Andre Dekker introduces the work of the Observatorium artist group. After the symposium he sends me a number of interesting observations: „Many people are smart. There are many things one doesn't know. Smart insights don't mean that the audience is equally smart.” During his lecture I learn that the American Bill of Rights includes the sentence “You have the right to be left alone.” His talk about the group's long attachment to a juvenile prison for which they installed a garden with a car workshop and goats includes the insight that „Prisioners come and go. Staff stay.“ Andre has since written: "The advantage of art presentations at a symposium is not having to question if it is true or if there might be opposite truths.”

Krassimir Terziev's film is shot on a set left behind by an Italian film production at a studio in Sofia. The set depicts an average historical central european city. Film extras have been recruited for a day's work but the shoot never begins. The camera observes the extras chatting, killing time, enjoying each others company and linking arms. I ask myself if extras everywhere would react like that or if different nationalities would behave differently. I'd love to know if the extras in my country would have been so patient. But I don't know much about the film extra profession.

Then Andreas Siekmann presents his proposal for a history of public art. Oil crises and squatters, documenta and participation. I listen entranced. Luchezar says "Nice drawing". The Bulgarian participants feel patronised and are clearly angered.

"Every institution - and art is always institutional - invents its own genealogy." Karl-Siegbert Rehberg's eloquence is captivating. "Before we move on to a more pleasant topic" as he puts it, he explains what he thinks of "rentier capitalism“ which socialises the risk factor. He describes the refusal for permission for Andreas Siekmann's merry-go-round round the Golden Rider as "a touching testimony of traditionalism", says "from the SED to ZDF", calls artists "neo-liberal tamagochis" and laughs about the way marketing departments believe that artists' main aim is publicity. He shows us monumental plans by an architect to rebuild Dresden after the war.

In the evening we gather for gulash soup. Geert van de Camp and I hear about the thinking behind artists' self esteem in socialism: if socialism had achieved the productivity levels required to allow the workers to have more free time, socialism thus becoming communism, then sport and art would have had their day. Artists stood for this perspective and had to be looked after. Professor Rehberg described a survey he did in Dresden 10 years ago: artists were convinced that their profession would have no future relevance for society.