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  • Can ECoCs contribute to a cultural synthesis - Hatto Fischer
    • 1. What are stories all about?
    • 2. What stories are being told about the European Union?
    • 3. European Capitals of Culture are remembered best by what stories?
    • 4. Can stories tell how Europe is connected through culture?
    • 5. When do stories being told reflect a cultural synthesis in the making?
    • Conclusion
    • References
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1. What are stories all about?

The story about the magic violin mentioned in the introduction was told to me by a Dutch artist whose father was a theologian who had saved many Jews during Second World War and who gave after 1945 a series of lectures to a most telling topic: 'the ethics of seeing'. No wonder that she would say as an artist: “I draw what I see.” ¹

In Germany after 1945 seeing became a major topic since many claimed not to have seen Jews disappear out of the midst of their community. Unfortunately this problem has continued to date. It poses the question how can ever human plight be resolved, if people prefer to look the other way?

Horkheimer and Adorno stated in the introduction to their book 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' published in 1944, “that even when Fascism has been defeated, there shall still be xenophobic forces in need to be dealt with.” ² Definitely these forces are still around in a European Union reluctant to see what happens not so much to the Jew, but to migrants. Has it to do with a refusal to learn from the past? Sadly enough a colloquium in Berlin drew after five years of research the conclusion that “Fascism has not been defeated in 1945, but has learned to mask itself better.” ³ It may explain the rise of again Right Wing Extremism and revives fears these force shall attempt once again to creep first into power, and then seize it. Chrysi Avgi or Golden Dawn in Greece seeks to replace all other parties and determine alone the state. It signals a willingness exists on a much broader basis to take recourse to Fascist methods, if all other means to resolve the crisis fail.

Whether culture can prevent inhuman acts, most telling is the question George Steiner posed in 'Language and Silence': is there something inherent 'evil' in our culture? ⁴ He went on to ask how is it possible that someone could play Schubert songs on the piano the evening before he went the next day into the concentration camp to kill there innocent people? The question can be reformulated into how can anyone allow him- or herself to be converted into a killing machine, and justify it by claiming to have been just following orders? Hannah Arendt certainly could not make out this evil when seeing Eichman. To her he appeared as a mere banal person when standing trial in Israel. It all links to the crucial question if culture blinds people rather than let them see reality?

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Already this reflection shows how a little story can prompt larger questions setting off in turn associations which can reveal still other things. More importantly a story can reveal 'connections' not seen until now. It shows how imagination is accessed by way of association, and in turn demonstrates how human memory works when one aspect of the story allows the recollection of something long forgotten but what grandmother had told about the time when the Germans occupied the land. For these connections between past, present and future is what brings about culture. By drawing unexpectedly attention to connections not seen before, it says something about 'habits of seeing.' Too often things are perceived in the belief that this has to be the reality, when in fact something else can exist once everything is perceived out of a different angle. Gombrich demonstrates that clearly in his 'Story of the Arts'! Thus an emancipation from habits can begin with an 'imaginary culture' which can bring about a new perception of things.

There is something else linked to that little story about the magic violin. It was told to me by someone from Holland. By association, the mind can go immediately to Vincent Van Gogh. This artists wanted to become first like his father a priest, but in vain. The church did not like someone who would give away all his money and belongings to the poor. It marked, for instance, his painting of the potato eaters. But he left behind not only countless and precious paintings like the one of the sunflower but as well letters he had written to his brother Theo. These letters contain incredible insights into the making of art. For instance, he considered it to be a sign of greatness, if someone was able to recognize in others greatness.⁵ He demonstrated it himself by thinking immediately of another painter, in this case Rembrandt, who could paint better than he a scene created by his father, a priest, coming out of a mine shaft and crossing in his black robe a field covered by snow. For a long time, Van Gogh kept drawing as he thought this would keep him honest, and therefore he switched over to colours only much later.

Above all, the ability to keep a sense of proportions was for Van Gogh the highest of all art. It is a sense derived from Ancient Greek artists who kept such human proportion that even today, when walking through the Acropolis museum, the free standing sculpture never ceases to amaze how well face, muscles of the arms, hands, feet relate to other parts of the body, and then to the whole corpus. Altogether making visible the law of proportionality seems to translate itself into an idea inspired by what comes close to being alive forever. No wonder when the eyes glance beyond the present into the eternal blue of the sky above the Aegean sea.

