#2 Re: Tools?

Tools are never neutral. They shape our perception, our decisions and ultimately what we consider possible. That holds for the arts as much as for politics, science and everyday life. Talking about tools inevitably raises questions of power: Who decides what counts, which yardsticks apply and who benefits from which format? To speak of “tools” is also to speak about the conditions of work, the economies of attention and how meaning is made.

The arts don’t just use tools, they invent them. Thinking about tools is a lifelong search for the right means – playful at times, arduous at others. Exploring and refining these means is intrinsic to artistic work. Conversely, art itself is a tool: it allows us to renegotiate our relationship to the world, again and again, without prior fixations. In this capacity – working non-linearly with inner and outer realities, finding new modes of expression, expanding their repertoire – the arts help sustain openness and the capacity for change in society. In an age of hardening fronts, that is no side issue but part of our democratic infrastructure.

Three possible tools for the Akademie der Künste

1. TRANSLATION: The arts can mediate between models and the world and make complexity tangible. This means turning data, debates and conflicts into aesthetic experiences that strengthen critical judgement. Translation also involves tolerating not-knowing, allowing ambiguity to remain visible, and taking responsibility for one’s position. The aim is not simplification but orientation through precise legibility.

2. FOCUS: Attention is the scarcest resource. What is needed is time rather than speed, and spaces for rehearsal and repetition, for exactitude and reflection. Precisely because public funding is getting tighter, we need experimental settings and open formats that carry a real “potential for failure”, as Stefan Kraus puts it. That risk is not a flaw but a productive instrument. Only where failure is possible do depth – and, with it, the new – emerge.

3. INSTITUTIONALISATION: Cultural institutions are places of difference and therefore frequent targets for populist movements offering easy answers. As organisations that cultivate openness and the capacity for critical reflection, they are the care structures of democracy. To have an effect, they require reliable funding and programmatic independence. With that security, they can fulfil their public mission, which involves working through conflict, sustaining dissent and cultivating a culture of public debate.

Memory as a “tool for the future”

In her essay “Art as Tool for the Future?”, Angela Lammert reminds us that tools presuppose skills, and skills, in turn, presuppose notation. Notation, understood as an open, layering procedure, keeps the “how” of practice open, makes differences legible without flattening them and links thinking to making. What counts as a frame, which systems come into play and how we apply them depend on the memory systems we activate and our modes of notation.

Herein lies one of the Akademie der Künste’s particular strengths: its unique archive functions as an active memory in which systems of signs and images, scores and sketches, models and manuscripts are woven together. From this corpus, rules and exceptions emerge – tools that guide our work today. The archive lays bare connections and is a crucial prerequisite for artistic work as well as for the meta-work of framing and mediation.

The question of tools reaches beyond the arts. In daily life we use a multitude of technical means of communication. AI and its consequences are discussed everywhere, with the promises and perils inherent in it invoked in equal measure. The decisive question is this: When do we use our means, and when do they begin to use us?

Structure

This second Akademie-Brief once again consists of an essay, a conversation and an artistic contribution. It includes the Akademie’s programme for January and February 2026, and a postscript written by Rainer Esser on behalf of the Society of Friends of the Akademie der Künste. Fittingly, our editorial section ends with the oldest and perhaps most important tool: friendship as a practice of mutual commitment. Without it, there would be no risky projects, no staying power, no coalitions across divides.

In this spirit, please remain a friend to the Akademie der Künste.

Yours sincerely,
Manos Tsangaris
President of the Akademie der Künste

Anh-Linh Ngo
Vice-President of the Akademie der Künste