European Capitals of CultureΠοιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Navigation

• Home
• European Capitals of Culture
• Institution of European Capitals of Culture
• ECoCs contributions to Europe connected through culture
  • 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
  • Music
  • Poetry
  • Painting
  • Theatre
  • Museums
  • Architecture
  • Dance
  • Literature
  • Photography
  • Cultural News of ECoC cities
• Europe under construction
• EU Commission
• Candidate cities
• Imprint

5. When do stories being told reflect a cultural synthesis in the making?

The writer Nabakov understood cultural synthesis as a meeting of the past with the present out of which can be deduced expectations for what is to come in future. When he arrived in Berlin in the 1920's and upon seeing street cars, he was reminded of those he saw back home in St. Petersburg. Always he wondered in his 'Diary of Berlin' about these vehicles. Strange was for him the need to turn around the street car when it had come to the end of the track, or else horses pulling it had to be brought around to the other end now the front. He predicted the street car will not be around for long. Still, when boarding it, he would describe carefully the ticket collector. Although his fingers were not like that of a pianist delicate and fine, still he could handle tickets and coins without ever dropping them, while managing to pull the rope to signal the street car could move on.

He compared taking a ride in a street car with a Russian fable in which every new chapter starts by recapturing a bit as to what happened in the previous chapter before continuing with the story. Likewise passengers after having boarded the street car sense a bit what took place before they entered. Still wondering, they take a seat or else end up standing in the aisle as the street car rumbles on through the streets.

Nabakov's reference to the Russian fable demonstrates how telling a story can reflect a synthesis in the making. This is especially the case when the story allows making connections to the past while travelling on, if not immediately into the future, then at least back home for the evening. Likewise each ECoC should re-account what has taken place in previous cities before continuing with its own story. In that way both continuity and change shall be combined when telling how the European dimension can be fulfilled as the story continues. Unfortunately this is not the case, and so it is up to artists to overcome the missing link by creating their own connections.

The artists Maria and Natalie Petschtnikov from Petersburg undertook it to follow the path of Nabakov, in order to discover the Berlin of today. They perceived the street car as a dancer moving through the streets and decided to make an installation thereof. So when I took my friend, the train and street car designer Lutz Gelbert to their atelier to show him their installation, he was completely surprised upon entering. For he saw on the wall an exact replica of the very street car he had designed and not only that. He recognized immediately that their artistic touch made the technical product he had designed appear that much softer. Spontaneously he thought how to incorporate their artistic ideas in a new design of a future street car. This is how innovation between artists and technical designers can work. At the same time, it indicates a cultural synthesis in the making. By bringing the technical and artistic worlds together, a new perception makes something possible. At conceptual level it is another sense of mobility, while the synthesis in the making lets us imagine moving differently through our future cities. For then we shall be taking a street car which has been refined, both technically and aesthetically speaking. ¹

In an exercise found on the web, the question was posed: “What does it mean to say that a cultural synthesis developed during the Hellenistic Age?“ It was answered by one person in the following way:

„While the Greek world prior to the conquests of Alexander had been relatively insular, Alexander and the successor empires create a Hellenistic world, using Greek language, and planting Greek poleis, in an area covering much of the Mediterranean littoral and Near and Middle East. This resulted in a pan-Hellenic paideia, synthesizing many foreign elements such as eastern mystery religions, Mesopotamian divination and astrology, and other foreign elements with a Greek culture that was expressed in widely diverse geographical regions all sharing as a lingua franca a cosmopolitan form of the Greek language known as koine and a mixture of Greek philosophical and religious ideas and artistic traditions with elements imported from other traditions.“ ²

While one has to be careful with such a mythological attempt to reconstruct history, insofar as Habermas deems this to be impossible, still Robert Payne in his amazing book about 'Ancient Greece' does attribute to Alexander the Great an attempt to form a new identity over and beyond national ones. His armies brought together people of different nationalities and religious backgrounds. Unfortunately as soon as he died, this cultural synthesis in the making fell apart. Even his teacher Aristotle was banned from Athens since deemed not to be a citizen of that Polis. ³

In contemporary terms, the discussion about cultural synthesis has taken quite another turn. In a photo exhibition I curated for MEP Alecos Alavanos, the title 'Osmosis' was used to show how Greek photographers looked out from their culture while other photographers looked into the Greek context to depict not typical tourist images, but something which is unique and equally generally prevailing: a chain smoker. ⁴

The search for 'sui generis' – uniqueness – is akin to all artistic endeavours and translates itself over time into cultural attributes not to be found anywhere else. Likewise the prototype of European culture can be defined as an amalgam of different elements. Needless to say, culture as a synthesis differs from what stands for EU cultural policy since Melina Mercouri, namely the usual formula of 'unity in diversity'. That is at best an attempt to gloss over a non existing synthesis. ⁵

