on its efforts to REPRESENT the totality of independent artists in an agile and flexible yet also structured way. One cultural administrator considers the Koalition’s institutionalization or professionalization as the ‘best case scenario’ for it to systematize and objectivize currently contingent collaborative relations (July 16, 2015). Similarly, of those speakers who sympathize with the prospect of institutionalization, formalization would ideally reduce the ad hoc character of the group (December 14, 2015).

150 Bridge In sum, while institutionalization could strengthen the group’s selflegitimations ACT, BOUND and REPRESENT, there are considerable, and partially incalculable, risks that could irritate or diminish the acquired legitimations so far. On the one hand, formalization could potentially foreclose the productive paradox between representing absences and presences toward the one-sided representation of visibility and presence. On the other hand, it could also unlock new modes of agonistic representation (UP3) in an institutionally secure setting. Overall, institutionalization remains undecidable and contingent on the Koalition’s willingness to give priority to one form of legitimation rather than others to (re)build its organizational state. At last, translating the oscillation between visibility and invisibility, particularity and universality, or flexibility and formalization into a form of institution remains a challenging yet crucial future task for the agonistic collectivity. Keeping the ungroundable ground of representation open within an organization, then, could make way to imagine post-foundational political institutions.

Notes 1 Koalition interviewees argue that the group is ‘not anti-democratic’ (December 17, 2013). The double negation symbolically identifies the collectivity as neither adhering to nor openly challenging classic representative principles. Precisely, haphazard statements like this might point to the Koalition’s implicit approach beyond representative representation. 2 Arbeitskreis Struktur (Working Group Structure) is an initiative by current and former SK members engaging with questions of what organizational form the Koalition should take in the future. One of several working groups, formally approved by the plenum in May 2017, this internal differentiation into working groups exemplifies the group’s organizational development, reflexivity, and potentially even democratization to delegate specific areas of expertise and interest to the general artist population. 3 In accordance with Renner’s prioritization of artistic space, a survey to identify spatial needs and catalogue existing artistic space was initiated in the fall of 2014. While cultural administrators are said to have designed the survey in collaboration with artist stakeholders, both Koalition and other administrative interviewees have criticized the lack of participatory engagement during the study.

References Bain, Alison L.; Landau, Friederike (2017): Artist intermediaries in Berlin. Cultural intermediation as an interscalar strategy of self-organizational survival. In Urban Research & Practice 1 (1), pp. 1–16. Dockx, Nico; Gielen, Pascal (eds.) (2015): Mobile autonomy. Exercises in artists’ selforganization. With the assistance of Leo Reijnen. Amsterdam: Valiz. Gugu, Silvia; Dal Molin, Martina (2016): Collaborative local cultural governance. In Administration & Society 48 (2), pp. 237–262. Haben und Brauchen (ed.) (2012): Manifest, Haben und Brauchen. Berlin: Haben und Brauchen.

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Hebert, Stine; Szefer Karlsen, Anne (2013): Self-organised. London and Bergen: Open Editions. Institut für Strategieentwicklung (ed.) (2011): Studio Berlin II. Berlin. www.ifse.de/arti kel-und-studien/einzelansicht/article/studio-berlin-ii-studie-zur-situation-berlinerkuenstlerinnen-volltext.html Koalition der Freien Szene (2015a): Zehn-Punkte-Plan (Update 2015). Berlin: Koalition der Freien Szene. Koalition der Freien Szene (2015b): Reader zum Workshop im Rahmen des Workshopverfahrens zur Entwicklung von Förderstrategien räumlicher Infrastruktur für künstlerische Arbeit. Berlin: Koalition der Freien Szene. Laclau, Ernesto (2007): On populist reason. London and New York, NY: Verso. Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in (2015): Haushaltsplan von Berlin für die Haushaltsjahre 2016/2017. Band 3 Einzelplan 03. Berlin: Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in. Seippel, Ornulf (2001): From mobilization to institutionalization? The case of Norwegian environmentalism. In Acta Sociologica 44 (2), pp. 123–137. Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen (2018): Haushaltsplan von Berlin für die Haushaltsjahre 2018/2019: Band 8 Einzelplan 08 Kultur und Europa. Berlin: Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen. Suchman, Mark C. (1995): Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. In Academy of Management Review 20 (3), pp. 571–610. Suh, Doowon (2011): Institutionalizing social movements. The dual strategy of the Korean women’s movement. In Sociological Quarterly 52 (3), pp. 442–471.

5

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing in governance

This chapter engages with the tangible governance and policy outcomes negotiated between the Koalition and Senatskanzlei and introduces the example of the distribution process of incremental income from the City Tax collected in 2014 and distributed in 2015. This process is subsumed under the term CityTax2015 (Landau 2017), delineating the temporary construction of a policy network among formal and informal actors. The objective of this chapter is to extend the examination of the multiple constructions of legitimacy in various stages of collaborative policy-making processes in the agonistic framework of conflict and consensus. Teasing out the conflict-theoretical contours of formalizing and informalizing relationships at the example of the policy-making exercise of CityTax2015, this governance practice is revealed as imbricated in the temporal, discursive and material rearticulation of Berlin’s cultural policy-making setting. Without the intention of producing yet another binary account between ‘informality’ and ‘formality’, I consider the former to encompass legal non-fixation, lack of reliability, non-publicness, non-written form, political exchange and trust, constituting a complementary setting to formal structures (Potapova 2014, p. 102 ff.). Moreover, and in recognition of the unsettled issue of institutionalization, formalization or formality outlined above (see Chapter 4), in the following, informality arises as analytical concern to understand the governance arrangement coproduced with the emerging policy actor Koalition. After clarifying the theoretical approach to collaborative governance, I discuss the (self-)perceptions of Berlin’s cultural administration with regard to their shifting roles and responsibilities. Administrators’ rationalizations of their democratic mandate and their relationships with other political players significantly determine how spaces of political negotiation, legitimacy and conflict spread out (or not). The multi-layered consensusconflict dynamic is reintroduced in the context of Conflictual Consensus Matrix II, revealing the negotiation of CityTax2015 as a production of conflictual consensus (CC3) among agonistic policy stakeholders (see ‘Conflict and consensus between agonistic policy stakeholders’). This process illustrates the material and immaterial or symbolical transformations in a conflict-laden governance setting, spanning from the concrete, operational

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 153 realm of political decision-making to the overarching, meta implications of public opinion and prioritization regarding the concerns of the independent art scene in policy choices. Manifestations of legitimacy are disassembled along the temporal and procedural dimensions of the policy-making process as input, throughput and output stages (see ‘Varieties of legitimacy’). The chapter concludes by reflecting the interrelatedness of conflict, consensus and legitimacies in the conceptualization of an a(nta)gonistic policy network (see ‘Conclusions: agonistic throughput legitimacy’).

Transforming notions of governance and institutions Drawing on works on discursive institutionalism (DI; Schmidt 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2013) and critical policy studies (Fischer 2003; Fischer and Gottweis 2012; Hajer and Wagenaar 2003; Hay 2002; Pierre and Peters 2005), I understand governance as a complex empirical, theoretical and normative phenomenon. Ansell and Gash (2007, p. 544) describe collaborative governance as arrangements where non-state stakeholders are directly involved ‘in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented, and deliberative and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programs or assets.’ Following Bingham’s (2011, p. 391) definition of collaboration, which distinguishes between collaboration, cooperation and coordination, I use the former to describe the ‘co-labor’ of policy stakeholders in the face of conflict. Beyond discourses on participatory governance (Gbikpi and Grote 2002) or collaborative participation (Innes and Booher 2004), which are imagined to leverage civic, democratic multi-stakeholder consensus-making processes, I consider collaborative governance not as consensus-oriented, but as structurally bound to conflict and contingency. Actors in collaborative settings engage in multiple dynamic and responsive governance relations in different roles and with diverse purposes of collaboration (Getimēs and Grigoriadou 2005; Huxham and Vangen 2000; Vigoda 2002). Ansell and Gash (2007, p. 547) distinguish between ‘adversarial’ and ‘managerial’ governance, describing the former as geared toward the transformation of antagonistic relations into collaborative ones: ‘In adversarial politics, groups may engage in positive-sum bargaining and develop cooperative alliances. However, this cooperation is ad hoc, and adversarial politics does not explicitly seek to transform conflict into cooperation.’ In correspondence with this notion of ‘adversarial’ collaborative governance, I develop a theoretical account of a(nta)gonistic governance which extends beyond stakeholders’ zerosum thinking and consensus orientation. To transform antagonistic relations into agonistic ones, the case of the City Tax distribution serves to theorize the ambiguous intermediary space between adversarialism and collaboration. Based on Ansell and Gash’s (2007, p. 559) assumption that collaborative governance shifts ‘“ownership” of decision making from the agency to the stakeholders acting collectively’, the following analysis identifies legitimacy (de) constructions between the Koalition and the Senatskanzlei as collectively

154 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing owned decisions. Fawcett and Daugbjerg’s (2012, p. 197) view of governance as ‘contingent practices that emerge from the competing actions and beliefs of different people responding to various dilemmas against the background of conflicting traditions’ directs attention to the collaborative potentials of conflictuality, which are to be developed throughout this chapter. In tumultuous and conflict-ridden situations of political decision-making, governance evokes new political dilemmas, but also tackles governance challenges such as inclusion, exclusion and lack of transparency (Bevir 2011). I take a critical stance on urban governance theories’ state-centrism and its partially implicit positivism (DiGaetano and Strom 2003; Fung et al. 2003; Heinelt et al. 2006; Keohane 2011; Pierre 2005; Pierre and Peters 2000, 2015; Stone 1993). These approaches do not adequately consider the formation and impact of self-organized collective actors in agenda-setting and policy formulation. With the goal of broadening the governance theoretical scope of actors and claims to be included in policy-making, I attend to the analytical potential of emerging, diverse governance coalitions (Bramwell and Pierre 2016; Gugu and Dal Molin 2016; Le Feuvre et al. 2016) to understand the emancipatory influence of ephemeral or informal policy stakeholders in governance. I address the political interactions and practices of collective agents with a discourse theoretical approach to policy analysis to diversify our understanding of the implications of (in)formality in collaborative governance settings (Howarth 2010; Howarth and Torfing 2005; Torfing 1998, 2002; Torgerson 2003). Christensen et al.’s (2016) crisis management framework instructively conceptualizes the formally and informally exercised ‘governance capacities’ of coordination, analysis, regulation and delivery, all of which are manifest in the cultural administration’s governance activity. First, the Senatskanzlei’s coordination capacities bring together diverse actors (e.g., the K2 summit in 2012, Jours Fixes with artist advocacy associations). Second, the cultural administration’s analytical capacity comes to the fore via incremental internal benchmarking and evaluation activities to understand the impact of its funding instruments.1 Third, regulative capacities that control, audit and monitor governance arrangements are enacted via the differentiated jury system which reviews artistic productions to be funded. Fourth, delivery capacities, which are necessary to handle crises and maintain public service infrastructures, become apparent in the cultural administration’s provision of services to the artist population (e.g., via arms-length organizations such as Kulturförderpunkt (Culture Funding Point), which offers workshops and professionalization aid to Berlin-based artists). Pierre and Peters’ (2005, p. 16) notion of ‘governance outcomes’ of coherence, inclusiveness, adaptability and accountability interrelates with the above ‘governance capacities’ insofar as they both address what governments can do or have done. With regard to civil stakeholders’ expectations of formal actors, governance capacities and outcomes locate cleavages, mismatches and resulting discontent between the imagined and practiced form

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 155 of collaborative governance, depending on each stakeholder’s perspective. While the first three dimensions of governance outcomes are not conclusively measurable or attainable, they implicitly structure multi-stakeholder interactions. First, the criterion of ‘(in)coherence’ could describe the governance condition/outcome of Berlin’s funding imbalance (i.e., the significant disproportion between institutional funding and funds for the independent scene). Given that a deficient bureaucratic infrastructure can contribute to a public impression that the bureaucracy or administration is incompetent, the perceived coherence of public policy (or lack thereof) significantly affects the legitimacy of collaborative multi-stakeholder governance. Second, the outcome of governance ‘inclusiveness’ is renegotiated by the Koalition via its challenge to existing modes of stakeholder inclusion and political representation. Third, the ‘adaptability’ of governance outcomes is showcased in the CityTax2015 process in which the administration’s responsiveness not only addressed, but also temporarily resolved an existing policy challenge (i.e., the independent scene’s insufficient funding). The fourth criterion of ‘accountability’, if understood as a form of legitimacy, is the most significant governance outcome to illustrate the conflictual collaboration between the Koalition and Senatskanzlei. Pierre and Peters (2005, p. 120) highlight the double-edged nature of government’s ‘overload’ in legitimacy-building contexts (i.e., excess demands voiced by civil stakeholders, connected to the state’s fleeting capacity to adequately address and respond to these untameable challenges). In addition, Pierre and Peters (2005, p. 123) argue that the ‘ungovernability’ of an increasingly complex society, and the resulting challenge of coordination and coherence, put formal stakeholders invested in governance under pressure. As a result, governance accountabilities and responsibilities become increasingly unclear and diffuse (Davies and Imbroscio 2009; Haus 2005; Nissen 2002), posing a challenge to the primacy of parliament and eroding the positionalities of stakeholders engaged both in making and critiquing of policies. The paradigm of governance introduces additional, notably interdependent spaces of policy design which reinforce but also address problems of accountability and legitimacy (Pierre and Peters 2005, p. 127). Concurrent with the crisis of legitimacy, processes of generating policy outcomes become generally less predictable and thus more open and vulnerable to criticism. Within this tumultuous state of complexity in governance, to navigate through structural uncertainty, the notion of ‘institutions’ needs to be decisively rethought. Concerned about the unpredictability, and the subsequent uncontrollability of governance processes, Pierre and Peters (2005, p. 56) are skeptical about collaboratively produced governance outcomes, writing that decision-making processes in governance ‘tend[s] to be poorly defined. The attempts of any actor to become involved in any decision may be capricious.’ In contrast to the supposed capriciousness or lack of reliability of civil stakeholders, the following analysis addresses the inherent ambiguity of governance as a challenge and opportunity to create new forms of

156 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing legitimation rather treating them as a problem, irrational impulse or threat. Attending to agents’ ideas and capacities, I investigate the unstoppable symbiosis of state and society by asking whether ‘the state’ might transform rather than ‘lose’ capacities to adapt to governance challenges. This more hopeful approach explores how governance can contribute to create new modes of civic identification, or perceived legitimacy of governance outcomes. DI defines discourse ‘in terms of its content, as a set of policy ideas and values, and in terms of its usage, as a process of interaction focused on policy formulation and communication’ (Schmidt and Radaelli 2004, p. 184). Subsequently, discourse as reflexive practice is constitutive of political narratives and frames that influence perceptions about policy problems and solutions. Moreover, DI pays attention to actors’ rationalizations of their own positions, demands and activities (Schmidt and Radaelli 2004, p. 195). Accordingly, ‘institutions’ are dynamic and ever-changing structures that are ‘internal to sentient agents, serving both as structures (of thinking and acting) that constrain action and as constructs (of thinking and acting) created and changed by those actors’ (Schmidt 2010b, p. 14). In contrast to institutionalist approaches of rational choice, or historical and sociological institutionalisms, DI emphasizes the importance of ideas and discourses in the construction of new policies. Taking an evolutionary approach to institutional change, DI examines the ‘insides’ of institutions and their configurations by laying bare policy-makers’ and stakeholders’ perceptions and motivations to produce policy (Schmidt 2008, p. 9). Hence, Schmidt (2002, p. 210) identifies that discourses have communicative and coordinative as well as cognitive and normative functions. However, institutions have no agential capacities of their own, and do not causally determine actors’ behavior, but are enacted by relatively autonomous agents nested in discourses (see Grunden 2016). Differentiating between ‘foreground discursive’ and ‘background ideational’ abilities, Schmidt (2010b) delineates the former as agents’ capacities through which they actualize institutional settings via known patterns of behavior and routines (or not). Foreground discursive abilities enable actors to engage critically and deliberatively in discourses about the institutions with which they interact and exchange knowledge. Background ideational abilities are used by agents to create and reproduce institutions. In the case of the Koalition, the new collective agent exercises both foreground discursive abilities to create, position and persistently defend specific discursive positions such as the chronic underfunding of independent cultural production as well as background ideational abilities to challenge and reconfigure the very institutions that shape artists’ production and funding conditions. Based on Panizza and Miorelli’s (2013, p. 315) post-structuralist development of DI, discourses are revealed as ‘intrinsically political and [that] politics involves the discursive construction of antagonisms and political frontiers.’ The constitutively contested nature of discourse in and for power

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 157 comes to the fore. Recognizing the insurmountable lack that is coconstitutive of political subjects and structures, ‘institutions can never determine the identity of agents and [that] failed structural identities are what make institutional change possible, makes institutional change endogenous to a DI analytical model’ (ibid.). In other words, the discursive institutionalist framework, with its sensitivity to notions of lack, failure or absence of any ultimate reason/ground, lends itself to investigate the governance activities of the Koalition, whose status as an ‘institution’ is not conclusively settled, to explore how the versatility of structures and both formal and informal institutions play out to enact new legitimations. In the discussion about (in)formal governing, Grunden (2016) qualifies Helmke and Levitsky’s (2003) four-fold scheme of ‘effective’ (i.e., highimpact) and ‘ineffective’ (i.e., low-impact) formal institutions, and the ‘converging’ or ‘diverging’ influence of informal toward formal institutions. While the classification of the cultural administration as a formal institution (i.e., democratically appointed organ of government) is comparatively uncontroversial, the assessment whether it is an ‘effective’ institution might be more disputed. On the one hand, the cultural administration is ‘effective’ because it regularly delivers cultural funding services. However, the Senatskanzlei could also be considered ‘ineffective’ by dissatisfied artist stakeholders because the funding system provides insufficient support for many cultural producers. The question about whether an informal institution (e.g., the Koalition) ‘converges’ or ‘diverges’ toward a formal one (i.e., the Senatskanzlei) contours the main analytical concern of this chapter. Based on the assumption that the Koalition is an ‘informal’ institution, does its governance involvement facilitate convergence in the form of a conflictual consensus (CC3) or create further divergences in the shape of fundamental conflict (CC1)? Based on the hypothesis that the group converges with the effective formal institution of the Senatskanzlei, Grunden’s (2016) scenario of a ‘supportive enhancement’ of governance should apply. If the Koalition would converge toward the ineffective formal institution of the Senatskanzlei, a ‘functional replacement’ would take place. In the case of diverging from formal institutional settings, the Koalition would evoke a ‘compensating detour’ from otherwise effective formal institutions. Lastly, a ‘rivalling alternative’ would occur if the informal institution of the Koalition would diverge from the ineffective formal institution. Without definitively classifying the governance relations between Koalition and Senatskanzlei in any one of these scenarios, the dividing lines sketched by Grunden help to approach the conflictual thicket of the Koalition’s (counter-)hegemonic governance intervention, which substantiates an understanding of the roles of informal actors in governance. To avoid the analytical dead end of the binary between formality and informality, the attendance to ‘informal architectures of power’ could ideally create common paths of action without dismissing degrees of less formality (Grunden 2014, p. 29). Paraphrasing the German original, Grunden (2014, p. 24) defines informal institutions as

158 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing systems of rules of decision-making, leadership and coordination that, on the one hand, do not have legal liability yet are characterized by an agreed political liability. On the other hand, they represent a (temporary) deviation or concretization of nameable rules from the formal structure without committing an immediate or intentional violation of laws (…) Informal governing can be characterized as [a] voluntarily regulated decision-making process that creates political liability which should be transformed into legal liability. This ‘political liability’ or legitimacy of informal governing arrangements touches on the analytical core of this chapter which sets out to understand the temporary institution of a conflictual consensus in the governance setting of Berlin’s cultural political field. Grunden (2014) describes informal institutions as ‘auto-licensed’ (i.e., self-instituted or -affirmed) in comparison to formally legitimized institutions which are confirmed by the state or democratic elections. Reminiscent of the previously discussed selflegitimatory practices (see Chapter 3: ‘Unpacking modes of legitimacy’), ‘auto-licensing’ could interconnect with Mouffe’s (2005) terminology of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ in that the notion of legal liability/legitimacy would sync with ‘politics’, while political liability/legitimacy would point to the wider realm of ‘the political’. Grunden’s request that political liability should be transformed into legal liability parallels the controversially discussed possibility of the Koalition moving from ‘the political’ to ‘politics’ in its conflictual collaboration with the cultural administration. The interstitial policy space between the cultural administration and the Koalition, created in the timely and financially limited context of CityTax2015, might thus reveal new modalities of transforming political into informally considered legal liability. In the networked collaborative and legitimacy-building context of the governance arrangement, the Koalition appears as a ‘policy entrepreneur’ which mobilizes diverse resources to participate in policy change (Mintrom and Norman 2009). Regarding the group’s significant investment of resources, it complies with Mintrom and Norman’s defining features of ‘social acuity’, ‘defining problems’, ‘building teams’ and ‘leading by example’. Via the creation of (policy) networks, the definition of collective problems and demands and a team-oriented structure paired with selective organic leadership, the Koalition presents itself as a political actor with the capacity to reduce governance-inherent risks which would occur if there were no group to REPRESENT. Approaching the cultural administration after settling internal conflicts (i.e., forestalling or outsourcing potential conflicts the cultural administration would have dealt with in various bilateral bargaining dialogues), the pre-selected positions and requests of the Koalition serve to facilitate multi-stakeholder governance interactions. Moreover, due to its articulatory aspiration, the group acts as an ‘interpretive’ policy entrepreneur, bringing a meaning-making dimension to policy framing

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 159 activities (Aukes et al. 2017). By opening the ‘black box’ of political priorities, problems or narratives, interpretive policy entrepreneurs compensate for missing interactional links among diverse stakeholders and (re)frame policy problems. In CityTax2015, the interpretive policy entrepreneur called the Koalition contributed to address diverging perceptions about funding priorities, resulting in the construction of conflictual consensus (CC3). Drawing this introductory overview on concepts of governance and discursive institutions to a close, the presented concepts aim to provide greater analytical depth to otherwise undertheorized accounts of artists as policymakers (Landau 2016; Woddis 2005, 2013). Notions such as (interpretive) policy entrepreneurs can be imported to the study of the self-organization of social and/or artist-led movements not only to destigmatize interestdriven or ‘entrepreneurial’ modes of advocacy, but to outline how hybrid forms of political agency and activism in governance arrangements, oscillating between potentially more conformist expressions of ‘politics’ and more subversive modes of ‘the political’, can create new political outcomes and alliances.

