Since the publication of Joel Tunström’s “What’s Happened to Iaspis?” in Kunstkritikk on December 12, 2012, the direction in which Iaspis has been steered for the last several years has been subject to debate in the Swedish art world and Dagens Nyheter’s editorial pages. This discussion has largely centered on the role of the institution’s director, and the recent constraints on instituting a program that follows a strong curatorial line.
The first response was a debate article published in DN on January 21, 2013 and signed by 195 Swedish artists under the title, “Threatened Independence: Director Controlled by Censorship and Bureaucracy”. Written by artists Petra Bauer, Goldin+Senneby and Matts Leiderstam, the authors strongly object to the increasingly drastic limitations to the director’s autonomy and decision-making power, which they argue prevent this once vital institution from developing independent artistic and critical operations. While acknowledging that Iaspis is a part of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, they ask if this simple fact actually requires that “artistic operations must be permeated by ‘the government agency’s perspective’?”. For example, “Moderna Museet is another state institution. Should their programs and exhibitions also be governed by bureaucratic principles without curatorial vision?” The authors maintain that Iaspis has served as the single most important link between the Swedish and international art scenes and if it is to survive as a viable institution, it must be as a place for the exchange of contacts, experience, ideas and criticism, rather than as just another instrumentalized government agency. “Save Iaspis while it can be saved”, the authors conclude.
The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and the Visual Arts Fund responded with their own debate article in DN on January 24th, where they claim that the limitations they’ve put on the director’s operational plans are entirely in order and a routine process within the agency. Tunström, responding in Kunstkritikk the following day, asks if this is the case, why in that case this routine was not followed until recently, and how the administrators actual interventions in the director’s operational plans can be seen as merely preparing the proposal for the board to approve, and not actively altering these plans? But beyond this, he asks, how does this help better serve Iaspis’ aim to be an international center for contemporary visual art?
The following week, Maria Lind and Cecilia Wiedenheim, directors at Iaspis from 2005-7 and 2008-10 respectively, weighed in with a piece, again in the pages of DN, highly critical of the changes that have taken place at Iaspis over the past few years. Lind and Wiedenheim write, “We agree completely with the article in Kunstkritikk that regulation has taken over and capped discussions and other exchanges that make it possible for artists in Sweden to take part in a serious way in a global conversation.” Lind and Wiedenheim conclude by suggesting a fundamental change is needed in Iaspis’ institutional structure: “An alternative that should be explored is that the Visual Arts Fund, which, in contrast to the free-standing Swedish Authors’ Fund, currently is under the Arts Grants Committee, becomes independent.”
Most recently, Petra Bauer, Goldin+Senneby and Matts Leiderstam have again published a piece in DN (Feb. 5th), this time detailing some of the “Kafkaesque” processes that have stymied various proposals and actual projects, one of which resulted in Iaspis no longer having a presence at this year’s Venice Biennale. They also point out the inadequacy of the response from the Arts Grants Committee and the Visual Arts Fund when they refer to the fact that most proposals they receive from the director have received funding, by arguing that their boards never actually are able to make a decision on the director’s proposal, but rather one first vetted by the agencies’ administrators.