It will also not do to define European culture solely through cultural heritage, for it is used more often to distort perception of the present (Paul Tillich), and never takes into consideration what bottom-up narratives would alter the official versions usually linked to property rights conveniently covered up by being declared as part of the national heritage. ⁶ Furthermore, it is linked to restoration of buildings even though UNESCO has included 'intangible heritage' which includes stories being told. About cultural heritage is made quite often the sarcastic remark politicians would prefer such projects because then they cannot make any mistake. For it is easy to have everyone agree that the Hagia Sophia needs restoration as was the case when Istanbul was ECoC in 2010.

Here then I would like to bring into this discussion about cultural synthesis in the making something Karsten Xuereb, project manager of V18 expressed in a letter to me. While he refers to Ferdinand Richard, he gives a basic outline of how Valletta shall set out to prepare for 2018:

„With regard to views (of Ferdinand Richards) (or pre-views, as the case has it) of Marseille-Provence 2013, a great deal of what he discusses applies to us, and I am sure, many other cities/ECoCs. The struggle between externally-oriented large events, which may or may not be imported, and the bottom-up approach, is a case in point. I say such large events may or may not be imported because, in our case, in a way which is markedly different from larger, older (in terms of politically and economically independent) cities, Valletta is working at large, popular, engaging events for the general public, developed from and with local talent, rather than imported individuals or companies. The priority is giving value to what is local and, due to our territorial dimensions, almost immediately and naturally national, rather than cross-border and international (and in the case of ECoC, especially European). I believe this approach comes from the local merging with the national, as pointed out, as well as because we feel we need to assert ourselves nationally, rather than on the basis of communities which are intrinsically European, or Mediterranean.

The reference to the Med is interesting in view of the way Marseille has interpreted, or not, the extra-European dimension, which I feel has been limited to French connections and remnants of the UfM (although this is a very limited view as I have not gone into enough detail of this aspect, I’m afraid). In Valletta’s case, as has been Malta’s over the past decades, speeches on the Med are not backed up by action; however, I find many Med political players do not expect anything more than this. I think Richard’s remark near the conclusion, ‘Seen from Algiers, from Istanbul or from Ramallah, of what kind of Europe will MP13 be a Cultural Capital?’, following his reasoning about the relevance and interpretation of a Med project today, applies well to Maltese reality.

To conclude, with reference to Richard’s own conclusion, I found his reflection on the importance of synthesis striking (‘Centres of population that have shown such a capacity for synthesis, and who therefore bear witness to very real richness of culture, are rare in Europe.  Furthermore, it will be necessary to give every one of them good reasons for identifying with this project and making it their own. This is one of the political frameworks which still needs consolidation.’) It recalled the thinking that democracy is really about synthesis, and not about people leading their lives separately from each other while guaranteeing rights with no interaction and sense of community.” ⁷

To allow for further understanding as to what Ferdinand Richard views of importance in a changed European landscape, it is worthwhile to add the one paragraph to which Karsten Xuereb refers to, and which he took from the Report of a seminar about artistic mobility and territorial diplomacy:

„The importance of local and regional cultural policy building should not be underestimated in this regard. The title of the seminar proposed the concept of “territorial diplomacy”. Ferdinand Richard, President of RCF, explained that this concept, which could also be called “diplomacy of local governments”, is based on the shift in sovereignty to territories alongside nation states. This shift is linked to the development of Europe and globalisation. The political impact of regional development funds, for example, has strengthened the autonomy of local and regional authorities. Local cultural identity is being consolidated by touristic attractivity for the better or for the worst. A local politician will have to imagine the common future of his or her local inhabitants with the good quality creative talents that his/her territory deserves. Elected leaders could become mediators between local cultural actors and public spending, so as to define their territorial assignment on the long--‐term. International contacts are being developed to extend attractivity elsewhere. In this context it is no surprise that a timely local cultural policy framework has developed, the Agenda 21 for Culture, produced by a worldwide network of local governance, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). The indisputable effect of the European Capital of Culture phenomenon has lead to a transfer of cultural interests and aims to local authorities and this shift is upheld by international treaties such as the UNESCO Convention of 2005 on the promotion and protection of the diversity of cultural expressions.“⁸

At first sight, this returns us to the beginning when the small and the large became a reference for reflections about the law of proportionality. But now there is added a new theory of 'sovereignty'. At least, this seems to be emerging with a shift occurring on how ECoC shall use the title to tie things together. Added is, for instance, the criterion of 'community' if the local and national level are to be brought together through cultural events as proposed by Karsten Xuereb. It matches also a trend to be interpreted as a 'disenchantment' with Europe which may be responsible for seeking to shift power away from nation states and more towards regional territories with their own cultural synthesis. Naturally this may lead, for example, to strengthen the drive towards even greater Scottish independence, but which can take on quite another form of politics best called 'self assertiveness.' Interestingly enough, it is usually a new claim ownership since 'our community' seems to be much more preferred than an anonymous Europe ruled from Brussels.