Shifting self-understandings in agonistic governance To outline the institutionally embedded context in which the exemplary process of CityTax2015 took place, the following paragraphs give insight into the Senatskanzlei’s changing (self-)perceptions and its relational positionality of power within the landscape of other administrative and parliamentary actors in Berlin. Black (2008, pp. 3–4) notes the critical importance of investigating institutional embeddedness to understand ‘how legitimacy is constructed, both by those making legitimacy claims and by the regulator who is responding to them, often by making legitimacy claims of their own.’ Accordingly, the cultural administration’s position in a collaborative governance setting is influenced by other stakeholders’ respective positions and their (self-acclaimed) scopes of action and legitimacy. With regard to analyzing policy and governance outcomes and their contested legitimacies, institutional contexts significantly condition, structure and constrain material and discursive spaces of governance in which collaborative interactions take place (or not) and facilitate agents’ opportunities to leverage legitimacy (or not). Considering the executive as a ‘contact zone’ between the politicaladministrative complex and citizens serving as a ‘projection surface’ to negotiate ideas, claims and stereotypes (Brandenstein and Strüngmann 2016, p. 107), this surface is not an opaque, but a political arena appropriated by individual and collective sentient agents to design and contest the meanings and futures of policies. Executive actors such as the cultural administration are traditionally assigned the mandate to ‘row’ (i.e., implementing democratically conferred decisions, carrying out requests from Captain Parliament) while the legislature conventionally is sought to ‘steer’ (i.e., making executive decisions on

160 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing how (much) money is spent, determining the journey to be sailed; Peters 2011). According to the German constitutional Grundgesetz, the competence for the legislation and administration of cultural affairs, the so-called Kulturhoheit (Cultural Sovereignty), lies in the hands of the Bundesländer (States/Länder). In the Land of Berlin, the Abgeordnetenhaus, the Berlin Senate, bears this responsibility as the provincial government. Berlin’s constitution (§20) states the obligation to ‘protect and support cultural life’ (Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa 2018a). On its website, the cultural administration concludes that ‘even though, from this national objective, no claim for the preservation or construction of specific cultural institutions or offers can be derived, a cultural political mission can be deduced’ (ibid.). Together with Berlin’s 12 boroughs, civil society actors and arms-length cultural agencies as well as federal and European cultural funding institutions, the Land of Berlin assumes the responsibility and ‘mission’ to design and supply the cultural funding system. From 1996 to 2006, Berlin cultural policy was housed at the Senat für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur (Senate for Science, Research and Culture), and integrated into the Senatskanzlei (Senate Chancellery) in 2006. The loss of an independent Senate for Culture has been described as a ‘fatal sign’ of degradation or a ‘beheading’ of an important policy department; in the media, culture has been described as the future ‘carthorse’ for Berlin’s image and economic development because the city lacks other strong industries (Krupp 2016). The long-standing request for an independent senator was realized by a new Berlin coalition (from 2016) between the social-democratic SPD, the Green party and the left DIE LINKE, when Dr. Klaus Lederer, an openly gay lawyer from DIE LINKE, became the first Senator for Culture after a decade of mayors who had occupied this position on the side of their primary office. This departmental reorganization transformed the Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten into Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa (Senate for Culture and Europe). Without assessing the specific personal performances of past cultural senators, the duplication of offices has been criticized as leading to an under-performance of cultural senators, while it has also been considered advantageous that culture was treated as ‘chief responsibility’ (Schaper 2016). The most recent changes aside, the process of CityTax2015 was enacted before Lederer’s entry in office and the Senatskanzlei was still under the roof of the ruling mayor, taking place when Michael Müller (SPD) was Senator for Culture (2014–2016; mayor since 2014) and Tim Renner State Secretary for Culture (2014–2016). Regarding the power constellations both within the cultural administration and between the Senatskanzlei and other senate departments, bureaucracies ‘do not limit themselves to the implementation of public policies [and that] they can and do affect public policy formulation itself ’ (Considine and Afzal 2011, p. 372). Thus, advocacy geared toward public policy change is not only about civil society’s self-organization, or its address to politicians/the legislature, but underscores the executive as a central locus of

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 161 power in the construction, validation and implementation of political requests, values and policies. Attending to the politicization of bureaucracy (Kjaer 2009; Peters 2010), or investigating the ‘quasi-legislative action’ of the cultural administration (Bingham 2011, p. 388), this chapter uncovers the transforming exercise of power which occurred throughout the cultural administration’s collaboration with the informal policy stakeholder the Koalition in the case of CityTax2015. Discussing its position in Berlin’s political landscape, a cultural administrator assesses (October 28, 2015): The administration cannot know everything, the administration cannot easily decide with great knowledge, it is self-limited in a way (…) We need networks, and we also need conversation partners. We need idea givers, we need people that we can present our ideas in a dialogue, not only because of the transparency, but also to make the ideas better. Deconstructing the notion of an all-knowing institution that had seemingly prevailed before, the reference to ‘self-limitation’ reinforces the administration’s necessity to include stakeholders ‘from the scene’ with their specific knowledge and expertise. The importance of mobilizing public support for administrative decisions is underscored (ibid.): ‘Of course, we [the Senatskanzlei] need this part of the public [the Koalition] because he [sic] then also helps to implement the ideas and to lobby for it.’ Hence, the inclusion of sparring partners is intended not only to improve the quality of policies but also serves as a self-legitimation for the cultural administration. By openly stating its self-limitation, the cultural administration perhaps does not lose but rather adapts power to leverage ‘alternative’ sources of legitimacy in the given governance arrangement. With regard to the cultural administration’s self-understanding as a knowledge-seeking institution, administrators argue that the Senatskanzlei has a long-standing tradition of participation and stakeholder engagement. The inclusion of artists’ expertise has been stated as ‘matter of course (…) the peer-to-peer governance model as a constitutive element of a contemporary cultural administration has been being executed here for the past 20 years’ (Senatskanzlei, November 2, 2015). But, if collaborative governance has such a long tradition in Berlin’s cultural administration, what is new or different about the interactions between the cultural administration and the Koalition as a collective actor? A Koalition speaker considers the behavior and openness of the cultural administration unprecedented, but also unsettling for administrators’ routine behavior (January 7, 2016): What an enormous step this is for them [the Senatskanzlei] to sit around a table like that and to discuss! Seriously, with seven people, to discuss what the second bullet point should look like. You notice that it really asks a lot of them (…) they are quite proud of that. Renner can

162 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing now claim that this [CityTax2015] succeeded in a participatory process (…) They don’t really keep it in mind yet as a beautiful process that must be repeated. The uniqueness of the CityTax2015 process is highlighted in its detailed procedural exchange (‘discussing the second bullet point’). Similarly, an administrator affirms the novelty of the approach with the Koalition (July 16, 2015): It is a completely different collaboration now (…) openness regarding the role of the Koalition, but it also has to do with individuals here that are convinced by the work and say: OK, we will provide this space of discussion for you [the Koalition] here. Despite the indistinct assessments of what stakeholder inclusion means or has meant in the past, the cultural administration portrays the CityTax2015 process as innovative. A Senatskanzlei press release, published the day after the Cultural Budget 2016/17 was passed, states: Conventional administrative behavior fits this case just as poorly as the autonomous, anarchic thinking of some artists. At the example of the City Tax and the new grants, we [the Senatskanzlei] have experimented with a participatory process and have commonly found solutions for the distribution structure and the funding criteria. (Senatsverwaltung für Kultur 2015) Without specifying the shortcomings of what the ‘conventional’ administrative behavior entailed, the ‘new’ approach is presented as an incisive advancement in the collaboration with civic stakeholders. In the institutional entanglements of governance, artist and administrative actors variously stress the primacy of the legislature to make final decisions and allotments for budgetary concerns. Cultural administrators state that the Senatskanzlei is being consulted by politicians throughout budgetary processes due to their expertise (October 28, 2015): Finally, they [Parliament] are the decision-making body. And they are my [the Senatskanzlei] controlling body. That means that I have to (a) present and then (b) justify what I am negotiating and what I am deciding (…) it is an interplay that we have with them [Parliament], right? So, they say: “You [the Senatskanzlei] are the experts, you do this every day, what’s your opinion?” But then we tell them: “Well, now you [Parliament] have our assessment, what are you willing to do as parliamentary legislating body and what are not you willing to do?” While the cultural administration is sometimes explicitly asked to make suggestions for policy formulation and design, it can also deliberately express

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 163 ideas and make proposals. As Peters (2010, p. 24) confirms, ‘through the ability to control information, proposals for policy, and the knowledge concerning feasibility, the bureaucracy is certainly capable of influencing agency policy, if not determining it.’ Hence, while the cultural administration can operate and create interpretive spaces to propose, design and implement policies, its mandate to do so comes from the legislature. Accordingly, cultural administrators describe their main task as the responsibility to administer and moderate procedures to distribute funding. Pre-selecting, assessing and prioritizing claims that are articulated by both civil society actors and the legislature, cultural administrators highlight their agentic position (November 2, 2015): Administration needs to construct a position for itself, independent from politics, yeah? (…) one [the Senatskanzlei] is the instrument of the legislative (…) they [Parliament] are our contracting authority. That is the reason why we exist. But without giving an opinion, without giving a well-argued position, we are not doing our job (…) when they [Parliament] said: “All crap, I don’t want this, I want it differently!” Fine, we [the Senatskanzlei] are an instrument, but without that, it is the free reign of interests and I don’t think that’s right (…) As [an] administration, one is allowed to understand oneself to formulate the general interest (…) that is why a stakeholder dialogue, a structured one, is extremely important – but not only to receive demands, and pass them on, so to say, but also to consider them to make a justified decision about these demands. The administration’s objective to mirror the ‘general interest’ reflects its internalized mandate to design policies and implement administrative actions that are conducive to the public good (regardless of the controversial interpretation of what that means, conjuring another meta conflict). While clearly restating the legislature’s primacy and the aspiration to actively contribute to shaping parliamentary decisions, this cultural administrator also highlights its constricted role by pointing to the boundedness to parliament. Ascribing agency to ‘the administration’, the cultural administration actively proposes policy objectives geared toward ‘the public good’ by providing arguments for funding increases in budgetary negotiations (October 20, 2015). In contrast to their safeguarding of the collective good, cultural administrators portray parliamentarians as requesting changes that favor politicians’ local constituencies or privilege their own favorite cultural projects (July 16, 2015). More drastically, a Koalition speaker frames parliamentarians’ behavior during budgetary negotiations as ‘horse trading’ (June 17, 2015). However, the narrated clientelism and lack of proactive policy design on the side of parliamentarians needs to be treated with caution because these derogatory statements stem from administrators and artists who are at the discretion of these powerful politicians. Extending criticism about parliamentarians’ unfit leadership,

164 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing Koalition speakers lament the obsession to invent ‘new’ funding structures (January 21, 2015). The preoccupation to create something new is supposed to increase politicians’ prestige, voter recognition and public visibility as creators of innovative beacons. Hence, the pressure to develop new funding mechanisms at the cost of destroying existing, functioning ones for the sake of creating something new is perceived as a potential threat to the overall cultural funding system in place. The administration’s bridging role between parliamentarians and civil society actors situates civil servants as moderators between inclusion and exclusion. Via the legitimation of formally ascribed democratic actors such as the parliament, the executive is actively legitimated to act, yet ‘more often than not this legitimation comes through inaction and acquiescence rather than through formal action’ (Peters 2010, p. 213). Justifying the administration’s moderating role via the legislature’s ‘inaction and acquiescence’, in the Berlin case, foregrounds the Senatskanzlei’s increasingly dominant role in relation to politicians’ partial passivity. Besides the formal legislative primacy, the cultural administration’s policy-formulating role is limited by other executive organs such as the Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen (Senate for Finance), which has the responsibility for allocating funds in the budget. A cultural administrator defends its propositions in budget drafts to request ‘as much as we can’ while relegating the responsibility to make cuts to the Senate for Finance (July 16, 2015). The temporally and functionally limited power in the allotment of funds, which indirectly incapacitates ways in which the Senatskanzlei can govern, becomes apparent in CityTax2015. With regard to the City Tax income from 2014 which had been ‘frozen’ due to a persisting legal struggle on whether the tax could be spent on specific purposes,2 cultural administrators describe the Senate for Finance’s behavior as ‘nebulous’, non-transparent and uncommunicative (July 16, 2015). Consequently, the cultural administration’s potential for collaborative outreach was constricted by the Senate for Finance because the funds were only ‘de-frozen’ in June 2015, thus narrowing the window of time for dispensing the funds until the end of the year. In the context of the ‘City Tax Lie’, causing a public outcry about the drastically smaller income dedicated to the independent art scene than requested,3 a cultural administrator captures the inter-departmental relationships as follows (October 28, 2015): We are writing up for our State Secretary “Fraud! Fraud! Fraud!” and then the Cultural Senator kicks in: “Fraud! Fraud!” And then, the Finance Senator at the time [Nussbaum] says: “Nope, that’s no fraud at all, don’t get so upset!” Clearly demarcating inter-departmental hierarchy, the cultural administration is subject to the financial administration’s budgetary power. The latter

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 165 had prioritized allocating City Tax income to general budgetary consolidation instead of an issue-specific allocation for independent cultural production. The cultural administrator sums it up (ibid.): ‘In the game of departmental powers, we just lost.’ This ‘game of powers’ is both institutionally and practically imbricated in administrative responsibilities and constraints of each parliamentary committee or senate department. Interestingly, Senatskanzlei employees present themselves as more eager to act collaboratively than other senate departments (November 2, 2015): ‘The sensibility of the cultural administration about what can you still do in the 21st century as an administration and what you cannot do anymore (…) [the Senatskanzlei] is remarkably further than other administrations.’ Building on this flattering self-assessment, she or he points out that the Senatskanzlei is at least willing to take risks to collaborate with civil stakeholders, even though attempts to initiate dialogue with the artistic scenes in the past had utterly failed. In contrast to the Senate for Economics, Technology and Research, which distributed the incremental City Tax funds for tourism and sports-related projects, cultural administrators say that the former worried much less about stakeholder inclusion than they did.

Dramaturgy of lobbying: when to talk to whom Koalition speakers believe their claims should be introduced in the budget as early as possible (January 21, 2015). Addressing the executive as a primary interlocutor is preferred over first directing claims to the legislature because the budgetary senate draft is passed from the executive to the legislature, hence providing more opportunities for influence in exchange with the administration. In contrast, parliamentarians often make changes and corrections to the budget after the senate draft is provided. This temporally sensitive claims-making strategy not only reveals the Koalition’s consciousness of the administration’s limited mandate and power but underlines the changing loci of power throughout policy- and budget-making processes characteristic of the transformation from government to governance. Within the intricate interdependence of governance stakeholders, the Senatskanzlei intends to circumvent potential criticism of collaborating with civil society actors like the Koalition too closely. The administration stresses that it maintains critical distance toward particularistic claims and emphasizes its sovereignty in the construction of funding programs. Against the potential reproach toward the cultural administration that it would unconditionally accept and turn lobbyists’ requests into policies, a cultural administrator states its exclusive decision-making right in stakeholder dialogues (October 28, 2015): The act of the allocation of funds – in the sense of an administrative act – is, as the name suggests, an administrative act (…) You [the Koalition] have to trust us, because if you argued well, and we have well discussed it together, then we [the Senatskanzlei] will decide on the matter as you wanted.

166 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing While artists’ feedback is appreciated as a specific kind of expertise, administrators do not extend a full-on ‘invitation’ in the sense of: ‘You [the Koalition] invent something, and we will implement it however you want’ (October 20, 2015). Against the unregulated reign of interest groups, the cultural administration weighs whether and to what extent civil stakeholders’ policy proposals are appropriate and legitimate (or not). While the appeal to ‘trust’ the administration remains ambiguous, one administrator self-critically urges that the Senatskanzi needs to better communicate its responsibilities and capacities; this is also to not be mistaken as responsible for things that are formally beyond the administration’s scope of action (November 2, 2015). Koalition speakers perceive the different constitutional and parliamentary positionalities and responsibilities as obscure (December 14, 2015): How this ping-pong game actually works, I [the Koalition] still don’t have a real clue until today. So, does the administration suggests something, pre-structures a possible way? (…) There is an administrative strategy, which is however portrayed as parliamentary, cultural political solution, and then the administrative path is the subordinate one? I have the feeling in Berlin it is always (…) relatively in the hands of the administration. And then, the parliamentary voice basically comes at the end. Whereas it must technically be the other way around (…) That is pretty alarming. And if it is not like that, it would be even worse, it would be even more stupid if that impression prevailed, right? Illustrative of the insecurity occurring from unclearly defined mandates between different decision-makers, the ‘administrative strategy’ alludes to the Senatskanzlei’s dominance as a cover-up for clothing administrative actions as parliamentary choices. This ‘quasi-legislative’ behavior of the administration evokes a sense of discomfort, because it is assumed that the ‘proper’ parliamentary process should ‘be the other way around’ (i.e., parliament steering, administration rowing). Simultaneously, Koalition speakers complain about parliamentarians’ avoidance or lack of action, shifting blame away from the administration toward politicians who are not doing their job right (March 31, 2014). Despite the general appreciation of the administration’s relative openness to civil stakeholders’ requests, Knoch voices concerns that the former intervenes in the political process too much and is too political (February 2, 2016). The bureaucratic head of the Senatskanzlei, Dr. Konrad SchmidtWerthern, is criticized by Koalition speakers for having a ‘very strong cultural political vision which does not correspond to that of the arts people here in Berlin,’ and they claim that ‘he [KSW] is steering something into a direction that goes beyond what his job is. The steering is the task of politics, or respectively, in combination with the citizens (…) He [KSW] isn’t a hegemon’ (ibid.). The disapproval expressed here is twofold. On the one

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 167 hand, the statement points to a gap between Schmidt-Werthern’s cultural political vision and that of Berlin’s artists, implying that the former cannot adequately represent the latter (i.e., persistent meta conflict). On the other hand, the steering task is not only relegated to the legislature but considers citizens as authorized/responsible to co-steer the course of politics without further justifying how or why. This critique is emblematic of the deep divergence between administrators and artists and reminds of the group’s claim to best REPRESENT themselves. Extending criticism concerning the politicized bureaucracy, he reports that Tim Renner, who is considered the political spearhead of the cultural administration, is supervised in strategic decisions by civil servants, which is deemed inappropriate. The State Secretary’s partial dependence on his administrative staff is noted by Koalition speakers (January 21, 2015) ‘because behind Renner or under Renner, there are others.’ Hence, despite Renner’s dominant appearance and explicit advocacy for the Koalition, the latter remains skeptical with regard to how much Renner can really do for them, because not only is he dependent on the briefing of his staff, but his hands are also tied by other senate departments, parliament and Renner’s boss, the Senator for Culture. The actual influence or willingness to enact policy change thus is largely hampered by parliamentary mechanisms and personal priorities and sympathy for the independent scene (or not). The latter is embodied by former Senator for Culture Wowereit, for whom ‘the independent scene simply wasn’t his thing’ (Senatskanzlei, November 2, 2015). The lack of clarity about political mandates complicates the transparency of relations between state and non-state actors (ibid.): We [the Senatskanzlei] are in the responsibility to deliver with regard to the transparency of our actions (…) and responsibility to gather information from those of wish to participate (…) This is exactly the reason why we cannot go on like that! If we, if the administration continues this game of “You ask something, and we won’t tell anything!”, then we will end up in a society that is even more hostile to politics than it already is. Self-critically reflecting the implications of lacking transparency and the refusal to share information, she or he concludes that this administrative behavior could depoliticize generally interested citizens. Instead, the administration should act self-determinedly (ibid.): Government action needs a space in which it can reflect without everybody jumping in with their own interests. I consider this utterly important because otherwise one becomes the football of interests, and then tries to fiddle it in a way so that, at best, the strong interests are being served and the weak ones that don’t play a role anyways fall off the table again (…) A certain confidential space for administration is extremely important.

