Cultural activism as a counter-discourse to the European Capital of Culture programme: The case of Turku 2011

Abstract

Each year the European Union designates one or more cities with the competed-for city brand of European Capital of Culture (ECOC). In several recent ECOCs, such as in Turku, Finland, the management and organisation of the events have caused tension among the citizens regarding decision-making, financing and power over use of the urban space. The focus of the article is on analysis of the discursive dynamics of local activists and their project ‘Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011’. By emphasising the cultural analysis of activism, the article indicates how the counter-discourse of the activists was produced through cultural production. The project produced a strong movement culture with common practices, anti-neoliberal values and world views. Through cultural production and movement culture, the project participated in the creation of subculture as a fluid and flexible cultural category expressed through stylistic and lifestyle choices.

Keywords

Counter-discourse cultural activism European Capital of Culture subculture urban space

Introduction

The European Capital of Culture as contested fields of meaning

The annual designation of European Capital of Culture is one of the EU’s longest-running cultural initiatives. Since 1985, the European Union (EU) has designated nearly 60 cities – first as European Cities of Culture, and later as European Capitals of Culture (ECOC). During these decades the designation has grown into a competed-for city brand that enables the cities to promote their cultural activities, develop their cultural sectors and renew their image. The aims of the designation have transformed and focused during the decades: the political and ideological contents have become more apparent in the EU rhetoric of the initiative. According to the latest EU decision on ECOC, the cultural programme of the designated cities has to follow two main criteria: ‘the European Dimension’ and ‘City and the Citizens’. The first criterion requires cities to foster cooperation between cultural operators, artists and cities from other Member States, highlight the richness of cultural diversity in Europe, and bring to the fore the common aspects of European cultures. The second criterion places emphasis on the cities to foster the participation of citizens living in the city and its surroundings, raise their and foreigners’ interest in the city and its activities, and promote the long-term cultural and social development of the city (Decision 1622/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 2006). In the designated ECOCs, the cultural programmes, plans and promotional rhetoric usually obey these criteria and other EU instructions, even in detail, because they are a prerequisite for designation.

Implementation of the ECOC year is financed mainly from local, regional and national sources. If the set criteria and expectations are considered to be fulfilled, the EU remits a small fund for expenditure to each designated city. Since 2007 the fund has been €1.5m, and is named the Melina Mercouri Prize, after the Greek minister of culture who initiated the designation. According to the report by Palmer (2004a: 181), the total amount of EU support for a ECOC represented on average only 1.19 percent of the total funding generated for ECOCs in 1995–2004. The average total operation expenditure of the 20 ECOCs between 1995 and 2004 was €37.66m.¹ Besides operating expenditure, the ECOCs use varying amounts of money for different kinds of capital projects.

In general, long-term cultural events and festivals take on a variety of roles, extending from mechanisms to sustain cultural groups, to mechanisms assuring the acceptance of a particular cultural discourse, and from means of creating local pride and identity to generating income (Crespi-Vallbona and Rischards, 2007; Quinn, 2005). Cultural events and festivals have been historically construed as instruments through which place-based communities express identities, celebrate communally held values and strengthen communal bonds (Quinn, 2005). However, recent cultural changes have brought new challenges to the traditional meanings of cultural events and festivals. As Crespi-Vallbona and Richards (2007) have noted in regard to their study on cultural festivals in Catalonia, the cultural content of festivals can be limited, and there is a fear that the more traditional culture of societies is being replaced by globalised popular culture. Similar trajectories can be recognised from the cultural offering of the ECOCs and their reception.

Quinn (2005) has discussed how the traditional functions of cultural events and festivals fare under prevailing entrepreneurial approaches to urban management. Processes of commodification have been blamed for the loss of identity and meaning of local festivals. In the eyes of many, the ‘local’ loses its ‘authenticity’ as a result of globalisation and modernisation, while the market economy gains from the tourism spin-off. Such debates underline the idea of cultural events and festivals as contested fields of meaning (Quinn, 2003), in which different groups or stakeholders try to utilise the symbolic capital of the event for their own ends (Crespi-Vallbona and Richards, 2007). Clark (2004) has described modern festivals as a kind of supermarket, where the paying public is persuaded to bulk-buy processed culture. Such events quickly begin to resemble each other, and the danger facing internationally oriented cultural events and festivals is that, in spite of their aims, they may neglect their local resources and cultural needs (Quinn, 2005).

Often, the focus of many previous studies on urban cultural events has been on the replacement of local and traditional culture by a globalised popular culture, and the transition from ‘ritual’ to ‘spectacle’ (Crespi-Vallbona and Richards, 2007: 106). This kind of transition is part of a wider development of ‘festivalisation’ which represents the ‘symbolic transformation of public space to a particular form of cultural consumption’ (van Elderen, 1997: 126). Often, the commercialisation of festivals has been opposed on the local level (Crespi-Vallbona and Richards, 2007): this kind of shift also has been criticised in the implementation of the ECOC programme.

In general, the ECOC years, the cultural profiles of the designated cities and the management and financing policy of them, have caused tension, severe debate, objection and even counter-movements in several cities, as various studies indicate. The host cities have been criticised, for example, for failing to enable local cultural ownership, overcome real social divides and create lasting cultural legacies (see e.g. Boyle and Hughes, 1991; FitzPatrick, 2009; García, 2004, 2005; Griffiths, 2006; Gunay, 2010; Herrero et al., 2006; McLay, 1990; O’Callaghan, 2011; Richards, 2000; Rommedvedt, 2009). According to O’Callaghan (2011), the problems lie in the core of the ECOC programme as such: the multiple objectives are not mutually reinforcing, and are often contradictory. The events should incorporate economic and cultural objectives, introduce both local culture and cultural heritage and European cultures and identities, stage international arts events, and simultaneously advance the local cultural sector and social inclusion objectives. In O’Callaghan’s view, mutually antagonistic discourses and policy objectives create inevitable fragmentation, anxiety and dissonance in the host cities. What kinds of concrete forms have these dissonances taken in the ‘contested fields of meaning’ of the ECOCs?

