The Agonistic Politics of Invitation: Narrating Moments of Cultural Policy Interventions in Berlin, New York and Vancouver

Abstract

This paper offers the framework of an agonistic politics of invitation to nuance the political implications of contextually- and temporally-specific cultural policy invites that bring to light a range of conflicts. Invitations are conceptualized with respect to their rationale, form, role expectations, and responses in three empirical vignettes: (1) the collectivized articulation of Berlin’s trans-disciplinary Koalition der Freien Szene as future invitee in local cultural governance; (2) the counter-invitation formulated by New York City’s People’s Cultural Plan to tackle ongoing racial inequities in the municipal Cultural Plan; and (3) uninvited graffiti responses to Vancouver’s Chinatown public art call to reconcile century-long discrimination against Chinese Canadians. The paper argues that invitations crucially shape and condition future spaces of possibilities for collaborative urban cultural governance.