Passages Nr. 56

Browsing, Blogging, Tweeting, TaggingCultural Journalism in Flux

World Traveller with Sketchpad: Cosey in India | Swiss Game Design in San Francisco | CoNCa: Fresh Breeze on the Catalan Cultural Scene

THE CULTURAL MAGAZINE OF PRO HELVETIA, NO. 56, ISSUE 2/2011

passages

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2CONTENT

Cultural Journalism in Flux

With drawings by turns humorous and whimsical, cartoonists Ruedi Widmer and Philippe Becquelin bring cultural journal-ism to life.

6 The Rapidly Changing World of Swiss Culture Sections Culture sections in Swiss media have changed.

They now focus on people and events rather than content.

By Pia Reinacher.

12 So Who’s Going to Read All This? The age of Internet journals is over. Nevertheless,

in recent years certain blogs have brought fresh life to cultural discourse.

By Christoph Lenz

15 None of Your Friends Like This The new Internet recommendation systems are superior

to traditional reviews and critical pieces. By Kathrin Passig

18 “The revolution has made the people braver and more critical”

Cultural journalist Gamal El Gamal hopes that the emerging democracy movement will revive stifled debates about culture.

Gamal El Gamal in conversation with Susanne Schanda

24 The Internet: No Competition Literary and arts critics in the classical culture sections

need have no fears about the future of their profession. By Thomas Steinfeld

28 LOCAL TIMESan Francisco: Gaming between Technology, Science and CultureBy Bettina Ambühl

30 Shanghai: The Attempt to Find a Universal Language

By Stefanie Thiedig

32 REPORTAGE

World Traveller with a Sketchpad

By Janice Pariat (text) and Ankur Ahuja (photos)

36 PRO HELVETIA NEWSFLASH Swiss Stagecraft, Experimental

and to the Point / Conversations about Arts

Outreach / Applications for Grants: As of

2012, Only in Electronic Form / La Ribot in Southern Africa

38 PARTNER PROFILE CoNCa – the Council for Culture

and the Arts in Barcelona By Cecilia Dreymüller

39 CARTE BLANCHE New Role for the City Theatre By Carena Schlewitt

41 GALLERY A Showcase for Artists “Signs and Wonders” By Christoph Schreiber

43 IMPRESSUM PASSAGES ONLINE NEXT ISSUE

4 – 27 DOSSIER

Cov

er: M

IX &

RE

MIX

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3EdITORIAL

In this edition of Passages, we take the pulse of cultural journalism, a pro-fession changed by the economic crisis and the success of the new media. Jobs have been downsized, culture supplements have been cut and news-paper sections combined. At the same time, the supply of information about culture on the Internet is flourishing, indeed running rampant, and every newspaper with a care for its reputation is online with blogs and other features. Browsing is a thing of the past: now it’s all about googling, blogging, tweeting and tagging.

Anyone who appreciates the punchy opinions of freelance bloggers or wants the review of last night’s theatrical premiere served with breakfast, who enjoys spending time in digital debating rooms and loves the fantastic abundance of multimedia online culture magazines is ready for a turn on the information superhighway. And all this despite the fact that we effort-lessly find what we never sought amidst the endless wealth of the world-wide web, and often do not find what we were really seeking. We need help orienting ourselves in the jungle of ever more numerous cultural agendas and PR texts if we are to locate what makes it truly worth our while. In this issue, Christoph Lenz forays into the thick of online cultural information and presents a variety of pages that matter.

Authors Thomas Steinfeld and Pia Reinacher are certain that the clas-sical culture section will continue to hold its own in future despite increas-ing competition from the Internet, since the reader’s need for critical con-sideration of issues of culture and society is not simply going to disappear. In contrast to the fast-paced and entertaining Internet, the newspaper culture section boasts its qualities as a reliable source of information and a forum for social reflection.

One place where the new and old media fruitfully enhance and support each other is Egypt, where, as cultural journalist Gamal El Gamal ex-plains in the interview printed here, the new media have made a decisive contribution to the process of democratization. Now he is hoping they will breathe new life into stifled debates on culture.

The cartoons by Ruedi Widmer and Philippe Becquelin, created espe-cially for our issue, demonstrate just how amusing, and occasionally gro-tesque, the turn in cultural journalism can be.

Janine MesserliManaging Editor, Passages

Browse, Blog, Tweet, Tag

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4Kulturjournalismus

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5Cultural journalism in Flux

Reporting on culture has changed enormously in recent years and today is

more lively and multimedia than ever. In this dossier you can read

about why the culture section continues to hold its own contrary to all the

eulogies. Discover the lighthouses on the culture-blogging scene and find out

more about the Internet machines that know so much more about our

cultural preferences than our friends do. And a trip to Egypt offers insight

into cultural journalism in a country on the road to democracy.