Turku, a city of 180,000 inhabitants in southern Finland, was designated as the ECOC for 2011. As in many previous ECOCs, the preparations for the cultural year in the city activated several debates in which (high-)culturally active citizens, local interest groups and cultural associations objected to the management and financing policy of the official Turku 2011 organisation. In Turku, part of the criticism was organised under a project titled ‘Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011’. Unlike in the previous ECOCs, the Capital of Subculture project produced a channel for alternative and unofficial culture to promote its position in the city.

In this article I investigate the Capital of Subculture project as an activist counter-discourse to the official programme of Turku 2011 by discussing how and why the counter-discourse was produced, what kinds of cultural and social aims it had, and what kinds of ideologies and power relations were included in its production. Unlike previous studies on tensions and contentions in ECOCs, my focus is on unofficial grass roots-level cultural activism and its networked and culture-oriented strategies in protesting against the ECOC event. Thus, the focus of the article is a special case study in which I analyse the discursive dynamics of the local counter-movement. However, the analysis also indicates the interrelations of the movement between the local and transnational levels. I will emphasise the cultural viewpoint towards activism and explore the meanings of culture in and of social movements. The article indicates how activist counter-discourses not only produce criticism and resistance, but also alternative cultural spaces and products.

Method

Data collection

The research data consists of multifaceted documents on the Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011 project: newspaper articles, comments on these articles on newspaper websites, text, images and videos on the website of the project, open blogs supporting the project, open discussion forums used by the project activists (such as DIYTurku.net, MuroBBS-Plaza and Takku), the Facebook page of the project, flyers, posters and other texts created by the project activists, YouTube videos filmed by the project activists and TV programmes about the project. In addition, I observed the cultural events and demonstrations organised by the project activists and talked to several of them at the events during field research in Turku in 2011. Thus, the data collection method combines traditional ethnographic observation documented by notes, photographs and videos and virtual ethnography (see e.g. Domínguez et al., 2007; Hine, 2000; Kozinets, 2010), for which the non-participatory observation took place on the aforementioned internet sites.

Data analysis

The data were analysed by the method of discourse analysis. Its theoretical formulations arise from social constructionism, which emphasises the productive role of language, interaction and social practices in the construction of reality. In social constructionism, language is not just an instrument of communication, but it is seen as producing, justifying and changing actual practices (Gergen, 1999; Shotter, 1993). Even though discourse studies include several different orientations, a common viewpoint is in the emphasis placed on the constructed character of social entities, relations and phenomena. In the analysis, some discourses are seen to produce one version of reality, while some produce another (Fairclough, 1992). In this article, discourse is defined as a particular way of representing reality. These representations, which are expressed in the data in text, visualisation, cultural performance and social practice, construct the meanings of the city as the ECOC and the notions of its local culture, urban space and identity.

Theoretical aspects to activism: focusing on culture

During the last few decades, interest groups, social movements and different forms of activism have been researched from various viewpoints and by several different methods. In addition, this multifaceted phenomenon has enabled interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary investigation. By the 1970s, researchers already had become interested in the success of social movements explained, for example, through the theory of resource mobilisation. In addition, social movements have been investigated by analysing the politics and political opportunities provided by the state, which form the societal conditions for the origin and growth of social movements (see e.g. Sriramesh and Kim, 2009). In particular, the so-called new social movements which arose in the 1960s and 1970s as a response to unprecedented state penetration into various private spheres of life, inspired scholars such Habermas (1981a). In the late 1980s, several social movements scholars focused on identifying members of the movements and began to explore the collective identity of the groups (McCaughey and Ayers, 2003; Melucci, 1989). Since the 1990s, social movements have been analysed in order to investigate networks of relations and trace the flow of information through them, and to discover what effects these relations have on people and organisations (Diani, 1992a; Garrido and Halavais, 2003).

Reed (2005) points out that social movements as forces of cultural change have been pretty much neglected in previous research. However, various scholars have recognised the cultural nature of social movements in their studies. Habermas (1981a, 1981b) pointed out that the nature of action of new social movements is social and cultural, rather than economic. Social movements are not only reactions to unsatisfied conditions; they also can be proactive by generating new forms of interaction, communication and culture (see e.g. Melucci, 1989, 1996). In fact, the cultural aspect of social movements has been interpreted as one of the major factors encouraging and attracting people to join a movement. As Tarrow (1998) suggests, ideology is a rather dry way of describing what moves people to action. Therefore, in recent years, scholars have begun to use terms such as ‘cultural discourse’, ‘cognitive frame’ and ‘ideological package’ to describe the shared meanings that inspire people to collective action (Tarrow, 1998). The formation of collective identities – a sense of belonging – is a crucial motivator to join and stay in a social movement. As Reed (2005) notes, people enter movements as individuals and need a feeling of individual commitment, but at the same time they gain a sense of collective identity as a part of the group effort that is the defining feature of a movement. Cultural products have a significant role in fostering a sense of belonging to movements.