168 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing The image of a ‘confidential space’ for administrative reflection interlocks not only with the agentic role of the administration, but also its necessarily political position within bureaucratic efforts and dialogues. As a result, administrators’ wish to act independently from party politics or parliamentary strategizing should enable them to develop, design and implement policies that serve marginalized groups and the general good. Considering the fact that some parts of the independent scene – producing art with hourly wages of less than three euros – certainly can count as marginalized social groups, the administration’s goal to engage with and include those groups fosters the idea of a collectively owned space for collaborative governance encounters and decisions.

Conclusions: blurring mandates as chance and challenge Within the politico-administrative institutional entanglements, the Senatskanzlei operates with a ‘situated agency’ (Bevir and Richards 2009), organizationally and legally bound by parliamentary constraints and interpretive leeway, to produce and reproduce policy-making procedures. Within its institutional context in transformation, the administration approaches parameters of collaboration (e.g., scope and rationale of including informal stakeholders) in realms of responsibility and power that are eroding from their traditionally defined positions. Questions like who sets the agenda, who implements political decisions and who is ultimately responsible for political outcomes are respectively perceived as messy. As Considine and Afzal (2011, p. 381) point out [U]nder the new modes of governance, the role of bureaucracies (…) as entrepreneurs, facilitators, coordinators, and mediators has increased along with the autonomy of the organizational structures in which they work, but, simultaneously, their role has also become less distinguishable from the contributions of the private and civil society actors operating in their domains. Underscoring the parallelism of a stronger coordinating responsibility and increasing organizational independence, the tension between formal, narrower role assignments and informal, more fluid governing mandates requires an ongoing negotiation of a delicate balance between formally conferred legitimacy and other practices of legitimation. Vague role ascriptions might not only lead to frustration and discontent, but may also inhibit policy action altogether (Le Feuvre et al. 2016). However, a certain ambiguity of political positions that occurs in processes of governance initiation and experimentation might also allow both formal and informal governance stakeholders to challenge existing procedures and strike debate about routinized, hegemonic systems. Thus, the blurriness of mandates, evoking critical inquiry and irritation, but also skepticism, frustration and conflicts,

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 169 constitutes governance itself as not a flawed technocratic mechanism, but as a ‘wicked problem’ (Rittel and Webber 1973). While the gradual specification of institutional collaborative arrangements may alleviate the emergence of fundamental conflicts (CC1) via ‘position’, ‘boundary’ or ‘scope’ rules (Klok and Denters 2005), demarcating when and where governance actors have leeway and how to specify entry and end points of collaboration, the request for more transparency, reliability and planning security of informal governance relations is marked by its own impossibility of being fully realized. The enactment and assessment of values such as transparency or success remain necessarily contested. Regardless of the degree of flexibility, transparency or informality of the rules of the ‘collaborative game’, the interpretation of these polyvalent rules itself stays controversial. If we take the post-foundational framework seriously (i.e., there is no a priori identity or claim prior to the articulation of collective or individual political subjects), the constitutive polyvalence of roles and related tasks and responsibilities needs to be addressed in the face of this common ambiguity. The plea to ‘better’ identify and specify rules and roles of collaboration is blocked by its own impossibility. In the worst case, this claim would even reactivate the positivist assumption that the non-ambiguous execution of rules could be achieved. Hence, against the romantic idea of pure, unequivocal and fixable governance roles, a postfoundational conceptualization of governance departs from the notion of irreducible negativity, contingency and underlying antagonism. Agonistic governance, bound by the failure of its own specification, could institutionalize the ambiguity of a(nta)gonistic stakeholders’ positions, and fixate the definitive unfixability of rules in a governance roadmap, which is legitimated via constant (re)articulation of its very premises. In other words, anchoring the institutional acknowledgement of uncertainty and ‘unstable structures of expectation’ (Rüb 2014, p. 64) in a shared space of trust and transparency might facilitate conflictual collaboration. Incorporating the struggle about the value and importance of culture and cultural funding into the institutional architecture creates spaces of discussion for all engaged actors to discuss meta and operational conflicts. Securing room for the negotiation of conflict and consensus, agonistic governance ideally provides institutional infrastructures that act within their own unstable and ungroundable grounds of legitimation. Revisiting the notions of ‘steering’ and ‘rowing’, the cultural administration has been shown to engage in both steering and rowing activities. It not only rows by implementing policies and providing cultural funding services, but also co-steers via the active proposition of policies. Between innovation and change on the one hand, and the reproduction and maintenance of institutionalized procedures on the other, the emergence of auxiliary arenas of policy design between steering and rowing challenges the primacy of parliament and its established modes of legitimation and accountability (Urbinati and Warren 2008). Since both parliamentary and self-organized political actors address the administration with respective policy objectives and requests, the latter reconcile a limited grasp at power to determine

170 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing policy outcomes with the self-proclaimed aim of opening policy spaces for debate (Bekkers et al. 2007). Ultimately, instead of viewing the dedifferentiation of policy roles as a defect or source of illegitimacy, what might be needed are new epistemologies for the inherent ambiguity of governance interactions to understand and capture the increasingly diversifying array of stakeholders in governance.

Conflict and consensus between agonistic policy stakeholders Reintroducing the conceptual pair of conflict and consensus to dissect the collaborative relations between the Koalition and the Senatskanzlei, the Conflictual Consensus Matrix II (Table 5.1) disentangles and systematizes the exemplary collaborative efforts between the two policy stakeholders. The heuristic helps to outline how policies are constructed (or not) by highlighting the (im)possibilities of governance arrangements. The four collaborative scenarios are structured along the vectors of meta-level goals of policymaking (i.e., normative and prescriptive statements about the general condition, problem or purpose of funding) and the operational level of policy implementation (i.e., organizational and procedural (inter)actions dependent on concrete resources such as money, staff and time). Consequently, there can be conflict or consensus about overarching goals and principles of collaboration as well as about the means chosen to realize these collaborative goals. The matrix abstracts from Berlin’s concrete topography of conflict and consensus beyond its specific local, temporal and issue-related context, thus extending its analytical applicability to other policy areas in which conditions of conflict and consensus need to be identified. A wealth of impressions and experiences by cultural administrators and Koalition speakers demonstrate the conflictual opinions revolving around the meta conflict about the notion of ‘culture’ (or cultural funding) and its normative, socio-political and economic value. Cultural administrators and Tim Renner have been variously accused by Koalition advocates of operating with Table 5.1 Conflictual Consensus Matrix II

Meta conflict

Meta consensus

Source: author

Operational conflict

Operational consensus

Fundamental conflict (CC1) no collaboration/policy outcome Technocratic conflict (CC2) theoretical scenario; morphs into CC1

Conflictual consensus (CC3) agonistic policy design (e.g., CityTax2015) Fundamental consensus (CC4) theoretical scenario; references to ‘consensus’ decompose into meta conflict or potentially CC3

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 171 a neoliberal, tourist-friendly, event-oriented, functionalized notion of art, geared toward exploiting the potential of art for economic growth instead of applying a non-instrumental, ‘autonomous’ understanding and explanation to fund arts and culture (September 7, 2015). Illustrative of grave conflicts, in the budgetary negotiations 2016/17, the catch-all term ‘artists and creatives’ caused controversy among policy stakeholders because the phrasing was not exclusively directed to ‘artists’, but creepily incorporated creative industry workers as eligible for the Work Space Program. A Koalition speaker remembers (ibid.): I reproached him [Renner] of being a creative industries person and then he got really mad (…) Tim said, “Let’s leave the creative story out” and the next day I get a draft where they [the Senatskanzlei] say, “Look, we modified everything just the way you wanted it.” (…) The only problem is that “creative industries” is still in it! (…) I was asking myself, “Come on, administration, we just discussed this yesterday!” (…) This is almost a Freudian lapse. Everybody says Tim Renner is the descendent of the creative industries scene, and now, at a point where he could basically prove “I want to fund arts!” he makes a mistake and it says “creatives”. Due to the supposed bureaucratic ‘error’, the collaborative relations between Koalition and cultural administration were at risk of collapsing. Koalition speakers took the above situation as ‘proof’ that there was a fundamental conflict between artists and administrators about what art should mean (or not), taking it as a sign of the administration’s ideological spinelessness. While narratives of ‘errors’, ‘mistakes’ or ‘misunderstandings’ regarding the notion of art recur among cultural administrators, representatives of the Koalition treat these dissonances not as ‘mistakes’, but as manifestations of meta conflict about conceptions of art. While for the cultural administration, the above formulation might indicate that the Work Space Program should provide space for artists and creative industry workers, the Koalition claimed the program should apply to ‘artists only’ to ensure that the anticipated resources would exclusively support artists’ need for production space. Renner’s willingness to withdraw the language of ‘artists and creative workers’ in the budget draft reveals a normative flexibility about which kind of creative production to fund on the side of the cultural administration. While this could be interpreted as a lack of consistent policy objectives or goals for the program, this adaptation and acknowledgement of meta conflict ultimately struck a preliminary conflictual consensus (CC3). Consequently, the final budget restricted the scope of the Work Space Program to artists only (Regierende/r Bürgermeister/in 2015, p. 119). In sum, this contentious instance underlines the general incompatibility of notions of art prevalent in the administration and the artistic scenes and points to the resulting cleavages that condition governance efforts and policymaking to increase public funding for the arts (or not).

172 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing Furthermore, notions of ‘success’ of policies or conflictual collaboration are fundamentally divided. Imitating Koalition speakers, one administrator assumes that the group defines successful collaboration (October 20, 2015) ‘when we [the Koalition] tell you [the Senatskanzlei] what we want and if you deviate 5 percent from that, then the administration did the exact opposite and then the participatory process has failed.’ This outright antagonistic posture – defining ‘success’ as anything but the complete realization of the Koalition’s claims – forestalls conflictual collaboration. This problematic attitude of either fundamental failure or complete success lapses into zero-sum, positivist thinking and leads to reproaches that the cultural administration would ‘betray’ the Koalition if it would not abide by its claims (January 21, 2015). Counterproductively, these absolute categorizations can trigger administrators’ reluctance and skepticism to fully translate the Koalition’s claims, thereby backfiring into fundamental conflict (CC1). Reiterating the noticeable divergence about procedures and priorities to manage funding for the arts, a cultural administrator drastically claims (October 28, 2015): We all know what the other party thinks, and we have listened to all the arguments and considered them. There is no deficit, there is simply a dissent (…) We will always fight, and I don’t even have a problem with fighting at all, that is part of it, or with dissent, but if one wants to achieve something together, then one has to reliably come to terms with one thing, or at least as long as the opponent is somebody different, one has to fight it through together. Capturing the insurmountable dimension of meta conflicts in governance, meta conflict endures not due to a lack of information, knowledge or transparency, but because antagonism is ineradicable, and constitutive of political interactions among diverse actors. Pointing to the rapprochement in a common fight against a shared ‘other’, the cultural administrator alludes to the potential that lies in the temporary construction of an agonistic ‘we’ that consists of administrators and the Koalition, to leverage opportunities to manufacture (conflictual) consensus. CC1: fundamental conflict | CC2: technocratic conflict The multi-layered fundamental conflicts (CC1)4 between the cultural administration and the Koalition revolve around the priorities, goals, extent and forms of funding. Besides the above-mentioned controversy about whether (or not) to implement Zeitstipendien, which are also a contested topic within the Koalition, fundamental conflicts erupt, first, on the issue of the administration’s (implicitly stated) funding priorities and second, on the topic of peer juries who distribute cultural funding.

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 173 There is little concrete documentation of the official cultural funding objectives or priorities of the Senatskanzlei. Notably, the Werkstatt-Treffen zu Zielen der Kunst- und Kulturförderung der Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa (Workshop Meeting about Goals of Funding Arts and Culture of the Senate for Culture and Europe; Zielwerkstatt), planned as a two-day event to discuss cultural funding goals in dialogue with stakeholders from the Koalition and Rat in the spring of 2018, sought to address this very shortcoming. However, as this initiative was cancelled due to the declined participation of the Koalition (see below), thus not producing tangible goal definitions, the Senatskanzlei’s funding priorities have been tentatively reconstructed from administrators’ statements to illuminate what the cultural administration wants to fund (or not) and why. While artistic ‘quality’ or ‘excellence’ certainly pertain to the Senatskanzlei’s funding priorities, due to the analytical indeterminacy (and ideological contestability) of these terms, the focus here lies on funding priorities, which can be operationalized in collaborative interactions. As illustrated above, the merit and meaning of artistic quality is evidently divided, contouring the grounds of meta conflicts among artist and administrative stakeholders. With regard to the day-to-day priorities of their funding portfolio, cultural administrators find that contemporary funding should be close to and in correspondence with the artistic scene’s needs, leading to the claim that the Senatskanzlei funds ‘at the pace of things’ to ‘avoid getting stuck’ (October 20, 2015). Besides the assumption that there is never enough funding to satisfy all needs, the overall direction or adequacy of the current policy procedures is considered suitable and up to date by cultural administrators (again bracketing the discussion whether more funding should be available in the first place). However, the concrete/operational realization of overarching/meta policy objectives depends on administrators’ personal assessment, engagement and drive. Accordingly, when actors like the Koalition do not agree with administrators’ conceptions that they already provide appropriate forms of funding, fundamental conflicts (CC1) come to the fore. For example, in opposition to the contested Zeitstipendien, administrators suggested an ‘art acquisition budget’, which would provide funds to purchase Berlin-produced art to support local artists. Administrators considered this initiative ‘more sustainable’ than smaller artist grants (October 20, 2015). It becomes apparent that, while expressing a general concern for artists’ precarity, some administrators pursue their own ideas of how to guarantee ‘contemporary’ and ‘adequate’ funding for the independent scene. Since the claim for an acquisition budget has never appeared in the Koalition’s catalogue of demands, it might not be as ‘close to the scene’ as imagined by the cultural administration. With the fervent rejection to ‘fund like a watering can’ (ibid.), the Zeitstipendien controversy and the peripheral proposal of an acquisition budget reveal one of the diverse fundamental conflicts (CC1) between artists and administrators.

174 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing The second facet of fundamental conflict concerns the funding distribution via peer-to-peer juries. On the one hand, the Senatskanzlei’s differentiated system of 29 professional juries has been complimented by Koalition speakers as (December 17, 2013) ‘being close to what is happening in the scene,’ thus potentially attenuating conflicts mentioned above. However, the personnel and organizational composition and procedural transparency of juries has been criticized.5 Besides the controversial request to selfadminister funding, which marks an internal Koalition meta conflict about the validity and appropriateness of juries, there is critique about specific operational features of jury processes, such as their appointment, or the insufficient compensation for the labor-intense jury sessions. Koalition speakers find fault with the administration’s appointment of jurors, which is said to reinforce artists’ heteronomy by external evaluators, and criticize that their suggestions for potential jurors are often disregarded (January 21, 2015). In sum, there is no shared notion or consensus about the meta and operational implications of juries, constituting a condition of fundamental conflict (CC1) between administrators and artist advocates, which remains open on whether (or not) to resolve into the construction of conflictual consensus (CC3). CC3: conflictual consensus The scenario of conflictual consensus (CC3) addresses how policy outcomes can be realized in concrete collaborations among heterogeneous policy stakeholders without sustaining consensus on an ideological level. Turning antagonistic into agonistic governance relations with the objective to unlock institutional or policy-related change, conflictual consensus crystallizes a mode of informal governing that creates and interrelates legitimations between state and non-state governance stakeholders. Regarding the different layers of collaboration and conflict, a cultural administrator observes (October 28, 2015): There will always be a level where we must work together to achieve something. And then, there will always be levels where we cannot work with each other anymore. And it is just incredibly important to get along on that first level together, and in the stage where conflicts arise, to not mutually mangle each other (…) You must know exactly when to argue with one another, and you must know exactly when to stand united. The statement captures both the need to ‘get things done’ and the acknowledgement of irreconcilable antagonism emblematic of the rationale of agonistic governance. Accordingly, the strategic unity between the cultural administration and the Koalition would culminate in the creation of a temporary, agonistic ‘we’, when necessary. However, the administrator’s plea for the ‘exact’ determination of when to fight and when to stand united

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 175 is difficult to sustain, since the degrees of conflictuality between meta and operational levels are always fluent and themselves controversially perceived. Illustrative of meta conflicts inherent in the City Tax issue, another cultural administrator openly states that some of the Koalition’s demands were never intended to be included in the cultural budget because they did not correspond with the administration’s plans (October 20, 2015). This is reminiscent of the above-mentioned exclusive decision-making right of the administration and its power to foreclose points of contention when they see fit. In addition to some issues, which vanish from political debate because they are unwanted, the cultural administration also gives advice to the Koalition regarding how to leverage room for strategic collaborations. Knoch recalls an instance where civil servants suggested that the artist activists should ‘stage’ public outrage while maintaining internal conversations with the cultural administration (February 2, 2016): The concept of a balcony speech, that was something completely new to me. That one potentially must talk to those people [the Senatskanzlei], but technically that one also has one’s own people as addressees of the speech. So, that maybe, you must articulate yourself as the great revolutionary (…) “I [the Koalition] need to hit it hard now, guys, we can continue talking to each other, but I need this for myself.” So, these kinds of deals, I don’t know if one should call it cynicism, but, in any case, the cleverness apparently also exists on the other side [the Senatskanzlei]. The ‘advice’ to maintain contact with the cultural administration despite having officially stated conflict or rupture relates with the administration’s concern to avoid public and/or definite disagreements with the Koalition, which could delegitimize current as well as previous collaborations or policy results that were collaboratively realized with the Koalition. However, as the cultural administration is significantly less vulnerable in the governance relationship than the self-organized artist coalition, a public breach would primarily cause political damage for the independent scene and would reflect less badly on the cultural administration (Senatskanzlei, October 28, 2015). To conclude, the temporary construction of an agonistic ‘we’ between the cultural administration and civil stakeholders such as the Koalition appears desirable in policy contexts where collaborative efforts need to be justified, and potentially defended vis-à-vis other governance parties (e.g., parliament). With the ongoing possibility of re- or de-antagonization of collaborative relations, frustration can be decreased if there is openness and acceptance of divergences (i.e., meta conflict) and a will to advance concrete political measures (i.e., operational consensus). Ultimately, the consideration of differential political objectives and claims as legitimate yet not fully agreeable positions lays the groundwork for the realization of agonistic policy-making.

