Open Call (2012):

“The Arthur Boskamp Foundation has been awarding two artist grants annually since 2007. For the first time, this year’s call for entries is coupled with a concept that reaches beyond particular fields of artistic production to encompass all media and is targeted at artists pursuing a particular interest. This interest should fit under the umbrella concept of “realism”, largely ignoring the term’s change in meaning over time and its historical loadedness. The choice of concept is founded in the desire to sound out not only different forms and possibilities of working with the world, but also the (inter)relation between art and presence. It may go without saying that artistic work can rarely avoid some form of relationship to reality, but the question of the intensity and immediacy of its interest in reality does not. If relationship to reality means reflecting on the (inter)relation between art and world and the desire to work on reality, then this foregrounds the political and thus ideally utopian dimension of “realism”. The core of our interest in realism is thus located in the divergence between that which “is” and that which is (re)presented and what that is referencing. This necessarily includes the divergence between the person who (re)presents and the recipient and/or participant – and that in all imaginable diversity. This interchangeability between (artistic) “work” and “reality” can take on the most diverse of (mixed) forms. To that extent, this call goes out in the interest of undermining practices of cataloging, classification, as well as traditionally accepted (at the expense of others) forms of knowledge – and therefore of somehow being realistic.”

Annette Hans, Artistic Director M.1 2013/14