A Question of Culture

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he news was like an insult to long-established culture sections in German-speaking Switzerland: at the be-ginning of May, Schweizer Monat, of all magazines, a small and not very wealthy publication that is never-theless rich in tradition (until its recent relaunch, it

was Schweizer Monatshefte) announced its new literary supple-ment. Literarischer Monat is intended to combat complaints about the shrinking of Feuilletons, or culture sections, in so much of the print media. This is certainly a bold move by the magazine’s young editors – even if some of the wonderful interviews, columns, correspondence, essays, and reviews generated a contributor’s fee of no more than a bottle of whisky. But one year earlier, the renowned German daily Die Welt had already heralded a turnaround in the rampant reductions of culture sections by expanding its literature section, as did the magazine Focus a short while later. For some time now, the NZZ am Sonntag, with its Bücher am Sonntag supplement, has also been betting on culture to ex-pand its reach.

Between politics, economics and the new media

All this was preceded by a steady shrinking of culture sections (as much in the Swiss media as elsewhere) in the first decade of the twenty-first cen-tury, as a direct result of the economic crisis after 11 Sep-tember 2001, the bursting of the economic bubble and the subsequent collapse of pub-lishing revenue. Mostly, the end of the traditional elite cul-ture section took place here without a whimper. Many edi-torial boards managed their budget and personnel cuts dis-creetly, as the superb special supplements on events in the worlds of art, film, theater and literature quietly disappeared in the search for ways to save money. The media revolutions over the last few years have been significant, and even in the culture section, the most prestigious part of the media, nothing has been the same. Everything is in flux: the identity of the culture section, the job descriptions of its editors and journalists – and most of all, con-sumer expectations.

The development of the culture section since its creation “below the line” (that is, in the bottom half of the page) around 1800 has been influenced by three fundamental factors. First of all,

political changes are immediately reflected in the cultural pages, as in their politicization after the 1968 revolution, or the effect of German reunification after 1989, when even the Swiss culture sec-tion became an arena for political debate. Recent events like Fuku-shima or the Arab Revolution have shown how established the cul-tural pages now are as a platform for political and philosophical reflection: it went without saying that such discussions took place in the culture sections.

Secondly, there is a close correlation between culture sections and the economic situation. During the golden years of the nineties, the cultural pages were euphorically expanded here in Switzerland

as much as they were else-where, while everyone came back down to earth with the economic, financial and bank-ing crisis that started in 2007 – which led to the firing of ed-itors as well as a new struggle for less and less space.

Thirdly, the influence of the new media on the culture section has been consider able, as has the by now easy-going hybrid behaviour of media con sumers. The print media extend or supplement their own cultural offerings online, where interaction with cul-tural themes is made con-sumer-friendly with such lively visual and interactive elements as photo port folios, videos and blogs. Many pub-lishing houses have an in-dependent group of online cultural editors who compete with their own print culture editors – all of which is ac-companied by anxiety-driven internal power struggles for the cultural high ground in such houses.

This is exemplified by Tagi-Newsnetz, whose cul-

tural reporting can also be read on the Internet sites of the Bund, the Berner Zeitung and the Basler Zeitung – which does end up encouraging a dangerously boring cultural uniformity in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. In the course of a day, the “Newsnetz” takes at most three articles from the Tages-Anzeiger print edition – but the mistrust is greater the other way around. Online texts rarely find their way into the cultural pages of the associated print media, which are too defensive in this respect. Finally, traditional cultural editors are increasingly becoming visibly “dynamized” and “democratized” by such effective niche platforms on the Internet as www.perlentaucher.de, www.literatur-

The Rapidly Changing World of

Swiss Culture Sections

Contrary to all of the eulogies, the culture sections in the Swiss media have

not shrunk – but they have fundamentally changed. They now focus not on

content but on people and events. The cultural journalist of the future will be a flexible

producer who knows how to take advantage of a variety of media channels with agility.

By Pia Reinacher

T

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7Kulturjournalismus

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8Kulturjournalismus

kritik.de, Krimi-Couch.de and www.nachtkritik.de (just to name a few). These are increasingly competing with the tradi-tional culture section.

Readers actually are interested in culture

It’s no surprise that all these influences have fundamentally changed the identity of the Swiss culture sections. Still, it must be pointed out right away that the traditional intellectual culture sec-tion is in no danger of disappearing. The culture section still pro-vides a recognized forum for a society to assert and challenge it-self, while also helping its members to understand their positions in a fragmented world. Beyond that, competition in the media still appears in the culture sections today. Culture lends prestige to publishing houses and editors-in-chief – a distinguished culture section is a decisive element in the construction of a reputation.

