directors, who in the preliminary stage of the creative process, give the actual creative
impulse.
3. Beyond the celebration of the cultural economy: The vulnerability of
artists.
3.1 Visual Artists in Berlin
Along with painting, sculpture, drawing, graphic, design, photography and
installation, performance, video/film and new media also belong to the examined
group3.
Visual artists and their artwork and cultural production can not always be measured
monetarily. The coherence with other creative industries and the ability to be
appealing in the tourist industry are much more significant4. These artists are
regarded as ambassadors of art and culture with an international dimension for a
location. Because of the associated transfer of image and their omnipresent, publicly
effective outer performance, they directly generate economic effects.
The economic situation of visual artists in Berlin is, in part, extremely tense. It is
often an issue of marginal income, which is often countered with, to some extent, very
high costs. (For some areas of visual arts such as sculpture, on the one hand high
material costs and on the other hand high lease/rental costs, due to a great need for
space, arise.) It is only possible for a third of the artists to finance adequate work
spaces. Not even half of the surveyed artists are able to completely dedicate
themselves to artistic production.
Almost half of the cultural production is sold nationwide, and a sixth is sold on
international markets.
As observed in other creative industries, certain city districts are preferred,
whereupon the nearness of the places, in which one works and lives, plays a very
important role in choosing a site.
3.2 Many artists, many agents of CIs?
At the place, where relatively many artists live in Berlin, there is also much culture
and creative industry- and vice versa5 (cp. Illustration 2). A quarter of all the
documented companies in CIs as well as those employed in art or culture, who are
3 The group of designers makes up close to 4 per cent of visual artists.
4 That applies to contemporary art as well as the conservation of cultural heritage.
5 Correlation coefficient R2 = 0,93. In a test of correlation between population density and artists and
creative industries for the 193 postal code districts the correlation coefficient was R2 = 0,46.