Art Critics Award (ACA)
art project
[collaboration with Erwin Uhrmann]
The Art Critics Award, a prize for art criticism in Austria, put a 180° turn on the usual relationships of appraisal. It was based on an evaluation of art critics' work by a jury of artists. The prize money was awarded to 13 authors between 2007 and 2017 in collaborations with art institutions, magazines, critics and artists.
The ACA was initiated by Moussa Kone and Erwin Uhrmann.
“Dieser Preis hat verschiedene angenehme Seiten. Eine wesentliche ist, dass er den Begriff Kunstkritik nicht für eine klar gegebene abgeschlossene Sache hält, sondern ihn bei jeder Preisverleihung neu definiert. Der Ausgangspunkt ist nicht: es gibt ein ewiges Feld der Kunstkritik, und das bringt immer wieder neue Kritiker oder Kritikerinnen hervor, und denen gibt man einen Preis. Sondern jedes mal wird definiert, welche Subdisziplin, welche bestimmte Funktion der Kunstkritik gefragt ist, und auf diesem Gebiet wird nach jemandem gesucht. Das ist eine sehr intelligente Vorgehensweise, und deswegen sollte der Preis weiter vergeben werden.”
Diedrich Diedrichsen in an interview about the ACA
(http://globe-m.de/de/experts/kritik-der-kunstkritik, accessed April 12, 2016)
Artists and critics
Texts are a part of contemporary art production. Today at art universities, artists are taught how to write about what they are doing - this was the starting point of the ACA project for Moussa Kone. Freelance critics find themselves in precarious circumstances. Between the interests of the market and the institutions, and as a part of the scene, it is not easy to assert oneself as independent. Therefore, it is important to point out the role that critique plays for art and to actively participate in this relationship as an artist.
Award ceremony 2010
Here’s a short video: a summary of the award ceremony in Vienna in 2010. The ACA went to Susanne Neuburger and Milena Dimitrova. Lioba Reddeker and Moussa Kone presented the concept of the prize, Georg Schöllhammer held the honorific speech, and the art critcs’ band La Stampa played a live concert.
Statistics
From 2007 to 2011, art critics could not apply for the prize. The texts for the jury's evaluation were provided by a media monitoring conducted at the institution basis wien. Texts about contemporary art in Austria were collected. Every year, the focus changed: from daily newspapers to art magazines, lifestyle magazines, online magazines, etc. The data was analyzed and presented in statistics and interpretations.
In 2010, e.g., from 27 media, including art magazines from Austria, Germany and Switzerland, 156 texts on contemporary art in and from Austria were collected from a total of 93 authors. Among them, two thirds were women and one third men. The Art Critics Award provided a rare and revealing insight into the media landscape and data on art reporting in Austria.
When the Kunsthalle Wien started to host the ACA in 2015, the procedure changed to an application process, but the idea of having changing categories continued. The prize money was doubled for two main prizes.
Discourse
In the supporting program a reader (ACA Lesebuch, basis wien, 2008) was published and panel discussions were held. Various workshops for writing about art were given, and public celebrations were held. In collaborations with magazines (artmagazine.cc, Camera Austria, Eikon, Fleisch, frieze d/e, Kunst-Bulletin, Monopol, Spike, Springerin, The Gap, Wiener Zeitung) the Junior award winners could publish about art.
The winning ACA critics from 2007-2017: Raphael Dillhof, Helen Young Chang, Patricia Grzonka, Benedikt Ledebur, Ines Kleesattel, Christian Höller, Susanne Neuburger, Milena Dimitrova, Sabeth Buchmann, Lavinia Neff, Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer, Matthias Dusini, Rolf Wienkötter. All prize winners received 3000.-€, only once the jury split the prize into two prizes à 1500.-€. The Junior prize winners received 1000.-€ and paid assignments to write texts for collaborating art magazines. The prize money was sponsored by the City of Vienna. Honorific speeches about the winners were held by Diedrich Diedrichsen, Georg Schöllhammer, Thomas Wulffen, Martin Prinzhorn, Vanessa Joan Müller and Lioba Reddeker.
The ACA artist jury members from 2007-2017: Matthias Herrmann, Anna Jermolaewa, Constanze Ruhm, Markus Schwander, Andrea van der Straeten, Silke Wagner und Thomas Baumann (2007), Nikolaus Gansterer, Clemens Krauss, Dorit Margreiter, Ursula Mayer, Markus Schinwald, Andrea Thal, Jun Yang (2008), Florian Pumhösl, Andreas Fogarasi, Corinne L. Rusch, Christian Egger, Katrin Plavcak, Daniel Hauser, Carola Dertnig (2010), Isa Rosenberger, Thomas Draschan, Katrina Daschner, Heimo Zobernig, Svenja Deininger (2011), Lisl Ponger, Julian Göthe, Jenny Tischer, Monica Bonvicini, Bernhard Cella (2015), Henning Bohl, Nicole Wermers, Barbara Kapusta, Johanna Kandl (2017). A jury statement about the winners was always published.