Before discussing this any further, a recapitulation of the EU as a community in the making might provide provide another vantage point from which to view these latest ECoC developments with Marseille being the latest reference point. Already a change in character was noticed once Kohl instigated a change in name from 'European community' to 'European Union'. The latter suggests already something more bombastic, equally far more removed from the communal sense citizens seek when trying to be more than just by themselves. Then, as stated already, after the bombardment of Kosovo in 1999, priorities of the EU shifted to external matters. More and more the focus was on a rapid intervention force, while external affairs and expansion of the European Union took on an ever greater priority. Consequently the internal consolidation which every community needs, became secondary. The aim to bring about social and economic cohesion by attaining equality between the regions was no longer pursued so vigorously after 1999, and when the crisis hit member states like Greece, the divergence between Southern and Northern economies became an even greater challenge on how to remain united despite these huge discrepancies in opportunities and levels of wealth. All along culture was given secondary competence within the European Union compared to the primary given to the environment. It says a lot that the European Union does not conjoin different policy measures by linking urban and regional development in need to observe environmental constraints with the call for economic growth. Here a synthesis would be a cultural landscape which reflects truly a diversity, itself an outcome of man's interaction with nature e.g. the tableau farms in the Greek mountains. Instead this need for a synthesis is being ignored since the contradictions between economic and environmental policy measures are not resolved but further aggravated. Also cultural matters are left due to the subsidiarity principle to member states.

The loss of sense for community manifests itself still in another way. Sadly enough human solidarity as true kit of European society has become very rare. By comparison when the war raged in Vietnam, one reason for the Student protest to erupt in 1968 was out of solidarity with the people in Vietnam. The same cannot be said after American and other troops invaded Iraq in 2003 as no one seemed to care as to what happened to the people being bombed in Baghdad. Today even less solidarity is expressed despite people being made into refuges due to civil war like strives threatening Syria, Iraq, Lebanon while Pakistan and Afghanistan do not come to rest despite massive interventions of different kinds e.g. troops on the ground compared to Drone attacks. Many borders drawn by former European colonial powers seem no longer stable e.g. Iraq, Syria, but also Ukraine. The redrawing of borders has always been an expression of shifts in power, but their trespassing more often than not a sign of a ruthless war aggravated by economic coercion in the form of sanctions or prize hikes e.g. for gas. Unfortunately while people are killed in Gaza due to the incursion of the Israeli Defence Forces, life continues in European cities as if nothing happens.

It may well be that a cultural synthesis at world level may be impossible or something in reverse at best to be called 'schizophrenia of peace.' While youngsters go to disco bars on one side of the street, bombs can go off on the other. It happens repeatedly in Beirut, Tripoli, and as of late almost everywhere in the Middle East and not only there. However, once the victims of the Malaysian flight were brought back from Eastern Ukraine to Holland, the artist Boudewijn Payens wrote “war has been brought home, inside our houses.” It signals something is altering in Europe where people have been living in relative peace since 1945. It may well be that due to a new self assertive politics quite another reality shall impose the ugly rule of violence and strife once again.

All the more so Karsten Xuereb's remark about the link between democracy and cultural synthesis is crucial for understanding what culture can do to avert war. Yet the critical question remains, if this is best served in a local-national framework? Here I would like to contradict softly by pointing out that the cultural space offered by the European Union is linked to the opening up of borders, so that citizens of Europe can travel freely. Many had dreamt of this after having read how Goethe travelled in his times from Weimar to Palermo without being stopped at any border.

A cultural synthesis is critical for democracy since it will determine the structures which shall govern our lives. It was defined by Aristotle as the constitution which keeps those parts together which belong together and those apart which have to be separated for otherwise they cause explosions. Different from the concept of 'unity', it is something else than a mere sum of the parts while throwing into existence something difficult to ignore. When we observe how natural someone plays the piano, then this merger of human being and the art of playing music Adorno called 'ourselves becoming second nature'. Interestingly enough, once Odysseus lands finally in Ithaca, he finds shelter under a tame and wild olive tree. We attain that after much learning and more so practising. With it goes criticism, the learning from others and in receiving decisive impulses. Freud called this process sublimation lasting so long until what was submerged in our unconsciousness suddenly re-appears but hardly recognizable from the original since so much changed. By developing human talents, the art of being alive comes to a full expression once a cultural synthesis of all possibilities is attained.

