culturally innovative and socially engaged

We ended last year at the art centre with a debate at Kulturhuset and a release of the book 163 04/ VENEZIA NEW YORK PARIS. It was a great event and a highly engaged audience listened to our moderator Elaine Bergqvist, Seher Talayhan a student from Ross Tensta High School, Måns Wrange, rektor from The Academy of Fine Arts, Calle Nathanson, the head of our board and cultural specialist from The Stockholm County Council and Guleed Mohamed who both works for us and runs Tensta Against Crime

The questions that were posed and the tone of the discussion led me to a very basic conclusion; the need to revisit these questions time after time. This in fact has prompted us to in some ways reconsider our ways of working with outreach and community based projects at Tensta Konsthall.

It is hard not to sound pompous about these things and we certainly open ourselves up for criticism, but it is our determination that the projects with which we work are not isolated one-off events but must become a routine of practice. I am personally convinced that the only way to make real changes in behaviour or praxis, is by making our community based activities part of our every day. They cannot be considered as separate but integral to what we do as an art centre each day and every day. Our involvement with or activity in the communities that we serve and, in which we are also participant, are the bedrock of our institutional identity.
If we convert our community involvement into star-turn-egoism or over-determined presentation, the form of display or publication can supersede the intention. It is for this reason that we want to now develop ways in which projects like 16304/ are a continuous presence and not an isolated happening. It is equally critical that the investment we make is balanced. By this I mean that the resources we have at our disposal must be used to enable as much as possible. We will need to look seriously at how we have worked, how many people can take part, how we can evaluate our work and who determines the course and direction of our actions.

The questions that this can promote are not easy. Are the number of people involved in any given project more important than a quality of exclusivity that a project might engender? Is it better that a project receives press coverage than becomes a regular and expected part of a cultural offering? Should we evaluate our work by the responses of the participants or through peer review?

Our commitment to community is something that must act as a constant guide to what we do. I am well aware that for many the combination of international art and a commitment to working with the multiethnic community of Tensta seems a difficult balancing act. I can only say that we believe that we can make this happen. Since I accepted the job as head of Tensta konsthall a year ago I have been told on numerous occasions that you can’t have both. Either we are doomed to alienate the ‘art crowd’ or we will jeopardize our community relations by showing work that is too elitist or esoteric. I refuse to accept the argument that contemporary cultural practice cannot speak broadly. And I believe that managed well and with an underpinning ethos that is both inclusive and ambitious that we really can establish Tensta Konsthall as a model for a culturally innovative and socially engaged international centre of contemporary art.