176 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing Materializing conflictual consensus (CC3): CityTax2015 The informal governance exercise of distributing incremental City Tax income from 2014 exemplarily unfolds how conflicting and partially contradictory expectations, hopes and ideas were negotiated into an agonistic policy outcome. The Arbeits- und Recherchestipendien (Working and Research Grants; ARS), allocating 1.38 million euros in over 140 individual artist grants, serves as a concrete indicator of conflictual consensus (CC3). The City Tax has been described as a fleeting or insecure source of funding, because it is dependent on politicians’ changing policy preferences and fluctuating funding priorities or might diminish in a case of decreasing tourism in Berlin. While the latter scenario is viewed as not very likely, the City Tax is relatively less stable than budgetary items. The latter are not very prone to cuts, and thus provide more planning stability and more continuity (except in times of severe austerity when budgets are generally cut). Accordingly, the introduction of more budgetary items for independent cultural production would grant more planning stability for the independent scene (Senatskanzlei, October 20, 2015). Notwithstanding the slippery status of the City Tax, the Koalition assumes that the tax can leverage substantial changes for the independent scene, but also presses that these improvements should not remain merely cosmetic (January 21, 2015). As a window of hope, the City Tax reveals itself as a clearly communicable request in public discourse. However, the City Tax cannot alleviate all the problems of the independent scene’s underfunding. In sum, the tax is viewed as a ‘politically opportune means’ to attract attention from the public and politicians, who might otherwise not be too interested in or concerned with culture (Koalition, June 17, 2015): To be honest, everybody gets the thing with the City Tax. When you say, “We want an increase of the cultural budget!” everybody screams, “There is no money!” But when you say, “But look, there is the City Tax funds!” then everybody is going to say, “Oh yeah, that’s right. That can be used for culture.” Using the psychological leverage effect of the ‘fresh money’ discourse to enter the political debate, the Koalition increasingly moved beyond claiming the City Tax income toward placing claims via requests for budgetary changes. Despite its attention-catching function, the City Tax could not replace other legitimate requests that should be implemented in budget choices (ibid.). Hence, Koalition speakers emphasized that budget changes and additional monies flowing in from the City Tax were two separate objects of political negotiation, and thus needed to be treated separately. The unique distribution of City Tax funds was not to terminate governance arrangements but considered as a starting point or ‘way in’ toward a more regular consultation in policy-making processes. Amidst the entangled expectations and opportunities for change, the CityTax2015 distribution constitutes a temporally and financially limited opportunity to probe new

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 177 modes of collaboration among a(nta)gonistic policy stakeholders under pressure to produce an immediate, material policy outcome in a short period of time. Co-producing an agonistic policy outcome Before the City Tax income was ‘defrozen’ in the summer of 2015, the Koalition released the Sofortprogramm (Immediate Program) on December 27, 2014, as a ready-made funding scheme proposal in case the City Tax was eventually available for distribution on short notice (Koalition der Freien Szene 2014). The program displayed the most urgent funding priorities as an extract of the Zehn-Punkte-Plan (Ten-Point Plan; ZPP). Benefitting from the latter’s versatility, the Koalition concretely and tangibly restated its demands. With a strong emphasis on individual grants (i.e., 1 million euros for visual arts grants or Zeitstipendien, 1 million euros for artist fees in performing arts, 100,000 euros to double existing dance scholarships, 20,000 euros for jazz grants and touring support, 180,000 euros to double writers’ and authors’ grants, 420,000 euros to triple the existing project space prize money), it also requested the setting up of office structures for LAFT and the literary scene (each 40,000 euros) and increases to project funding for new music and literature (320,000 and 180,000 euros). Notably, the Sofortprogramm formulated neither overarching funding requests to support the Koalition as an organization, nor requests to foster transdisciplinary production (only a Fund for Artistic Research was requested (50,000 euros)). Rather, it reproduced a logic of particularity by aggregating standing genre-specific funding positions. The first proposal from the cultural administration regarding how to spend the City Tax income was referred to as Expressverfahren (Express Procedure). In early 2015, the Senatskanzlei-initiated concept was introduced to the Koalition in a non-public meeting suggesting allocating 880,000 euros into individual artist grants, doubling the project space prize money with an additional 210,000 euros, and the realization of an ‘urban development project’ with a budget of 240,000 euros. This project was planned by cultural administrators to create public attention and visibility for the politicized topic of scarce space for artistic production and presentation (July 16, 2015). A city-owned, urban wasteland or empty building was to be revitalized with this one-off ‘independent scene festival’ organized by independent cultural actors themselves before the end of 2015. However, the festival idea was perceived by the Koalition as a paternalistic and forced attempt to perform within impossible temporal and monetary parameters. Imitating administrators’ expectations, spokespeople felt that the independent scene was pushed to present itself and show to the public how great they are (…) I was pretty allergic against it because it looked like “Yeah, the nice uncle is going to give you money now, and now show us what you can do!” rather than taking us seriously with our work. (March 24, 2015)

178 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing Besides the discontent about the pressure to perform, the coalition voiced skepticism about awakening a ‘sleeping giant’ with the ‘urban development project’ or festival (June 17, 2015). Pitting itself against tokenization of Berlin’s cultural scenes, the Koalition did not see its responsibility (or capacity) as showcasing the independent scene’s artistic variety (ibid.): ‘You [the Koalition] could never do something like that as Koalition, we are no cultural hosts, we are no cultural producers, we do not work on the notion of art itself or with art, we do cultural politics.’ Perhaps unknowingly, this statement defeats the claim that the Koalition is driven by practicing artists (‘we are no cultural producers’) and subtly foregrounds the group’s lobbying purpose. The differences between the Koalition and the cultural administration – the former wanting long-term and individualized funding support for as many artists as possible, the latter exposing short-term and marketable funding ideas – could easily have resulted in a fundamental conflict (CC1). Yet, when the Koalition unanimously rejected the ‘urban development project’ and suggested redirecting the funds toward more work and production grants, the cultural administration, partially to the Koalition’s own surprise, accepted the modification proposal and assigned the available funds to the individual grant scheme. Far from a spineless concession, administrators also acknowledged that the timeframe and resources for a festival would not have been realistic and sufficient to organize the event with the necessary care and preparation (July 16, 2015). Reminiscent of negative experiences, giving an ‘aftertaste’ of the K2 summit, the festival might have been ‘too risky’ or ‘too tricky’ for the independent scene to operate on unknown terrain with insufficient resources (ibid.). Moreover, reinforcing the administration’s solidarity about the disappointment over the ‘City Tax Lie’, cultural administrators found that the City Tax funds should be used to serve the independent scene. Hence, despite initial divergences about item-specific allocations, which might in themselves be reflective of deeper-seated antagonisms, the ‘sleeping giant’ in the shape of an independent scene festival remained dormant and morphed into a preliminary operational consensus during the design process of the grant scheme. But the harmony did not last long. Once the priority on working and research grants was collaboratively agreed, a hitherto undebated issue newly inflamed conflict between the Senatskanzlei and the Koalition. While the initial distribution scheme was collectively arranged in April 2015, the cultural administration’s proposition to include grants for curators – who notably do not have any lobby or collectivized voice in Berlin or the Koalition to date – sparked another struggle. While the administration justified the need for curator grants with the goal of addressing the funding gap of artistic research, bbk was not pleased to see the number of visual arts grants divided (July 16, 2015). While a differentiation between visual arts and curatorial grants was plausible, the proposal was primarily perceived as a material loss for the immediate constituency of practicing visual artists. Demonstrating the tension between particularist zero-sum thinking and a more encompassing logic,

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 179 which would have transcended the epistemology of absolute gains or losses for a specific artist population, the focus on the benefits achieved for the entirety of ‘the independent scene’ was difficult to establish. Some Koalition speakers became annoyed to the point that they wished that the cultural administration would have told them that it was too late for changes (June 17, 2015). Cultural administrators also were dissatisfied with the constant, unpredictable requests for changes from parts of the Koalition (October 28, 2015): Technically, we [the Senatskanzlei] had written down these funding criteria on a page or one and a half, we have tried to discuss this, but it is just completely different systems. That means the Koalition wasn’t even capable to introduce their changes within this system, or it was actually even more crazy: They [the Koalition] did that, they changed something, we followed, we kicked a lot of things out (…) After that they [the Koalition] still said, “We do not agree”, and when asked why, they said, “Yeah, because in general, we do not agree with the system that way.” And that is a problem. Yeah, because it is simply different approaches. The ‘simply different approaches’ point to the irrefutable conflict or principal meta divergences between the administration and the Koalition’s conflictual collectivity. Even though a temporary solution could be struck in the operational realm, lack of understanding about different mindsets persists on both sides. Notably, the Koalition’s alleged incapacity to ‘act within the given system’ not only positions the Senatskanzlei infrastructure as the hegemonic system by which to abide, but also dismisses the group’s non-correspondence as failure within that very system. Another cultural administrator voices frustration about the sudden withdrawal of support (November 2, 2015): I talked about that with them [the Koalition] over and over again, and we were all at a point where we said, “It should be like that”, and now they blow me off in front of everybody as if this had never been discussed with them. Despite the assumedly shared definition of the problem and the continuous exchange throughout the design process of the grant scheme, the denouncement of the almost agreed solution reveals the latter as more controversial than imagined. Nonetheless, the agonistically disputed, precarious conflictual consensus (CC3) of CityTax2015, in sum, succeeded to detour the particularistic interests and antagonistic rebellions of some genre-specific associations, which evoked the danger of tilting back into fundamental conflict (CC1) in the intermediary solution of working and research grants. Table 5.2 provides an overview on the issued grants as announced in July 2015. Due to the parallel negotiation of the Cultural Budget 2016/17, some of the Koalition’s claims were not attended to via the artist grants, but instead integrated into the budget (e.g., structural funding for Lettrétage), while

180 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing Table 5.2 Agonistic policy outcome: Arbeits- und Recherchestipendien 2015 Artistic genre

Number of grants

Number of Amount applicants per grant (euros)

Total Amount (euros)

Distribution mechanism

Visual arts

43 (min. 34, max. 9 for curators) 2015: 38 artists, 5 curators 7

1,327

8,000

344,000

new peerreviewed jury

n/a

30,000

210,000

min. 35 2015: 42 min. 12 2015: 15 31

473

4,000–8,000

284,000

existing peerreviewed jury existing jury

106

4,000–8,000

96,000

existing jury

285

8,000

248,000

Serious music and sound art

19

188

8,000

152,000

new peerreviewed jury new peerreviewed jury

Total grants

minimum 140 2,379

max 8,000

1,334,000

Project spaces

Performing arts Jazz Literature

Source: replicated from Landau (2017, p. 80)

others were left unattended to in both the City Tax grants and the budget. To sum up, CityTax2015 constituted a unique temporally, materially and organizationally restricted moment of conflictual collaboration between the Koalition and the cultural administration. Driven by a collective aspiration to construct a policy outcome (which was yet approached differently), all stakeholders showed openness to engage in agonistic exchange to ultimately produce a conflictual consensus (CC3). On the brink of re-antagonization Two moments of temporary re-antagonization between the Koalition and the cultural administration showcase the precarity of conflictual consensus. While the threatened cancellation of political conversations in November 2015 did not collapse from conflictual consensus (CC3) into fundamental conflict (CC1), the Koalition’s rejection of participating in the Zielwerkstatt on the (selective) invitation of the Senate for Culture and Europe in April 2018 manifests an actual regression from CC3 into CC1. These two temporary instances either threatened to cancel or matter-of-factly cancelled conversations among the agonistic policy stakeholders. Moreover, they exemplify the

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 181 group’s changing position of power (and potentially, its own awareness thereof) within Berlin’s cultural governance arrangement. A semi-public Facebook post The Koalition’s position as central interlocutor and ‘representative’ of the independent scene took a decisive turn in a plenum session held on November 11, 2015. Koalition speakers laid out the option to potentially interrupt the budgetary conversations with the cultural administration because the latter was not advancing the Koalition’s proposals about the City Tax Fund from 2016 onwards as the Sprecher*innenkreis (SK) saw fit.6 Wanting to gather opinions of the 40 to 50 plenum attendees, a Koalition speaker recalls Knoch’s management of the situation as ‘open’ and ‘transparent’, repeating his speech (December 14, 2015): ‘Tell us what we [the SK] should do. These are the situations, there aren’t any big secrets behind it, instead we can say now – and you [the plenum] decide – we [the SK] cancel.’ Knoch summarizes the lingering atmosphere between either giving up everything or ‘rescuing’ imperfect material achievements (February 2, 2016): When we [the SK] asked the question whether we could cancel the talks or not, there were different responses. There was a general agreement like: “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work! One doesn’t have to fully bend over” (…) Should we let it burst with the risk that we do not achieve anything for our people or should we go on and on and on? And I think the general result was: “No, no, make a clear statement, it has to be that way! But when you make a point, you have to make it loud and clear!” While Knoch condenses the plenum’s diverging views into a general affirmation to cancel the conversations if necessary, the plenum’s articulate request was to make the rupture ‘loud and clear’. When looking at the actual cancellation of the conversations, which took place in a rather quiet and nontransparent manner, the loose bond of accountability and liability between plenum ‘decisions’ and the SK’s approach becomes apparent. Illustrative of the non-binding relationship, the latter interpreted the plenum’s verdict as a consultative rather than an actual instruction to carry out this request. Stating that the SK ‘let it be confirmed by the plenum that we could cancel the talks,’ Knoch positions the plenum as an ex post affirmative factor in a choice which had already been quasi-decided by the SK (ibid.). On the day after the plenum, a meeting between cultural politicians and representatives from cultural administration as well as selected members of the Koalition took place to discuss the controversial proposal for the City Tax Fund. The discussion was no longer focused on concrete funding modalities but revealed a shift from operational to more political and strategic concerns. After the disillusioning meeting, Knoch, who managed most

182 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing of the Koalition’s online communication at the time, posted a message about the interruption of talks in the ‘semi-public realm’ of the Koalition Facebook group. The post notified those affiliates who had a Facebook account (while notably excluding those supporters and speakers who did not have access to Facebook) about the ‘regrettable, but unavoidable’ interruption that would go public ‘if nothing unpredictable happens’ (Koalition der Freien Szene 2015): We [the Koalition] do not consider it our task to provide our blueprint of a funding model in return for marginal adjustments that we cannot support in their entirety in the current state. Because of this, we currently do not see a purpose in further conversations about the allocation of the City Tax funds. We ask you [politicians and administrators] to refrain from publicly presenting the mentioned program, or parts of the draft of the cultural budget, as ‘discussed’ with the Koalition der Freien Szene. The first striking aspect is the Koalition’s revocation of its self-assumed responsibility to engage in negotiations with the cultural administration, defining its task based on what the latter is not. Presenting itself as a selfdetermined and -confident actor that cancels negotiations in case its expertise is not valued (enough), the potential loss of legitimacy for the Koalition as a collective representation and the consequences for its future scope of influence and action are not further spelled out. Second, by stating that it could not support the draft for the City Tax Fund ‘in its entirety’, the Facebook post ignores the necessarily contested nature of the City Tax Fund and brushes over the inevitable meta conflict in any kind of agonistic governance issue. As a result, it implicitly resorts to an antagonistic allor-nothing conception of conflict or consensus. Notably, while an imperfect conflictual consensus (CC3) could be established in the context of CityTax2015, which also did not fulfill all Koalition demands ‘in their entirety’ (e.g., controversy about curatorial grants, funding requests that were ignored), the City Tax Fund is assessed as providing only ‘marginal adjustments’, and thus disqualified as conflictual consensus (CC3). Third, the protection of the Koalition’s name, encapsulating its REPRESENT claim, is used in threatening to withdraw Renner’s mandate as ‘advocate of the independent scene’, which was never formally attributed. Beyond the incalculable material losses for the Koalition, the cancellation of conversations would also have caused political or reputational damage for cultural administration and parliamentarians. This potential fundamental failure was assessed by a Koalition speaker as (January 7, 2016) ‘too stupid’ bearing in mind that ‘one is not very far from reaching a common goal, and that it is only worth something, for the administration and the independent scene, if we sit down together again.’ While the ‘common goal’ would necessarily remain contested, the looming absolute rupture was also to be avoided.

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 183 After the post, online comments and reactions from Facebook group members mostly affirmed that the Koalition had ‘rightfully’ threatened to cancel the talks. The discrepancy between the plenum’s request to make a ‘loud and clear’ rupture and the actual ‘semi-public’, not-so-loud communication did not ignite public critique or outrage. Interestingly, information about the threat to cancel the conversations was communicated to the cultural administration via email prior to the publication of the Facebook post, further illustrating a relative rather than absolute (i.e., ‘loud and clear’) rupture. This procedure is reminiscent of the cultural administration’s plea and advice to the Koalition to warn them and maintain conversational threads instead of ‘just dropping a bomb completely unprepared, where everybody does not know what it means (…) That destroys a relationship of trust and cooperation’ (Koalition, June 17, 2015). Similarly, Knoch stated his personal dislike of absolute ruptures and reemphasized the Koalition’s role of entertaining conversations with administrators and policy-makers against the odds (February 2, 2016). In a nutshell, the semi-public Facebook announcement represents a suspending disruption of agonistic governance relations without wholly overthrowing the already established communicative and interactional ties. In this instance, the Koalition interpreted the position to REPRESENT the independent scene by using its ‘mandate’ to NOT REPRESENT, or not negotiate further. Despite the consultation of the plenum, the actual stance taken by the SK disregarded the clear instruction given by the plenum. The problematic implications of the representational gap between plenum and SK aside, with regard to the actual policy outcome, the Koalition’s selfempowerment led to a renewed approximation among the governance stakeholders and struck conflictual consensus after all. More precisely, shortly after the Facebook post, text message and email exchanges between Koalition speakers, SPD politicians and Senatskanzlei employees resolved the lingering dissonance about the City Tax Fund. Witnessing a phone call between parliamentarians and leading administrators that clarified the solution of the City Tax Fund impasse, Knoch was ‘grinning a little because I thought, “OK, so the wires are working, the strings have been pulled right, that is like a billiard ball – it first hits here, and then there, and then you sink it”’ (ibid.). Within this laboriously curated partial success, the City Tax Fund still contained policies the Koalition did not completely agree with, illustrative of conflictual consensus (CC3). In summary, the temporarily re-antagonized relations reveal at least two important aspects with regard to the Koalition’s positionality as a legitimacyseeking policy stakeholder. First, the group used a ‘threatening scenario’ to test its assumedly irreplaceable status as representative and legitimate sparring partner vis-à-vis the cultural administration. Looking at the conflictual policy outcome of the City Tax Fund, the Koalition consciously leveraged its weight as cultural political player to the extent that politicians and administrators would shift their previous course of action. While the cultural administration

184 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing argumentatively ‘dug out’ the importance of other cultural stakeholders such as the Rat to diminish the bargaining power of the Koalition, the latter’s unique position could not lastingly be relativized or replaced. Put differently, the Senatskanzlei did not revoke the Koalition’s (precarious and nonrepresentative) legitimacy as main sparring partner about the City Tax Fund to the extent that the coalition was conclusively excluded from the debate. At last, the sudden yet impermanent interruption between the Koalition and governmental stakeholders might have even strengthened the Koalition’s position as representative ‘relative universal’ of the independent scene in the conflictual governance arena because it did pressurize its way back into co-determining the parameters of the City Tax Fund. The Zielwerkstatt – an invitation that closed doors Another delicate instance in the agonistic relations between the new Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa and the Koalition was the planned Zielwerkstatt in the spring of 2018. Significantly after the co-design process of conflictual consensus in the context of CityTax2015, the cultural administration invited the Koalition (including newly founded Koalition working groups such as Digital Arts and Urban Art) as well as the Rat and other cultural political protagonists to a two-day workshop (which would have compensated freelance artists with 150 euros because they would be kept from working on their artistic projects). In addition, cultural political stakeholders such as elected cultural politicians, policy-makers from the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa who administer institutional cultural funding mechanisms, representatives from diversity-oriented arts organizations, jury members and academics as well as representatives from larger cultural institutions were invited to ensure a wide array of participants. The workshop was pre-structured into four themes (i.e., ‘art’, ‘artists’, ‘the city’ and ‘(non-)audience’), out of which I was asked to moderate the third space of discussion to potentially deal with the implications of urban development on the independent art scene. The generally proclaimed purpose imagined by the Senatsverwaltung was to stimulate debate about the ‘contemporary justification of cultural policy’ which was considered to have ‘great relevance for the design of further processes of communication, in which positions of intersection, differences and consensus (should) become visible’ (Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa 2018b). Shortly after the invitation was sent out to the collectivities of the Koalition and the Rat rather than individual genre-specific associations, discontent about the selective politics of invitation emerged. Criticism about the planned event ranged from the condition set by the Senatsverwaltung to nominate only one speaker from artistic genres to participate in the workshop (which factually excluded other speakers who represent their associations via a two-tiered Koalition speaker model), as well as content-related critiques about the choice and priority of workshop themes (Koalition der Freien Szene 2018). Most

