In response to the abrupt funding cut by Berlin's Cultural Senate in November 2023, Oyoun, a cultural initiative in Berlin-Neukölln, reflects on the challenges of navigating an inherently hostile system in their curatorial practice. Having operated as an intermediary between marginalized communities and various institutions since January 2020, Oyoun faced a significant setback with the funding cut, losing both financial foundation and a 3800-sqm space.
Oyoun’s structure, though partially institutionalized, was marked by precariousness, obliging compliance with political decisions. The abrupt funding cut, which came after Oyoun criticized Germany's pro-Israel stance, exposed the vulnerability of institutionalization, highlighting issues of tokenism, censorship, and potential stigmatization.
The author of the text, Dami, draws inspiration from works like "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded," edited by INCITE!, emphasizing the need to envision alternative, autonomous, and sustainable models of work. The key question raised is a collective reflection on the nature of one's practice and its connection to communities. The emphasis is on creating a space for reflection, imagination, and dreaming beyond the constraints of the system.
The curatorial focus of Oyoun, centered on transforming the memory culture of war and colonial, patriarchal violence from queer-feminist perspectives, remains integral. Despite the suspension of annual funding, the solidarity received demonstrates the strength of a queer-feminist alliance in surviving a hostile system.
Despite facing an uncertain future, Oyoun asserts its resilience, transcending physical forms and finding strength in community and solidarity during this challenging period.
Its chronically unfulfilled assignment to support those in need, its permanent malfunctioning in serving principles of equity, is nothing new to many cultural workers working with public funds, whose works center around community support, political resistance and system critique. Especially for those of us, who must navigate through intersections of oppression not only at work but in our life, the system is nothing but hostile.
With the abrupt funding cut by Berlin’s Cultural Senate last month (November 2023), all of us at Oyoun are confronted in our curatorial practice with the inherent insecurity of institutionalization, which we were all aware of, urging us to imagine alternative ways of sustaining our work, but which will inevitably continue to linger within our organizational structure in the future as well.
With the city’s project funding constituting the major part of our annual budget since January 2020, Oyoun has been functioning as an intermediary between individuals and initiatives from different marginalized communities and the state, public and private institutions. We were always grassroots, but at the same time, we were very close to institution.
The funding included a 3800-sqm house in Neukölln with various kinds of spaces and resourceful equipment. We could offer and share what is in our hands, while organizing ourselves to realize our own curatorial agendas. Our work carried a fundamental mutuality with and responsibility towards our communities. We listened to each other, gathered and disseminated knowledge among and beyond us, re-built and deinstalled structures and grew together. We learned and unlearned how to care for each other in our work. Above all, the last three years and ten months have enabled us to experience, both individually and collectively, the reclaiming of our space, our platform and the affirmation of our legitimacy.
Although a certain stability coming from the partial institutionalization supported this collective experience, our structure was symptomatic of precariousness which the minoritized are often exposed to. We were obliged to comply with political and financial decisions of the city and the state. Whenever we were not willing to comply, it entailed that what we were given would be taken away. Most of us with experiences of marginalization were already quite familiar with such a half-mindedness. All this became only more evident with the arbitrary funding cut of the Senate, especially ever since we publicly criticized, in dialogues with our communities, Germany's unconditional pro-Israeli stance.
Becoming institutionalized comes with dehumanization — tokenism, censorship, reductionism and a potential stigmatization. It might give stability, for a while, but not security. This is the case not only in a few corners of the non-profit sector, but in most of the socio-politically oriented and artistic-culturally organized movements, initiatives and projects.
As a member of the Oyoun team going through the current repression, it is inspiring to encounter works like "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" edited by INCITE! (2017). It is illuminating to once more recognize and criticize the capitalistic (hence naturally patriarchal and colonial) habits, intra-community tension and exhaustion that such a hostile funding environment brings about. Knowledge shared in this book gives me courage to imagine scenarios and options beyond it. It is essential to dream of an autonomous, collaborative, resistant and sustainable model of work.