In this article I follow Reed’s viewpoints by focusing the investigation on the cultural aspect of social movements and activism. According to Reed, the cultural study of social movements needs to pay attention to various relationships between and among movement cultures, and the cultural formations of movements and subcultures. By movement culture, Reed means the ‘general meaning making patterns that develop among participants in the subculture formed by a given movement’ (2005: 296). The action and communication in movements produce various cultural formations and objects which can have a wide or a narrow agenda in terms of opposition to dominant cultural forms. However, usually their first concern is thought of as being aesthetic rather than political (Reed, 2005). By subcultures, Reed (2005) means the more or less political elements that mediate between movement cultures and their cultural formations. As such, subcultures do not centrally employ strategies which directly challenge existing political, economic or social systems. Focusing on cultural aspects in the study of social movements does not narrow the investigation to them, because in social movements cultural, social, economic and political domains coexist and intertwine in various ways (Reed, 2005).

The cultural domain is important in social movements for various reasons. As mentioned previously, communality and collective identity are manifested often in social movements by cultural codes expressed, for example, through music, clothes, murals, poetry, theatre, graphic arts and so forth (see Reed, 2005; Tarrow, 1998). Cultural formations are also one of the key sites where re-socialisation to the movement or re-education to its goals is particularly intensive and extensive (Reed, 2005). Through culture the movements express, spread and establish their aims, values and world views among non-members, and thus influence the mainstream or dominant culture. As Reed (2005) points out, at times this diffusion of a movement culture into the mainstream culture can be the most important impact that a given movement has. Faye Ginsburg (1997) introduced the term ‘cultural activism’ to interpret the public efforts of various groups and movements that use cultural objects to articulate their political aims. Since then, other scholars also have used the term in their investigations on various social practices, political identity manifestations and multiple kinds of public actions that people use to alter the circumstances of their lives (see e.g. Checker and Fishman, 2004).

What kinds of actions do we eventually mean when we talk about social movements and activism? In general, confrontation, resistance or counter-discourse gets its meaning only in relation to some norm, custom or border (see e.g. Foucault, 1998). Resistance does not necessarily mean rejection or revoking a norm: it also can aim to renegotiate the borders or elaborate more interpretations or alternative viewpoint to the norm. Often, social movements, activism in particular, are related to expressions of extremist resistance, violent protest or deprivation, even though they are better characterised by different kinds of dialectical moments of struggle intertwined with emotions, hope, affirmation and social solidarity (Hands, 2011; Tarrow, 1998). Being a part of the social or activist movement can be adopted as a lifestyle and concretised in individual choices in quite non-dramatic acts of everyday life. Cultural activists in particular often utilise cultural objects instead of working through political channels, in order for their efforts to have direct and immediate consequences (Checker and Fishman, 2004).

In their studies of resistance, scholars frequently use the terms ‘social movement’ and ‘activism’ in an overlapping manner. Some scholars have referred to social movements and activists as ‘special interest groups’ (Mintzberg, 1983) or just ‘interest groups’ (Browne, 1998). Sriramesh and Kim (2009) utilise the definition of social movements by Tarrow (1994) and activism by Diani (1992b) and Burstein (1998) to define activism as:

The coordinated effort of a group that organizes voluntarily in an effort to solve problems that threaten the common interest of members of the group. In the process of problem solving, core members of the group attract other social constituents or publics, create and maintain a shared collective identity among members for the time being and mobilize resources and power to influence the problem-causing entity’s decision or action through communicative action such as education, negotiation, persuasion, pressure tactics or force. (Sriramesh and Kim, 2009: 81–82)

In this article I lean on Sriramesh and Kim’s broad definition of activism and discuss the Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011 project as a counter-discourse, the activities of which can be defined as cultural activism due to their strong focus on cultural aims and the cultural efforts used in the attempts to achieve them. The next section will explore how the activists in the project produced and used culture as a counter-discourse to the official programme of Turku 2011. This exploration is followed by sections that will investigate the movement culture of the project and its subcultural position.

Findings and discussion

Cultural activism as a counter-discourse to the official programme of Turku 2011

Turku was selected as the ECOC out of seven Finnish candidate cities in 2007. The preparation and implementation of the cultural year were organised by setting up an independent Turku 2011 Foundation which took care of planning, coordinating and promoting the cultural events. The budget of the Turku 2011 project rose to €55m, in addition to which €145m was used in capital investments in various infrastructural projects. In the application book and promotional material, encouraging well-being, internationalism, creative industries and cultural export were defined as the main goals of the Turku 2011 programme (Helander et al., 2006; Määttänen, 2010). In addition, the foundation aimed to activate local people to participate in preparing and implementing the ECOC events. This aim led the foundation to set up a broad voluntary programme in which more than 400 voluntary citizens worked during the cultural year, and to launch an open project call in which everybody could suggest cultural projects to be funded and included in the official programme of Turku 2011.

The open project call was very popular and encouraged various groups, associations and local citizens to participate in it. The foundation selected more than 100 projects from the proposals to be added to the official programme of Turku 2011. On the whole, three-quarters of the projects were based on suggestions sent to the open call. In addition, the foundation set up a webpage to help people think about the cultural programme, and through which they could submit ideas for the forthcoming ECOC year. The official programme of Turku 2011 included 155 cultural projects in total, which covered a broad selection of different art genres ranging from social and community events to sport and science. However, many planned and proposed projects did not fit within the official programme and were not executed due to a lack of funding and facilities. The selection process caused feelings of both success and disappointment among the applicants, creating enthusiasm and frustration towards the planning and implementation of the ECOC year.