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 185 extensively, the Koalition criticized the fact that artist associations, who also ‘delegate’ representatives to the SK, were not invited separately. This strikes one as somewhat surprising with regard to the REPRESENT claim, which would position the Koalition as prime interlocutor and addressee for overarching themes such as funding goals and objectives. More precisely, while the Senatsverwaltung addressed the Koalition as the supposed ‘relative universal’ of the independent scene (which would be capable of ‘speaking for’ the scene in discussing cultural funding objectives), the Koalition deconstructed this very representative mandate by relegating the responsibility to engage in this debate to individual associations. On March 23, 2018, a Jour Fixe meeting was hosted by the Senatsverwaltung to discuss the status quo of the planned Zielwerkstatt with representatives from both the Koalition and Rat to underscore its open and dialogic form. Responsive to the Koalition’s critique that associations had been left out, the Senatsverwaltung adjusted the scope of its invitation on March 26, 2018, one day before the plenum, now also inviting input from genre-specific associations. Despite the Senatsverwaltung’s willingness to change the parameters of the planned event, in the Koalition plenum on March 27, 2018, members of the SK remained dissatisfied. They elaborated that the Zielwerkstatt disregarded a proposal they had made in the name of the Koalition on how to evaluate and adjust the funding system in November 2017. Notably, this proposal had not been officially presented or discussed in a plenum prior to its submission to the cultural administration, raising the issue of the self-authorized and loosely defined communicative bonds between the SK and the plenum. Beyond informing plenum participants about the non-consideration of the proposal from November 2017 (which remained a vague reference to non-SK plenum attendees because it was unclear what the proposal entailed, and exactly which parts had been disregarded by the cultural administration), a comparatively vivid plenum debate about whether (or not) to reject the now-extended invitation was ignited. As an unanimous vote or Koalition position could not be definitively leveraged in the plenum (as speakers for genre-specific associations needed to consult with their membership, referring to their BOUND legitimation, and hence could not speak for their respective associations in situ), the atmosphere at the plenum left the general impression that the Zielwerkstatt would not provide an open space to discuss overarching (meta-level) funding goals and objectives in dialogue with the Senatsverwaltung. This time, the Senatsverwaltung did not apply a ‘detour strategy’ to ‘dig out’ the Rat as a sparring partner opposed to the Koalition, because it was already invited. As the Rat did not criticize or reject the parameters of the workshop as vehemently as the Koalition, the former could not overwrite or outweigh the non-participation of the latter. While genre-specific associations could have participated in the meeting without requesting to recognize or referring to their ‘membership’ in the Koalition, in the end, there was a collective agreement among speakers to decline the invitation. On April 3, 2018, the Koalition released an official reply letter, stating that it

186 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing partially dismissed the ongoing process of evaluating and revising funding programs to create a Födermatrix, in which the Zielwerkstatt would have functioned as a kick-off meeting, and heavily criticized the (perceived) lack of transparency and non-participatory nature of the planned workshop (Koalition der Freien Szene 2018). Without completely cancelling the dialogue, the Koalition made it conditional to resume conversation about its self-designed proposal (ibid.). In comparison to the Facebook ‘incident’, this episode demonstrates the always-existing possibility for conflictual consensus (CC3) to implode into political deadlock of fundamental conflicts (CC1). Without the externally ascribed parameters and pressures, which might have accelerated the realization of CityTax2015, the Zielwerkstatt might have been rejected due to the personnel shifts in the administration (i.e., the new Senator for Culture Dr. Lederer, as well as a new State Secretary, Dr. Wöhlert) and the concurrent changing dynamics to leverage and negotiate. Moreover, the contested subject matter of the workshop (i.e., the meta issue of funding goals/priorities), which had long been shielded in the agonistic relations (see below), might have elicited caution regarding engaging in the planned event. As the Koalition has primarily become knowledgeable and experienced in bargaining for concrete/ operational concerns, the definition or fight for its own understanding of overarching/meta funding goals might have constituted (too great) a challenge. With regard to the Conflictual Consensus Matrix II, both excursuses have unpacked the permeability and contestability of agonistic governance relations. In the first instance, the ‘threatening scenario’ leveraged by the Koalition prevented the tipping from CC3 to CC1 and indirectly reinforced the power of the Koalition in the overall governance setting. The second example showcases the actual split and temporary suspension of agonistic relations. It remains to be seen if and how the path (back) into realms of conflictual consensus (CC3) will be trod by the Koalition. CC4: fundamental consensus The scenario of both meta and operational consensus, conceptualized as fundamental consensus (CC4), might resemble an ‘ideal speech situation’ where fully transparent and identical consensus could be achieved (Habermas 1984). In an agonistic understanding of governance, this scenario remains, however, ontologically and empirically constricted. Nonetheless, references to ‘absolute agreement’ or ‘consensus’ occur via mutual or double negation. When both cultural administrators and Koalition speakers state that there is agreement about ‘shared disagreement’ or the ‘common rejection’ of positions, consensus could be deduced from mutual dissent. For example, a cultural administrator remembers that all policy stakeholders agreed that the administration should not single-handedly distribute the City Tax funds, yet the introduced transdisciplinary jury elicited new forms of conflicts about the purpose and composition of the jury (i.e., invoking the impossibility of

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 187 meta consensus). Meta consensus was also imagined by a Koalition speaker (January 28, 2015) if funding procedures were not only secured and better organized (i.e., operational consensus), but more importantly, that artists were ‘not only being funded, but also for the right reasons’ (i.e., meta consensus). This appeal to consensus or the ‘right reasons’ to fund is equally difficult to substantiate due to the differential notions of art and resulting priorities for funding. Consequently, while double negations might allow one to synthesize meta consensus on a conceptual level, in real political debate, agreement about disagreements still contains disagreements, so that no ‘pure’ or fundamental consensus can be detected. Conclusions: put meta conflict aside! Let’s ‘just’ get to work? Regarding a long-term cultural political agenda, a cultural development plan or other strategic documents commonly circulating in ‘creative’ cities, Senatskanzlei employees state that they have (October 28, 2015) ‘a relatively strong tradition of finding these plans really silly.’ The dismissive attitude to engaging with longer-term or meta-level concerns over Berlin’s cultural political future becomes apparent in the focus on short-term measures. Administrators find that long-term strategies can never reflect the quickly-changing ramifications of Berlin’s cultural scenes, so that ‘big picture’ discussions are ultimately rationalized as inhibitors to concrete action (October 28, 2015). In contrast, Koalition representatives find that short- and long-term measures and discussions should be combined and are not mutually exclusive (September 7, 2015). In this vein, complementarity of immediate and structural transformations could comprehensively address the funding condition of the independent scene and be pursued via both new and existing funding instruments, depending on respective temporal, disciplinary, political and budgetary contexts. While administrators express both ideological and practical concerns about the productiveness of a long-term strategy or a debate about the future of Berlin’s cultural funding landscape, the recent attempt of the Zielwerkstatt, which aimed to discuss funding goals and priorities, is emblematic of the necessity to discuss meta goals. Notably, the workshop, which intended to address the longer-term direction of cultural funding, was initialized by ‘the cultural administration’ as a seemingly disembodied institution, so that individual reservations voiced by administrators might reveal the overall internally contested nature of the project. However, administrators themselves have also criticized the fact that, in the past, incremental adjustments of funding instruments (i.e., operational issues) prevailed while more conceptual discussions (i.e., meta issues) were pushed to the background (November 2, 2015). Hence, the general discussion to be stimulated by the Zielwerkstatt might have also met administrators’ appreciation. Regarding the fact that the Zielwerkstatt has been annulled, it remains unclear when, how and by whom (and by how many) the concerted effort to discuss meta cultural political concerns will be resumed.

188 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing In the wider discussion about conflictually collaborative governance arrangements, it becomes apparent that despite the irreconcilability of meta concerns, discussions about those very goals and values are neither redundant nor replaceable (e.g., aggregation of operational consensus does not equal meta agreement). While ideological concerns can be temporarily disentangled or endured to construct conflictual consensus (CC3), ultimately, even an actionist or purely operational approach to cultural governance cannot be independent of underlying normative understandings of the socio-political value and meaning of art. In other words, meta-level concerns will sooner or later trickle into operational policy-making and reveal the ‘ethical bias’ of policies (Cooke 1997). Moreover, institutional procedures are interdependent with normative and discursive frames, making problem definition and problem-solving ambiguously interrelated (Head and Alford 2014). Agents’ cultural political practices thus influence ‘cultures of governance’ (Coaffee and Healey 2003). Even though short-term measures might be justifiable and adequate in quickly-changing governance contexts, the ongoing non-thematization of meta concerns complicates (if not paralyzes) the realization of policies or measures as part of conflictual consensus (CC3). Put briefly, a neglect of meta-level questions might hamper the ‘effective’ implementation of operational measures, leading to fundamental conflict rather than conflictual consensus. Hence, grander policy goals and rationales cannot be bracketed or ignored because, in the last instance, agonistic governance encounters, rid of their conflictual force, might ultimately depoliticize governance. By highlighting that there is always an alternative (fervently discarding Thatcher’s ‘there is no alternative’ paradigm), agonistic governance sets out to foster conflictual collaboration regarding both concrete/operational and conceptual/meta concerns. Questioning the status quo of any governance stakeholder spans open the productive dimension of agonistic debate and thus opens opportunities to leverage conflictual consensus (CC3). In sum, acknowledging the interrelatedness of goals and measures, as well as that of conflict and consensus, unclogs notions of ‘universal consensus’ or ‘neutrality’, which would reduce policy-making to a technocratic affair without alternatives. Just as the formulation of political objectives or priorities is a political decision, the choice of tools to enact policy (e.g., rhetoric, times and places to voice critique, design collaboration or not) is equally political. The Conflictual Consensus Matrix II as an analytical explanatory grid structures the conditions of both possibility and impossibility to concretely work on conflictual politics. It assesses why some policy ideas, proposals or requests turn into concrete policy results, while others remain untouched or disregarded. Regarding what Pløger (2004, p. 81) describes as the ‘ever-latent conflict and tension between government policies and governance practices’, the matrix serves as a tool to locate and identify negotiable and nonnegotiable levels of conflict inherent in collaborative encounters. In other words, the transitory disaggregation of the interdependent axes of meta and

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 189 operational concerns may transform the latency of conflict into deciphering manifestations of agonistic conflicts in urban policy-making and planning (Bäcklund and Mäntysalo 2010). Beyond the field of cultural policy, the Conflictual Consensus Matrix II not only draws attention to intertwined levels of conflict, but might also provide a device to transform policies, politics and the political despite conflict. And the trouble with art is?! After teasing out both meta and operational divergences between the Koalition and the cultural administration, the above-introduced question ‘What kind of art does the Koalition stand for?’ remains unanswered. Notwithstanding the irresolvability of meta-level controversy about the notion and purpose of art, cultural governance cannot move forward without any engagement with these underlying normative antagonisms. Conceptions of art will necessarily influence procedural negotiations of conflict and consensus. In short, no funding instrument is detached from an understanding of art, but is always implicitly or explicitly imbricated in an assumed purpose of art (Lee and Lingo 2011). While the Koalition may distinctly compose concrete demands, the group’s own comprehension of art/artistic practice remains little-specified. Even though ‘transdisciplinary’ is among the most frequently used terms to describe the collectivity, how to translate the framework of transdisciplinarity into funding and jury processes is seldomly clarified. Moreover, and problematically, the imprecise definition of transdisciplinarity (willingly or not) might impede multi-stakeholder policy collaboration. If interlocutors cannot articulate what art means to them, or should or could do, this vagueness will be reflected in funding and policy claims and outcomes. For example, if transdisciplinarity is not valued and anchored in the consciousness of the cultural administration, transdisciplinary funding programs will lack resources or remain non-existent. The Koalition’s singular advance to develop transdisciplinary funding instruments (i.e., the Fund for Artistic Research) as specified in the ZPP is outnumbered by most other funding requests, which address existing genre-specific funding frameworks. While the Koalition’s self-definition states that it is not a ‘space to discuss art in the narrow sense’ (January 21, 2015), the group cannot absolve itself from a debate about what notion of art it REPRESENTS. Notwithstanding the parallel activity of a Haben und Brauchen (H&B) working group, which sporadically discusses a notion of contemporary (transdisciplinary) art, this tacit ‘division of labor’ relegating the conceptual task to H&B, in this case, does not work. The H&B working group cannot compensate for or ‘lend’ its discourse about art to the Koalition. This is a field no other group can till. To this point, it seems that the Koalition operates in the face of an absence of its constitutive definition of art. While this absence undergirds, once again, the ‘negative’ representation of the Koalition, the contingent and strategic

190 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing ‘filling’ of definitional voids needs to be enacted nonetheless. If the Koalition’s uniqueness lies in the oscillation between requesting and shying away from a specific notion of transdisciplinary art (because the latter could ossify what ‘art’ means), maybe this definition can equally only be approached via the absence of concrete criteria to define itself. In other words, understanding transdisciplinary art as grounded in its own absence and impossibility might unlock a potentially post-foundational notion of art. However, this advancement, which could unfold weight in political debates, to this point is not foregrounded in the Koalition’s articulation. An explicitly ‘negative’ definition of transdisciplinary art is not put forward in the Koalition’s requests. Instead, parts of the group tacitly morph into relying on socially conventional conceptions of ‘autonomous’ art. In contrast, a negativity-based notion of transdisciplinary art, taking its own definition as a fragmentary placeholder of an absence, could make its way into future policy-making. Moreover, it might correspond with the cultural administration’s own uneasiness to pinpoint funding goals or objectives, which are based on (more or less explicit) understandings of art. For the overall collaborative governance arrangement, a radically open, agonistic dialogue about the impossibility of defining art altogether might provide grounds to accept meta conflict or create conditions to attempt that impossible definition together. Instead of curtailing the undeniably undecidable status of (transdisciplinary) art, this agonistic dialogue would at least move toward overcoming outdated notions of absolute artistic autonomy, which are in their own way restrictive.

Varieties of legitimacy Legitimacy is variously negotiated between the cultural administration and the Koalition. Interrelated with governance action, the disaggregation of different legitimatory dimensions throughout policy-making processes seeks to underline their mutual interrelatedness. Aiming at an operationalization or localization of different stages of legitimation in governance, Schmidt’s (2013) notion of ‘throughput legitimacy’ is activated to discuss agonistic policy- and consensus-making. Beyond actor-centered institutionalism, which focuses primarily on ‘input’ and ‘output’ legitimacy (Mayntz and Scharpf 1995; Scharpf 2002; Schuppert 2006), a throughput-oriented framework leaves (implicit) positivist assumptions behind and places emphasis on processes and dynamics instead of assessing predominantly ‘efficient’ policy outcomes. While input legitimacy revolves around citizens’ engagement in agenda-setting processes, output legitimacy is understood as a performance criterion that focuses on the ‘effectiveness’ of policies (Schmidt 2015a). In contrast, throughput legitimacy highlights the processual dimensions of decision-making and foregrounds the quality of policy processes, allowing us to look at ‘what goes on inside the “black box” of the political system, between the input and the output’ (Schmidt 2010a, p. 7).7 Hence, the focus on the procedural dimension

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 191 of governance not only assesses policies beyond questions of efficiency or efficacy (notably not necessarily instead of them!), but attends to actors’ own perceptions about the legitimacy, representativeness and adequacy of policies. While output legitimacy approaches consider democracy to have reached a limit when conflictuality persists despite seemingly ‘perfect solutions’ (Ströder 2016), my development of a throughput-oriented governance approach seeks to capture the ongoing imperfection of irresolvable conflicts. But throughput is not the panacea. Schmidt (2015b, p. 3) cautions against ‘bad throughput’ in the form of ‘oppressive, incompetent, corrupt, or biased governance practices’, acknowledging that the latter can theoretically delegitimize both government and governance activity (or, input and output legitimacy). Hence, while throughput legitimacy might facilitate ‘collective ownership’ in collaborative governance (Ansell and Gash 2007) or illustrate the ‘buy-in’ (Brand and Gaffikin 2016) of non-formalized stakeholders into governance arrangements, actors’ practices need to be carefully scrutinized. Since actor-centered institutionalism considers agents’ contextually bound attitudes and practices only relevant insofar ‘the institutional settings or rules of the game alone do not sufficiently explain behavior’ (Haus et al. 2005, p. 3), a throughput-sensitive approach, embedded in a discursive institutionalist framework, underscores concrete (discursive) interactions between artist and administrative agents not as secondary or subordinate to institutional settings. Rather, it attends precisely to the interactional exchanges that explain and transform institutional architectures within governance. As informal governing practices can enhance throughput legitimacy (Schmidt 2010b, p. 24), the example of CityTax2015, engaging the non-institutional(ized) actor the Koalition, serves to conceptualize the legitimacy-related transformations of conflictual collaborations in multi-stakeholder governance arrangements. Analyzing the legitimacy-building relations between the Koalition and the cultural administration along the lines of input, throughput and output generates insights about the Koalition’s self-legitimation via articulation and helps to situate legitimation within changing constellations and temporalities of recognition and legitimation. The synthesis of the different rationales and foci of legitimacies in collaborative policy-making concludes this chapter (Table 5.3). Input legitimacy As Woddis (2013, p. 499) remarks, artist stakeholders’ ‘participation’ often remains restricted to selective realms and stages of the policy-making process. To gain a more nuanced understanding of these partial participatory facets of legitimacy-making, the Koalition’s approach to include political claims for better funding conditions for independent cultural producers and policy propositions in the agenda-setting process is retraced. While new social movements, or non-state actors by and large, often initially act outside of the realm of ‘politics’/policy-making because they constitute themselves from and within the realm of ‘the political’, their articulation as policy stakeholders

192 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing can gradually transform wider political claims into policy proposals/requests that are intelligible for the political apparatus. Over the course of ongoing collaboration or institutionalization, the Koalition increasingly invested capacities and resources in the institutionalized realm of ‘politics’ to acquire legitimacy from official and democratically instituted policy-makers and administrators. This meets the cultural administration’s own rationale to include civic stakeholders during the agenda-setting stage (i.e., input). Since administrators and civil society interest groups are mutually interdependent (Peters 2010), the necessity of exchange of knowledge, other resources and legitimations at an early stage of policy-making comes to the fore. In the face of changing political responsibilities and role ascriptions, which both revitalize and challenge collaborative practices, interdependence is experienced by cultural administrators in various ways. While some newly employed administrators endorse stakeholder inclusion early on, others, who have worked at the Senatskanzlei for almost a decade, have had negative experiences with stakeholder dialogues with open agendas (e.g., the K2 summit). Regardless of length of employment, cultural administrators generally noticed a change of atmosphere or paradigm – and an increasing spirit of collaboration – upon Renner’s arrival in office in 2014. The temporally premature inclusion of artist actors such as the Koalition exemplifies a more substantial presence of stakeholders, opening gradual opportunities to enact qualitative changes regarding collaborative governance. According to a cultural administrator, the transformation, rung in by the self-instructed articulation of the Koalition, not only takes place on the work level of Jours Fixes and meetings, but also on the ‘political’ level of engaging with the State Secretary (and Senator), which might transform the overall administrative culture (October 20, 2015). Radiating into both the procedural/operational and the substantial/metalevel realm of the Senatskanzlei’s governance, the Koalition’s position and legitimacy is once again enhanced by the cultural administration based on the latter’s relatively universal position to REPRESENT the independence scene in overarching cultural political discussions. Hence, the Koalition’s involvement at the stage of agenda-setting is significantly expanded and facilitated via the change in the administrative culture that emerged around collaborative attempts such as the City Tax. The shifting approach to multi-stakeholder engagement relates to both personnel changes such as Renner’s arrival and the Koalition’s self-initiated and early addressing of cultural administrators and politicians to discuss how to use the newly introduced tax and how to support the independent scene via budgetary adjustments. Stating claims publicly and at the dawn of the City Tax debate, the ‘uninvited contribution’ of the Koalition might have increased the input legitimacy of the policy proposals (Woddis 2013, p. 497). In other words, the group’s initial status of not being invited to the governance debate about the City Tax changed into a partial and temporary invitation/acceptance at the governance table, facilitated by the

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 193 Senatskanzlei. Moreover, the group’s persistence in making its claims heard via ACT interrelated with the cultural administration’s STRATEGIC legitimation, which secured the partial consideration of the group’s proposals at an early stage of policy-making. Policy interactions at the input stage can have legitimizing and relegitimizing effects (Schmidt 2010a, p. 19). However, input legitimacy can also have delegitimizing effects, alienating non-formalized stakeholders further from the expression of their wills by democratic vote. Selective multistakeholder governance arrangements could be devaluing official democratic channels to push for their political claims (Ströder 2016). Thus, the inclusion of non-formalized, quasi-representative stakeholders could potentially reinforce the general crisis of legitimacy for institutionalized politics. This possibility constitutes a major theoretical and practical concern for (representative) democracy because the emergence of new and selfarticulated political actors could corroborate the democratic challenge of disengagement and alleged post-political disenchantment. In the exploration of novel ways to create legitimacy by non-formalized, self-initiated actors such as the Koalition, their actions, might contour a way not to neglect or detour democracy, but to strengthen it via agonistic encounters between actors from ‘politics’ and ‘the political’. However, within this possibility, new informal governance actors also challenge democratic input legitimacy, even while being co-dependent on it. Halpin’s (2006, p. 923) proposition to ‘recalibrate expectations’ on informal policy actors supports the conceptual reflections on how to innovatively legitimize the long-term collaboration of informal governance arrangements. In other words, while self-authorized groups might not necessarily aim to advance democratization, or enhance representative democracy per se, the diversification of sources of legitimacy beyond representative principles enacted by non-representative representatives might nonetheless enhance (representative) democracy.8 With regard to the scope of those actors ‘included’ at the input stage of the City Tax policy exercise, the Koalition notably does not literally encompass the ‘entirety’ or constituency of Berlin’s artist population, which is claimed to be REPRESENTED, but the (partially self-selected) array of Koalition speakers. This fragmentary inclusion leverages input legitimacy in its own somewhat exclusive way. In sum, the legitimizing effects evoked within the issue-related collaboration of the City Tax remain dependent on contestable loops of legitimation initialized at the input stage, which can yet be called into question (e.g., because not ‘everybody’ was included). Ultimately, input engagement or legitimacy might be important to promote and prioritize grander governance objectives such as ‘participation’ or ‘inclusion’. Especially in political contexts in which democratic engagement of civil stakeholders is perceived to be lacking, this type of legitimacy comes to the fore as an incisive stage for informal actors to claim their part in (democratic) decision-making.

