The interview was conducted by Leonie Baumann on July 8, 2009 and was published as “Gernot Bubenik: Action Group on Art”, in: 40 Years Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin 2009, pp. 39-43.

Leonie Baumann (LB): I see from your biography that you were already active in cultural politics in the 1960s for the Berufsverband Bildender Künstler/BBK [the professional association of artists]. What were your political goals at the time when you became involved with BBK and then the action group in Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst/DGBK, then later for NGBK?

Gernot Bubenik (GB): Until 1967, BBK regarded itself as a purely ,economic’ association. As a member of BBK in 1967 I founded the working group Berufsverband [professional association] with the aim of initiating a new self-image for the BBK. The working group Berufsverband at the BBK, which from 1967 onwards met in my flat, was soon joined by Dieter Ruckhaberle. He wanted to inform us about the undemocratic structure of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, and called on the working group Berufsverband to help bring about a change in the statutes there. For this, we founded the working group Kunstverein. All those present decided to register with both organisations, BBK and DGBK, unless they were members already. At the meetings of the working group we started debates about democratic statutes for the DGBK and how to proceed strategically to get them changed. In the course of these discussions, the group named itself ,action group in the Kunstverein’ and moved its meetings to the rooms of the students’ union at the HfbK (Hochschule für bildende Künste, the art academy). This address was then also used as return address for communications and flyers. As a BBK board member, I also represented the interests of the working group Berufsverband on the board, and together with the BBK board supported the democratisation of DGBK and the establishment of NGBK.

Beginning in 1968, the students’ unions at HfM (Hochschule für Musik, the music academy) and HfbK started to be receptive to questions of cultural politics. Although as far as I know, the SDS paid little attention to cultural politics, they were receptive and agreed with our goals. I remember an event with Peter Weiss in the SDS space, a meeting of the project group ,culture and revolution’ in Hans-Werner Heister’s flat on 14 March 1968 with four participants, including Jobst Meyer and me, a meeting of a working group ,cultural politics’ in Christiane Maether’s flat with, in addition to myself, Jobst Meyer, Hadlich, and Freiersleben. As far as I know, this group met twice. Hans-Werner Heister thought that in view of the strong self-dependent activities of the Berlin artists, participation of the SDS was not necessary. As far as I could see, that was that. I, as a representative of BBK, was invited by the executive committee of the students’ union at the music academy to give a lecture on ,professional perspectives for independent artists’. At HfbK, Wolfgang Fritz Haug offered a Marxism seminar. Dieter Ruckhaberle encouraged the action group at the Kunstverein to attend.

It was known that some participants of both activities (BBK and Kunstverein) were also members of the SEW. In my view, this became a problem when both in the BBK as well as NGBK (after it was founded) groups formed that were not so much committed to democratic will formation in group discussions and to democratic voting, but rather more committed to the policies of the party, whose viewpoints of course were not up for discussion. The fact that the professional interests of artists and their strategies were increasingly marginalised caused me to withdraw from the activities in both areas in 1973.

LB: You are considered the creator of NGBK’s logo. Now you’ve brought this impressive portfolio of initial sketches and drawings with which we can trace the logo’s genesis. Obviously, many people were involved in the search for an apt visualisation of the structure and grass-roots democracy: Göta Tellesch, Herbert Mondry, you, and others.

GB: Yes, sure, I tried to take up the various ideas in the group and translate them into a logo. The image was supposed to signal that something new was happening. Somehow my works appealed to them and they were fascinated by the visual language I used. We then settled on a compromise, and this is how the NGBK logo came about.

LB: Now would the logo look if you had been able to determine the design alone, without having to reach a consensus with others?

GB: I had worked on various drafts and tried to articulate this idea of a cycle, which wasn’t all that easy. I was interested in translating what actually went on into a spatial structure, the interchange between the actions of the working groups, the reflection of the development of exhibitions, and the emotional effects, to capture all that. There was a draft for the last meeting, when the logo was to be decided. When it was on the table, some graphic design student put everything into little boxes. While I had tried to represent the process without any interruptions, preferably in a circle that comes back together, now everything was framed in an orderly fashion.