A cultural synthesis was in the making according to the philosopher Ernst Bloch when the Greeks discovered the light, but the Arab philosophers and translators both saved and changed it before passing it on to Europe. While Idealism tends to link up only with Ancient Greece through an idealization of its values, it does so by seeking a link between theology and philosophy. The outcome is a belief in reason. However, the Arabic contribution should not be forgotten as they are as well the hidden roots of the European cultural self understanding. In that sense, philosophy and science go together in ensuring reason corresponds with the categories of knowledge in such a way that we not merely deduce or induce by logical means general statements out of particular ones or vice versa, but proceed in our thoughts by synthesizing all previous experiences and empirical observations made as a result. The practice of synthesizing is itself an intellectual capacity to make human thoughts not only more clear but equally 'outstanding'. For instance, Al Gahiz considered things were lying around in the street, it was therefore a matter of giving them a form so that they could exist. Hence a synthesis in the making relates to the form-content idea which Ernst Bloch interpreted even when we can see water, we know what exists when we distinguish a river from a lake as then we can imagine the form of existence. ⁹

All the more reason to reconsider the theoretical assumptions as to what a European Capital of Culture should undertake nowadays, in order to realize such a cultural synthesis. Presumably it is a common agreement that it is is best done by ensuring the cultural freedom of expression, so that artists can explore and bring together human and aesthetical values in ways which have significant ramifications for people seeking to live and to work together in Europe. To this has to be added that a cultural synthesis differs from any enforced unity as a painting does not impose itself upon the human being, but recollects and articulates human potentialities to exist within the visionary anticipation of the future by, letting different forms and flows of energy exist together simultaneously in time and space. Hence a cultural synthesis refers to a locality giving time and space a frame of reference, so that the inner sense can become the outer, the concrete the abstract, the finite the infinite, the possibility the reality, and vice versa. As a gift of life, it makes possible for human beings to exist.

Since we need to be careful about which model we chose to understand something complex, I wish to return for a moment to Van Gogh and look at several of his paintings while keeping in mind Valletta as a small city with big dreams. Looking at paintings is taking up a dialogue with the imagination. This discourse is best expressed in the form of a poem which follows more feelings than any strict logic. Using such a method, Van Gogh's paintings can be examined, if they reveal a cultural synthesis in the making. Clearly two outstanding qualities can be detected in all his paintings. For one, after having been exposed to Japanese art, he started to depict life not in the bilateral logic usual for the European way to paint with here the earth and above the horizon, but rather by showing time flows connecting past, present and future, he lets time pass by as things depicted seem to enter another time zone. They do not slip away but stay present. And secondly, everything seems to converge in his painting at a magical point within the painting. The location is not defined or specifically marked. Rather where the grass of the fields meet the sky with trees bent by the wind, there appears something like a perspective to look at things. This vantage point is not located outside and in front of the painting, but rather seems to be inside the painting from where the glance pierces through the surface of the painting towards the viewer. Needless to say it startles when realizing by being gripped in such a way a cultural synthesis has been created as our own model of understanding things in real life. The painting is there to make that possible.

There is, for instance, one painting depicting a sad tree without leaves and which is shown to stand aside from a group of three trees full of leaves. By association, the painting appears to be reflective of an outsider looking on as a family of three frolic about due to spring time having come. One can imagine Vincent Van Gogh himself being shut out by society. It is known that in his life time he did not sell one painting except to his brother and that he never married even though he tried three times. By association, the single tree without leaves denotes the kind of 'displacement of concept' by which existence is made possible. That happens as well when ECoC cities leave aside the concept of culture being 'theory' and strive to realize something else like urban renewal, for it leaves culture standing there like that tree without leaves. ¹⁰

                                     

Van Gogh's painting expresses the failure of society to integrate outsiders but not only that. Interestingly enough, it marks as well a failure to let people use the arts to create for themselves models of understanding as to what they have to face in real life. Culture gives them the tools by enriching their self understanding. Reading Dostoevsky is an experience of being touched emotionally otherwise thought not to exist since no one really talks about it in society. Doubt can then silence the own feelings as if they would not exist. Once people are not be able to create a synthesis made of out of love for life and knowledge what society requires to survive, then they cannot extrapolate to learn how to adapt while they venture out into a world full of challenges. Instead they feel displaced, or no where at home or at ease when in the company of others.