194 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing Throughput legitimacy The Koalition’s self-initiated participation at the input phase was extended to the throughput stage of co-designing the procedural configurations of CityTax2015. As Innes and Booher (1999, p. 415) point out ‘consensus building stands or falls (…) on the acceptability of its process. It needs to produce good answers through good processes.’ The Koalition’s engagement at the procedural level of the City Tax distribution might help to unpack the interrelation between ‘good processes’ (i.e., qualitative throughputs) and ‘good answers’ (i.e., qualitative outputs), which nonetheless remain ambiguous because the boundaries between processes and outcomes remain blurry. However, the aim of producing ‘good processes’ supports the aspiration to leverage legitimacy via the procedural engagement of stakeholders affected by these processes. Again, the selective array of participants that partake and shape these ‘good processes’ (or not) hinges on the pre-structured entity of the SK. The cultural administration justifies its extended collaboration with civil stakeholders such as the Koalition on the grounds of needing reliable partners to enact high-quality policies. A cultural administrator is of the opinion the governance goals should first be collaboratively developed, and subsequently be put into action together (November 2, 2015). The common development of solutions mirrors input and throughput stages of multi-stakeholder interactions, which prevailed in CityTax2015. The collective realization of goals, which would correspond to multi-stakeholder engagement in the throughput and output stages, seems less politically encouraged because non-democratically legitimized actors were not to interfere with the actual execution of policy implementation. With regard to the productive potential of multi-stakeholder exchange in the throughput stage, the collective creation of quantitative and qualitative data about Berlin’s funding landscape could be one means of increasing throughput legitimacy. If cultural political data were coproduced in procedural collaborations, a sense of transparency and co-ownership could foster throughout legitimacy. The collaborative collection, analysis and discussion of data could productively interrelate administrative institutional capacity and knowledge with artist stakeholders’ practical experience and expertise from the ground, bringing together different perspectives to assess the funding condition (e.g., development of questionnaires, evaluation criteria). Moreover, a common discussion of results could increase the reliability, acceptance and thus legitimacy of the facts so produced. However, reminiscent of the failed Zielwerkstatt, which aimed to rework and reevaluate the current tableau of funding programs, the Funding Matrix, which is now produced by the Senatsverwaltung without the participation of the Koalition, exemplifies a missed opportunity for collaborative data collection. In any case, the matrix will produce information accessible to and interpretable for everybody (Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa 2018c). In the future, the common assessment and critical discussion of data could facilitate agonistic relations to expand ‘good procedures’ of funding. While approximations toward ‘more’ and ‘better’ (coproduced) data could enlighten the dark

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 195 space of non-information, a post-foundational perspective on these ‘data politics’ cannot escape the constitutive failure of any attempt to fixate or ‘attain’ complete knowledge or information. In other words, a post-foundational approach to data creation would acknowledge the impossibility of supposed fullness to be researched or evaluated yet engage in the creation of data nonetheless. In other words, the political necessity to quantify and fragmentarily REPRESENT funding needs temporarily outruns the conceptual concern to quantify anything that ‘is’ nothing. In the face of this paradox, the request for ‘more’ and ‘better’ data not only underscores the impossibility of resolving meta conflicts, but also outlines empirical, data-driven paths to move from fundamental conflicts about the factually precarious condition of many artists toward conflictually consensual assessments of problems that can then be indicated by data (and thus made less controversial). With regard to the contestability of throughput legitimacy, multistakeholder interactions at the procedural level of policy-making problematize both contested policy goals and means/strategies to realize these goals. Nonetheless, throughput engagement invites agonistic dialogue in the form of legitimate struggles. A cultural administrator underlines the contingent nature of procedural collaboration, viewing their task to ‘adjust screws’ when the Koalition should or should not participate in policy design. The assessment of when this tweaking of governance/participation screws is ‘necessary’ remains dependent on the administration’s interpretation. Even though the clear definition of starting and end points of collaboration might alleviate conflicts on the operational level, a systematic and succinct guideline regarding the temporality of stakeholder engagement is lacking in the administration’s rapport with the Koalition. There is no comprehensive roadmap to anticipate when collaborative engagement will take place or not. Since cultural administrators assumed CityTax2015 to be a ‘testing ground’ to understand what the independent scene thinks about planned policies (November 2, 2015), this governance trial is framed as an experiment rather than a blueprint for future governance and collaborative efforts on the side of the cultural administration. Bearing in mind that the City Tax Fund resorts to non-collaborative funding distribution via an interdisciplinary jury instead of institutionalizing the Koalition’s throughput engagement, the long-term enactment of collaboration during the throughput stage is not (yet) in sight. While cultural administrators have repeatedly claimed that they make implementation choices based on what is collectively discussed with artist stakeholders during the input stage (i.e., securing input legitimacy), Koalition speakers remain skeptical about what exactly the administration is doing (or not) when the group is not directly present/engaged in procedural policy formation (December 14, 2015). Besides a lack of trust, Senatskanzlei administrators mourn the Koalition’s lack of appreciation (November 2, 2015): We really bent over backwards here, and anyways, we have never actually heard from the other side [the Koalition]: “You know, the result

196 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing [CityTax2015] is bad, but we [the Koalition] also acknowledge that you couldn’t do too much about that (…) The Koalition is not even capable of publishing a press release that says, ‘Without further ado, thank you.’” Illustrating administrators’ craving for gratitude, they expect to receive recognition for their efforts independent of the concrete policy outcome realized in CityTax2015, hinting at a prioritization of throughput over output legitimacy in this specific case. Another administrator underscores the rising need for (public) approval of administrative decisions, yet, if civil actors are publicly divided, collaboration with such ‘disorganized’ and loosely legitimized stakeholders might reflect badly on the administration. In sum, on the one hand, multi-stakeholder collaborations might produce ‘bad throughput’ when non-state agonistic stakeholders such as the Koalition are engaged in governance arrangements. The administration might risk failing to produce ‘good’ answers or policy outcomes by including heterogeneous actors who might hamper the construction of ‘effective’ policy outcomes. On the other hand, ‘good’ or ‘better’ throughput could create needed legitimations that communicate political decisions made with the people who are concerned about them (as opposed to, paternalistically, for them). Hence, anticipating ‘bad’ throughput might be a risk worth taking to create an equal chance at enabling conflictual collaboration with better, as opposed to no, throughput legitimacy. With regard to the potentialities of throughput legitimacy to provide alternative sources of legitimacy, legitimacy is sustained not only by strictly democratic, representative or legally binding arrangements, but by the capacity to attend to the public’s needs and satisfaction (Peters 2004). Reminiscent of the Koalition’s imperfect representation as a ‘relative universal’ rather than a literal depiction of ‘the public’, whether ‘the public’ is satisfied is fragmentarily assessed by the universalizing placeholder of the Koalition with its supposed REPRESENT claim. In other words, if the Koalition communicates being satisfied by the collaborative exchanges with the cultural administration, this satisfaction is articulated by a fractional, quasi-representative ‘public’. Yet, the REPRESENT claim seeks to extend to the greater social group concerned, or to be satisfied, with the policy changes. In conclusion, based on the reservation that a limited ‘public’ is engaged during the throughput stage, CityTax2015 has evoked a high-quality, ‘good’ process (i.e., highthroughput legitimacy) due to the relative satisfaction with the policy outcome of conflictual consensus (CC3). Output legitimacy The performance criterion of output legitimacy focuses on the effectiveness of policies. Notably, the effectiveness of policy outputs is different from the effectiveness of policy stakeholders’ contribution to policy-making. Elaborate efforts to produce ‘good’ policies do not necessarily produce ‘good’ or ‘effective’

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 197 results. Schmidt (2010a, p. 13) makes clear: ‘[E]ven if policy performance is optimal, if the actual content of the policies clashes with [national] values and principles (…) as acceptable and appropriate (or not), then its output legitimacy is in question.’ In other words, value-driven/meta conflict can always tamper with otherwise ‘efficient’ policies to inhibit the overall perception of output as successful or legitimate. Without proper throughput legitimacy, which ensures qualitative processes (‘actual content of the policies’), there will be no high-output legitimacy. Even seemingly ‘effective’ policies will not garner legitimacy because ‘the people’ have the feeling that the policy has not been designed with them. In the case of CityTax2015, output legitimacy would have been lacking if the Koalition had not endorsed the material output of the working and research grants as ‘successful’, ‘effective’ and legitimate. Accordingly, the definition of effectiveness or success heavily depends on the process (i.e., throughput) that produces the policy result (i.e., output). In the Berlin case, precisely because the Koalition was part of the process and thus co-responsible to ensure throughput legitimacy, the group validated the process and result as ‘good’. As co-producer of the designed decision of the artist grant scheme (see Table 5.2), the group contributed to securing the narrative of ‘success’ or conflictual consensus (CC3) regarding both process and result. A fundamental failure of the policy outcome was to be avoided on both sides of the agonistic governance encounter because this would have opened a larger debate about ‘governance failure’ (Jessop 2002). Hence, the shared motivation to circumvent grander failure, reminiscent of the theoretical scenario of fundamental consensus (CC4), fostered the guard-railing of output by considering throughput legitimacy. While output legitimacy stimulates ‘good’ outcomes for as many artists as possible, the former would have been endangered by lacking throughput legitimacy. In that sense, ‘bad’ throughput was risked again in anticipation of increasing output legitimacy. Briefly, CityTax2015 demonstrates that collective ownership of the policy was prioritized in the legitimacy-making context, because a policy result, however ‘effective’, might not have leveraged overall public approval of the policy in a case where self-authorized claimants such as the Koalition would have been excluded. Conclusions: throughput legitimacies The legitimacy-building interactions in the distributive context of CityTax2015 have revealed the latter as a unique concatenation of what can tentatively be assessed as medium-input legitimacy, as well as high-throughput and mediumoutput legitimacy. These understandably preliminary assessments indicate the relative dominance of throughput over input and output legitimacy in the agonistic encounter between the self-authorized policy entrepreneur Koalition and the formal governance actor Senatskanzlei.

198 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing Despite the risk of ‘bad’ throughput (resulting from its inherent ambiguity), throughput stands out in comparison to input and output legitimacy because it can transcend a logic of zero-sum gains and successes in governance. Accordingly, Schmidt (2010a, p. 5) notes that input, throughput and output legitimacy do not stand in opposition, but mutually support each other in a ‘“virtuous circle” with a “win-win” solution for democracy and legitimacy.’ In contradistinction to Schmidt (2017, p. 3), who argues that ‘bad’ throughput cannot leverage positive trade-off, or that the former cannot ‘make up for flaws in political input or policy output,’ I argue that high-throughput governance instances such as CityTax2015 are emblematic of a contextually contingent primacy of throughput legitimacy, where a trade-off with regard to less ‘effective’ policies (i.e., medium- as opposed to high-output legitimacy) and selective inclusion (i.e., medium- as opposed to high-input legitimacy) might reinvigorate the overall legitimatory dynamic via great throughput legitimacy. In other words, while the policy result of the ARS might not have been the most ‘efficient’ policy outcome in the eyes of the cultural administration or cultural politicians, and it did not include literally all stakeholders concerned by the policy, the collaboratively designed grant scheme increased throughput legitimacy in situ as well as output legitimacy ex post. While throughput legitimacy plays a major role in this case, it cannot definitively compensate for either input or output legitimacy. Priorities of legitimacies emerge from different political stakes, which are weighed by heterogeneous challengers and seekers of legitimacy. Depending on which kind of legitimacy is perceived to be lacking in the most significant way, interconnections of input, throughput and output legitimacies take different forms. In the context of Berlin, artist advocates were most frustrated about lacking input and throughput engagement because previous attempts at multi-stakeholder dialogue had not considered their claims or engaged them directly in policy design.9 Hence, increasing inclusion in political processes (i.e., throughput legitimacy) was valued over both input and output legitimacy, and indirectly might have stabilized these crumbling legitimacies. In sum, while ‘bad’ throughput can deteriorate political results, better-than-bad throughput can leverage a positive trade-off for both ‘not so good’ input or output legitimacies. Beyond Schmidt’s observation that input legitimacy is political, the governance exercise of CityTax2015 has revealed matter-of-factly that all kinds of legitimacy are political. While input legitimacy configures the parameters of who speaks, and who legitimizes government behavior or processes (i.e., politicizing dynamics of inclusion and exclusion), output legitimacy reveals its political dimension in the hegemonic impetus to categorize what is ‘effective’ (or not). Depending on the hegemonic definition of the term ‘effectiveness’, and what it means to whom, at whose advantage and at whose cost, policy results are political par excellence. Lastly, the politics of throughput legitimacy allows non-state stakeholders to interfere with the quality of governance processes (or not), making them better or more legitimate (or not), depending on the composition and substantial nature of

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 199 legitimacy-seeking and legitimizing actors. Table 5.3 summarizes the multiple legitimacies at play in CityTax2015. Agonistic policy networks: arenas to negotiate throughput To extrapolate from Berlin’s agonistic governance interaction, policy network analysis (Marsh and Rhodes 1992) offers an analytical avenue into conceptualizing the informal and contingent governing practices of this context. Following Rhodes (2007, p. 1244), policy networks are interdependent ‘sets of formal and informal institutional linkages (…) structured around shared interests in public policymaking and implementation,’ which ideally produce policies as the result of negotiation. Based on this definition of multistakeholder bargaining coalitions, I consider policy networks as dialectical and temporary governance arrangements with concrete policy implications, which either deliberately produce new policies, or decidedly do not produce policy (Marsh and Smith 2000). I suggest conceptualizing policy networks as agonistic insofar as the dialectic between consensus and conflict opens discursive and material spaces to negotiate diverse, yet legitimate interests. Agonistic policy networks do not rely on consensus but productively deal with contradictions and antagonisms in legitimacy-building governance contexts (Fraher and Grint 2018; Häikiö 2016; Sorensen and Torfing 2007). In agonistic policy networks, a primacy of throughput engagement/legitimacy reaches beyond established modes of representative democracy, which might enable collaborative and legitimate exchange on both operational and meta levels of decision-making. Both policy-related (i.e., operational) and broader (i.e., meta) political claims are negotiated among interdependent state and nonstate stakeholders. Because both levels of conflict are subject to discussion (and are not necessarily reconciled to proceed with policy formulation or implementation), agonistic policy networks can enhance the overall legitimacy of policies coproduced via high-throughput legitimacy. Civil stakeholders’ engagement in Table 5.3 Synthesizing governance legitimacies Input legitimacy

Throughput legitimacy

Output legitimacy

Temporal stage of policy process

(Quality of) participation, agendasetting

Performance criterion

Responsivity to civil society

Realization of policies and measures, evaluation Efficiency, effectiveness

CityTax2015

Medium

(Quality of) administrative procedural process, implementation/execution Transparency, (co-) ownership, engagement High

Source: author

Medium

200 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing procedural policy-making might legitimate policy outputs, whose overall legitimacy might be in doubt. In contradistinction to deliberative, rationalist and consensus-glorifying approaches, agonistic policy networks are grounded within and from an insurmountable dimension of antagonism. Capturing informal governing as ‘unstable structure of expectation’ (Rüb 2014, p. 64) potentially unlocks a space to negotiate and (re)articulate types and stages of legitimacy among governance stakeholders. While there is a loosely legitimated restriction on the network’s overall inclusivity/exclusivity, represented by a ‘relative universal’, an agonistic policy network foregrounds struggle among legitimate adversaries. All policy regimes ‘are the product of political decisions, and though these acts of power are often forgotten and sedimented, they leave institutions, relations and policies vulnerable to reactivation and contestation’ (Howarth 2010, p. 329). Accordingly, policy networks might provide arenas to embrace this contestation, contestability and vulnerability among policy stakeholders, making them more aware of each other’s perspectives and differences. The temporary agonistic policy network in the context of CityTax2015 emerged both due to the cultural administration’s openness to allow for informal legitimations and the Koalition’s various approaches of self-legitimation. Within the evolving and intensifying collaboration, the Senatskanzlei’s perceived governance capacities of coordination, analysis, regulation and delivery interrelated with the provision of an agonistic policy network (Christensen et al. 2016). Leveraging medium-input and highthroughput legitimacy activated the cultural administration’s ‘coordinative’ governance capacities (i.e., creating a space of discussion for diverse actors). In the form of medium output and high throughput, the cultural administration applied its ‘delivery’ capacities via the ‘effective’ co-design and implementation of the ARS. Drawing this discussion to a close, the emphasis on throughput legitimacy in the CityTax2015 distribution process has contributed to enhance both input and output legitimacy. Extending the Koalition’s input engagement to the throughput stage, which made the civil policy entrepreneur co-responsible for producing a legitimate policy outcome, ultimately led to the perception of the policy outcome as legitimate. This procedural and legitimatory expansion of throughput does not only complement input and output legitimacies but reveals the throughput stage as an agonistic arena to negotiate legitimate inputs (e.g., the ‘universal’ representative claim; REPRESENT) with the objective of producing legitimate outputs (i.e., outcomes directly attributable to the group’s activities; ACT). Ultimately, the conflictual collaboration of CityTax2015 exemplifies the complex legitimatory dynamics of agonistic policy networks to interweave input, throughput and output legitimacies.

Conclusions: agonistic throughput legitimacy This chapter has unfolded the multi-layered informal interactions between the Koalition and the cultural administration as an example of agonistic governance. The investigation of the cultural administration’s changing

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 201 agency and action in times of increasing societal self-organization has revealed how administrators and civil society actors engage together to codesign agonistic policies. Illustrative of the legitimatory implications of the ongoing transformation from government to governance, the temporary creation of an agonistic policy network in the multi-stakeholder collaboration in CityTax2015 shows that negotiations of consensus/conflict and legitimacy play out on different levels and phases of policy-making. Moreover, increasing institutional openness and responsiveness toward non-formalized, civil policy actors shifts the positions of all stakeholders who are affected by governance (i.e., the executive, the legislature, civil society), reshuffling how both state and non-state stakeholders assess the extent (input), quality (throughput) and impact (output) of their collaborative governance encounters. Assessing the Koalition’s governance-related activity, in Grunden’s (2016) scheme of interactions between formal/informal effective/ineffective institutions converging with or diverging from formal apparatuses, the Koalition as an assumedly informal institution has been shown to converge with given institutional parameters due to its ongoing efforts to provide budget-linespecific policy proposals, adopt policy jargon and produce material policy output. In dialogue with the formal and (partially) effective institution of the Senatskanzlei, the collaborative setting qualifies as a ‘supportive enhancement’ to the cultural political-decision-making repertoire. In Mouffe’s (2008) terms, the Koalition ‘engages with’ institutions rather than ‘withdrawing from’ them. CityTax2015 illustrates the production of a conflictual consensus (CC3) with medium-input and -output legitimacies, as well as high-throughput legitimacy, leading to a concrete agonistic policy outcome. This provisional result has been accomplished despite irreconcilable conflicts about the notion of art and normative cleavages about the purpose and extent of stakeholder engagement in policy-making (i.e., meta conflicts). By unpacking contestations about the meaning of collaboration, the discussion about legitimation practices of new collective political actors has been qualified with a framework sensitive to the temporal and procedural specificities of input, throughput and output engagement. Regarding the governance implications evoked by new forms of legitimacybuilding, Nullmeier and Nonhoff (2010, p. 28 ff.) argue that new interpretations of (democratic) legitimacy aim to either serve the ‘public good’ or ‘download’ democratic and/or representative dimensions of legitimacy. The present case relates to both these aspects in the following ways: Regarding the former, the contingent agonistic policy network appeals to ‘funding justice’ and other quasi-universal claims to improve the abstract yet concrete concern over Berlin’s artists’ precarity. In that sense, the temporary introduction of a new funding instrument might be interpreted as serving the ‘public good’ for a partial public. With regard to the concern over the ‘downloading’ of democratic and/or representative aspects of legitimacy, non-formalized actors such as the Koalition oscillate between legitimatory claims to downgrade, integrate

202 (Re)negotiating steering and rowing and upgrade their own representative position. Moreover, the ‘downloading’ of democratic legitimacy might relate to the (perceived) lack of politicians’ proactivity to represent and fight for demands they maybe should represent. Emerging from the ongoing ascriptions and withdrawals from legitimatory and representative claims, new practices of legitimation might contribute to understanding of the understudied relationship between representative democracy, or representation at large, and governance. However, it has been problematized: non-representative and/or informal modes of legitimatory practice also challenge existing models of democratic decision-making, and thus might destabilize currently distressed representative democracies further. With regard to the overall transforming positionalities of state and non-state actors in governance, the temporal and procedural collaborative alignments probed in CityTax2015 might create a way for governance efforts that do not shy away from conflict but face it with an adversarial spirit to design current and future political life precisely as contested, conflictual and always open to alternatives.

