Communication in the Digital Age

Gerhard Kowař

What particularly impresses me is the fact that there is nothing left when we pull out the plug. (Ute Vorkoeper)

Vienna, October 2011. At the Old City Hall in Vienna, edition atelier and KulturKontakt Austria presented a new book: “Vom Sponsoring zur Corporate Cultural Responsibility” (From Sponsoring to Corporate Cultural Responsibility). This documentation of a symposium outlines the far-reaching changes that have taken place in the communication of business enterprises with their cultural environment. It is not really surprising: These communication processes have become more complex and multi-layered, making it increasingly difficult to describe them in traditional terms of patronage and sponsoring. The little book has attracted a great deal of media interest, since it describes relationships and circumstances that have only recently been observed in Austria.
Osnabrück, November 2011. The music education platform netzwerk junge ohren (“young ears network”), in addition to organising the ambitious music festival YEAH!, in the context of which the YEAH! Young EARopean Award 2011 was conferred, had set itself a second major task: Questions of interculture, cultural education and music education were to be discussed in a think tank off the beaten track of the usual conference concept, with five idea generators, 25 participants, a full day of self-regulated discussion and a concluding presentation of results before an audience. The effort was definitely worthwhile.
Anyone who has attended conferences regularly over a period of several years will have noticed one thing in particular: Everywhere, people are seeking new conference concepts, because often the traditional formats are not appropriate for dealing with new challenges. The ideas range from World Cafés through more intensive integration of target groups to the construction of specific laboratory situations that may have quite an experimental character: Unconventional settings as participation-intensive frameworks for negotiating, considering and testing new ideas are more highly in demand than ever.
A change of scene. One week later in Genshagen. The foundation of the same name held a conference on the role of the digital media in cultural education. The discussion revolved around the central (and already time-honoured) question: Are the new media changing or replacing the content of works of art? One of the things the participants discussed on the first morning of the conference was whether the subversive power of art needs to be protected from the digital media and whether cultural education makes a contribution in this respect – and if so, what kind and to what extent. The discussion focussed not so much on the generation conflict between digital natives and digital immigrants as on ways of dealing with the media developments that have turned life as we used to know it upside down, including the field of cultural education. As one of the participants so aptly pointed out: It’s not a matter of digital culture moving towards the schools; rather, the schools have to finally grasp the fact that the digital culture surrounding them is a reality of society. Outside of school, young people have already done so in any case.
Vienna, the end of November 2011. A final observation relates to the event series “Pimp my Integration”, which emphatically posed the question of what could or should be meant by the proposal, contained in the City of Vienna’s coalition agreement, to establish a “post-migrant cultural space”. Specifically, a panel discussion organised by Garage X and das kunst entitled “Kunst, Kultur und Theater für Alle!” (Art, Culture and Theatre for All!) focussed, among other things, on the question of the extent to which a particular venue (modelled after the Ballhaus Naunynstraße in Berlin, for instance) can help to promote post-migrant discourse and the telling of another “story”. The underlying question here is: Who takes advantage of the present (Viennese) culture industry and aren’t new “genres” needed in order to capture the interest of population groups that in general are very seldom found at traditional cultural events?
The examples spotlighted here illustrate the fundamental paradigm shift in communication with which institutions are now confronted on a daily basis. Whether it is a matter of appropriate communication in the context of cooperation between the business sector and the arts, the question of the digital media that surround us, the need for innovative formats for thinking and discussion, or the constantly recurring demand for up-to-date audience development and programme legitimation on the part of cultural institutions, all four examples serve as proof that the process of dealing with diversity and difference – one might say, with the Other – in today’s society is in a constant state of flux. It all relates to a complex state of transformation that has to do not only with technological changes (the availability of new communication tools) but also with the rapid transformation of society and everything that this implies for the arts and culture industry. While some people are enthusiastically hailing the possibilities that the social media offer for the transformation of societies, others are asking awkward questions about the quality of our communication behaviour. It is unfortunate, however, that misgivings about the forms and apparent vacuity of communication today so often lead to the dead end of nostalgia for old, supposedly “tried and true” formats. Ultimately, what is needed is to take advantage of new opportunities in the knowledge that even today, everything is already changing.
As an institution at the interface of education, the arts and culture, KulturKontakt Austria, too, is confronted with considerable challenges relating to questions of communication. Communication is our daily currency, internally as well as externally, and the development of strategic communication behaviour is part of the innovation potential that we as an institution have to promote. Moreover, a not inconsiderable part of KulturKontakt Austria’s portfolio of services consists in the wide variety of consultancy services that our organisation has offered for decades, be they in the fields of sponsorship or cultural education or as a supporter of systemic reforms in the field of education via the eleven k-education offices currently operating in Eastern and South Eastern Europe.
Effective and open communication behaviour is always a primary consideration, not only in dealing with an increasingly demanding and diverse target public, but also within the organisation itself. In order to preserve and develop our innovation potential, we are constantly seeking and finding new forms of internal communication: be it in our formalised work processes or at informal levels. Ultimately, however, a primary motivating force is always the legitimation of the organisation. This culminates in the complex question of which up-to-date programmes and activities need to be developed for which recipients, and which forms of communication should be used to present them. It goes without saying that KulturKontakt Austria is making increasing use of social networks.