Even a quick glance at recent studies of thematic preferences shows that readers are as interested in cultural themes as ever. A 2009 Univox study showed that a good 60 percent of those sur-veyed had a strong preference for the treatment of cultural themes in the media – more than were interested in domestic or foreign politics. Analysis of the content of the most popular daily news-papers in the German-speaking part of Switzerland is also telling. In his 2006 study Kulturberichterstattung der Deutschschweizer Tagespresse (Cultural Reporting in the Swiss German Daily News), the media scholar Dino Nodari may have shown that cultural texts continue to feature more and more illustrations and that a larger number of short texts now appear alongside a smaller number of longer articles, but he also found that the preference for traditional categories remains. The Zurich media scholar Heinz Bonfadelli came to the same conclusion in his 2008 study Kultur-

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berichterstattung (Cultural Reporting): since the 1980s, cultural reporting in the broad sense and the culture section in the narrow sense have not gotten smaller, but in fact have very clearly ex-panded. In the culture section, Bonfadelli adds, the emphasis is still on traditional elite and high culture, with the classic review at the core of such reporting. In his 1998 study Feuilleton für alle. Strategien im Kulturjournalismus der Presse (Culture Section for Everyone: Strategies in Cultural Journalism in the Press),

Gernot Stegert had already predicted that the concept of culture would radically expand and described how the traditional culture section canon was already being extended into such areas as eve-ryday culture, lifestyle, or fashion and clothes.

The end of text-heavy news

All these findings cannot disguise how scholarship, by nature, is always somewhat behind the rapid changes in the media. The Swiss culture section, both in the major national press and in the re-gional and boulevard press, has been subject to another surge of popularization and personalization in the last five years. The pro-portion of cultural reporting in the media may not have decreased at all, despite the frequent claims to the contrary. But cultural re-porting has shifted its focus and is still looking for a new identity. This structural transformation applies both to the boulevard press and to the elite media: it is more obvious than ever that culture is primarily dealt with in easily readable genres like portraits, inter-views or announcements of forthcoming events. As a result, the emphasis is on cultural actors rather than on the content of the works. Individual events are celebrated, and the newspaper’s ser-vice role is emphasized. Culture is also now being presented in a more entertaining, lively and tangible way by the elite culture sec-tions – the age of text-heavy pages is definitively over. The differ-ence between low and high culture already broke down long ago; even boulevard and quality journalism have begun to mix easily. A completely successful experiment in this field was Swiss Televi-sion’s 2007 broadcast of Die Zauberflöte auf 2 Kanälen (The Magic Flute on 2 Channels), in which the audience could zap back and forth between the stage and what was going on backstage. And then there was the monumental 2008 production of La Traviata in the Zurich train station, where an opera was staged between

streams of commuters as a melodic live event halfway between art and everyday life.

A radically different job description

Borders are now blurring everywhere – with good and bad sides for culture. Distinctions between reporting, reviewing, PR, mar-keting and consumer advice have vanished in cultural journalism as much as they have anywhere else. These days, what with the

time pressure caused by reduced budgets and staffs, more journalists than one would like have begun to write their pieces using prefabricated PR fodder from the cultural institutions themselves. Everybody is cut-ting and pasting as much as they can. Ex-cellent background documentation, com-bined with Internet research, make it easy for journalists to get information extremely quickly and to don an air of expertise in their articles even when they have no knowledge of a subject. The media’s target-group mentality often turns cultural jour-nalists into writers of advertising copy. No effort is made to categorize and comment on cultural events – people are happy to

sugarcoat their half-competence by appealing to the primacy of communication over criticism. Still, the disappearance of journal-ism that has an agenda is actually good for culture section readers. In the absence of space, the emphasis is on over-arching topics, central questions of significance and the establishment of focal points. And journalists don’t get lost in the discussion of ephem-eral events as often as they did in the past.

These trends will only grow stronger as change continues to dominate the media world. With the increasing production of journalistic “content” distributed on all media channels by the newsrooms of the editorial offices, as well as with “multi-channel publishing”, the job description of cultural journalists will itself radically change. The traditional figure of the critic, a broadly ed-ucated expert in his field coming to serious conclusions in his ivory tower and communicating them in beautifully written sentences, is thus dying out. Even now, there is not enough new blood. The “new” cultural journalist will be a flexible producer who knows how to deftly play all the channels of the media.

So there are two sides to everything. But one thing is certain: in the Swiss media, the culture section is livelier than ever – if in ever changing ways. For the reader, this is surely no problem at all.

