European Capitals of CultureΠοιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

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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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Conclusion

An effort was made to see how Europe is connected through culture with European Capitals of Culture serving as example in terms of their possible contribution to a cultural synthesis. The latter is a most difficult term in need of still further philosophical clarification, but by bringing together people who enter a dialogue with artists, it is no longer mixing or merging different cultures. Rather it is about synthesizing crucial ideas emerging out of experiences made so far. It is needed in order to understand and even comprehend what challenges lie ahead. The insights gained can leaded to a refinement and verification of policy knowledge as to what needs to be done to ensure solutions to outstanding problems can be found. The extra cultural value in all of this is that these solutions are liveable ones. Hence they need to be brought about by a governance which based on a cultural consensus to ensure a common agreement prevails as to what values and therefore laws are compatible with the political understanding of democracy. This is why European Capitals of Culture need to ensure this political message of culture is not lost, for only then it can be said that Europe is connected through culture.

Subsequently something interesting needs to be observed, for while focusing on stories being told and learning how to distinguish true from false ones, the main focus has been on culture as a concept and not so much on what constitutes the usual 'raison d'etre' of European Capitals of Culture, namely their capacity of implementing such an artistic and cultural programme which upholds the European dimension. This topic was merely touched upon when doubt was articulated that a cultural synthesis needed for Europe to be connected through culture cannot be created by remaining solely and exclusively within a local-national frame of reference. The deeper implication of this crucial difference can be examined if there is consistency between the original bid a city made to receive the designation of the title and what cultural and artistic programme was implemented in that decisive year. For it matters if original intentions are still recognizable in the final outcome even if it is at best but a work in progress akin to the self understanding any artist has of works realized by upholding a 'morality of creativity' so as to add to reality a sense of beauty. For this reason it is claimed that the European dimension can only be fulfilled if the disconnect between a cultural organization and artistic content is overcome. Too often culture has become a self assuming concept used for general policy purposes but hardly able any more to work with artists and their works even though they are needed if people in Europe are to attain a self-understanding so that they can deal with the situation being created by a European Union putting its peculiar stamp on Europe as a continent rich in cultural landscapes, artistic schools of thoughts and novel ideas about what gives shape to life on this planet.

Unfortunately the EU has adopted a technocratic viewpoint in the belief that technology can resolve everything. It is at best a short sighted, if not a dangerous illusion. Especially when Europe is going through 'uncertain times', culturally and economically speaking, this viewpoint tends to distort perception of reality. Insofar as the main actors use mainly a playing field called 'making connections at informal level', it fails to uphold the important dialectic between 'public truth and public space' required that citizens participate in the decision making. Here a better word for transparency and accountability would be what ensures a honest culture so as to avoid bad decisions. Consequently it would be the task of European Capitals of Culture not to reproduce blindly the technocratic viewpoint which has replaced culture as basis for decision making, but to emancipate culture from this technological tutelage. There should be no illusion about the difficulties such a task has to face. The philosopher Edmund Husserl realized only towards the end of his life that he had neglected one important question all along, namely honesty, and realized it was the most difficult one to answer not in theory, but by having lived a life which allows to the emancipation of such a theory which allows for the making of a cultural synthesis reflective of being an integral part of a honest culture.

Due to having become over dependent upon a technical system, the demand for certainty has gone way out of proportions. This can be best seen not only in reliance on automatic pilots but in economic terms what financial support banks received once the crisis broke out. As if security depends solely on the reliability of payments and therefore on the purchasing power of money, inconsistency in policy became the credo of the EU. While banks were rescued, many people were left in limbo, financially and socially speaking. The high number of unemployed signifies that and therefore by looking a painting of Van Gogh, it can be interpreted inconsistency at policy level reflects but a sad fact that the entire system relies no longer on people, but on evaluation systems applied independently from the very people affected by such low esteem of human life. It means further that the wrong criteria of success are applied since one sided in favour of an economy no longer constrained in its growth. The latter equals expansion but does not see what is left behind, and meant is not only waste leading to still further pollution of the environment, but to people no longer integrated into society. Hence Europe can only stand to be connected through culture if the demand for equal distribution aims to achieve a just society, so that the vision upheld until 1999 to ensure integration is based on social and economic cohesion is renewed by a cultural understanding thereof. For any good art work comprehends cohesion as a tension just like any human being alive has tense muscles in order to be able to walk. There are also tensions between the sexes but which let all social institutions come alive. But the most crucial tension expresses best the work of culture insofar it allows cultural identity be formed between inner and outer references, European and Non-European impulses. Just as Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac etc. are common elements of European culture, today's cultural self-understanding includes as well Louis Armstrong, Carlos Fuentes, Tagore and many others who have and are contributing to the making of a humane culture world wide. It is up to European Capitals of Culture to ensure the constant enrichment of such a cultural synthesis in the making.

