Sonntag, 15. Oktober 2006 13:10:02

Melting borders

Jordi, I also want to respond to the question(s) you are raising. Reading your comment, I get the overall impression that you think of boundaries as of something man-made and therefore artificial. It seems easy to overcome something ‘artificial’, there are agreements, the anyway imagined boundaries are constantly melting.

Nation-states are ‘imagined communities’, like the historian Benedict Anderson so rightly observed coining the term. But this doesn’t make them less ‘real’. They are historically grown entities, endowing us with identity. To overcome national boundaries within Europe, we are in need of a common myth, a common history book, of history revisited and rewritten. We are in need of trans-national media, trans-national school education, a sense of a common trans-national economy and common democratic policies with transparent bodies representing them. And what about the role of a common language? Here in Germany, still a minority of people is capable of understanding and even more so of speaking fluent English.

So what, then, is the role of trans-national/ cross-border cooperation? Exactly in melting cultures and in inventing a new homogeneity. In my opinion, we are in the very first stages of this process. Who takes part in these cultural cooperation processes? In most of the cases, the ones who are involved here, the artists, cultural managers and researchers, no way represent a larger part of their societies. We have to be very aware of the fact that it will need time until the outcome of cultural cooperation projects trickles down to the people, the ‘citizens of Europe’. And this is still an ideal scenario. Just think of the immense tensions the EU is facing due to paragraph 312 in Turkey. No online tool will easily overcome the political and mental differences inherent here.

But no doubt we are coming closer. During the Second Lebanon War (2006), I read the blogs of young people in Beirut, not only online, but also in the German print media. Here I deeply understood, to which extent we are able to overcome physical barriers via internet tools and to which extent this could potentially shape our view of today’s world. The message of the westernised English-speaking Lebanese elite is understandable to anybody in command of English worldwide. We all sympathise with a young woman feeling trapped, just wanting her ‘damned stupid life’ back. Her cultural background and national identity are very different, but there is a level of understanding which overcomes national boundaries easily.

To be more precise: I believe that due to online tools and trans-national cooperation processes a melting of boundaries happens, but slowly and in a limited way, reaching certain parts of societies on certain levels. Like in some countries westernisation happens on the surface with Coke or H&M being exponents of this process, ‘Europeanisation’ first happens here and there, perhaps with a work of art which is the outcome of national identities revisited and rewritten.

Sonntag, 22. Oktober 2006 13:09:22

Re: Re: Melting borders

hello Heike, and the Group, and the readers
I totally agree with your explanation, wish I had written it... I fully subscribe it !!
Your new question... difficult. On-line tools do not stop in the seas or the Urals. We need to combine "building Europe" with global initiatives. May it be that the best way to build Europe could be working together for a globalisation with values and democracy... in which culture has a central role? If we agree on that, where is the European cultural policy for this purpose? Maybe the consultation the commission has opened for "The 2007 Communication on culture" will bring some answers... See http://ec.europa.eu/culture/eac/communication/comm_en.html

http://ec.europa.eu/culture/eac/communication/comm_en.html

Dienstag, 31. Oktober 2006 21:58:57

inputs regarding the concet of the other in my practice number 1.

what do you get when you get together promising curators from the Balkans and from Western Europe? Well, that what happened in the curatorial workshop, held by Rene Block in the occasion of the October art Salon in Belgrade this year, I saw as a mirroring process. I have to be specific, a mirroring process in which one sees, hears or experiences something for the first time. The process in which our backgrounds need to be translated, but in a short period of time. And the image reflected is not one one always feels like finding. I am telling you all this, because two groups were segregated, the Balkan and the West did not merge. After the workshop was over the list of emails was divided: one for the Balkans one for the Western Europe.
This is why it is very important to participate in this kind of public forums. The internet has to be used as a tool that will translate differences.