Critical reaction towards the official programme and its planning appeared soon after the city won the title. Several concurrent, local cultural political decisions which cut the resources from local cultural operators and cultural institutions functioned as an impulse to the criticism. In a severe economic situation, the city decided to run down two small local public libraries and close down a building that housed workspaces for local artists, leaving many of them unable to work. At the same time the financing of the local art academy was diminished and its pedagogical selection narrowed. In addition, many citizens experienced that the city was neglecting its architectural heritage by leaving several old wooden houses in the inner city unused, without restoration: in fact, the city decided to demolish one of these houses in 2011. All these actions caused a lot of critical public discussion in the local media. The city’s ECOC designation intensified these discussions, and could be used as a basis for arguments in all culture-related issues (see also Kankkunen, 2011). Some local communal and heritage associations even sent an appeal to the Monitoring and Advisory Panel of the EU Commission’s Department of Culture, claiming that the city ‘has not fulfilled or abided by the spirit and letter of the European Capital of Culture programme’, and appealing ‘to the European Union to institute the necessary steps and measures in order to prevent further destruction of culturally and historically valuable buildings in the city’ (de Anna et al., 2011).

In addition to these incidents, several local students, young cultural operators and artists (men and women, generally aged under 30) criticised the city’s unwillingness to offer space and resources for small-scale, ‘alternative’ or youth cultural activities. A group of art students, artists and other similar-minded local people already had organised and set up an association in 2006, aiming to establish a new type of cultural centre based on voluntary and independent cultural production. To speed up their attempt and to criticise the estate policy of the city, this group of like-minded people started to squat in empty city-owned buildings and run cultural activities in them. The city decided to impose zero tolerance towards squatting.

This was not the first time that the policies and values of the city authorities in Turku had collided with the values and practices of the cultural or subcultural scene in the city. In the cultural circles of Finland, Turku is known for its lively underground scene, which emerged in the 1960s in music, literature and the visual arts. In the following decade, the underground scene was strengthened by a strong punk movement. In the 1960s and 1970s, alternative and provocative performances and works of art caused both local and nationwide scandals that were even thrashed out in court. Still today, the alternative cultural and subcultural atmosphere and scene remain strong in the city (Komulainen and Leppänen, 2009) .

After Turku won the ECOC designation, the same local people who were interested in establishing the independent cultural centre in the city launched an activist project titled Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011 as a response to the ‘culture-hostile attitude’ (source: 2011 Art Slum flyer)² of the city, and to the unwillingness of the Turku 2011 Foundation to intervene in the above-mentioned faults in the local cultural scene. In addition, the high budget of the Turku 2011 programme and the plans to use money to invite foreign artists to perform in the city during the cultural year were criticised: the activists emphasised the importance of supporting local artists, cultural operators and small-scale cultural activities. Criticism also focused on the concept of culture and the audience–participant–artist relationship in the official programme. One of the founding figures of the Capital of Subculture project, puppeteer Suvi Auvinen, described the critical viewpoints of the project as follows:

We also see the culture itself as a very broad issue. It does not mean just painting paintings and watching theatre, but it can also mean, for example, reading fairytales to children on the bank of the Aura River. The Cultural Capital has promised to promote the cause of small people and us doing things together, but practically it has not been shown anywhere. (in Suomi Express, 2008)

We want to get people to participate in the making of culture and we do not only offer experiences, but instead we want to say that everyone is an artist. We want to point out that the quality of culture does not depend on the money used, but on people’s eagerness and zeal towards the subjects which they create and experience. (in Ajankohtainen kakkonen, 2008)

The previous quotations are from magazine programmes broadcast by the national public broadcasting company: the project received a lot of local and national media attention from the very beginning. As they indicate, the spokespeople of the project emphasised a bottom-up viewpoint to cultural production, the innate and everyday creativity of people and an idea of culture as opposed to consumption and the economic domain. The latter interview was filmed in the Festival of Free Culture organised by the project in a squatted building in Turku in 2008. The festival programme consisted of tens of voluntarily organised cultural performances and workshops with a total budget of €10.40. The criticism towards economic forces behind the cultural production in ECOCs was one of the motivators for launching the project. Auvinen described the starting point for the project in a critical anthology on the official Turku 2011 programme as follows:

[T]here was a fear that the ‘Cultural Capital’s’ last funds for the artists would be wasted in mega-spectacles brought from elsewhere and which the common citizens could not access. There emerged a will to present the local culture, which would look like us, the common people and be in our scale and the content and ticket prices of which would not be determined by the rules of capitalist profit-seeking but by working genuinely together. (Auvinen, 2011: 35)

The counter-discourse of the project objected to the commercial ‘festivalisation’ of culture, the transformation of culture into spectacles, undemocratic cultural management and seeing receivers of culture as a passive audience instead of considering them as creative subjects. In addition, the activists strongly criticised the cultural hierarchies between different genres of culture and the dichotomies between high, mainstream, popular, low and subculture. Thus, the project itself aimed to avoid a hierarchical structure. The project’s activities were planned in open meetings without a formal organisation or leaders: ‘Anyone can take the lead in the Capital of Subculture’ (Tuomi, 2011), stated one of the activists, student Jonne Pohjois-Koivisto, in a student magazine interview. The activists’ disappointment towards the management of the Turku 2011 programme and the planning and decisions of the open project call was manifested in the counter-discourse through emphasising the openness of the Capital of Subculture project: everyone was invited to produce cultural performances using the title, as the Facebook page of the project indicates:

Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011 project aims at gathering together those who make and experience free culture. We claim culture as a free playground where everyone can be an artist in spite of their official title and where everyone’s culture is equally valuable. The Capital of Subculture lives in people, takes place in the streets and operates in the air. All friends of self-generated production are welcome to include their dreams and projects as parts of the enterprise, to network, to empower and to get inspired. (‘Turku – The European Capital of Subculture 2011’, nd)

As this indicates, the counter-discourse stressed the openness of the idea of cultural production and the concept of the artist. In addition, cultural production was determined through independence from cultural institutions or cultural infrastructure: in the discourse, the everyday environment was considered both a possible and an eligible space for cultural production.