These days, what with the time pressure caused by reduced budgets and staffs, more journalists than one would like have begun to write their pieces using prefabricated PR fodder from the cultural institutions themselves. Everybody is cutting and pasting as much as they can.The traditional figure of the critic, a broadly educated expert in his field coming to serious conclusions in his ivory tower and communi - cating them in beautifully written sentences, is thus dying out. ”

“

Pia Reinacher is an author, literary critic (Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, Weltwoche) and lecturer in culture and media at the University of Zurich. She is on the board of MUELLER Consulting&Partner. Her most recent publication is Kleider, Körper, Künstlichkeit. Wie Schönheit inszeniert wird (Clothes, Body, Artifice: How Beauty is Staged), Berlin University Press 2010.

Translated from the German by Andrew Shields

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10Kulturjournalismus

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11Kulturjournalismus

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n any given Monday: around 10 million blog entries are posted worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of cul-tural consumers broadcast the discoveries and disap-pointments of their weekends over the internet. Tens of thousands of Twitter users post links to newspaper

articles. German book publishers alone send almost a thousand Twitter messages. Dozens of papers reference hundreds of blogs. Tweeters blog articles. Writers of lead articles tweet blogs. Blog-gers article tweets. And then there’s Facebook.

On any given Monday, we might ask ourselves: so who’s going to read all this?

According to an estimate by BlogPulse, a seismograph for the Internet, there are around 150 million blogs worldwide. The invention of the online diary in the mid-nineties marked the shift to Web 2.0, the interac-tive Internet. Since then, this form of digital communica-tion has pluralized ad infi-nitum. Every attempt to get an overview is hopeless; every attempt at ordering it a pre-sumption. People talk about an ocean of data, a mine of in-formation, a multi-media jun-gle. All these concepts reflect the basic position of human-kind in the digital universe: the Internet has become an inhospitable place. The meta-phor of surfing – an exciting, weightless rush down the face of the data-wave – is long gone. Anyone who dares to enter the net in spite of all this, moves quickly, quietly and purposefully.

Yes, the culture-blogging scene does have its light-houses, providing anyone who has an interest in culture with useful information quickly and reliably. They also offer read-ers a guarantee that they will not only find what they are searching for (after all, that’s what Google is for), but also, and much more importantly, that they will find things it would never have oc-curred to them to search for. The new, the unknown, the worthy, the important. The following introduces a few of these interna-tional, national and regional lighthouses. The selection is incom-plete and random – but it is, at least, a start.

Between analogue and digital

Amongst the Internet’s most important cultural platforms, there are many that stand at the interface between analogue and digital media. Perlentaucher.de is one example. This online magazine has been reporting on literature and culture in the German-speak-

ing world for over eleven years. At the portal’s core is a daily press roundup, which brings together the main topics from the most prestigious of the German language newspapers’ culture sections (including that of Swiss newspaper the Neue Zürcher Zeitung) into a short, concise package. A book roundup with reviews, and a media ticker, also appear daily. The online archive of this portal, which was awarded the Grimme Prize in 2003, holds over 30,000 book discussions, all of which are freely accessible. Numerous intellectuals, writers and renowned cultural producers write for Perlentaucher.de more or less regularly, amongst them Jürgen Habermas, Imre Kertesz and Götz Aly. However, Perlentaucher.de is above all a recycling plant. Here, things that have already been published elsewhere are processed and edited quickly and simply. This is the reason the magazine has been engaged in

a rights debate with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zei-tung since 2007. Signand-sight.com is the English-language blog set up by Perlentaucher.de, and this is just as active in the dis-semination of European lit-erature and culture.

Eurozine.com also acts as a pivot between the “old” and “new” media. This online magazine links up over 75 of the leading European cul-tural publications, including Du from Switzerland, and the French Revue Interna-tionale des Livre et des Idées. It also makes a selection of current articles from these magazines available to its users. The central feature of Eurozine.com is a broadly conceived and politically en-gaged concept of culture.

A visit to Transcript-re-view.org is also to be recom-mended. This is a web-based

literary journal, which appears several times a year in German, English and French, and has the financial backing of the Euro-pean Union. Here everything turns around questions of the native and the foreign, and the journal sounds out the geographic and linguistic peripheries of Europe. The special editions are always impressive, featuring for example the literature of Macedonia, the Basque region or Latvia.

Only four years after its launch, Nachtkritik.de has estab-lished itself as a permanent feature of the German-language thea-tre scene. This theatre magazine utilizes the time advantage that the Internet has over print media: once a show has premiered, you can read about it on Nachtkritik.de the very next morning. Re-views of performances are illuminating and well-founded, both

So Who’s Going to Read

All This?Yes, of course, Internet diaries are yesterday’s

news. Anyone with their finger on the pulse today is on Twitter and Facebook. Despite this, there are around 150 million

blogs worldwide. Most of these just add to the Internet’s white noise, but over the

last few years, a select number have brought fresh life to cultural discourse.