Such a fate seems to follow a romantic notion of love and therefore a peculiar 'theory' as to what binds people together. Here a main illusion is to think of love as the most complete concept when in fact it is the most incomplete and sets an agenda with many points not really addressed openly such as the notion a real experience of love can be made only outside of marriage but then at the risk to be unfaithful. Many use such a concept and not only by artists for likewise by all kinds of outsiders, including anarchists, end up generalizing about society which excludes them for the one or other reason. Often it is because they have thrown away the key to their self understanding and thus do not feel themselves to be understood first of all by the parents, then by teachers and finally by the whole of society. As a result of the 'displacement of the concept' success appears to be a mere illusion while real life appears to be just a failure for lack of social recognition. The fate of Van Gogh illustrates that. It is something to think about how culture can bridge that gap to avoid such fate. The solution might lie in direction of developing quite another, equally non romantic idea about love.

 

There is a deeply moving painting by Van Gogh in which he depicts the unemployed. All of them sit alone at a small table in a cafe and stare into empty glasses. The waiter is shown as being dressed in white while he walks with his tray in between these tables. For someone looking at this painting the waiter appears as 'a butcher of time'. Indeed, time is wasted once laid off from work and yet life is so precious so that every minute counts. To this agony of realizing time cannot be lived if without the means gained through employment, there is added the painful realization that time is being eaten away by idleness. The knowledge that each person has but one life intensifies that feeling of human pain. Van Gogh's ability to show the plight of the unemployed in such a direct way is what makes his art so powerful. It is achieved by acknowledging the finite time to be lived, but while the onlooker of the painting senses this agony, he is trusted directly back into life and into a society which keeps a huge number of people if not completely unemployed, then still at the fringe or ever closer to the poverty line. It is even said that there live in Europe one third in wealth, one third near or in poverty, and one third serves the other two thirds as waiters, taxi drivers, nail polishers, nurse, policeman etc. Consequently there is no solidarity with the unemployed as those having a job fear more to become like them if they lose their job. Alone by intimidation through fear power rules in effect with one third of the voices while making sure through this mechanism no human solidarity comes about.

Another sense of synthesis of time can be found in Van Gogh's painting of a field having just been harvested. In the background can be seen a train on its way to Paris. Two different time zones hardly to be bridged underline the contrast between the country site with its nature prompting a different sense of life when compared to the time spend in the city. The contrast startles. It makes evident a different world awaits one in the city. Interestingly enough when Van Gogh went to London, he saw that people were not really as alienated as Marx said they would be once exposed to hard working conditions and downgraded living conditions. To his surprise, they carried in their hearts still the 'good old stories' by which souls are warmed like the hands held against the fire during a cold winter day. Van Gogh tried to show that especially in his 'The Potato Eaters' but his refutation of the theory of Marx about alienation has yet to be acknowledged. It says that art is resistance against false generalizations about people, and thereby refutes theories which may be convenient for politics seeking simplifications, but which do no justice to people. That means a cultural synthesis entails a sense of justice which links up to keeping a sense for proportions. Always politics tends to exaggerate to make a point, but the evidence itself is not only what people show on one day, for they are full of potentialities and therefore can bring about another reality once given a theory which does justice to them.

Van Gogh did not stay in Holland but went to France to join the Impressionists. To do so, Cocteau and Aaragon said he had to cross through a 'river of forgetting'. That is important for it reminds what Parmenides stated in his fragment about a person who was taken by a goddess out of the city. But before he was able to step out and could experience nature, he had to turn the key of fate to open the gate. The key was called fate because by turning, he forget all previous experiences he had made in the city. Only then could he absorb nature by trusting his senses to create a synthesis of what he would see, hear, smell, touch and taste. The same applies to the arts. If they succeed in bringing about this self forgetting, then a viewer of a painting can become so absorbed by what he or she sees, that out of this experience can emerge a synthesis of all previous and new experiences. This synthesis of form and content will let the viewer know how to relate to reality from then on differently. For reality is itself like the river undergoing constantly changes. Thus the remark by Cocteau and Aragon points to a different theory of how memory works best. We remember the past once we can forget it in the present moment, in order to allow for the making of new experiences and in so doing create a form a receptivity into which all previous memories can flow like water into a newly created lake.

The Impressionists got that name due to a specific style of painting related to the present sense of time: they rush over the canvas with the paint brush in an attempt to capture one precise moment of light leaving behind but an impression of something else. When speaking with an artist making a copy of Renoir's 'Woman on a swing', he described what real pleasure he was experiencing by tracing the ingenious paint strokes Renoir had created., but who had never the time to enjoy them since he had to rush through, in order to complete the painting. That too says something about many cultural synthesis not recognized for a long time although they have come almost unnoticeable into existence. Only by transcribing these paint strokes at a later stage can an understanding thereof mature into a fully fledged appreciation of this level of art creating in opposition to photography and all what was previously an accepted 'sujet' a new genre of painting school.