The activism of the Capital of Subculture project was determined by the idea of independence in cultural production. Like many cultural and artistic movements of the previous century, the project created its own manifesto in which its worldview and main goals were declared. The manifesto brings to the fore anti-consumerist and anti-neoliberal viewpoints towards culture:

The broadly spread ideology of accountability and efficiency in society harnesses culture as the motor oil of creative economy and isolates art through the ticket price. When the city space is blocked from everyone except the buying customer, the value of the common environment for human interaction is forgotten … Free culture delights and provokes with poetic terrorism, non-explicated performances, taking possession of space, small truths and the return of the community. The year will see the constant communication of subcultures, populating the wasteland, mocking the distinction of genres. It will be the physical manifestation of subculture, which takes place in domains difficult or even impossible for the dominant culture to deal with. (Alakulttuuripääkaupunkimanifesti, 2007)

Here, the counter-discourse borrows its mode of expression both from artistic rhetoric and anti-neoliberal discourses typical to various contemporary new social movements. It emphasises direct action, but in cultural terms.

Many of the cultural activities in the project were based on reusing the cultural codes of the Turku 2011 official programme. This type of cultural activism has been discussed as ‘semiotic terrorism’ or simply as ‘culture jamming’, which aims to reverse and transgress the meaning of cultural codes used in ideological, political and economical campaigns (Jordan, 2002; Meikle, 2010). The project’s website introduced several ironic cultural events which mocked or parodied the events of the official Turku 2011 programme. The logo of the Capital of Subculture project was based on same logo with the official programme, but with an added overlapping stamp print proclaiming: ‘We too are building Turku as the European Capital of Subculture 2011.’ The logo was available on the project’s website, and spreading it was encouraged. It was used on various webpages supporting the ideology of the project, and printed in advertisements and flyers promoting the events organised by the project.

The project organised annually various cultural events such as the Festival of Free Culture: police intervention ended the festival several times. The activist motive for organising the festival was to raise a question regarding the use and ownership of urban space. In the activists’ counter-discourse, the city and its urban space belong to the citizens, who have the right to use it for their own purposes. This is how one of the activists advertised the Festival of Free Culture in a blog entry:

The Festival of Free Culture has originated from the need to make the city space look like people, like ourselves. In a public space usually only those who are able to pay for publicity and whom advertising companies accept on their billboards are allowed to be seen. We think that the city belongs to the citizens and they are allowed to be seen and heard in the city space. The Festival of Free Culture is a part of the global fight for free city space. We have raised culture as an important weapon in this fight. (‘AutoNomia’, 2009)

The rhetoric of this discourse includes the anti-capitalist and militant vocabulary typically used by leftist new social movements.

Another long-term cultural event organised by the Capital of Subculture project since 2007 is a ‘protest camp festival’ (DIYTurku.net, 2011) called ‘Art Slum’, which aims to ‘comment on the long continued lack of work space for artists in Turku and the hostile attitude of the city towards culture’ (source: 2011 Art Slum flyer). The activists built the Art Slums on public space in the city centre from waste material and used them as venues for various cultural activities such as band concerts, performances, poetry readings, exhibitions, workshops and discussions. The Art Slums, like other organised cultural events, were open for everybody to follow and participate in – the activists estimated that there were more than 100 participants in 2011. However, at the same time this openness weakened the original protest nature of the slums, when the evening programme in particular attracted partying youngsters. In 2011 the Art Slum was ended by police intervention because the activists had not pulled down the slum by the given deadline. City workers demolished the slum and cleaned the park in which it was set up. Documented police interventions, as well as other conflicts with the city authorities, were often uploaded to the project webpage or on YouTube. These images and videos were used as a means of propagating the activists’ aims: the images and videos portrayed the activists and their notion of culture as the victims of the city authority.

One of the main focuses in the rhetoric and action of the counter-discourse in the Capital of Subculture project was the city space. In the counter-discourse, the current city space was represented as a dominated, bureaucratic and commercial space that hindered citizens’ spontaneous creativity and independence to influence their everyday environment. Thus, the city space needed to be returned to its citizens for their free use. The idea of the city space was intertwined with its citizens, expressed for example in a demonstration organised as a part of the Art Slum in 2011: during it the activists shouted, ‘We are the city, the city belongs to us’. The city space was seen as getting meaning only through free and non-hierarchical use by its citizens.

As the previous quotations indicate, the activists positioned themselves in the counter-discourse as ‘we’ and ‘the citizens’. In addition, they referred to themselves as ‘artists’, ‘street artists’ and ‘makers and friends of art’, thus emphasising the citizens’ creative potential. The counter-discourse produced a unified and culturally minded image of the activists. Their opponent was also produced as a unified or even singular agent: ‘high culture’, ‘the city’, ‘Turku’, ‘Capital of Culture’ or ‘the bureaucrats’. In the media texts the agents of the Capital of Subculture project were referred often to as ‘activists’ or ‘cultural activists’. However, in the newspaper discussion forums, they were spoken of as ‘teenagers’ and ‘youth’, or even as ‘criminals’, ‘hooligans’, ‘hippies’, ‘drunks’ or ‘kooks’, even though in many cases the writers shared the criticism towards the cultural management, decision-making and use of money in Turku 2011. In general, the Capital of Subculture project offered an interesting subject from the media’s viewpoint, and the activists were contacted a lot by journalists and editors who were seeking a good (adversarial) story.