It was suggested before that telling stories is an art of keeping the proportions especially with regards to the exaggeration of the small vis a vis the large and vice versa, all along while seeking to make a point. Likewise a sense of proportion needs to be observed when a 'small city but with big dreams' like Valletta strives to connect Europe through culture. By the time Valletta shall be European Capital of Culture in 2018, a referendum in the UK will have given an answer whether or not PM Cameron was right to claim the EU has become too big. Such a criticism implies that the European Union in its present set-up does not give sufficient space to the nation state to apply own laws. This loss of sovereignty seems to be a common complaint right down to the local level while globalization poses new challenges. But practical questions like climate change have to be answered. They cannot if politics becomes a victim of mere self assertiveness regardless what happens to the rest of the world.

Interestingly enough, Germany's finance minister Schäuble called after the European elections in May 2014 for a much more stringent application of the subsidiarity principle. He meant not in a cultural but political sense. According to that principle, the small should supersede over the large where-ever decisions at smaller scale are possible. One can wonder how this shall work in a European Union favouring larger units? The latter are much preferred presumably due to the assumption that they are more productive in a single market. However, such economic viewpoint linked to funding mechanisms favours distorts completely the role culture has to play if a sense of proportionality is to be retained.

Certainly citizens find it hard to locate themselves within Europe. Baumann believes that “we have all become strangers in Europe.” The European Union has been constantly expanding. By now there are 28 member states, so naturally everything seems to have become larger. And by way of expansion the EU claims to be still a 'success story'. Yet all the complaints about the European Union suggest that all is not well. Add to that rumours about possible horrible scenarios if the EU would break up, such projections against the wall suggest that there is no real alternative but to stay in Europe. It means, however, fear and not reason rules the continent.

At best European connections are of technical nature such as high speed intercity trains. They follow the global trend indicating business bases everything on technical innovation. Naturally firms wish to take advantage of a single market but the export orientation is truly global. Still, after reviewing all the stories told about Europe, one can gauge the law proportionality to which Van Gogh referred to in his letters to his brother Theo has not been observed. Something is getting ever bigger in Europe while the small seems to be constantly neglected.

Moreover the 'law of proportion' takes on an entirely different meaning when the Israeli Defence Forces use it to justify their attacks as being 'proportionate' to the threat they have come under from the side of Hamas. Unfortunately any European effort to deal with such projections upon the other by promoting inter-cultural dialogue seems futile. Repeatedly diplomatic initiatives lose themselves in the midst of a turbulent Mediterranean region at best a 'minefield of misunderstanding'. Noam Chomsky has called it the failed illusions of the Middle East.

In view of the ongoing war and frightening vicious cycle of revenge and violent counter attacks, sadly enough it has to be admitted that Europe failed not once, but repeatedly in the Middle East and not only in that region to further an inter-cultural dialogue for the sake of peace. This failure leads straight back to a European Union in which human words seem not to have any place. By failing to uphold the cultural dimension of freedom, the European Union has also ignored what culture stands for. According to Michael D. Higgins, poet and currently President of the Republic of Ireland, culture is “a search for truth.” To this has to be added the search for a right proportion between the small and the large requires a practical judgement as to what is possible in today's world gone global. While the global world can pressurize easily localities into conformity, but easily ignore local interests, it has come to a series of unresolved conflicts between different levels of governance no longer easily coordinated. Hence this search for the right proportions does not end with Malta wishing to locate itself now not only in the Commonwealth but in the European Union.

As events reveal in Eastern Ukraine, once local people are left all to themselves, a lawless void shall be filled by gangs taking the law into their own hands. It marks the beginning of rogue states dictating affairs with no restraint as to what self assertiveness they may want to impose in a most reckless way. It will have no regard for other people's lives. It ends up in a seeming order, in reality a disorder which will bring out something raw and ugly i.e. uncivilized behaviour. Fielding tried to explain it in his novel 'Lord of the Flies'. The story 'The robbers of Liang Schan Moor' shows that even men of the bush can realize that they are in danger if no sense of justice – the keeping of proportionality – prevails amongst themselves.

 

With this in mind, the question becomes whether or not Europe can stay connected, especially if culture is at risk to be abused by policy makers for purpose to obscure a lack of equality?

 

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