Wir Sind Woanders #2 (2007): "Artist-run exhibition and work spaces (...) stake a position in urban discourse, and present art as a non-instrumentalized field of experimentation in the spirit of social innovation. In parallel the galleries' and museums' establishment of marketable values and representative works, respectively, the off-space scene has proved its worth as the third column of artistic production." Subvision (2008): "Worldwide, new forms of artistic activity and mediation have developed at far remove from the big art-fairs and biennials." Wir Sind Woanders #2 (2007): "For Wir Sind Woanders #2, each Hamburg art space selected a "partner-city" and from there, an artist-run space that has affinities and reflects its approach. The invited spaces then send a representative and artists from their network to Hamburg." Subvision (2008): "The three large Hamburg art institutions - the Hamburg Art Museum, the Deichtorhallen Art Center, and the Hamburg Art School - want to invite over a hundred of these initiatives from all over the world to Hamburg." (note: the figure has been scaled back at least 50%) Wir Sind Woanders #2 (2007): "The focus of the 2007 project is to compare cities nationally and internationally." Subvision (2008): "It is especially though its international perspective that this festival promises multifaceted views of the quality and significance that non-established artistic strategies have for the cultural scene." In grand usurpative style, when Martin Köttering and Robert Fleck presented the Subvision project on February 5th, only passing mention was made of Wir Sind Woanders #2.


Conjuring up images of "the little engine that couldn't," Köttering laid out the credit due to the previous festival in the following elaboration: "The term off and these art initiatives have, over the last decades, become stronger and have a stronger presence in specific, often locally-bound, scenes, yet do not, in our view, get enough public - also international-attention. This is why we think that in a tradition, in a context like that in Hamburg - Artgenda was (just) mentioned, Wir Sind Woanders was a project where, indeed, the off-scene wants to adopt a relatively sophisticated and also ambitious role-one should really open up this view internationally and should internationally position Hamburg in such kinds of questions."[20] Note the twist: Wir Sind Woanders protagonists wanted, according to Köttering's construal, what only the can-do Subvision team can deliver!! Wir Sind Woanders is somewhat less parenthetical to Subvision when you look at the latter's staff: Köttering hired Wir Sind Woanders co-initiator Tim Voss to be his "curator", and Wir Sind Woanders #2 Press and Public Affairs Officer Olaf Bargheer is now doing the same job for Subvision. We are waiting to see what other crossover specialists may follow. Subvision applied to the same source as its precursor did for funding, the German Federal Culture Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes), which was set up by the German government in 2002 in view of supporting innovative projects. Wir Sind Woanders saw its funding request turned down. Subvision's subsequent application for diversion within the confines of HafenCity yielded €500,000. Virginia Craven has detailed the ethical cloud that hovers over this award. She writes: "Very questionable also the practice of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes: the juridical term "accepting advantage" was used to describe that Dr.


Christoph Heinrich (then Director of Hamburg Kunsthalle - Galerie der Gegenwart), as a member of the jury, decided to give nearly half a million Euros of taxpayers money to the subvision project, whose advisory board member Hubertus Gassner (Director of Hamburg Kunsthalle) was at the time of application - his boss... " [21] Wir Sind Woanders is not the only Hamburg artist-initiative that challenged old-guard norms while also having a direct bearing to the Subvision project