Below is a presumptive attempt to order them.

By Christoph Lenz

O

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critically and technically. Over 50 authors visit 20 or more pre-mieres every weekend throughout Germany, Austrian and Swit-zerland. On top of this, press roundups give a reception to the views of other theatre critics, and the site’s blogs also pursue current de-bates. The use of guest authors from all over the world ensures the platform is connected to international theatre discourse.

Amongst the most prestigious art blogs, Artlog.com is un-doubtedly worth mentioning. This is an important online maga-zine in which text articles, interviews and videos stimulate engage-ment with contemporary art.

Blogs by established media

Beyond these free platforms, almost every media house, journal and daily paper that wants to be taken seriously has its own pro-fessionally-written blog. It’s worth noting that these publications, often steeped in tradition, with their titles and prestige, will also stand behind the articles they publish solely on the Internet. The equation generally applies here, that the more weight accorded to culture in the primary medium, the higher the quality of the culture blog. And if you read Der Spiegel, Le Monde Diplomatique or the NZZ, you will also appreciate their blogs.

An excellent example of this category is the literary blog The Book Bench, from US magazine The New Yorker (newyorker.com). This is an exemplary combination of the advantages of on-line journalism with the elevated standards that derive from a prestigious title. The discussion of books here is more agile and versatile than that of the printed edition, often also more coura-geous, more personal and humorous – all before the magazine’s

printing presses have even been started up. And what is written here can be read, with a few days’ delay, not just on blogs, but also in newspapers’ culture supplements and literary journals all around the world.

There is also opinion leadership on the Internet. For the last seven years, the writer and journalist Pierre Assouline has been voicing his opinions regularly, under the umbrella of the French newspaper Le Monde. His literature blog, La République des Livres, and other blogs on cinema, theatre, art, photography and politics can be found at www.lemonde.fr / blogs /invites. The high-quality, multilingual online offering Arte Creative should also be mentioned here: this is divided into pop culture, art, film, design and architecture sections (http://creative.arte.tv), and is under the

general direction of Alain Bieber, the founder of the art, culture and politics blog Rebelart.net.

Federalism on the Internet

Even Switzerland’s blog scene can hardly be summed up, and rep-resenting it here are two music portals and a general culture blog. Norient.com, based in Bern and written in German and English, can claim to be one of the most influential forums for global un-derground folk music. It somehow manages to bring everything together under one roof: blog, online magazine, digital debating chamber, academic exchange, videos, sound clips and much more. It also maintains a constant reference to world events. So when Arabic youth came out onto the streets in protest recently, Norient.com featured portraits of the Arab musicians whose songs blared from transistor radios at the demonstrations: rappers, rock-ers and avant-gardists from Yemen to Morocco.

The platform 78s.ch from Zurich is another very successful example. Originally started as a blog about the Swiss music scene, this magazine has now undergone a huge expansion. A new musi-cal treat awaits visitors every day, and the authors keep a very close eye on national events in pop and rock music. Last autumn, the multi-media culture magazine Neuland-mag.net also got off to a hugely promising start. Using reportage and columns, mix tapes and photo galleries, it addresses the political and cultural state of the nation – sometimes sardonically; sometimes with deadly se-riousness.

Last but not least, tribute should be paid to the regional blogs. These are generally characterized by greater proximity to the

producers of culture themselves, and often do excellent work in communications and networking. To name a few: Kulturteil.ch, a blog for Central Switzerland; Kultur-StattBern, established under the umbrella of the daily paper Der Bund; Kulturkritik.ch, a site for the Zurich area maintained by the Zurich University of the Arts; Valais-mag.ch for the francophone canton of Val-ais; Schlaglicht (http://blog.bazonline.ch /schlaglicht) for Northwest Switzerland, and Saiten.ch in Eastern Switzerland. The blogs belonging to the magazine L’hebdo (such as Bonpourlesoreilles.net), amongst

others, follow cultural events in the west of the country. While al-most all regions control their own online platforms, there is hardly a single blog with a focus on the country as a whole. It’s a wonder-ful irony that even the new globalized multi-media jungle, where borders no longer exist, is still presided over by our old friend: pro-vincial thinking.