Artists and therefore culture can contribute towards enriching this self understanding by furthering an 'aesthetics of resistance'. By encouraging resistance against any over deterministic and single model which leaves out empathy for the other and the personal memory base, it would free the individual to find identity through multiple categories of real knowledge about the human being. It would allow holding out this tension best expressed by Adorno saying that identity includes as well non-identity. Just as knowledge is incomplete and the ratio to not knowing everything the best way to continue in the tradition of Socrates to pose further going questions, the same should apply to identity not being complete when it would exclude this unknown part of the self. That is also one reason why assuming a strictly speaking national or local identity would miss out on the openness of assuming Europeaness to mean in reality an open space to further explore identity as non identity.

Such an identity as non identity requires to live in that tension field openly with doubt. As shown, it means learning to let 'self forgetting' become the premise for new experiences. The cultural synthesis created by having entered, for instance, a dialogue with a painting means a model of understanding as been created between the viewer and the painting, so that reality can be faced. Here a misunderstanding needs to be avoided. Self forgetting does not mean the self is excluded but rather how to attain such a freedom so that the imagination can be enriched. If it happens, then it will become noticeable by making possible an anticipatory vision of the future while reality in the present is no longer perceived as a non changeable given. And things can be considered on the basis of a human understanding as prerequisite for any dialogue with reality as lived by others in contrast to oneself.

Unfortunately by not having given top priority to the cultural freedom of expression, things have been channelled in a wrong direction. Simone Mundy points out in his book 'Coming home' while politicians talk internationally in Brussels, once back home they talk only in national and local terms. Such a 'schizophrenia in reverse' does not allow citizens to know what is going on at EU level. Instead each national politician treats Brussels as if a supermarket for money, in order to get the most out of it for the own nation. Moreover a closer look at the rhetorical use of this term shows that the term 'national interest' is used to cover up the fact that it favours the privileged few of the educated elite in the respective member states.

The interest of all Europeans is best served by acknowledging that the European Union is itself an incomplete concept. Whenever applying the measure of completeness, it should be kept in mind what Michel Angelo said when he looked at the stone he was about to use for a sculpture. For he acknowledged that the stone is by far more complete than the sculpture he will be able to create. By analogy Europe as a continent made up of a diverse cultural landscape is far more complete than whatever those working within the EU institutions can ever envision. Likewise the human being is incomplete especially if the self left out by a technology displacing ever more culture as 'logic of organization'. To counter that, a culture based on the law of proportionality is needed so as to recognize the measures required for the hard tasks ahead to bring about a just European society. It would make these measures into cultural mediators between aspiration and realization.

Culture has to be based on real stories and therefore on a true knowledge as to what is happening to people in cities, but also remote areas. While Europe and the world is caught up increasingly so in all kinds of conflicts edging ever closer to a full scale world war, more needs to be done to prevent still more senseless killings of innocent people. All the more important is that EcoCs continue the story of the work of culture. Each ECoC should like the Russian fable to which Nabakov refers to give an account as to what took place in the previous European Capitals of Culture before continuing with its own narrative.

The poet Brendan Kennelly advises that European Capitals of Culture have to learn to use, but not abuse culture, if they are to show how Europe can face in a cultured way the global challenges of the twenty-first century. Emancipation from the past means to overcome the post colonial and imperialist mind set which presumes superiority over others. Hence for evaluation purpose, the theoretical question has to be posed but what contributions have made European Capitals of Culture so far to the overall cultural development of Europe? Literally it means posing the question, if they have succeeded in contributing to the ECoC as an institution able make Europe become more open and sensitive to the needs of other people living on other continents. If they succeed in doing that, then truly something great has been achieved. It requires, however, recognizing the greatness in others and in seeing the plights of the migrants. ¹

A critical self understanding of culture would recognize that too many voices go unheard in Europe, in particular of those who grow up in different countries with parents of different origins. Their identities can never fit into any local-national framework. Yet no voting representation system heeds the need to hear their voices. That means those are excluded whose father is German, the mother French and who has grown up in Greece. All these Europeans have not yet come home in Europe. This sad state of affairs cannot continue. It excludes a majority of people from the political process nor does it give them any political Rights wherever they may live and work. Since they do not feel to be national citizens or even in cultural terms to be Greeks, Germans, but also not Catalan or Basque citizens even though they live in Barcelona, they need to find another access to culture, if a true synthesis in the making is to be for the sake of all to participate in a democratic life.