The style of the Impressionists was the last optimistic tone in the arts for what followed was First World War. Van Gogh signalled that by having crows descend upon the harvested fields. That war destroyed all beauty, said Paul Klee, and therefore made any expression thereof out of necessity 'abstract', because no longer based on direct experience but on memory of what beauty existed before the war. This fragmentation of beauty revealed itself further in Cubism, while Braque, Picasso and others wanted also to make something visible which was for the common eye till now invisible: air!

                   

                          Shop window of the house where Van Gogh lived in Arles

Van Gogh dreamt of an atelier in the South. He sensed not only the importance of light but realized that there are many worthy subjects to be painted, but which one painter cannot do all alone. For this reason Van Gogh wanted to bring together different painters. It underlines that a synthesis can only be created by bringing together people from different cultural backgrounds and dispositions. By the same token, if an image of Europe cannot be created alone, then it makes no sense at all to confine an artistic programme of a European Capital of Culture to a local-national frame of reference and thereby let only local talents to create general events. Rather quite a different approach has to be taken if artists are to contribute to a new model of understanding of European reality in the 21^st century.

Unfortunately for Van Gogh only Gauguin came with disastrous consequences for Van Gogh. Interestingly enough Gauguin left Europe several times, and once for Tahiti. He wanted to leave behind Europe because 'sick'. In Tahiti he claimed to have found again the freedom of spontaneous expression while still being connected to the whole. It meant in Europe the process of destruction took toll on Hegel's dictum that 'the whole is the truth', and which expressed Adorno best in 'Minima Moralia' as the 'whole not being the truth'. It should be added that Gauguin is considered to be a painter of “Synthetism in which neither form nor colour predominate but each has an equal role.“ ¹¹

If there is no cultural synthesis of any significance in the making, when the syntax of power speaks its own language while politics shall be devoid of any human substance. Needless to say, since the latter is identical with honesty, this may be one of the hardest tasks for Europe's culture to bring about. Heike Henning, a dancer and choreographer in Leipzig, had once proposed a dancing project for Europe. She would have loved to call it “a smile goes through Europe”. That would be like a streak of warm air or a human stream touching everyone in acknowledgement that the 'lightness of being' can also mean a substantial form of mutual understanding. It would signify a common understanding of European values. Simone de Beauvoir said if people are unhappy, then all should join them in their wish to celebrate, but when there is reason to be sad, then this too should be shared. Hence the phase of mourning is just as important if there have been too many losses of human lives. This the people in Holland did when the coffins were returned from the Ukraine after that plane crash on July 17^th, the day the Israeli Defence Forces started the incursion into the Gaza strip which left by the beginning of August more than 1 800 Palestinians dead and many more wounded. That is to say in sharing happiness and grief, important is that this relates to all human lives and not only to a collective subject of 'we' which excludes others as if they do not belong to human culture. For then something vital for culture shall be jeopardized, namely openness needed to let in new ideas and to be challenged in one's own assumptions when generalizing about the world. Always openness relates to humanity in the way creativity is based on upholding the ethical spirit of mankind. Andre Breton called it 'the morality of creativity' and cited Picasso as example who needs no ethical code of conduct since he stayed creative over time by following his own morality of creativity. ¹²

The arts stay alive through daily practices while envisioning use of things in a very different way from what is the case 'here and now'. Picasso could transform by a simple act with his hands an object into an art work e.g. a bicycle handle into a bull with horns. Hence all art works mark the present by taking on the challenges of the future. Equally there needs to be such institutional set-ups that uphold these values and include creativity as attempted by the Prague Spring. When Russian troops entered Prague during that fateful month of August in 1968, they squashed that attempt to put a human face on Socialism. It would have allowed people to be creative inside the institution. After that fateful August intervention the creative people were pushed outside and left stranded. This has been the widespread case as well in the West. Its precedence was the bloody putsch by Pinochet in Chile 1973. It helped to set up an experiment for the Chicago Boys around Milton Friedman who wanted to test a new economic policy, in order to refute Keynes who saw the state of having the responsibility to take care of people rather than use brutal methods to force them to pay a high price.