The activists’ discursive positions manifest the power relations between the counter-discourse and the official programme of Turku 2011. As mentioned previously, in the counter-discourse, the official programme represents the criticised values of the festivalisation and commercialisation of culture and a neglect of local, spontaneous and self-generated small-scale cultural production. However, from the official programme’s viewpoint, the cultural content of the Capital of Subculture project manifested the idea of bringing local people into the creation of culture: the goal that was emphasised both in the policy texts of the EU and the application book and promotional rhetoric of Turku 2011. Thus the programme director of Turku 2011, Suvi Innilä, contacted the activists and advised them to leave an application in the open project call in order to become a part of the official programme and to get funding, space and publicity for their cultural aims. However, the activists declined: ‘Our project emerged as a response to the values and the course of action of the Turku 2011 project – how could we ever want to become a part of something we try to be an alternative to?’ (Auvinen, 2011: 37), stated the spokesperson for the activists, Auvinen, in a critical book on Turku 2011. The activists seemed to get the inspiration and motivation for their activities from objection to the official programme. On the one hand, negotiation and compromise with, and adaptation to, the official course of action might have speeded up the activists’ aims in setting up their own independent cultural centre and producing cultural events with the type of content and a way of organisation that would have followed their aims and values. On the other hand, adapting to the official course of action might have suppressed the activist cultural practices, which formed the core of the project itself.

In general, cultural products are profoundly efficient tools for activist movements because they can combine easily the private and public domains and the emotional and intellectual dimensions (see e.g. Reed, 2005). As the Capital of Subculture project indicates, the creation of cultural products such as festivals, singular performances or posters of them, enabled both individual effort and a collective experience to belong to, and thus became a part of the movement. Through the project, private cultural production could be shared both in virtual and physical forums. Sharing cultural products and creating them together within the project strengthened the emotional ties to it, while bringing to the fore the movement’s ideological dimension.

Movement culture in the Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011 project

The activists of the Capital of Subculture project shared a strong movement culture, speaking in the terms of Reed (2005). The basis for the movement culture in the project was in its common anti-neoliberal and leftist world views and values. This basis was strengthened in the project through other networks in which the activists functioned or with which they cooperated. Besides squatting, for example, the same activist circles protested against nuclear power, supported animal rights and the peace movement, propagated the message of the Anonymous and took part in the ‘Critical Mass’ cycling event, ‘Slutwalk’ and a demonstration against faults in the conservation of built heritage. The latter took place during the visit of the Head of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, to Turku as a guest of the city and the Turku 2011 Foundation.

One of the main ideologies in the Capital of Subculture project was to object to the commercialisation of culture in the official programme of Turku 2011. Besides the free festivals organised by the project, the same activist circles planned and implemented other protests against consumerism and capitalist logic, such as ‘flash mob freezings’ in a mall (an organised routine in which the activists held a pose in silence for some minutes), self-organised urban picnics on parking lots, or shopping trolley jamming in a local supermarket. Models for these protests were found from abroad, and the actions were filmed and uploaded to blogs, Facebook and YouTube. Due to the networked nature of activism, the borders of the Capital of Subculture project are difficult to draw. In fact this kind of fluid and networked nature characterises the movement culture of various contemporary activist groups and so-called new social movements.

The movement culture of the Capital of Subculture project is characterised by the intersection of local and global dimensions of activism. On the one hand, the focus of the project was on local issues, and it functioned locally. On the other hand, the ideological base of the project referred to international or global activist movements and their contemporary manners of protesting. In particular, the project’s opposition to neoliberal policies in the domain of culture reflects the recent trajectories of social movements. Several scholars have explained the shift in the axis of power from politics to the market, by emphasising the role of neoliberal economic policies in increasing the power of multinational corporations and reducing the capacity of traditional state structures to control them. This development has produced counter-reactions and, thus strengthened the social movements that protest against the process of corporate globalisation or transnational corporate capital (della Portia and Tarrow, 2005; Reed, 2005).

In general, globalisation has influenced contemporary forms of activism (Tarrow, 2005). According to Tarrow and della Porta (2005), the new activist stratum is influenced by three recently strengthened elements: rooted cosmopolitanism, multiple belongings and flexible identities. By rooted cosmopolitanism, the concept borrowed from Appiah (2005), Tarrow and della Porta refer to people and groups who are rooted in specific national contexts, but who are involved in transnational networks of contacts and conflicts due to their activities. A common feature of contemporary activism is the presence of activists with overlapping memberships linked within loosely structured, polycentric networks. Activists’ flexible identities enable concurrent identification with various groups and networks, as well as around common campaigns. The Capital of Subculture project reflects all these elements. In addition, the new activist stratum seems to be intertwined with the cultural production: culture functions both as the medium and the message of resistance. The protest is created in various cultural formations that are mediated in common gatherings, within public space and online.

The spread of the internet and the development of social media have had a major influence on the recent organisation of social movements and intensification of activism. As the Capital of Subculture project indicates, social media offer both an easy platform for networking, communication and organisation, and a virtual space in which the activism itself may take place. Thus, contemporary strategies of activism can be distinguished either as internet-enhanced or internet-based (Vegh, 2003). For about a decade, social movement scholars have stressed either the empowering impact, emerging new possibilities and the general importance of the internet in the development of social movements (Bennett, 2003; McCaughey and Ayers, 2003; Reed, 2005; Tarrow, 2005), or reminded that the internet per se does not offer a passage from structure to action – it has to be mobilised by committed individuals or organisations in order to serve as an instrument for collective action (Bennett, 2003; Tarrow and della Portia, 2005). McCaughey and Ayers (2003) point out that the internet has changed substantially what counts as activism, community, collective identity, democratic space and political strategy. The ease and commonness of using the internet and social media for stating an opinion, showing support or protesting against recognised faults blurs the previous definitions of activism and social movement.