Given the fact that these Europeans have not found as of yet a home in a Europe sub-divided into national member states and mono culturally defined regions like the Basque or the Scottish area, Aamir Mufti says something of crucial importance. He states that there is not enough critical thinking of the post colonialism mind set still prevailing in Europe, and which plays into the hands of the national elites playing their own game with Europe. Aamir Mufti also reminds that Said's 'worldliness' has been nearly forgotten in the strive for 'homeland'. ² That is also something Thomas Mann missed upon returning from exile in the United States during Second World War and when stepping into the streets in Hamburg. He did not feel in that immediate locality any contact with a world full of different and interesting people. Writers and artists do know when dipping into the immediate context whether or not they touch upon one of those tributes feeding the stream of humanity. That is to say not every local place has it.

So how to ensure that EU institutions do uphold 'equality between all citizens'? As long as member states claim quite another stake on how to govern the European Union, and therefore keep in reality citizens outside the EU institutions, the political process in Europe shall be determined not by citizens but by states and their non-elected representatives in Brussels. Basically that says equality does not exist within the European Union as the leverage of power is given to member states. They have far more and formidable influence when compared to citizens who have but a scant vote and therefore voice come European elections of members of the European Parliament. This issue went completely unnoticed when the EU Constitutional Treaty was drafted, but not ratified in 2005, although it was stated “all citizens are equal with regards to the EU institutions.” It says a lot about the European debate that this issue has not been taken up until now.

As to the influence of the member states upon the European Commission, crucial for understanding how culture is being dealt with, that is already indicated by prime decisions being delegated back to the member states on the basis of the 'subsidiarity principle'. That concerns as well how in future European Capitals of Culture shall be selected for the weight swings back to the respective member state whose turn it is. The subsidiarity principle fails, however, to answer the question of sovereignty understood as citizens agreeing on how to govern themselves in Europe, and this without leaders or rulers dictating from above as to what should happen below. Rightly so Karsten Xuereb points out that this bottom-up versus top-own process needs to be resolved. Thus the question should not be what guarantees 'political independence' of the European Commission but of European culture. Since the European Commission is a political apparatchik which has the sole Right to initiate legislation and not the elected representatives in the European Parliament, all the more reason to be concerned by the political independence of culture not being guaranteed within the European Union. Over the years it has led to a weakening of the cultural consensus. Instead technocratic rules and instruments have left but one space free for creativity to unfold, and that is in the area of financial control. It is leading to an unnecessary over bureaucratization and a pretence to be still in control of budgets. That has been refuted soundly by the crisis which erupted not only in Greece due to an unsustainable state deficit partly due to unreliable statistical records being kept. Here may be added that most financial estimates are based on probability calculations which never allow any truth to be known since everything is a part of the same system of factors politicians manipulate to bring about results which seem successful in the way they are presented. That is why no true story is told about the European Union.

As long as there dominates the need to prove that the European Union and the ECoC project is a successful story, spin doctor like reports shall be written while the true story as to what happened during that one year shall never be told and heard. By keeping a tight lid on what not should have happened but which did manifest itself once it became clear that the ECoC project is not really in favour of culture, then the demise will come in the form of a lack of continuity.

Culture is an intelligent way of human beings communicating with one another to preserve human dignity. To further this communication, human self-consciousness has to be maintained by a language brought about by cultural work with artists adding to human self understanding the categories of creativity. But to be complete, Karl Marx stated this has to be conjoined with the categories of productivity. Also this language has to be free from any coercion, if human dignity is to be respected. For this reason, the German constitution upholds the principle that no person should be forced to externalize his or her 'human substance'. All the more important is Picasso's declaration about the 'human scream' in his Guernica painting. He states that human dignity is preserved primarily by an intimate silence. Given that silence it makes possible criticism of superfluous words to bring about an 'economy' in language by saying important things not only in so many words, but which mean something. Added to this can be Descartes' advise that any personal identity should be formed with the lest possible rules. That too is an economy but one of rules most administrations do not observe. Moreover Descartes stipulates that the personal identity should be formed in a spontaneous act so when someone says 'I think', his identity links up simultaneously with other people. This is how connections are made through the formation of identity. It can be realized best once everyone participates in the making of a cultural synthesis to let people act accordingly and freely.