Notes 1 Notably, the lack of quantitative and qualitative data often exacerbates conflicts between policy stakeholders. The existence of more substantial data could increase not only the quality of policy design and implementation with regard to responsiveness (input legitimacy) and efficiency and effectiveness (output legitimacy), but also put the conflictual collaboration on generally more substantiated grounds. Nonetheless, the creation of information and ‘facts’ does not solve the more encompassing dilemma that ‘more’ or ‘better’ data, creating more visibility of the problems and precarity of the independent scene, would put a definitive end to the systemic precarity of the independent art scene. 2 The legal earmarking of the City Tax created public attention and judicial controversy (Wildermann 2013). The main contention was that, since the City Tax is not a tax in the strict sense, its income could not be directly linked to an expense. 3 Initially, the full City Tax income was to be divided among sports, tourism and arts/culture, each receiving a third of the funds. Various budgetary negotiation phases decreased the percentage to be divided among the three policy areas to a fixed rate of 50 percent (Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen 2014, p. 68). The Budget Committee also modified the proposal, introducing a ‘cap’ of the first 25 million euros of tax income for general budgetary consolidation purposes, which was perceived as non-transparent and an ominous agreement by the Koalition (September 7, 2015). The ‘cap’ was finalized in the Cultural Budget 2014/15, evoking feelings of disappointment and betrayal among both cultural administrators and the Koalition. 4 As in Conflictual Consensus Matrix I, technocratic conflict (CC2) is subsumed into CC1 because the reference to meta consensus and mere operational dissent sooner or later erupts conflicts on wider-ranging meta levels. 5 A workshop with the goal of evaluating advantages and challenges of existing jury processes was hosted by the Senatskanzlei in November 2017. Koalition and Senatskanzlei participants have differently assessed whether the workshop was useful (or not). So far, no binding results or visible adaptations of existing jury procedures have emerged from the workshop. 6 The City Tax distribution from 2016 onwards – the so-called City Tax Fund – distributes 3.5 million euros annually (2016/17), allocating two-thirds to independent projects

(Re)negotiating steering and rowing 203 and one-third to cultural institutions collaborating with the independent scene. In 2018/ 19, 3.2 million euros are available for the same purposes (Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen 2018, p. 58). 7 I discuss input, throughput and output also as temporal stages of the policymaking process. In this adaptation, the input stage mirrors the agenda-setting phase, throughput the implementation and output the policy evaluation phase. 8 Regarding Mouffe’s axiomatic preconditions for agonistic relations (i.e., ‘liberty and equality for all’), the Koalition has not questioned the necessity of these principles but offers a contested interpretation of what ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’ means to Berlin’s independent artists. In its challenge of how these values affect political practice, the group itself might not only employ strictly democratic means (bearing in mind the loose representative bonds between SK and plenum) yet might contribute to reinvigorate democracy by striking new paths of negativity-based representation and legitimation. 9 K2 (2012) illustrates the cultural administration’s prioritization of input legitimacy and public consultation with no apparent intention to increase throughput legitimacy/engagement. Due to the lack of concrete policy outputs produced from K2, there is no evident objective to increase output legitimacy. Consequently, artists did not consider the Senatskanzlei-initiated event a legitimate collaborative attempt. The Concept for a Long-term Dialogue (2014) might have emphasized input legitimacy/engagement, yet did not increase either throughput or output legitimacy because artist stakeholders were drastically restricted in their proposals to execute a multi-stakeholder dialogue between the cultural administration and the artistic scenes. While artists’ claims and problem framings were heard (i.e., ensuring a degree of input legitimacy), throughput and output legitimacy were deficient.

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6

Distillate and outlook

This concluding chapter analytically distills the manifold empirical findings to create connective, and potentially generalizable, insights from the major analytical themes of articulation and legitimacy. Having studied the political self-organization of a new collective actor in a specific policy-making context, we can learn from their forms and practices of political mobilization, representation and legitimation by abstracting what exactly it is that they do differently from other social and political movements and lobby groups. The following distillate introduces four dimensions that are indicative of post-foundational political representation. These analytical vectors might inform political activism and collaborative governance efforts in other temporal, local, cultural and thematic policy fields and contexts. Whenever and wherever multiple stakeholders come together to discuss the purpose, shape, extent, impact or quality of political measures and instruments, conflicts come up. The agonistic framework developed throughout this book, encapsulated in the Conflictual Consensus Matrices, theorizes how a conflict-oriented approach to policy collaboration unclogs, and thus aims to overcome positivist and consensualist approaches to collaborative governance, policy and planning. With this conflict-oriented perspective, which acknowledges the insurmountable dimension of antagonism as constitutive of political relations, the consensus obsession of some public administration scholars and practitioners might be volatilized. Having outlined potentially emancipatory routes to political articulation and legitimation of times of complex and supposedly post-political decision-making, I have sought to open the ‘black box’ of politics to reveal policy-making as contingently-produced conflictual collaboration by diverse actors who construct interconnecting and looped legitimations.

Distillate: post-foundational political representation Beyond the singular case of Berlin’s cultural politics, the negativity-based characteristics of the Koalition’s collectivization are distilled into a preliminary conceptual trope as part of a greater objective to build a theory of post-foundational political representation. Sketching the contours of this new paradigmatic

210 Distillate and outlook approach, new political actors constitute themselves in the face of radical negativity and antagonism, permanently oscillating between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’. From the empirical material, the following dimensions can be abstracted: #1 #2 #3 #4

Articulating loops of legitimation Agonistic representation of negativity Passages over ungroundable grounds Doing ‘the political’ in politics and policy

Regarding the first dimension of post-foundational political articulation (#1 distillate), articulatory practices have been revealed as densely interwoven with acts of (de)legitimation and self-legitimation. In the face of decreasing legitimacy of representative democratic institutions and/or a burgeoning of new forms of political expression, mobilization and decision-making, ‘loops of legitimation’ conceptualize precarious and contingent, yet emancipatory constellations to leverage political legitimacy. Second, in the absence of protest or explicit opposition, post-foundational collective actors temporarily institute themselves as ‘relative universals’ to reconcile positions of particularity and universality, and to construct temporary collectivities of ‘we’ vis-à-vis an agonistic ‘other’. In preliminary enactments of agonistic representation (UP3), post-foundational collective agents work because, despite and regardless of ineradicable antagonism and negativity (#2 distillate). Third, knowing that the grounds to legitimacy cannot be grounded for good, any articulatory and legitimatory approximation remains contingent and somewhat ungroundable (#3 distillate). Despite the general unattainability of stable grounds or reasons for political engagement, legitimacy or concrete policy action, post-foundational actors aspire to ‘become’ legitimate and representative via oscillations between ‘relative universalization’ and partial (de)constructions of their representative positions. Post-foundational collective actors engage in what Gramsci called ‘wars of position’ between (counter-)hegemonic adversaries from the realms of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’. As a part of the struggle, agonistic actors engage with institutions, rather than against them with the goal to construct conflictual consensus (CC3). Taking a(nta)gonistic governance arrangements as ‘wars of position’, these conflictual collaborations, constrained by scarce resources, reveal contested real-life political and institutional transformations. Another passage circumscribes the swinging between the ontological realm of ‘the political’ (i.e., antagonism) and the ontic realm of ‘politics’ (i.e., agonism). In contrast to Roskamm’s (2017, pp. 174–175) claim that antagonism cannot ‘survive’ the change of its ‘aggregate condition’ toward agonism, the messy interstitial practices of post-foundational actors such as the Koalition suggest that the transfer from antagonism to agonism, or from ‘the political’ to ‘politics’, maintains a(nta)gonism as modus operandi because those transfers are temporary and reversible. In other words, while a(nta)gonistic actors morph into collaborations with ‘politics’, their antagonism, radical negativity or absence remains recalcitrant and constitutive. In short, the ontology of antagonism continuously outruns the representative or legitimatory position of ‘politics’ in ontic

Distillate and outlook 211 contexts. Despite the ontological dilemma or trade-off of agonism Roskamm mentions, no quasi-universal claim to REPRESENT, agonistic representation (UP3) or conflictual consensus (CC3) can wholly overwrite or kill off the underlying antagonism of empirical post-foundational collectivities. Attempted colonizations of ‘the political’ by ‘politics’ remain intentional and inconclusive at best, so that post-foundational articulation and representation reactivate ‘the political’ precisely by moving between both spheres. Lastly, agonistic collaborative efforts do not only dismiss an approach to make ‘policy without politics,’ common for political systems in legitimacy crises (Schmidt 2010), but export ‘the political’ to both the realm of ‘politics’ and even to ‘policy’ (#4 distillate). This expansion of ‘the political’ within policy-making processes demonstrated by CityTax2015 ultimately repoliticizes the meaning, actors and places of ‘politics’. Post-foundational collective actors acknowledge the insurmountable dimension of conflict inherent in political and social interactions but are not disenfranchised by such systemic ambiguity of politics. Amidst the overall dilemma-stricken phenomenon of representation, they take conflict as a point of departure to ‘become’ political regardless. Thinking or enacting collaboration and consensus through conflict, at last, allows us to outline constructions of conflictual consensus between diverse political actors. On a practical level, the localization of conflict in collaborative governance via the Conflicual Consensus Matrices helps diverse policy stakeholders to understand at what levels of decision-making conflicts arise and at what level these controversies can ‘productively’ be addressed. On a conceptual level, the disaggregation of meta and operational levels of consensus- and decision-making provides a heuristic device to understand how conflictual collaborations in multi-stakeholder arrangements are constructed. While this analytical grid does not help to resolve meta conflicts, it makes origins and manifestations of conflictual consensus (CC3) intelligible. Ideally, this conceptual un- and re-wiring helps scholars as well as formal and informal policy stakeholders in collaborative settings to consider meta conflicts as starting points for collaboration and opportunity to enact political change, rather than its mortal blow.

Outlook Having discussed a unique case of artists’ political mobilization in the urban cultural political discourse of Berlin, I have unpacked a real-life contestation against the notion of a ‘creative’ city which was formerly predominantly reliant on prestigious cultural projects and institutions. By articulating requests for more procedural engagement and transparency in policy-making processes, the Koalition has instituted itself as a counterhegemonic challenger of existing decision-making arrangements, procedures and funding proportions to narrate the ‘creative’ city of Berlin from a more artist-oriented perspective. Critiquing the existing, partially exclusive notion of the ‘creative’ city via self-organized political action, new parameters for a different cultural political future were projected. This new imaginary

212 Distillate and outlook emphasizes the safeguarding of the production of contemporary art as the indispensable location factor for Berlin’s attractiveness as an international cultural hotspot. Pleading against the reduction of arts and culture to specific forms of artistic practice or organization, the Koalition has engaged, and continues to engage, in both material and immaterial reconfigurations of what art means for and in the ‘creative’ city of Berlin, inscribing a loosely defined, transdisciplinary notion of art in the urban cultural fabric. Against potential instrumentalization or cooptation, agonistic collective actors, who move between and within institutionalized politics, lobbying and ephemeral interventions in urban cultural politics, tackle systemic problems that undergird cultural funding rationales and culture-led urban development (Laister et al. 2014; Murzyn-Kupisz and Działek 2017). By oscillating between universality and particularity, conflict and consensus, antagonism and agonism, politics and the political, (counter-)hegemonic rearticulations irritate and subvert the ‘creative’ city script, which has so far favored large institutions instead of independent cultural projects and productions. Via this unsolicited intervention, the overall cultural governance arrangement has been shaken up to question and resignify roles, rules and routines of all engaged policy stakeholders. Theorizing a change agent for radical urban (cultural) politics, this book has sought to provide analytical tools to grasp claims-making and representational practices of new collective actors that extend beyond the case study’s local scale and specific cultural and historical context. Scholars of urban politics and governance, social movements, urban sociology, geography and planning as well as political practitioners, administrators, activists and artistic researchers are invited to work on and challenge the conceptual tropes developed here, and take them to other cultural, geographic and historical contexts, as well as to other policy fields, to push a post-foundational theory of political representation further. The case study contributes to documenting artists’ presence and political practice in ‘creative’ cities to highlight their controversial roles in requesting and reinforcing the value of creativity in urban politics. In addition, bridging social movement scholars’ focus on mobilization and framing, and urban scholars’ concern for civil self-organization, this book has introduced a self-empowered urban actor whose collectivization relates the problematization of urban precarity, displacement and political marginalization with the request to reinforce transparency and inclusion in policy design. By unsettling predominant conventional and consensus-centric accounts to study decision-making, participation and governance, this book has laid out a conflict-theoretical framework to consider collaboration as inherently conflictual. This a(nta)gonistic perspective on consensus and governance does not condemn the latter as the epitome of neoliberal urban managerialism or depoliticization (Ruoss 2017), but argues that agonism precisely can re-politicize both governance practices and outcomes. Taking self-authorization via precarious legitimations as both an admonishment to crises of legitimacy and an attempt to provide preliminary answers to these multiple crises, the book has sought to contribute to debates about the assumed

Distillate and outlook 213 intractability of post-politics or the undermining of democracy in times of urban entrepreneurialism, competitiveness and neoliberalism. Against the gloomy assessment that we live in a post-political age, the articulatory practices of non-representative policy actors like the Koalition might cast a more hopeful light on this hypothesis. Suggesting and testing new ways of representation and consensus- and decision-making beyond representative democratic modes, new actors and activisms open spaces of action and discourse to reimagine politics. Notably, these legitimatory experiments provide no guarantee to succeed or necessarily establish ‘more’ or ‘better’ legitimacy, equity, participation, justice, transparency or democracy which they initially might request. However, taking the risk to restitute ‘the political’ from the post-political diagnosis, modalities of non-institutionalized, non-elected and non-representative political representation and legitimacy might reactivate ‘the political’ in otherwise consensus-constricted conceptions of ‘politics’. While post-foundational political representation and legitimacy do not automatically improve persisting orders of parliamentary or representative democracies, they can contribute to the ‘re-founding’ of means of representation to develop representative democracy (Saward 2009). Selfinstituted representative and legitimatory practices might pose a challenge to formalized, representative modes of interest representation, yet the Berlin case reveals that direct interactions among policy-makers and affected non-state policy stakeholders can stimulate new forms of thinking and doing ‘the political’ at large. These practices might feed into Mouffe’s (2009) vision of ‘agonistic pluralism’ to forge for a(nta)gonistic democracy and actualize agonism in theory and practice. Notwithstanding the need for more agonistic democratic practices, I acknowledge Dhaliwal’s (1996) critique that the concept of radical democracy might insufficiently consider post-colonial perspectives, and encourage the idea that future reflections on post-foundational politics and representation should address the construction of collective identifications and hegemonic legacies in a radically anti-essentialist framework of ethnicity, race, class, gender, profession or national affiliation. Colin Crouch (2014, p. 122) inspires the last reflections to be made here, reminding us to ‘stay alert to the potentialities of new movements which may at first seem difficult to understand, because they may be the bearers of democracy’s future vitality.’ Resonating with this, complex and potentially inconvenient political practices by actors of ‘the political’ might make way for future-oriented ‘politics’. To initiate political and institutional change with the people activates agonistic actors’ drive to interact with the system, and not against or without it. To push radical democracy further, we need reinterpretations of ‘the political’ which unsettle categories of political articulation, agency, representation and legitimacy to build more radical (democratic) urban futures. Because ‘protests are not rare episodes of uprisings in a sea of calm, but rather bigger outbreaks of struggles that keep going on a deep-seated level’ (Marchart 2013, p. 424), the acknowledgment of the constitutive and irresolvable tensions between

214 Distillate and outlook particularity and universality trigger new actors and activisms to come to the fore. In that sense, moments of emancipatory politics should abandon prescribed or outdated meanings of hegemony to contest their status and power. Taking contestation as a constitutive feature of future emancipatory societies, politics and bureaucracies, this book holds to Dikeç and Swyngedouw’s (2017, p. 3) appeal to ‘put the political at the heart of critical urban theory to make theoretical sense of urban subjects, events and claims that elude established government practices and institutionalized structures.’ Putting ‘the political’ (back) at the heart and trying to fill this empty place of power and politics against the odds of ultimate closure will only make politics more political.

References Crouch, Colin (2014): Post-democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Dhaliwal, Amarpal K. (1996): Can the subaltern vote? Radical democracy, discourses of representation and rights, and questions of race. In David Trend (ed.) Radical democracy. Identity, citizenship, and the state. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 42–61. Dikeç, Mustafa; Swyngedouw, Erik (2017): Theorizing the politicizing city. In International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 9, pp. 1–18. Gramsci, Antonio (2007): Prison notebooks, Volume 3. Trans. J.A. Buttigieg. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Laister, Judith; Makovec, Margarethe; Lederer, Anton; Boyadjiev, Luchezar (2014): The art of urban intervention. Die Kunst des urbanen Handelns. Wien: Löcker. Marchart, Oliver (2013): Das unmögliche Objekt. Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Mouffe, Chantal (2009): The democratic paradox. London and New York, NY: Verso. Murzyn-Kupisz, Monika; Działek, Jarosław (2017): The impact of artists on contemporary urban development in Europe. Cham: Springer Nature. Roskamm, Nikolai (2017): Unbesetzte Stadt. Postfundamentalistisches Denken und das Urbanistische Feld. Basel: Birkhäuser. Ruoss, Matthias (2017): Governance. Die Entpolitisierung der Demokratie. Geschichte der Gegenwart. http://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/governance-die-entpolitisierungder-demokratie/. Saward, Michael (2009): Authorisation and authenticity. Representation and the unelected. In Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (1), pp. 1–22. Schmidt, Vivien A. (2010): Democracy and legitimacy in the European Union revisited. Input, output and ‘throughput’. Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG) ‘The Transformative Power of Europe’ working paper. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin.

