From the Aesthetics of Administration
Schwebel was invited to produce a solo exhibition at the Centrum project space in Berlin. This project was originally meant to be a part of a festival for which the allotted artist’s fee was to have been 90€, an amount determined by a grant from the Berlin arts funding Council (the Kulturverwaltung), the festival was ultimately cancelled.
For his work Schwebel invited employees of the Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa (the city council responsible for culture) to propose and realize their own artworks. After sending many letters of invitation, many of which were ignored or declined, the artist received two positive replies. The participating administrators were curious, engaged, and thoughtful in their responses to my proposition, and composed works reflecting on their tasks at the Senat and their relationship to art. The resulting exhibition reversed the roles of administrator and producer, delegating the production of artistic content to those who normally manage the financial structures underpinning its production. It also made visible the personal aesthetics and opinions of the administrators of public arts funding, who normally remain unrepresented and unconsidered in the cultural landscape of Berlin, but have great power to determine the definition and determination of contemporary art.
The project was selected as a critic's pick by artforum.
