A.PASS, OR HOW THE LESS VISIBLE MAKES THE VISIBLE POSSIBLE

By Agnès Quackels, in dialogue with Barbara Van Lindt (both general and artistic coordinator), Maria Dogahe (programming) and Katelijne Meeusen (coordination team audience) (14 February 2022)

At the end of January it was announced that the Brussels research centre a.pass, just like the Higher Institute for Fine Arts, would lose its subsidies from the Flemish government. Agnès Quackels, general and artistic coordinator at Kaaitheater, responds with an open letter to theatre goers. ‘This decision affects the public too.”

Dear audience,

Flemish Minister of Education Ben Weyts recently decided not to grant any further subsidies to the Brussels-based postgraduate research programme for the performing arts a.pass, despite a recent positive evaluation by the competent commission.

The argument for this decision is that a.pass offers no added value to the arts field and that research in this field cannot be considered part of education.

This decision is a wake-up call for the entire sector. After all, it demonstrates the political policy shift in Flanders today and how this is counterproductive for the development of the arts.

Now that the subsidised art institutions in Flanders have submitted their applications for operating subsidies for the next five years, and it is becoming clear that the budgets proposed by Minister Jan Jambon will not even be cover the sector's current operations, we think it is important to draw the public's attention to the consequences of this for the arts sector, but also for audiences at the various venues. Because even though it may have passed you by, this decision also has consequences for you, the spectator.

a.pass is a programme aimed at artists who have completed their training and who may have already started a professional practice. Every year, artists from all over the world attend the selection interviews to participate in this programme. They are attracted by a.pass’ collective and experimental research environment which is partly shaped by curating artists and partly by the participants themselves. This special character makes a.pass a unique place in Europe (and perhaps in the whole world) that questions how performing arts are made and how we 'make' school today.

Although a.pass has been subsidised for 20 years, the public in Flemish and Brussels theatres probably know (little to) nothing about this place of research. Nevertheless, a.pass offers considerable value for the production of performing arts, and in particular the art we show on our stages.

But why?

What we see on our stages is the result of hours of work off the stage, and you, the audience, know that too. Dozens and dozens of people have spent months working, often full time, on each piece we put on before we spend a hour in the dark watching the result of all this. You may know that all these people are there, but you do not see them.

What some of you also know is that these people are often only paid for part of their work. The younger the artist, the smaller that proportion. But that you also can’t see.

What many people in the audience do not know is that the initial impetus for all this work, paid or unpaid, does not come from nowhere. Art is not made in a vacuum. Creation is not only a fruit of our times, which art also questions and illuminates. It also inscribes itself in the broader contemporary arts field and enters into dialogue with it. The arts field is made up of thousands of different people, with a variety of skills: dramatists, assistants, curators, journalists, educators, researchers... You don't see them either.

Yet, together these people form a complex ecosystem where all the players are interconnected, engage in continuous exchanges, think collectively and work together in many ways and all of this is indispensable to making art. In this ecosystem, a.pass, as an experimental learning space, plays an essential role.

The artistic community in Flanders and Brussels is strong, lively and diverse and the quality of its artistic production high, precisely because over the past 25 years there has been considerable investment in the development of the arts in Flanders. These investments went, and this is quite remarkable, in no insignificant part to small autonomous organisations such as a.pass. They helped create the framework for an arts field in which contemporary performing arts could flourish.

With meagre resources and sometimes a structural lack of them, these small institutions have today accomplished a titanic task and their impact on the development of the performing arts is internationally recognised. The time, space, attention and expertise they provide have ensured renewal and relevance of the performing arts year after year.

But where they were important yesterday, today they are considered superfluous.

It is disconcerting to see how quickly the importance of some things can be reassessed and how decisions are made outside the existing democratic review procedures. It is also alarming to see how political decision-makers lack long-term vision and how they apparently fail to appreciate the possible consequences of their, at best, arbitrary decisions.

What the audience should know is that when it comes to making art, and especially performing art, what is less visible is not superfluous, but of value. It is the sine qua non of what can be seen. On stage, the less visible makes the visible possible. To delete the less visible, the unknown, is an act of obscurantism that weakens the visible.

It is a mistake to think that one can stop caring for this field of small institutions overnight and make cutbacks that would mean the dissolution of organisations such as a.pass or HISK, which currently are suffering the same fate.

Asking that which is small continuously to grow larger and to be noticed by everyone in order to prove its worth and survive shows little understanding of the workings of the arts, including the great art institutions. For the great does not exist, never, without the small.

a.pass is not something you see on stage, but it is partly thanks to a.pass that you see 'something' on the stages of Kaaitheater, and that 'something' remains pertinent and unique.

To abolish small autonomous institutions such as a.pass or ask them to merge into larger organisations is deliberately undermining the basis and richness of our ecosystem, our community and its production on stage. It is a denial of the value of previous investments that have brought countless and internationally recognised results in the performing arts field. It means a structural and permanent impoverishment of the quality of the programming that we can put together for you, our audience.

For all these reasons, we ask Minister Ben Weyts to reconsider his decision.