In “between radical theory and community praxis”, Amara H. Pérez writes how not only institutional criticism but also collective reflection, transformation and constant and growing efforts for financial autonomy are at the center of work of Sisters in Action for Power. “In addition to developing strategies for institutional change, we also want to incorporate tools for transformation and healing into our organizing efforts. … We look at ways to develop an organizational culture and practice inspired more by revolutionary and holistic paradigms than corporate and business models. The work is not just about what we do, but how we do it; the process is just as important as the outcome.”
In their struggle to “maintain a political edge and revolutionary commitment” without fully relinquishing their operation within the industrialized non-profit funding framework of the USA, Sisters in Action, according to Amara, has developed a political framework grounding their practice: “by evaluating our work with this analysis, by staying within a budget that does not deplete us to raise, by integrating grassroots fundraising throughout the organization, and by taking the time to assess and improve on our terms the work we do.”
The real question is not whether we should decide right now to either completely abandon or continue abiding in the hegemonic funding structure. More importantly, we should be collectively reflecting on what consists of our practice and how it connects to our communities in the context of the larger movement. We should allow ourselves ample space, time, energy, and resources, with the absolute priority, to check in with each one of us about our wellbeing and vision and to collectively establish and continually transform the framework of our practice. The ability to imagine, to dream beyond the hostility of the system can only emerge in such a mutually achieved space of reflection.
Curation — as in holding a common ground filled with intimacy, as in connecting and weaving, and as in contextualizing — should be dedicated to enabling such an imagination, with or without the privileged backbone of funding. Each curation constitutes a far larger movement of personal and social transformation and should contribute to upholding a space where dissent, nuanced dialogues, experimentation, vulnerability and (un)learning is possible. Oyoun will continue to cherish such a role, in however form we exist.
Transforming the memory culture of war and colonial, patriarchal violence from queer-feminist perspectives has been central to my curatorial work at Oyoun. With artists such as Bruna Amaro, Nadja Makhlouf and Yukiko Nagakura, we have been designing and crafting ways of remembrance, celebration and commitment to persevere, with regional focuses in Latin America, Maghreb and in East Asia. In remembering anti-colonial and anti-partrichal struggles, it is essential to speak through non-state actors, with women and queer bodies. It is essential to deconstruct chronicles of history and navigate the intersecting timelines through future, past and present. It is essential to link multiple fronts across different regions with the aim to nurture a global alliance. In the queer-feminist alliance, we find the source of sustainability of movement and energy to care for each other. It shows us, in Margo Okazawa-Rey’s words, “the feminist vision of genuine security free of militarism and creating a culture of life.”
Such an alliance is essential for us in surviving the hostile system. With the suspension from the annual funding, we have experienced vast waves of solidarity. The act of recognizing the common struggle and tying knots with the others let me have a lucid dream of how we can fight back. The power to dream is substantial, especially in this moment, considering recent European politics instrumentalizing and exacerbating white supremacy and animosity.
More than ever, we must stay vigilant against the system’s inevitable tendency to institutionalize effective grassroots movements. We must be aware of the inherent precariousness that institutionalization entails. We should not, in equal measure, cease to demand the system to transform and the institutions to care. Organizations close to institution should continue to exist to serve the community and to secure, albeit temporarily, the momentum to reclaim our place in this society. We must insist to the system that it’s their job to worry about our labor being paid.
Several projects are still awaiting us at Oyoun in 2024. It seems like the house would not be there anymore and our team would have to disperse. But as per our slogan, we are more than a house; we transcend just one form of operation. The Senate’s funding withdrawal can never annihilate us. Through our current struggle, we hope to find each other in our communities and in our solidarity more desperately than ever.
최다미 Dami Choi (she/they) is a curator / cultural worker based in Berlin and in the Korean diaspora, with focus on amplifying queer-feminist, system-critical and marginalized perspectives, mainly through artistic media but also through a spectrum of critical/creative sociocultural works.