Yes, the culture-blogging scene does have its lighthouses, providing anyone who has an interest in culture with useful information quickly and reliably. They also offer readers a guarantee that they will not only find what they are searching for (after all, that’s what Google is for), but also, and much more importantly, that they will find things it would never have occurred to them to search for. ”

“

Christoph Lenz, born in Schaffhausen, works as a cultural editor at the Bern-based daily newspaper Der Bund. He neither blogs nor tweets, but does occasionally write postcards. Translated from the German by Ruth Martin

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14Cultural Journalism in Flux

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here is no indicator of sympathy as reliable, as free of illusions, and as incorruptible as music. You are what you listen to, or what you have listened to. And if someone has listened to all the wrong things for years, then nothing can be done,” wrote Frank Schäfer

in Ich bin dann mal weg. Streifzüge durch die Pop-Kultur (I’m out of Here: Rambles through Pop Culture). If I am quoting him here, it is not because he is especially wrong, but because he found such an exemplary way of stating a belief most people surely have, whether consciously or unconsciously: our friends like the same things we do.

This belief is almost completely disconnected from reality, as becomes clear when you use the various networking tools that have become available on the Internet in the last few years (ad-mittedly only after Schäfer’s book was published). Before the Inter-net made me realize it, I had had no idea how little I shared with my friends in matters of taste. If you’re a teenager, Schäfer is certainly right: you and your friends discover bands, films or authors together, so your prefer-ences and theirs run parallel for a while. The illusion that this is still true for your whole life is a bit of wishful thinking derived from how we prefer to talk about where our interests are the same rather than about our discrep-ancies. It’s not that my taste in books, films or music is so re-fined that nobody wants to share it with me; in many ways, in fact, I swim right in the middle of the mainstream. But even the friends I largely agree with still have interests so hard for me to understand that I have given up any hope of predicting what they will like and what they won’t.

Increasingly useless cultural tips

All this has consequences. Last.fm, an Internet-radio site that gradually responds to the listener’s taste, has made it clear to me just how inaccurate my ideas about now much I agree on matters of taste with my circle of friends were. Ever since I began using it, I have stopped giving CDs as gifts. I believe even less than before in the whole point of recommendations, reviews, top-ten lists, or Twitter and Facebook appeals to “read / watch / listen to this now!” I have also tried to make fewer recommendations myself and to lend books to people less often (although the latter is almost im-possible now anyway, given the current spread of e-book technol-ogy). The damage is slight, for our recommendations and loans to friends are largely favours we do for ourselves – for the recipient, they are rarely as useful as we want them to be.

This is not limited to recommendations in your circle of friends. Most reviewers say little more than whether they liked or disliked the objects under discussion, garnished with references to their cultural proficiency. If they try to justify their judgements of taste, such reviewers cannot distinguish them from ex-post-facto ration-alizations of their own private reactions. Even here, the utility of the review for the reader is limited.

Cultural discussions on the net and on paper largely serve purposes that are rapidly getting less and less necessary. Even a few years ago, it was still hard to learn about any new things at all and to find suggestions about whatever you might be interested in. Such needs, once catered to by reviews, shops and lending (all narrowly limited by the space available to them), are now

ob solete. The scarcity of infor-mation about cultural products has become a surplus. Publica-tions that draw attention to new things and evaluate them ac-cording to a reviewer’s judge-ment are being replaced by tech-nological alternatives that make it easier for individuals to put this surplus to use.

Vinyl artifacts and nose-flute solos

Systems for producing individ-ual recommendations take two general forms. One option is to identify similarities in products, as on the online radio Pandora, whose employees use several hundred genre-specific criteria (such as whether vinyl noises can be heard or whether there are prominent nose-flute solos) to sort every new recording by hand. The film platform jinni.

com generates similar results by automatically evaluating movie reviews. But most providers are betting on “collaborative filter-ing”, that is, having users identify commonalities themselves. This assumes that the users either have their consumption habits tracked automatically (as is the case with last.fm) or provide their own evaluations. The more data the recommendation software collects, the more precise it gets. Most such offerings distinguish between friends (that is, the users you know personally or feel congenial towards) and neighbours – the people you actually have something in common with when it comes to films, books or mu-sic. There is little overlap between the two groups.

But outside of insider groups, little is unknown about the so-phistication, extent and economic significance of such systems. By 2006, a third of all sales on Amazon derived from the company’s own recommendations, and in the same year, the online video-rental service Netflix established a one-million-dollar Netflix Prize for the improvement of Cinematch, its recommendation software.

None of Your Friends

Like This Who needs critics these days? The book

and film tips offered by the Internet recommendation systems are far superior

than anything a film critic, bookseller or Facebook friend could ever offer. And they

dispel the illusion of being part of a cultural community with the same taste.

