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ZURICH—More than half the word’s referenda are said to take place in Switzerland, where voters are invited to weigh in on national, cantonal, and local matters up to four times annually. In large part this is because Swiss citizens can easily petition for a referendum; all they have to do is collect 100,000 signatures in 18 months and the item will be added to the national voting agenda. Generally the issues that get people most riled up are civic matters relating to the military, urban planning, health, and immigration, but several recent referenda have touched on the cultural landscape, and on the ballots this September are two votes that threaten arts venues, both initiated by the right-wing party Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP).

While the SVP views culture, and in particular traditional culture, as an important factor in the well-being of the country, the party campaigns against excessive arts funding and has taken a cynical position regarding contemporary art. Its first target this fall is Zurich’s publicly funded Cabaret Voltaire, the birthplace of Dada in 1916. Founded by artists and intellectuals Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara, and Marcel Janco during World War I as a place where any form or tradition of artistic enterprise was welcome, the cabaret reopened in 2004, with significant funding from the Swatch group and the city, as a center for artistic experimentation. Having proved neither commercially viable nor entirely avant-garde, today it occupies a place outside the mainstream art world. The catalyst for the referendum was a controversial casting by sex therapist Maggie Tapert for sex “slaves” to meet the needs of her female clients; the event was moved to another venue and turned out to be a tame affair, but not before the vote was set in motion to determine whether the city should continue the center’s “wasteful” funding. Tapert has decried the vote, saying, “Those who are financing the Dada house want it to be a museum where nothing actually happens. The very things that honor the Dada tradition are frightening to those in power.” The SVP said in a statement, “The people of Zurich are already jaded about the waste of money [on cultural subsidies].”  

The second referendum is to take place in the town of Uster, about 10 miles east of Zurich, where the Villa am Aabach faces a similar challenge. Initiated by the SVP along with the Schweizer Demokraten (SD), a conservative party with isolationist tendencies, this vote attempts to revoke funding for the local contemporary art space, allegedly for cost-saving reasons — and despite the fact that the SVP was represented on the jury that recently selected the center’s new artistic directors, Monika Bühler and Michael Gutscher. Bühler and Gutscher’s program was to start in September, but in light of the vote the Villa will remain empty until a decision is made, after which it might reopen in 2009. Since its inception as an art space in 2002, the Villa has hosted the local creative community but also emerging international artists including Ferit Kuyas, Johanna Näf, Rory Macbeth, Paul Harper, and Bettina Carl, and its incumbent directors have proposed a program that would create further links with the local community while maintaining the space’s international perspective. The September 28 referendum will either guarantee funding for three years or close the space immediately.