One of the major changes provided by the networked social media is its potential to facilitate virtually anonymous, decentralised and leaderless social communication (Bennett, 2003, 2005; see also McCaughey and Ayers, 2003). The Capital of Subculture project emphasised in its counter-discourse a decentralised and leaderless structure based on anti-hierarchical and democratic ties between activists. As a response to the official programme of Turku 2011, the project invited everybody to participate in cultural production without control over self-organised actions. However, self-organisation has to be supervised in order to produce and mediate the necessary collective knowledge of the movement (Escobar, 2004).

Even though the counter-discourse emphasised the openness of the project and the equality of its agents, the project included its own structure determined, for example, by friendships, different interests in implementing the aims of the project, links to other activist networks and activity to participate in the project. The counter-discourse had its spokespeople whose interests determined how the discourse was formed. The core group of the project comprised only around a dozen activists; however, the organisation of festivals and other cultural events, and the cooperation with other activist networks, multiplied the number of people involved. One of the project activists, Jonne Pohjois-Koivisto, stated in a student magazine interview: ‘In our web page, one can get acquainted with our main principles and our manifesto. By understanding our course of action anyone can join and bring along something new’ (in Tuomi, 2011). However, this emphasis on openness and the invitation for everybody to join the project did not mean acceptance of everything. The internet discussion forums also reveal disagreement between the activists on the implementation of cultural events such as the Art Slum, in which some of the participants consumed a lot of alcohol. As ‘Jonne’ wrote in the discussion forum after the Art Slum: ‘This time also the “like-minded” have started to disapprove, which I think is worrying’ (‘Jonne’, 2011). The project itself created hierarchies, and the ruptures in its like-minded core were interpreted as a negative development.

Subculture: an impulse for and a product of activism

As mentioned previously, according to Reed, subcultures mediate between movement cultures and their cultural formations. For Reed, subcultures seem to form a fluid and loose category which does not challenge power systems as such. The concept of subculture has been used in academic studies since the 1970s. Scholars used the concept to refer to protest by working-class youth, which was manifested through various styles such as punk (Hall and Jefferson, 1975). While countercultures have been defined through their criticism of the values, norms and practices of the majority, subcultures have been interpreted to criticise the middle-class culture in particular, yet in a more latent manner than the countercultures. The criticism of subcultures has been expressed rather in the style, not in the direct statements or action (Duncombe, 2002; Roszak, 1969). Both countercultures and subcultures need a so-called dominant culture against which they can determine their own values and world views. Recent studies have criticised both counterculture and subculture theories for their incapability to describe the contemporary cultural condition, in which protests are more fragmented and blurred. Cultural or stylistic protest is no longer tied to class; rather, it is manifested through different alternative lifestyles. In addition, the contemporary dominant culture has become increasingly fragmented (Muggleton and Weinzierl, 2003).

In the Capital of Subculture project, the concept of subculture was taken to its discursive core. How was this concept used and given meaning in the counter-discourse of the project? Understanding subculture as a fluid lifestyle category manifested through styles, and ‘the culture of alternativeness’ describes the cultural ethos of the Capital of Subculture project. The activists in the project discussed the concept of subculture in their meetings and defined its meanings in their texts. ‘Alakulttuurijäbä’ summarised the discussions on the concept in the discussion forum:

In a five-hour discussion it was pondered if instead of subculture we should talk about marginal culture. About action which goes along with the dominant culture, but is not recognized to a similar degree when cultural production is discussed. The group, however, held on to ‘subculture’, because it offers a multifaceted point of view. It does not categorize cultural agents by their form of expression. ‘Subculture’ enables the idea of a person being able to act in several cultural environments at the same time without being fundamentally defined by being an outsider or different. Acting in a subculture is not an alternative action, but a simultaneous one. From this point of view, culture is not seen as heading to a one unified direction. Culture rather includes concurrent dimensions, which move in different directions. (‘Alakulttuurijäbä’, 2008)

Indeed, the borders of subculture and dominant culture, and the counter-discourse and the official discourse of Turku 2011, are not easy to draw due to the multiplicity of the groups to which the members belong and their flexible identities. In many cases, the discourses formed a dialogue and the activities of the Capital of Subculture and the official Turku 2011 were connected unproblematically. For example, one of the major projects in the official Turku 2011 programme was the documentary film Battle for the City (dir. Jouko Aaltonen). The premiere of the film was organised and advertised by the Turku 2011 Foundation; also, the film was sold at the main venues of the official programme. The film is about a phenomenon called ‘the malady of Turku’, which refers to the demolishing of old historical buildings in the city centre, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, and replacing them with modern apartment blocks. These processes included multi-level political horse-trading, and civil protests and demonstrations failed to stop the demolition. In the film, the director draws a parallel between the demonstrations of the past decades to the activism of the Capital of Subculture project and the networks close to it. Clips from present-day squatting and demonstrations in Turku are cut with historical images. Suvi Auvinen participated as an invited speaker in a panel discussion organised after the premiere. The film, panel discussion and other projects which were part of the official Turku 2011 programme were advertised in the discussion forums used by the activists.

In general, many of the activists with whom I talked during field research in Turku admitted to being surprised by how extensive the official Turku 2011 programme was. Many of them had participated in various events, ranging from street cultural projects to quite traditional and ‘high cultural’ concerts. Some of them even mentioned having applied for funding from the open project call for their own projects, but to no avail.

Conclusion

The ECOC programme and its implementation can be interpreted as a complex space of distinguishing interests, tensions and power relations. The ECOC designation as such is the EU’s cultural political instrument which includes strong political, economic and ideological dimensions that inevitably create enthusiasm and interest among local agents. Usually, planning and implementation of the cultural year has produced critical discussion which, at its best, brings to the fore the various problems in different local domains and allows citizens to participate in a public dialogue in solving the recognised problems.

