There is an exhibition in prison. It is called CRACK.

the spiritual depth that once secured it a starring role in the historical development
of the nation. One could say that “education” had been flattened, and it was in fact
by one of its former partners in the project of the Enlightenment: culture.
The latter left the era of modernity and emerged as its greatest profiteer. “Culture”
has become the latest valid, and thus significant, determinant of all kinds of social,
political, historical, economic, environmental, ethical, even individually-existential
conditions. 6 It is the thing that confidently dominates today’s broader logic of world
views and representations (art included) so that you can say: If culture today speaks
of the world, it speaks not only about itself, but also to itself. 7
So much for the context in which the concept of cultural education searches for
a practical connection to reality. It also explains what “cultural” in the concept of
cultural education actually refers to - namely culture “in the narrowest sense”, more
specifically, the arts in general, all artistic and aesthetic practices in visual arts,
literature, the theater or film, including applied arts such as design and architecture.
In fact, one introduces a subset of culture within a broader sense. But here is where
the real problem begins: What is the relationship of this part to the whole of
culture? And, more importantly: As far as the whole of culture today knows nothing
outside of itself - how can a part of this whole still have a relationship with anything
other than culture, like with society, politics, labor or the state? Or is culture in
the broadest sense the only thing that art today can still refer to? And how is one
to imagine the autonomy and freedom of art under these circumstances?
The artwork mentioned earlier gives us the best metaphorical answer to this
question. Art today finds its autonomous space, where it can articulate itself free
from ideology or political abuse, only in the prison of culture. Here alone, may it
live out its social roles according to its own will and develop its political effects, or
follow higher historical purposes – to the extent, and only to the extent, it does not
exceed the boundaries of the space of culture. Or it can rebel against it.
Atsuko Mochida, another participant in the project by the students of the MFA
program Public Art and New Artistic Strategies of the Bauhaus University Weimar,
pierced the walls of the prison, and fed a huge steel ring through the building. Her
work Piercing the Prison combined four prison cells, the courtyard, the outer wall,
and the "freedom" outside of the prison.
So there is a space outside of culture, where you can still capture society, politics
and work within their respective realities. It seems only art can remind us of that.
That and nothing else should be its role in the project of cultural education.
1 Raymond Williams, Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1976, S. 79.
2 Moses Mendelssohn, „Ueber die Frage: was heißt aufklären?“, in: Berlinische Monatsschrift, 1784, Neuntes Stück, S. 193.
3 Johann Friedrich Zöllner, „Ist es rathsam, das Ehebündnis ferner durch die Religion zu sancieren?“, in: Berlinische Monatsschrift,
1783, Zwölftes Stück, S. 516.
4 Siehe Reinhart Koselleck, „On the Anthropological and Semantic Structure of Bildung“, in: derselbe,
The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002, S. 174.
5 Karl Philipp Moritz, Werke in zwei Bänden. Band 1, Berlin und Weimar 1973, S. 203–211.
Erstdruck in: Berlinische Monatsschrift, 1785, 3. Stück.
6 Siehe Stefan Nowotny, „Kultur” in der politischen Moderne: Versuch über die Institution eines Begriffs,
Dissertation an der Université Catholique de Louvain, 2012, S. 198.
7 Benjamin Kunkel, Utopia or Bust. A Guide to the Present Crisis, London, New York: Verso, 2014, S. 60.
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