The ACA owes its existence to the commitment of Lioba Reddeker (1961-2011) and the basis wien. With great enthusiasm, Lioba Reddeker took over the patronage for a project of young artists, supported them and collaborated with all her strength.
From 2015-2017 Nicolas Schafhausen hosted the ACA at the Kunsthalle Wien. The success of the ACA was to focus on the relationship between art production and art reception and to support the work of critics.
The Art Critics Award
The Art Critics Award (ACA), a prize for art criticism, puts a 180° turn on the usual relationships of appraisal and is based on an evaluation of art critics‘ work by artists. The prize, invented by Moussa Kone, does not serve as an act of revenge on the critics. The ACA is a venture about the way art criticism should be according to those at the receiving end, and whether, in Oscar Wilde‘s sense (The Critic as Artist, 1888), it is more than merely text production.
Accordingly, since its inception the ACA has explored the structures within which criticism is produced, the different conditions under which critics work, especially the economical and production-specific framework. The prize, which had been awarded three times by 2010, is based on a comprehensive 3-month observation of the relevant media. Contributions on contemporary art in and from Austria were filtered for assessment from numerous Ger- man language media. A different focus is placed on each period of observation, from art magazines to daily newspapers and on- line media. For the additional Junior Art Critics Award, aspiring critics were asked to submit reviews in an open call. The complete texts were presented anonymously to a seven person jury of international artists, which changes for each prize, as the basis for appraisal.
An art project that engages with art criticism also requires the production of theory. In 2007 the ACA Lesebuch, the ACA reader, was produced. At workshops held at art colleges (in Vienna, Linz and Karlsruhe) the students engaged with relevant texts. One of the participants, Lavinia Neff, even became the prize-winner in the Junior category for 2008. The conditions of the production of art criticism, its future and the differences from other forms ofcriticism as well as the frequently parallel role of the protagonists in this arena were investigated in several panel discussions held with critics, scientists, artists and journalists.
That every piece of art criticism follows specific rules was shown by the jury in 2007 when the prize was split into categories for daily newspapers and for magazines. The 3000 euro prize money was shared by the journalists Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer and Matthias Dusini. The Junior ACA was won by Rolf Wienkötter; his first published articles in cooperating art magazines have enabled him to have a good start as a critic. The extent to which criticism not only provides a precise analysis of the artwork but also expands the way the work is regarded was one of the key criteria for the jury in 2008. First prize went to the theorist Sabeth Buchmann. In 2010 the jury awarded the main prize to the curator Susanne Neuburger, and the Junior prize to Milena Dimitrova.
In 2007 the artists on the jury were Thomas Baumann, Matthias Herrmann, Anna Jermolaewa, Constanze Ruhm, Markus Schwander, Andrea van der Straeten and Silke Wagner. In 2008 the critics‘ work was appraised by Nikolaus Gansterer, Clemens Krauss, Dorit Margreiter, Ursula Mayer, Markus Schinwald, Andrea Thal and Jun Yang. The jury for 2010 consisted of Carola Dertnig, Christian Egger, Andreas Fogarasi, Daniel Hauser, Katrin Plavcak, Florian Pumhösl and Corinne L. Rusch. From 2007 to 2010 the Art Critics Award was organised in a cooperation between the Verein Kunstwerft artists association and basis wien, an art documentation facility.
Text by Erwin Uhrmann, Vienna, 2010 (translated from German)
Addendum: In 2011, the ACA was awarded to art critic Christian Höller and the junior prize to Ines Kleesattel. In 2015 started a new phase and the prize was hosted by the Kunsthalle Wien museum. The modalities were adopted and the prize money was split into different categories of writing about art. The ACA 2015 went to the Patricia Grzonka (category review) and Benedikt Ledebur (category essay). In 2017 Helen Young Chang (category print) and Raphael Dillhof (category blog) received the prize money.
The jury in 2011 consisted of the artists Isa Rosenberger, Thomas Draschan, Katrina Daschner, Heimo Zobernig and Svenja Deininger. In 2015, Lisl Ponger, Julian Göthe, Jenny Tischer, Monica Bonvicini and Bernhard Cella made their decision. In 2017, the jury meeting was held with the participation of Henning Bohl, Nicole Wermers, Barbara Kapusta and Johanna Kandl.
Over a decade, in the supporting program of the prize a reader (ACA Lesebuch) was published, panel discussions were held with proponents form the art scene, publishers and authors, various workshops for writing about art were given, and public festive celebrations with honorific speeches by experts were held at different art locations and clubs. There, often art critics performed and gave concerts with their bands. In collaborations with art magazines, the winners - especially the Junior award winners - could publish texts about art. The prize money (3.000.- for the main prize and 1.000.- euros for the Junior ACA) was funded by the City of Vienna.
The ACA project ended with the last awarding ceremony at the Kunsthalle Wien in 2017.