We all know the art world is awash with ‘philanthropic’ money that serves to launder its donors’ reputations and advance their commercial and ideological objectives – Outset is one operation among many. However, following the ICJ ruling, we are opening a picket line here and now to meet the urgency of the moment: together we are drawing a specific, targeted line and together we refuse to cross it.
Through the Outset Bialik Residency, hosted at the Gertlers’ home in Tel Aviv, Outset partners with art schools directly engaging in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, siege, occupation and apartheid:
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Shenkar College of Engineering, Design, and Art have been making and mending military equipment, including grenade holsters, for the IDF since Israel’s genocidal military campaign in Gaza began in October 2023. Shenkar College even put out a press release describing themselves as having ‘enlisted.’ Bezalel Academy of Arts also has student accommodation on occupied territory at their French Hill Campus in a settlement in East Jerusalem.
These art schools are weaponising art education in the service of an occupying force engaged in ethnic cleansing, mass killing, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. These relationships mean working with Outset weaponises your work as an artist or cultural worker, too.
If you receive funding from Outset, it’s been banked with Barclays, who are bankrolling Israel's genocidal assault on Palestinians. Boycotting Barclays is currently a core target of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement and Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s action in the UK:
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has found that Barclays Bank 'holds over £1 billion in shares, and provides over £3 billion in loans and underwriting to 9 companies whose weapons, components, and military technology are being used by Israel in its attacks on Palestinians. This includes General Dynamics, which produces the gun systems that arm the fighter jets used by Israel to bombard Gaza, and Elbit Systems, which produces armoured drones, munitions and artillery weapons used by the Israeli military. By providing investment and financial services to these arms companies, Barclays is facilitating the provision of weapons and technology for Israel’s attacks on Palestinians.’
By withdrawing their labour, international artists and culture workers played an important role in ending apartheid in South Africa.
As artists and culture workers operating in our present moment, it is vital that we strategically withdraw our labour once again: Outset is a key target around which we can escalate cultural pressure to end apartheid and genocide against Palestinians.
PACBI (the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) advocates for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions ‘implicated in supporting, justifying and whitewashing Israel’s occupation and systematic denial of Palestinian rights,’ as well as a refusal to participate in events or activities held in cooperation with them. Through its chapter in Israel, Outset Contemporary Art Fund is thoroughly embedded with state-funded Israeli arts institutions, and therefore also complicit.
Outset Israel’s stated agenda is to ‘engage international art professionals with the growing talent pool of Israeli artists and to host international talent in Israel for an engaged artistic dialogue.’ In other words, to artwash Israel’s reputation.
This agenda is achieved through activities including the acquisition of work by international artists for state-funded Israeli museums and galleries, the joint funding of international art projects and exhibitions by Outset Israel and its international chapters, as well as Outset Israel’s regular funding of the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Art and Architecture Biennales. The Outset Bialik Residency based within the Gertlers’ Tel Aviv home explicitly invites international artists to engage with the Israeli art scene, citing collaborations with art schools and institutions including the military-equipment producing Bezalel Academy of Arts and Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and The Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
These close relationships with complicit Israeli cultural institutions, as well as the flow of funding and cooperation between Outset Contemporary Art Fund’s chapters, means that working with Outset in any capacity helps to artwash Israel's genocidal assault on Palestinians and undermines the demands of PACBI and the wider BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement.
Outset Contemporary Art Fund is part of an Israeli cultural scene that whitewashes, or artwashes, Israel’s regime of apartheid and unfolding genocide against the Palestinian people. Until Outset stops servicing apartheid and genocide, it's not a fit partner for artists, art workers, or art institutions.
By operating both in Israel and internationally, Outset is a key part of an artwashing mechanism laundering Israel’s reputation on the global stage and distracting from its outrages against humanity in Gaza and beyond.
STRIKE OUTSET throws a spanner in the works of that mechanism:
Until Outset Israel is closed, and all Outset’s ties with Israeli apartheid are cut, we collectively refuse to work with Outset Contemporary Art Fund.