Rather than speculate here about what any story about the human search for truth and justice might achieve thanks to what a ECoC can do, it seems more appropriate to quote an editorial published by the Malta Independent on July 20, 2014 for it is quite unusual for things to be said in such a straight forward manner: „in this newspaper’s opinion all (other) issues pale in comparison to the ongoing loss of lives – in their dozens, scores, hundreds or even thousands - on our very doorstep. This continuous human tragedy is, as the Prime Minister once accurately put it, is turning the Mediterranean into a cemetery. And in the meantime, the European Union, which fashions itself as the world’s great humanitarian bloc, the defender of the voiceless and the epitome of humanitarianism, sits back and watches these tragedies unfold one after another while it allows mainly Italy and Malta, and soon even a very well-intentioned NGO, take care of the rescue operations, to pluck the survivors from the beautiful yet unforgiving sea and to deal with the aftermaths of one tragedy after another.” ¹³

The migrant issue cannot be resolved by Malta alone or for that matter by remaining within a local-national framework of reference. People come to Malta because they see it being now a part of the European Union, the issue of citizenship a case in point. Once Maltese citizenship has been granted, it gives that person automatically unhindered access to all other EU member states. Due to the unsatisfactory solution offered by the Dublin agreement, the migrant issue is not really a common responsibility of all Europeans. Here human solidarity has yet to be realized.

Human values and the issues linked to them can thanks to cultural reflections connect, but also separate people. It depends upon stories being told do touch 'human pain' rather than distort reality. Even when there are language barriers to be overcome, Giotto showed that this pain can be communicated by gestures. It is so universal that whether soldier or women weeping, the grief felt is common to all. That happens when people are struck as was the case in Holland when the bodies of those on that fateful Malaysian air-plane were brought to Eindhoven. People lined up along the road which the funeral cars took to bring the coffins to the military camp for DNA identification. Most important was that one knew who was inside these coffins. they could have been Australians or any of other nationality, but in times like these it does not matter. Something else becomes more important, namely 'human dignity'. It can and should connect Europe so that people face together the new challenges openly, and without differentiating between European and non-European lives. Every human life matters. That is the difference to other forms of perceptions and identification patterns where American or Israeli life seems to matter more than others. It matters to have such a cultural synthesis which upholds human life without any form of discrimination. That means as well xenophobic forces should not determine what has value, what not in life. But to face especially the problems the world has with all kinds of violent assertions, Karl Jaspars recommended in his lecture held in 1951 this topic to uphold humanness, indeed 'human values', “one does not have to become a dragon to fight the dragon.” ¹⁴

At the level of humanity something too often overlooked counts. Dostoevsky describes it by re-accounting how people came out when prisoners taken to Siberia passed by their village. For they would slip into the hands of the prisoners pieces of bread with some money inside. Such human gestures, small signs of resistance, say a cultural synthesis can only be created by paying attention to both small and large details for they can make all the difference. Peter Weiss, in his book 'Aesthetic of Resistance' describes how a man being chased by Franco's police during the civil war in Spain runs into a church to hide. Once inside, he discovers beautiful paintings. Amazed he looks at them and forgets why he fled into the church. He calms down and then walks out again with no more sweat in his face. He is a different man. The police still look for the other one with a panic stricken face filled with fear of being caught.

It means that the artistic and cultural programme of any city which has received the designation of the title ECoC should let the arts be free to seek the human voice and bring out that resistance in everyone. As this translates into the need for an artistic director who can decide independently from any political pressure or other influences of interest, it says a lot about a Cultural Capital City if that is not guaranteed. If the case, there is a high risk that the arts and culture shall be functionalized for other purposes. Yet especially in times when not merely wars flare up, but an overuse of different kinds of propaganda means the risk for people to know no longer the truth, it matters if the arts can give support to culture as a 'search for truth'. And that only can take shape if independent from what politics may deem to be a success. For given all the failures to prevent wars and all the senseless killings, surely the closer culture comes to articulate reasons for human failures, the closer such a perception of reality is to the demand for human truth. Quite the opposite language shall be used when success stories are being propagating while ignoring at the same time this truly deep human failure to prevent the senseless killing especially of innocent people.

Significantly the bid book of Valletta when seeking the designation of the title for 2018 did mention that the youth of today expresses fore mostly a desire for one specific kind of freedom, namely the freedom to make mistakes. That can be translated in what an architect living in East Berlin while the wall was still standing and he could only look over to the other side said about architectural journals, that they are all beautiful but by showing only the end products, the thought process of how the architect arrived at this specific design is never revealed and therefore no real learning can take place. For this reason I agree as well with Karsten Xuereb when he says Valletta 2018 is but a preparation for when it shall be again the turn of the city together with Malta in 2030 to be the European Capital of Culture.