Finally, the crucial question for Europe is if the continent can stay connected through a culture which is capable of upholding peace not only within, but outside of Europe as well. Since culture means learning to govern by keeping a sense of proportions in all respects of life, and justice a critical question if EU institutions contribute to such a lawful process which allows for creativity in an artistic sense ³, then measures for the tasks ahead have to be derived out of a self-critical, equally imaginary theory of culture.

It is doubtful if such a critical and imaginary theory of culture can be achieved by sticking to a national framework of references. Not only has this lead to member states taking disproportionate advantage of EU institutions with regards to distribution of funds. Also they have a much greater influence in relation to the whole and therefore influence decisions not in the interest of all citizens of Europe, but what serves the national interest. The same negative tendency can be observed internally, for once a national framework is imposed upon the local level, it risks to destroy the diversity of not only people but also of ideas. Moreover a cultural synthesis relates to a cultural landscape in which certain activities take place over time, whereas the time rhythm imposed by the European Union distorts any sense for regularity.

Only once the dialectic of culture can be seen as ECoC enabling a cultural governance of Europe, and this with consistency best shown by upholding human and democratic values, then self understanding can be linked to ensuring that human self consciousness shall be the basis for all communications. As for the institute, its theoretical disposition can include such vantage points as 'dialectic of securalization', 'reason and the arts', but also 'poetry and philosophy' and as mentioned before 'psychoanalysis of culture'.

With regards to European Capitals of Culture, following points are in need to be iterated over and again:

• a continuity of learning between former, present and future European Capitals of Culture has to take place and therefore a revival of a more formal network like the ECCM of the past should replace the existing informal one which lacks transparency.

• ECoC should be evaluated in terms of what contributions they make to the very institution from which they derive the title;

• since culture is memory work, an archive for all EcoCs has to be located inside that institution, in order to upgrade over time the theory of culture being applied by the respective European Capitals of Culture;

• such an archive requires a theoretical framework if documentation is to make any sense at all insofar as culture is about giving recognition to the small and not only big, while stories told depend also on what questions are asked to find out what really took place and not merely what a city mayor would like to be known in order to claim the year to have been a success;

• without going into the controversy if it should be only a city or it can be likewise a region, the main criteria for selection of a future city should be where the European dimension can be best realized through culture;

• at the public consultation meeting in March 2011 it was advocated that guidelines should be more open to artistic proposals, so that cities can come up with a creative concept or rather true artistic programme proposal rather than be limited by pseudo criteria linked to measurable criteria of success, and which usually ends in demands that culture demonstrates of having value for the economy.

The much needed artistic contribution to culture shall not be realized in case the European Capitals of Culture fail to guarantee the independence of the artistic director. Always he finds himself in an ejection seat. An alarm bell was rung at the public consultation meeting in Brussels held in 2011 when someone drew attention to how many people have been hurt, indeed damaged in their reputation for having been first used to obtain the title, then ousted once the title has been designated. Suddenly other powers and forces become interested, therefore quite a different game is being played suddenly. It means there is little or no consistency between the original bid and what needs to be worked out for purpose of implementation. If the case that there is then no artistic director with the means so shape the cultural and artistic programme, then the entire year shall be shaped according to non artistic criteria, or else it will favour fake cultural contents claimed under such dubious concepts as 'cultural industries'. It would be a pity if this negative practice continues. Here a cultural synthesis could best be prepared if a manager and an artistic director can combine their respective talents and knowledge to practise something exemplary by not allowing non cultural interests to determine the concept of culture. But to succeed an artistic director needs the unconditional support of the mayor. That was the case when Bob Palmer was artistic director first in Glasgow 1990 and then in Brussels 2000 or Eric Antonis assumed responsibilities for Antwerp '93. Repeatedly it has been demonstrated that the monitoring group can admonish, but has no real power to follow up its recommendations. Moreover there should be examined a link between how a city was selected and where then things went badly wrong. For instance, the decisions for Wroclaw and San Sebastian were highly controversial, to say the least, and now both cities show worrying signs of neglecting the need for an independent artistic director. And in the case of Aarhus 2017, it is said that in retrospect some jury members regret in having given to that city the designation. Likewise jury members were furious after Essen was awarded the title over Görlitz, it suddenly became a consortium of 53 cities, that is the region of Ruhr. When Bob Palmer recommended after having visited Patras in 2004 and saw that nothing was prepared, to have the title be withdrawn, the then Minister of Culture of Greece opposed and ensured Patras retains the title with disastereous consequences. It let Bob Palmer conclude the European Commission does not listen to expert advise but bows to the pressure of member states. That means the structure of power linked to money overrides any other concern for culture.