In Turku, the ECOC designation activated various critical discussions on cultural political decision-making and the attitude of the city towards local culture, heritage, cultural institutions and citizens. In addition, the designation activated organised protests and cultural activism, which formed a counter-discourse to the official programme of Turku 2011. This investigation into the Turku – European Capital of Subculture 2011 project indicates that culture has a crucial role in activism: in addition to rooted cosmopolitanism, multiple belonging and flexible identities, it can be considered to be one of the key elements in the new activist stratum. Criticism of the Capital of Subculture project towards festivalisation and economic emphasis in cultural production was manifested in cultural events and products created by the activists. As such, the project produced a strong movement culture with common practices, shared values and world views. Through cultural production and movement culture, the project participated in the creation of a subculture: a fluid and flexible cultural category expressed, for example, through stylistic and lifestyle choices. The study indicates how culture has several functions in the activist projects: it provides a means to express shared and individual values, views and sentiments, spread ideological and political ideas and information, raise public attention, create communality and a feeling of belonging and identity, re-socialise new (and old) members to the community, and communicate and negotiate ideological and political differences with the official power and the status quo.

The Capital of Subculture project had diverse local impacts on the city. On the one hand, it succeeded in raising public attention and critical interest in the implementation of the ECOC year, and brought to the fore the active alternative (youth) cultural scene in the city. On the other hand, public attention was not only positive, but also caused negative and even hostile attitudes toward the activists and their cultural attempts. The most significant impact of the project was probably its activating and communal influence on its own participants. Through the project, critical-minded and culture-orientated youth, students and young adults could work for a meaningful common goal, get involved in creating the local subcultural scene, strengthen their feeling of belonging and identity and foster their social networks.

In general, one of the main aims of the ECOC designation is to gather local cultural forces to work on a common project. Even though the ECOC year includes diverse cultural performances and events, the official ECOC programme is usually managed by organising it using a few key themes decided on by the main management agency, marketing it with common slogans and logos and communicating it with a coherent management rhetoric. The underlying structure of the ECOC initiative is based on a bureaucratic and hierarchical top-town policy, in which the EU forms the uppermost level. The proposing, planning, implementing and follow-up phases of the designation are subordinated to formal evaluation and reporting processes instructed by the EU. This kind of ‘heavy’ structure of the initiative influences the planning, production and management of the cultural events of the ECOC year, and has an effect on notions of culture, cultural production and cultural consumption within the frame of the initiative, respectively.

Could the initiative be more open and flexible to diverse cultural attempts and interests in the local cultural scene? Could the grass roots level and bottom-up initiatives be involved more effectively in the planning and implementation of the ECOC year? The renewal of the whole ECOC initiative by deconstructing its control-based management ideas, top-down policies and aims for coherence and clarity in the structure of the cultural programme would enable possibly the broader participation and involvement of local citizens, bottom-up initiatives and grass roots-level cultural activities in the implementation of the ECOC year. However, is the widest possible involvement of local cultural layers a goal to be aspired to and aimed at using all possible means? This study indicates that all cultural layers in the designated cities do not necessarily want to be involved in implementation of the ECOC year. As the case of the Capital of Subculture indicates, the activists wanted to criticise its implementation and produce an alternative to it, not to be ‘swallowed up’ by the initiative.

The investigation also revealed that the counter-discourse of the Capital of Subculture project and the official Turku 2011 discourse shared many similar views, although the focus was on their differences at a discursive level. Both discourses aimed at activating local people to participate in cultural production, increasing their interest in the local environment and its uses, emphasising diversity of cultural expression and valuing small-scale cultural projects and everyday cultural experiences. Eventually, the aim of the Capital of Subculture project to set up an autonomous cultural centre obeyed a relatively normative idea of cultural production: establishing a cultural institute with an estate for the production and reception of culture.

The ending of the cultural year of Turku did not end the activism. One of the activists concluded her blog by predicting the future of the counter-discourse as follows:

The year 2011 has been celebrated. The official high culture will withdraw to suffer its cultural hangover, but the subculture lives and feels well in the cellars of the structures never reached by the celebrative speeches. Culture is dead, long live culture!

In the year 2012 the battle for Turku continues. Folk struggle against the power of capital and hierarchies and for the freedom of people and city space in everyday life and in everyday culture, which does not recognise tickets and sponsorship funding. The Capital of Subculture year is over, but the squatting and space invading as social combat, participation and resistance will continue in the future. (‘AutoNomia’, 2012)

When an activist movement is based on cultural production, strong movement culture and a subcultural lifestyle, the activism never reaches a condition in which it would become unnecessary. The motivation for activism shifts from the external to internal condition. Even though the sought-after changes would take place in the local community or broader society, cultural production, movement culture and subcultural lifestyle continue to unify people and give impulse to their common action. Cultural activism gets its power from its own culture of resistance.

Footnotes

Funding

This research was funded by the Academy of Finland.

Notes

Biographical note

Tuuli Lähdesmäki is a researcher in the Department of Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä. She specialises in the analysis of identity politics and processes in contemporary culture. She has written over 40 scientific publications on these topics in Finnish, English and Hungarian. She is an editor of the scientific series Nykykulttuuri [Contemporary Culture] and Taidehistoriallisia tutkimuksia [Studies in Art History] and the online journal Tahiti – taidehistoria tieteenä [Tahiti – Art History as Science]. In her current research project titled ‘Identity politics in Pécs, Tallinn and Turku as European Capitals of Culture’ (ID-ECC), funded by the Academy of Finland, she explores EU cultural policy and cultural programmes and their impacts on cultural production at the local, regional, national and European levels.

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