By Kathrin Passig

T

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The goal was to make recommendations ten percent better; three years later, the prize money was paid to an international develop-ment team. As reliable recommendations help keep customers us-ing the service for more than just a few months, the new software presumably earned Netflix more money than it invested in the prize. (I hate to disappoint you, but in case you immediately want to start using these services, neither Netflix nor Pandora is avail-able outside the United States. I am only dis-cussing them here as examples of how such systems work.)

Nothing original from the machines, please

“But what about lucky finds made while wandering around a bookstore?” the critics complain. “Computers will always only rec-ommend the same things to us, while good friends and experts occasionally suggest things that could expand our horizons.” I assume that such criticisms do not derive from actual use of recommendation software; they must feed on chance encounters with it – or perhaps they are just purely theo-retical.

I, for one, cannot confirm this impression from my own ex-perience. For a long time, last.fm tried to get me interested in reg-gae despite my insistence that I was not interested in it, yet my musical preferences actually have clearly shifted in several years of last.fm use (though still not towards reggae). Shortly after I signed up for the movie-recommendation website criticker.com, when I had about thirty film evaluations under my belt, the site surprised me by recommending the South Korean director Kim Ki-Duk’s Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring. This film had nothing to do with my previous evaluations, and nothing to do with my usual movie preferences, either, which usually revolve around zombies and lots of blood. Years earlier, I had chanced to see Ki-Duk’s film in a sneak preview and had been quite excited about it at the time, so the recommendation was actually right on target, even though it was far-fetched.

Yet the objection that software-generated recommendations are too conservative is made in almost every non-technical discus-sion of the topic, presumably for three reasons. The first is wishful thinking: machines are supposed to be unoriginal and limited, while people are supposed to be irreplaceable. Secondly, many of the tools (above all, Amazon’s recommendations as to what you should buy) do in fact adhere closely to what the user already knows and likes. Perhaps Amazon has not put as much money and developmental time into its tools as Netflix has, but perhaps it is intentional. Thirdly, after all, we usually ignore the very recom-mendations that could expand our horizons – all the ones we cannot categorize at a glance. If I had read a summary of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring, I would never have watched it. The only reason I know that that particular recommendation happened to be just right for me was that I had already seen the movie. I am absolutely sure that I have rejected many other tips that were just as good. The conservatism is not in the machine,

but in our heads, and the software developers have to decide whether to give users what they secretly desire (namely more of the same) or to confront them with new things and thus risk hav-ing them switch to the competitors, who will give them less ob-scure recommendations.

We have to get used to two things: our quite private prefer-ences can be predicted by the behaviour of other consumers (as is

the case with last.fm or Netflix), and at the same time, they isolate us. We are not part of a cultural community like the one Frank Schäfer imagines. That community was an illusion that can hardly be maintained much longer. Our friends are not our neighbours when it comes to taste, and the people we share opinions with when it comes to movies have horrible taste in music. Still, we can easily find some kind of community-creating confirmation that replaces liking or disliking cultural products. Perhaps it will be more copu-lation (like the bonobos), or shared complaints about the unrelia-bility of public transit, or even the formation of a meta-community that defines itself by refusing to talk about taste.

Kathrin Passig lives in Berlin and writes non-fiction books. Her latest book is Verirren: Eine Anleitung für Anfänger und Fortgeschrittene (Losing Your Way: Instructions for Beginners and Experts), Rowohlt 2010, written with Aleks Scholz. http://kathrin.passig.de Translated from the German by Andrew Shields

Most reviewers say little more than whether they liked or disliked the objects under discussion,

garnished with references to their cultural proficiency. If they try to justify their judgements of

taste, such reviewers cannot distinguish them from ex-post-facto rationalizations of their own private

reactions. Even here, the utility of the review for the reader is limited. ”

“

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17KulturJournalismus

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Egypt has a high rate of illiteracy. Who even reads the papers here?Gamal El Gamal: in a total population of 80 million, only about two to three million people read the newspapers. Several daily and weekly papers compete for this readership. The largest are the state-controlled Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar, with a circulation of a million copies and half a million respectively. The inde-pendent daily Al-Masry al-Youm, which saw a massive increase in its readers during the revo-lution, is already in third place, and today it prints around half a million copies.

You’re the culture editor of Al-Masry al-Youm. What does it mean to work for an independent newspaper in Egypt?Independent papers write about the same issues as the state papers, but they take a different stand-point. While the state papers exclusively repre-sent and propagate the views of the regime, the independents illuminate the issues from all sides, analysing them closely and without blinkers.