One further going proposal is to house the institute and the archive in the Library of Alexandria so as to gain a vantage point by being located outside of Europe, but in the Mediterranean. This archive could network already existing ones some of the EcoCs maintain e.g. Ruhr 2010, but also develop further what exists on the website of Poiein kai Prattein at http://ecoc.poieinkaiprattein.org/european-capital-of-culture/ The initial start of this archive was an online exhibition created by heritageradio to accompany the exhibition 20 years of history of European Capitals of Culture curated by Spyros Mercouris and shown in Patras 2006. Since then this attempt has seen the creation of the Documentation Centre in Athens but which existed only from 2007 until 2009. The European Commission maintains only a sparse one containing all bids and evaluation reports of successful candidate cities. The University Network of European Capitals of Culture covers other aspects of EcoCs since more and more researchers have become interested to explore different aspects of a European Capital of Culture. Their yearly conferences produced papers which are made afterwards available online. But there is no coordinated effort to link all these efforts or to give some systematic direction to all these research efforts by entering still other phases of verification. Also coverage of an exhibition of Le Corbusier differs from studying the impact the year has upon the relationship between the culture and the economy of that respective city. Given also the fact that two cities are simultaneously European Capitals of Culture per year, it diminishes the overall impact but no studies have examined the question what this does to the overall cultural development in Europe. Also candidate cities which did not create the designation have as in the case of the UK created a network and promoted a cultural capital only for the UK. The concept has also been applied in Africa, Latin America and the United States so that attempts were made to create a network of networks. Naturally a lot more can be said about archives in the digital age as this has altered the very concept of preserving historical and other materials related to the traces European Capitals of Culture left behind.

Such a vantage point would lead up to the overall question whether or not ECoC cities contribute to such a culture of Europe which is sensitive and aware of other cultures outside of Europe? Also it has been noted that ECoC cites need to take serious the term 'capital' in the title. They should enact accordingly such cultural measures which show a responsiveness to the need to assume responsibility for what is happening to culture in Europe during that one decisive year.

Human beings are equal in their vulnerability and just as precious as any other, whether now a Palestinian or an Israeli. When in search of a native home, then it is the collectivity of what memories people hold of one another. So it makes no sense to kill each other as it will destroy all human self understanding and the memories which go with that. Hence culture needs to uphold the collective memory work while not excluding the 'river of forgetting' that has to be crossed to make that possible – if only to take Vincent Van Gogh as an example. It is a human culture which bears this responsibility for keeping memories alive. As Karl Jaspers put it in his lecture given in 1951, the worst thing which can happen to a person is to live without memories.

As these reflections started with Picasso's Guernica to show how an art work can connect people, it shall be appropriate to end with a reference to what Alexandra Zanne in Gezoncourt, France did with children all suffering from epilepsy. One of their characteristics is that they leave no traces, so that they are unable to tell stories about themselves, in order to build their identities. Alexandra Zanne used the idea of Kids' Guernica – Guernica Youth to let these children enter a collaborative learning process by which they could discover traces they have left behind. They painted together a mural on a canvas of the same size as Picasso's Guernica, namely 7,5 x 3,5 m. Where artists have difficulties to use such a huge space, these children went ahead uninhibited by the size. Once their souls and imagination touch the canvas, they create amazing images as if finding traces of themselves at the border between themselves and the reality they have to live in. ⁴ This then might be a lesson for European Capitals of Culture to leave such traces that people can create out of the cultural synthesis in the making their own European identity.

 

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