LB: Your first diagram already contains elements of the logo: the arrows that point in different directions, the permeability…

GB: Yes, my idea was to use this structural model also as a logo. I didn’t quite succeed because it would have required more discussion. I have to say honestly that our ideas where still unstructured. Most of us thought in terms of ,above and below’ and ,left and right’, both politically and geometrically, while the notion of circles or spiral-shaped processes was impossible to realise formally. Therefore we ended the process of making drafts because after all, the idea was needed. Unfortunately the discussion wasn’t taken up again later. Structure helps with ordering one’s thoughts. I have always imagined this process of ordering thoughts or ideas as a continuous thing that never ends. We had the opportunity to actually emblematise actions and in a positive sense prepare the relationship of working groups, coordinating committee, and executive office through a graphic structure. The hope was to invent a structure, statutes that would be different from all others, in order to be able to develop democratic behaviour. You can’t create more as a foundation, everything else had to be left to the people in the working groups. You couldn’t and didn’t want to intervene, regardless of whether they bashed each other’s heads in, beat each other up, or ended up with a positive result. At the time, everybody suffered more or less from this inability to act democratically. My relationship to the group kept oscillating between kidnapping and adapting. The grasp the group had of the individual and the real personal interactions resulting from that could sometimes be quite unpleasant. You can be surprised, you get to know people differently, and a sorting begins to take place: this is democratic, this is not democratic. You don’t get any results, you compromise, etc. That caused many artists, whose individuality is at the core of their self-conception, quite a bit of distress.

LB: As far as I could observe, in the 1990s the logo was regarded as outmoded and fusty, whereas today many, especially young people are very enthusiastic about it. They think the logo is modern again. Do you think that the earlier idea of symbolising a freedom for democratic behaviour is once again noticeable today?

GB: I hope so, in any case. NGBK is after all really an institution that has taken and is still taking advantage of a certain freedom, and doing so very successfully. It appeals to a public, across generations, that sees its need for individuality realised here.

However, the relationship between the individual and the group is still problematic. The group cramps the individual in, without being able to see the consequences, or worse still, without caring about the consequences. A group must fulfil its group goal, regardless of whether the individuals can cope with that. I’m not familiar with the procedures and dynamics in the working groups today anymore, I can only speak from my experience. During my active time, nobody worked at solving this basic conflict, because nobody was interested in it. But it would have been necessary in order to be able to act in a more complex way. For me, this would be a current, topical question for NGBK, which has now seen 40 years of group processes. How did the individuals cope, what did they contribute to the community, what could they not contribute, what about the stuff they couldn’t contribute, and what happens with the stuff they did contribute?

LB: When you compare the exhibitions of the early years with those of today, were there any projects in recent years that corresponded to what you were thinking then, that worked on comparable ideas?

GB: I notice such exhibitions quite often. That makes me happy – I can say that quite emotionally. I still feel nobody caught up with me in terms of my thinking ahead and my emotions. But I see in the whole development the confirmation that my ideas can’t have been all that absurd, that a lot is doable, and often enough NGBK’s projects exceed my intentions and ideas. In any case, very positively so!

But these long early years, where there was such a need to catch up with addressing topics relating to social critique! It seemed like extra coaching, but I suppose it was necessary. We were always taking votes, and many good ideas did not get enough votes. All energy was concentrated on basic research on the functions of art in society.

LB: I see you regularly at many exhibition openings. Do you have, on the basis of your past experience and your dedicated work at the time NGBK was founded, a wish or maybe some advice for the working groups or for the future of NGBK?

GB: More self-reflection, that is to say, solve this group problem. If that isn’t solved, over the course of time sclerosis can develop.