However, I wish to emphasize once more that European Capital of Culture should not be about promoting local talents within a national framework. A cultural synthesis can only be created by bringing different cultures together, and thereby contribute to resolving in a peaceful way the various value issues about which there can be waged endless wars just in the belief the own God is the only truthful one while all others are non believers. It is also a sign of not understanding that tension fields can only be creative if they bring out the best in everyone while avoiding categories which keep the ones related to the locality inside and all others outside. Moreover real cultural work is not about city branding. That tendency towards a new myth for purpose of advertisement would invited everyone to look at the city only in a certain way. Naturally in a media age working only with images and Twitter like messages, it is easy to fall into that trap. Yet a cultural viewpoint goes beyond the image in the interest to further a just and therefore differentiated idea of how people live and work at that specific place, and this in relation to people coming to and departing from that place. For important is what they take with them since out of that material they shall create stories about Valletta and Malta.

It makes no sense to link the local with national level to enhance through culture and the arts a further going national identity formation process. It would simply destroy any chance of real diversity which exists at every communal and urban level, and this in contradiction to the single national identity. Also it would negate what has been the origin of European culture and the initial idea when Melina initiated the European Capital of Culture idea, namely to bring people so that they can create together with artists their own cultural synthesis and therefore models of understanding in what kind of world they live in. They cannot be free in their choices if they follow pseudo models of success as advertised constantly, for instance, on global networks like CNN. Strict adherence to one sided models was already the case when people were living still in a village and existence in a tribe meant nothing more but following very strict rules. Frazer in his amazing book 'the Golden Bough', later used by Freud to write his 'Totem and Tabu', showed what governed marriage in primitive societies but also what grave consequences had disobedience to the authority despite playing constantly a game of sacrifice. Rather models need to be enriched by such cultural inputs that the extrapolation allows a further going learning process on how to integrate oneself in the world while that world comes to one's own doorstep. It is said that in every local community of Malta there exist more than 130 or even more different cultures. The reflection process needed to do justice to this reality has to include the European dimension since it means a freedom from having to assume but one national identity.

Why a local-national reference in the arts will do more harm than good was pointed out by the director of the Modern Art Gallery in Berlin who said, if one wishes to ruin any artist, then just label him or her as being a Polish, German, Italian or Maltese artist. It would limit the artistic expression to a non humanistic demonstration of something called national identity, and thereby reinforce merely tendencies which the European Union has tried to overcome ever since it was set up to undo what Nationalism had caused in Europe, namely the Two World Wars.

Too many screams around the world are not being heard. Most often it is because the persons are already so wounded, if not dead, that they cannot really 'scream' to be heard by others. Christa Wolf in her novel 'Cassandra' said after Troy fell, the women had to flee into caves and since no historian took notice of them, they could only scratch their screams onto the walls of the cave, in order to leave traces for people to recognize later what voices had not been heard all this time.

There is still another problem in how society produces conformity. For too many speak only 'masked', that is in a slave language. They hide their true feelings and motivations, in order to survive passively like slaves always do. Survival means they cannot reveal true thoughts especially when speaking to someone higher up in rank of power and authority. 'Slave language' is by far one the greatest, equally least researched subjects and was only touched upon by the philosopher Ernst Bloch. ¹⁵ Here culture can contribute by way of aspiration and inspiration.

Right now a disenchantment with Europe has set in. Many go to Brussels in the hope to alter things by entering a true debate, but they return truly disappointed because all speak in a code which never allows for interesting debates to unfold. Only open and frank discussions which challenge conventional thinking and prejudices will allow an unexpected question to be heard. By contrast, speaking in a code means people are afraid to level with one another and to share knowledge openly with others. No wonder when the European process lacks transparency and such cultural synthesis which could ensure outer and inner knowledge as to what is going on still corresponds to facilitate mutual understanding. People and politicians need to speak the same language if any law is to mean the same thing regardless if insider or outsider. But to crack that code, there has to be resolved under what the current European debate suffers and which should become a task for any ECoC city. It has to do with having an equal voice when it comes to setting the agenda. Culture can only be conveyed when the discussion allows reality to enter. Right now by the time any report reaches the top everyone coming close to some controversial truth has been erased. It means the language used by the politicians and officials is so neutral that things said can apply to everything and nothing, while the true policy knowledge itself misses out in making sure that people become in the process truly involved, that is visible and audible. The latter allows for a some optimism that in critical situations both the human voice and the voice of reason would be heard, an together combine to ensure such wise decisions are made that they strengthen human compassion for liveable truths.

The silence in Europe amounts to deaf ears with regards to human plight. It marks a real problem since it seems as if no common human identity can be expressed. Hence ECoC concept should mean to provide a cultural space to make that happen. Only when a true story of people interacting in the best interest of all starts to unfold, then the best of everyone is brought out to make a difference.

 

^ Top

« 4. Can stories tell how Europe is connected through culture? | Conclusion »

---