Appendix List of conducted interviews (all in Berlin)

Koalition der Freien Szene, December 17, 2013 Koalition der Freien Szene, March 31, 2014 Plenum Note, August 13, 2014 Koalition der Freien Szene, September 5, 2014 Koalition der Freien Szene, January 21, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, January 28, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, January 29, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, February 4, 2015 Rat für die Künste, February 9, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, February 12, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, February 13, 2015 Sandra Man, March 17, 2015 Tiny Domingos, March 23, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, March 24, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, March 25, 2015 Plenum Note, May 3, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, June 17, 2015 Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten, July 16, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, September 7, 2015 bbk, October 2, 2015 Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten, October 20, 2015 Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten, October 28, 2015

216 Appendix Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten, November 2, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, December 14, 2015 Koalition der Freien Szene, January 7, 2016 Christophe Knoch, February 2, 2016 AK Räume, April 16, 2016

Index

Page numbers for tables are given in bold. Abulof, Uriel 97–98 Academy of the Arts (Akademie der Künste) 116 accountability 93–94, 154–155 ACT legitimation 96, 98–101, 114–115, 117, 141–142, 193 active consensus 91 adaptability 154–155 Afzal, Kamran Ali 168 agency 54–55 agonism: antagonism and 15–16; governance through 169, 170–176, 200–202; policy outcomes 177–180 agonistic pluralism 213 agonistic representation (UP3) 112–114, 112, 123, 130, 144, 210–211 Ahearne, Jeremy 9 AK Räume 146–148 Anheier, Helmut K. 10 Ansell, Christopher 75, 117, 153 antagonism: agonism and 15–16; Koalition member organizations 33; ontology of 14–16, 210–211; passage through 33; temporary re-antagonized relations 180–184 a(nta)gonistic governance 153–154, 210 A(nta)gonistic Representation Matrix 112–115, 112 Arbeits- und Recherchestipendien (ARS) (Working and research grants) 176, 180 Arbeitskreis Räume (Working Group Space) 146–148 Arbeitsraumprogramm (Working Group Space) 147, 171–172

art, conceptions of 65, 67–68, 171–172, 189–190 articulation: #1 agency 54–55, 129; #2 representing universality 54, 56–60, 129; #3 challenging discourse 54, 60–61, 130; #4 fixating discursive meaning 54, 61; (counter)-hegemony 17–18, 53; legitimacy 129–132; loops of legitimation 128–129, 131, 193, 210; overview 52–61 artistic activism 11–12, 18, 26 Association of Contemporary Dance Berlin 37 Association Old Music Berlin 43–44 associations and individuals 75–78 asymmetries 52; personnel 75; resource 78; organizational 79, 75–79 Auszeichnung künstlerischer Projekträume und -initiativen (Project Space Prize) 41 auto-licensing 158 background ideational abilities 156 Bang, Henrik 10 Barker, Rodney 96 Baumann, Shyon 10 bbk (berufsverband bildender künstler*innen berlin) (Professional Association of Visual Artists in Berlin) 33–35 Beetham, David 94 Behrens, Wibke 35–36, 69 Bénédicte, Chris 42 Berlin: as ‘creative’ city 5, 7–8; as international contemporary art hotspot

218 Index 26–29; governance of 159–160; urban cultural politics 5 Berliner Literaturkonferenz 39 Bildungswerk des bbk 33 Black, Julia 93, 159 Boelens, Luuk 4 Bohle, Bettina 42 Boonstra, Beitske 4 BOUND legitimation 93, 96, 102–105, 115, 117, 142 Bowen, Glenn A. 25–26 Brunet, Daniel 40 Bruns, Thomas 36 budget: art acquisition 173; Berlin’s cultural 28–29; Initiative Neue Musik (INM) 36; Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen 164; see also funding Butler, Judith 56 Byrne, Tara 8 CC1 (fundamental conflict) 81, 83–84, 169, 170, 172–174, 179–181 CC2 (technocratic conflict) 81, 83–84, 170 CC3 (conflictual consensus): (in) formality 157; CityTax2015 159, 176–177, 201; Koalition/Senatskanzlei 179–181; policy outcomes 174–177; success 172; theory 81, 84, 170 CC4 (fundamental consensus) 81, 85, 170, 186–187 Christensen, Tom 154 cities: creative 5–8, 29, 209–212; as political arena 4–5 CityTax2015: agonistic policy outcomes 177–180; conflictual consensus (CC3) 175; impact on Koalition 66; independent scene and 28; introduction to 152–153; managing conflictual consensus 176–177; participation process 161–163, 164–165, 192–193; policy outcomes 196–197 claims-making 58–60 Coalition of the Independent Scene see Koalition der Freien Szene (Koalition) Competitive Performance Show of Young Art from Berlin 27, 30 conflict: as analytical focus 25–26; in antagonistic theory 15; governance as 11; SK negotiates 68–71; social relations as 2–3 conflictual collaboration: agonistic governance 188, 191; culture and

169; between Koalition and Senatskanzlei 155, 158, 180; legitimacy and 196, 200; meta conflict and 86; policy-making as 209–211; success/ failure and 172 conflictual consensus (CC3): CityTax2015 159, 176–177, 201; (in) formality 157; Koalition/Senatskanzlei 179–181; policy outcomes 174–177; sensitizing concepts 25–26; success 172; theory 81, 84, 170 Conflictual Consensus Matrix 80–86, 81 Conflictual Consensus Matrix II 170–177, 170, 186, 188–189 consensus: as analytical focus 25–26; dangers of 2–3; governance and 11; SK negotiates 68–71 Considine, Mark 168 construction 54, 60–61 contingency 15 Council for the Arts see Rat für die Künste (Rat) counter-hegemony 18–19 creative city: artists’ perspectives 209–211; contesting the narrative of 5–8, 211–212; cultural conservation or production 29 creativity and policy 6–7 crisis management framework 154 Crivits, Maarten 97 Crouch, Colin 213 cultural administration: as agents 162–165, 166, 167–168; artist dialogue with 27; as formal institution 157; bbk relations with 34; (de)constructing universality 121–126; INM relations with 36; LAFT relations with 40–41; legitimating the Koalition 118–121; Network relations with 42; Rat relations with 32 cultural policy/governance 8–10 cultural producers 6, 7, 8, 35–36 culture: of governance 188; meta conflict 170–171 Cunningham, Stuart 9 curatorial grants 178 DACH Musik – Freie Musikszene Berlin (Roof Music – Independent Music Scene Berlin) 36, 43–44 Dal Molin, Martina 10 data 194–195 Daugbjerg, Carsten 154

Index deconstruction, articulation as challenging discourse 54, 60–61 DELAYED legitimation 52–53 democracy: conflictual consensus in 25–26; consensus or conflict models 2–3; legitimacy 201–202; paradox of 1–2; populist movements and 1–2; radical 3, 213–214; radical democracy 213–214 depersonalization 145–146 depoliticization 3 Dhaliwal, Amarpal K. 213 Die Wache 43 difference: A(nta)gonistic Representation Matrix 112–115; genre-specific associations 33; logics of 18 Dikeç, Mustafa 4–5 discourse: articulation challenging 54, 60–61; articulation fixating meaning 54, 61; definition 156–157; as a struggle 53–54 discursive institutionalism (DI) 156–157 discursive representation 98 Domingos, Tiny 41, 42, 69 Easton, David 94 emancipation 19 empty signifiers 71–75, 94 equivalence: A(nta)gonistic Representation Matrix 112–115; chain of 18, 34, 72–74, 85, 91–94, 112–113; genre-specific associations 33; logics of 18 European funding programs 27–28, 37, 39 executive actors 159–160 Expressverfahren (Express Procedure) 177 Facebook posts 181–184 Fawcett, Paul 154 Federal Cultural Foundation 27 federal funding 27–28 flexibility: as rear to formalization 140–141 floating signifiers 72 Florida, Richard L. 5–6 Flügel-Martinsen, Oliver 54 foreground discursive abilities 156 formalization 140–142, 157 free mandates 104–105, 146 full representation (UP4) 112–113, 112

219

fundamental conflict (CC1) 81, 83–84, 169, 170, 172–174, 179–181 fundamental consensus (CC4) 81, 85, 170, 186–187 funding: allocation of 164–166; in Berlin 27–28; IG Jazz 42–43, 44; institutionalization and 148–149; LAFT 40–41; Lettrétage e.V. 38; lottery 35; self-administration 33–35, 36, 141, 174; Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen 164; Sentskanzlei’s priorities 173; Tanzbüro 37 Gasché, Rodolphe 111 Gash, Alison 75, 117, 153 genre-specific associations see Sprecher*innenkreis (SK) governance: approaches to research 10–11; blurring mandates 168–170; legitimacies 199; lobbying 165–168; self-understandings of 159–165; transforming notions of 153–159; see also collaborative governance Gramsci, Antonio 56 Gray, Clive 9 Grunden, Timo 157–158, 201 Gugu, Silvia 10 Haben und Brauchen (H&B) (To Have and To Need) 29, 30–31, 69–70, 189–190 Habermas, Jürgen 2–3 Hagemann, Ingmar 17 Häikiö, Liisa 94 Hajer, Maarten A. 31 Halpin, Darren R. 90–91, 193 Haunss, Sebastian 97–98 Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital Cultural Fund) 27–28, 31 Haus für die Musik des 21. Jahrhunderts (House for Music of the 21st Century) 43 hegemony 17–19, 53–54, 132 Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (2001) 3 Helmke, Gretchen 157 Hendriks, Carolyn M. 90 Holsti, Kalevi J. 97–98 Hotz, Georg 42 identity 14, 15 impossible representation (UP1) 112–113, 112

220 Index inclusiveness 154–155 independent scene: definition 5; festival 177–178; funding for 27–29; recognition of 120; representation in Rat 32; visibilization of 110–111, 115 individuals: associations and 75–78; ‘creative’ city and 6; institutionalization and 145–146 informality 152, 157–158 Initiative Neue Musik (INM) 36, 43 input legitimacy 190–193, 199 institutionalization: Arbeitskreis Räume 144–148; debate over Koalition 140–145, 149–150; interlocking and (de)personalization 145–146; to self-administer funding 148–149 institutions: embeddedness 159; funding of 28–29; Koalition and 37–38; transforming notions of 153–159 Interessensgemeinschaft Jazz (IG Jazz) (Interest Representation Jazz) 42–44 interview list 215–216 Isar, Yudhishthir Raj 10 jazz 42–44 K2 summit 27 Kempendorf, Uli 42 Kemper, Ulf 94–95 Kesten, Christian 36 Knoch, Christophe 62, 69–75, 145, 166, 181–183 knowledge transfer 79 Koalition der Freien Szene (Koalition): conceptions of art 189–190; Facebook posts 181–184; on funding 27–29; governance relations 157–159; hegemony, equivalence, difference 18; institutionalization debate 140–145, 149–150; legitimations 191–199; membership assets/drawbacks 44–47; modes of articulation 52–53; as open action platform 64–67; plenum sessions 86–93; politicians legitimating 118–121; relations with member organizations 30–32, 34–35, 38, 41–42; relations with Senatskanzlei 149–150, 161–164, 166–167, 171–177, 178–181, 195–196; as research focus/case study 5, 7–8; transdisciplinary actor 67–68 Kotowski, Bernhard 33 Kucher, Katharina 5

Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Federal Cultural Foundation) 27 Kulturwerk 33 Laclau, Ernesto: antagonism 14, 15; democracy 3; discourse 55; empty signifiers 72; fundamental grounds 130; hegemony 17–19, 53–54; universality/particularity 26, 34–35, 56–57, 59–60, 108–109, 131–132 LAFT, Landesverband freie darstellende Künste Berlin e.V. (LAFT) (Regional Association of Independent Performing Arts) 38–41 leadership 71–75 Lederer, Klaus 160, 186 legislature 159–160 legitimacy/legitimations: absence and 89–92; ACT 96, 98–101, 114–115, 117, 141–142, 193; agonistic representation 111–115; articulating 129–132; BOUND 96, 102–105, 115, 117, 142, 185; conflict and 26; definitions 93; DELAYED 118–121; democratic 201–202; external 115, 128–129; governance 199–202, 199; input 191–193; institutional embeddedness 159; loops of 128–129, 131, 193, 210; modes of 93–98; NETWORKED 115–118; output 196–197; of political actions 12–13; REPRESENT 52, 105–111, 115–118, 123–126, 143–144; STRATEGIC 121–126; throughput 194–196, 197–199; unsolicited 126–128; varieties of 94, 190–191 Leipold, Sina 54–55 Leistungsschau junger Kunst aus Berlin (Competitive Performance Show of Young Art from Berlin) 27, 30 Lettrétage e.V. (Literature Representation) 38–39 Levitsky, Steven 157 Lewis, Justin 9 lobbying 120, 165–168 long-term planning 187–188 Malsch, Moritz 38–39 Man, Sandra 76–77 Marchart, Oliver 14–16, 33, 72 McAdam, D. 132 meta conflict/consensus 80–83, 85, 170–171, 186, 187–189, 211

Index Miller, Toby 9 Miorelli, Romina 156 Mondry, Herbert 33 Mouffe, Chantal: agonism/antagonism 15, 18, 213; conflict/consensus 2–3, 25–26, 201; discourse 53–54, 55; politics 17; universality/particularity 56, 59–60 Müller, Elisa 39–40 Müller, Michael 160 Mulligan, Shane 98 music: Initiative Neue Musik (INM) 36, 43; Interessensgemeinschaft Jazz (IG Jazz) 42–44; new music 36, 43 Musicboard 36, 44 negativity 14–15, 71, 89–90, 210 Network of Berlin Independent Project Spaces and Initiatives (Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und -initiativen) 35, 38–39, 41–42 NETWORKED legitimation 52, 117, 130, 143 Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) (New Society for Visual Arts) 35–36 new music 36, 43 Nonhoff, Martin 95–96, 201 NOT REPRESENT 126, 182–183 Nullmeier, Frank 95–96, 201 objectivity 14 O’Connor, Justin 8 ontic space 15–16 ontology of antagonism 14–16, 210–211 open action platform: Koalition as 64–67, 98–99, 141–142 operational conflict/consensus 170–171, 170, 188 output legitimacy 190–191, 196–197, 199 paid labor 78–79 ‘palaver principle’ 80–83 Panizza, Francisco 156 particularistic representation (UP2) 112–113, 112, 123 particularity: A(nta)gonistic Representation Matrix 112–115; as analytical focus 25; hegemony and 17, 132; representing universality and 54, 56–60, 129 passive consensus 91–92

221

Passow, Anne 38, 39 Peck, Jamie 6–7 performing arts 39–41 Performing Arts Programm (PAP) 39 personalization 145–146 personnel asymmetries 75–78 Peters, Guy B. 154–155, 163 Pierre, Jon 154–155 Pitkin, Hanna F. 57–58 plenum sessions 86–93, 181–184 Pløger, John 188 poetry 38–39 policy: artist participation 12, 191–199; ‘creative’ city narratives 6–7; creativity and 6–8; cultural administration 161–165; entrepreneurs 158–159; networks 158, 199–200; power and change 160–161 policy outcomes: co-producing agonistic 177–180, 180; effectiveness 196–197; legitimacy and 155 political liability 158 political opportunity 132 political representation: approaches to 57–60; crisis in 1–2; new forms of 2, 3, 213; post-foundational 209–211, 212–213; social movements and 3–4 politics: creativity and 5–8; Koalition der Freien Szene (Koalition) and 118–121; new actors 2, 4, 12–13; ‘the political’ and 16–17, 210–211, 214; society and 1 populist movements 1–2 post-foundational philosophy: collaborative governance 169; political representation 209–211, 212–213; theory 13–15 post-politics 3, 4, 12–13, 213 power: asymmetries of 75; as emancipation 19; hegemony and 17 Professional Association of Visual Artists in Berlin 33–35 project spaces: CityTax2015 177; within Koalition 35; Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und -initiativen (Network) 41–42 protest(s) 3, 62, 89–92, 213–214 Radialsystem 61–62, 63 radical democracy 3, 213–214 Rat für die Künste (Rat) (Council for the Arts) 29, 31–32, 142–143 rational legitimacy 94 regulation 154

222 Index rehearsal space 43 Rehfeld, Andrew 91, 98 relative universality 109, 113–114, 210 Renner, Tim 126–127, 160, 161–162, 167, 170–171, 182 REPRESENT legitimation 52, 105–111, 115–118, 123–126, 143–144 representation: A(nta)gonistic Representation Matrix 112–115; claims-making 57–60; hegemony and 17; negative or non-representation 86–93 research methodology 25, 215–216 resource asymmetries 78–79 responsibilization 6 Rhodes, R.A.W. 199 Roskamm, Nikolai 72, 210–211 Round of Spokespeople see Sprecher*innenkreis (SK) rowing 159–160, 166, 169 Sandig, Jochen 61–62 Saward, Michael 57–59, 64, 77, 102 Schmidt, Vivien A. 156, 190–191, 197 Schmidt-Werthern, Konrad 166–167 Schmitt, Carl 15 Schmitz, André 73 Schneider, Steffen 102 Schöpp, Klaus 36 Schumacher, Eric 38–39 Seippel, Ornulf 140, 144 self-legitimation: ACT 96, 98–101, 114–115, 117, 141–142, 193; BOUND 93, 96, 102–105, 115, 117, 142, 185; NOT REPRESENT 126, 182–183; REPRESENT 52, 105–111, 115–118, 123–126, 143–144 self-organization 4, 11–13 Senat für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur (Senate for Science, Research and Culture) 160 Senate Chancellery for Cultural Affairs see Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten Senate for Finance 164 Senatskanzlei see Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten: agency of 168; governance relations 157, 164–165; K2 summit 27; on Koalition 149–150,

195–196; Koalition on 161–164, 166–167; relations with Koalition 171, 172–177, 178–181; self-perceptions 159–165 Senatsverwaltung see Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen 164 Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa (Senate for Culture and Europe) 160 sensitizing concepts 25–26 Shaw, Kate 8 short-term measures 187–188 SK see Sprecher*innenkreis (SK) social movements 1, 3–4, 90–91 society 1, 14, 15, 56 Sofortprogramm (Immediate Program) 177 space: for artists/cultural producers 26–27; Kulturwerk 33; project spaces 35, 41–42, 43, 177; work space program 147, 171–172 speaker of speakers 62, 71, 73 Sprecher*innenkreis (SK): berufsverband bildender künstler*innen berlin (bbk) 33–35; Conflictual Consensus Matrix 85–86; Initiative Neue Musik (INM) 36; Interessensgemeinschaft Jazz (IG Jazz) 42–44; Landesverband freie darstellende Künste Berlin e.V. (LAFT) 39–41; Lettrétage e.V. 38–39; negotiating conflict and consensus 68–71; Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und -initiativen (Network) 41–42; Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) 35–36; overview 32–33, 44–47, 45–46; Tanzbüro 36–38; unifying requests 63–64 Sprecherkreis see Sprecher* innenkreis (SK) stabilization 54, 61 steering 159–160, 166–167, 169 STRATEGIC legitimation 53, 130, 193 Strobel, Vera 40 success 47, 169, 172, 197 Suchman, Mark C. 95 Swyngedouw, Erik 3, 4–5, 17 Tanzbüro (Dance Office) 36–38 TanzRaumBerlin Netzwerk 37 tax see CityTax2015

Index technocratic conflict (CC2) 81, 83–84, 170 Ten-Point Plan see Zehn-Punkte-Plan Thatcher, Margaret 3, 188 ‘the political’ and politics 16–17, 210–211, 214 theoretical frameworks: governance and institutions 153–159; hegemony, equivalence, difference 17–19; introduction to 13–14; ontology of antagonism 14–16; politics and ‘the political’ 16–17 ‘There is no alternative’ (TINA) 3, 188 throughput legitimacy 190–191, 194–196, 197–199, 199, 200–202 time grants see Zeitstipendien (time grants) To Have and To Need see Haben und Brauchen (H&B) totality: articulation seeking to represent 54, 55–60; impossibility of 92–93 tourism 8 transdisciplinarity 67–68, 76–77, 189–190 transparency 167, 169 Uhde, Folkert 61–62 universality: A(nta)gonistic Representation Matrix 112–115; articulation to represent 54, 56–60, 129; as analytical focus 25; relative 109, 113–114, 210; STRATEGIC legitimation and 121–126; universalization 109 unpaid labor 78–79 UP1 (impossible representation) 112–113, 112 UP2 (particularistic representation) 112–113, 112, 123 UP3 (agonistic representation) 112–114, 112, 123, 130, 144, 210–211

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UP4 (full representation) 112–113, 112 urban development: creativity and 5–8; projects 177–178 urban governance 154 Vasilev, George 91–92 Vereinigung Alte Musik Berlin (Association Old Music Berlin) 43–44 visibilization 110–111, 115 visual arts 33–35 Vivaldisaal II 43 Wagenaar, H. 31 Weber, Max 94 Weiner, Corinna 33 Wiehe, Kerstin 36 Willeit, Simone 38 Winkel, Georg 54–55 Woddis, Jane 12, 191 work space program see Arbeitsraumprogramm 147, 171–172 Wowereit, Klaus 27, 30, 167 Zehn-Punkte-Plan (ZPP) (Ten-Point-Plan) 52, 62–64, 83, 177 Zeitgenössisches Musiktheater Berlin e.V. (Contemporary Music Theater Berlin) 43–44 Zeitgenössischer Tanz Berlin e.V. (ZTB) (Association of Contemporary Dance Berlin) 37 Zeitstipendien (time grants) 33–35, 66, 75, 172–173, 177 Zielwerkstatt (Workshop Meeting about Goals of Funding Arts and Culture of the Senate for Culture and Europe) 184–186, 187 Žižek, Slavoj 131