Questionnaire: Francesco Bertelè for Carrozzeria Margot
Francesco Bertelé is artist & artistic director of Carrozzeria Margot, house for contemporary art production run by a group of art professionals and based in Milan, Italy.
1. How have you maintained your practice in your country with its changing economical and political conditions?
Actually, the activity of Carrozzeria Margot hasn’t been significantly affected by the changes in the economic (the so-called crisis) and political (tightly connected to the cultural sector) context. It is so for the following reasons: the activity of CM, which is the evolution of previous independent organizations I founded and run, for example Mobeel in Venice, have always been on the fringes of the current market and funding system, with the presumption of reaching an economical autonomy over time. As a consequence, in contrast to the current scenario of enterprises that have structured their activities on economic regimes of grants and subsidies, our working conditions haven’t varied significantly. In other words, we have always been relying on economic self-support and self-production to pursue our practice with obstinate conviction.
Also, from a political point of view, we were born during the “Berlusconian era”, characterized by the functional aberration of the social quality of culture and of the impoverishment of its political value (in the sense of enhancing its collective function): this era saw the progressive neglect of a culture capable of generating spaces of collective cohesion and of evolving its critical thinking. Now we are at a plateau, beyond which there will be either total denial or rebirth. So now, us and those who like us have always tried to fill the voids left in the civil function, who have remained autonomous and with an intact critical sense, well, we all find ourselves in a very difficult situation: we need to become capable to evolve beyond the stage of resistance into a new phase of active production and to generate a new and autonomous economy. If we do not succeed, we’ll simply disappear.
2. If there were an international governing body of contemporary art policy making, what would your concerns be?
I think that a government characterized by policies of “doing” can only derive from a collective awareness of the reasons for the current total absence of a “public” government and for the ineffectiveness of policies imposed by a system of vertical government, which has proved to be unable to recognize the variety and multiplicity of those identities which composed and still constitute the cultural landscape of contemporary art.
The only organ of government, at the local level as well, which I think may develop and be helpful, should derive from a collective sense of responsibility of all the individuals who over time have continued to create, sustain and identify themselves with activities of research and professional development.
3. To what extent does your government participate in producing contemporary art infrastructures?
It doesn’t participate in any ways and above all with no usefulness or effectiveness, especially for non-institutional, small-scale enterprises.
4. How do you move across different funding systems to produce your projects?
We are currently experiencing a further evolution of CM’s identity: we were born in an informal and autonomous context, going through productions financed by third parties with sufficient budget to cover certain costs of production but not the costs of labor, to finally reach the current evolution stage where we believe that we should abandon the search for grants and instead be able to do business, to become economically independent, generating market demand without sacrificing and compromising the political function and artistic value of our work.
For this reason, we don’t turn to sponsors and funding anymore, but we are searching for new commissions and committees, clients across various market sectors, not just focusing on that of contemporary art, but clients who understand the cultural as well as economic value of our product.
5. If you could work with a local policy maker, what would you desire for the future of contemporary arts funding? Give your forecast.
I wish that contemporary art professionals were valued more and that first of all they began to think of themselves as any of the other sectors of economy and society, that they could count on a fair legislation and law from the point of view of guarantees and duties, that they could acquire organs of government and protection democratically determined and recognized.