Who finances the independent newspapers?Predominantly business people, who have differ-ent dreams, ideas and views from those dis-seminated by the state media. This is reflected in their newspapers. However, the journal-ists don’t have to share or represent the business people’s inter-ests. They analyse, discuss and write in a way that is fundamen-tally free and fair. Even so, they are influenced to a certain degree by the mentality of the people financing them – consciously or unconsciously.

Do the owners try to exert an influence over the paper’s content?That does happen. When I spent a year working for Al-Dustour, I was very keenly aware of the owner’s interventions. He said ex-plicitly what should be in his paper, and what shouldn’t. This was the reason I resigned from my position there. At Al-Masry al-Youm, where I work now, the journalists are professional and in-

dependent. The owners do exert a certain influence by making suggestions. But these are not binding, and the editorial team isn’t obliged to take them up. Granted, the baselines are clear: a paper owned by business people will not back socialist or Com-munist ideas; it will orient itself towards a liberal economic phi-losophy. Papers like this have a bridging function, connecting Egypt with the rest of the world, in that they report on interna-

tional economic relations. If a proprietor of the paper ends up in the political spotlight, the paper dis-tances itself from it. When one of the owners of Al-Masry al-Youm ran for parliament in 2005, the paper didn’t turn it into a story, it went on strike.

What role do radio, television and new media play? Do they compete with print media?No, quite the opposite, they complement and sup-port each other. In the newspapers you’ll find ref-erences to Internet sites, radio and TV programmes, even to people who work there. In this way, news-papers profit from the popular new media. They haven’t lost any readers to them. Besides their print versions, the papers each have online editions, and here they can for example show pictures of demon-strations that have hap-pened just a few minutes previously. You can also

read interviews and listen to them online at the same time.

You are a cultural journalist. Could you explain what culture means in Egypt today?There are cultural products in Egypt, but no cultural scene. On the one hand there is a book published almost once every three hours, and there are more and more publishing houses, projects to encourage reading and state translation projects. On the other, there is an absence of cultural policy analysis, commentary and qualified literary debates. The traditions are hardly heeded any more: nobody is interested in the grand old men of literature. Pro-ducers of culture and intellectuals have always been expected to play a role in society. And this is also what they wanted, but were unable to do because of the threat of repression. I’m sure this will

“The revolution has

made the people braver

and more critical”

Reporting on culture in Egypt is in crisis. Cultural journalist Gamal El Gamal hopes that the

burgeoning democracy movement will also revive stifled cultural debates. Inspired by the young

Egyptian blogging scene, he wants to open the culture section of his newspaper to new topics.

Interview: Susanne Schanda

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change over the next few years. We are in the process of develop-ing democratic structures, and the mentality that goes with them.

That surprises me. After all, intellectuals like the bestselling author Alaa alAswany have been criticizing society and the regime in independent newspapers for years.I believe that intellectuals have betrayed culture, they are trai-tors to culture. They stopped writing about their own experiences, weren’t active as writers in the literary world, and wrote instead as politicians, about general issues. Since the fall of Mubarak on 11 February, Alaa al-Aswany has been writing for Al-Masry al-Youm as a party follower and a politician, not as a writer. It’s entirely un-derstandable that writers, too, have to let off steam now and then. Many Egyptians love reading these articles, because they identify with them and have the feeling that here is somebody speaking to them from the heart. But this is nothing to do with literature; these pieces are political manifestos. So, for example, the well-known author Youssuf al-Qaid writes mediocre literature, but readers like his novels because he criticizes the regime in them. Al-Aswany’s novel The Yacoubian Building is nothing but social criticism. Lit-erary qualities are absent from these books. Their authors, how-ever, become stars, and frequently appear on television. Ibrahim Issa serves this need that readers have to insult Mubarak. And that’s

how he became a star. The popular Hisham Abu al-Nasr is not ac-tually a good director, but his films take a clear political position against the normalization of relations with Israel, which is some-thing the people love.

These intellectuals open up debates and are successful. What is your criticism of them?These films and books are a type of political merchandise, and it sells, but they are not works of art. We have lost a lot of authors as writers. Take Youssuf Idriss, who writes a weekly column in Al-Ah-ram, but hardly writes literature any more. Politics has won the authors that literature has lost. Naguib Mahfouz’ political observa-tions were always rather weak, but he was all the better as a writer for that. He won the Nobel Prize because he wrote books of a su-perior literary quality. He belonged to a generation who tended towards arbitration, rather than loud and direct criticism. Today we have hardly any good writers, but they are very strong in their

political engagement. This is why Egyptian authors no longer win many international prizes.

How do you see your remit as culture editor?Cultural reporting is in crisis. There are no longer any specifically culture magazines, just a few extra pages in the daily newspapers. At Al-Masry al-Youm, we’re planning a supplement entitled “The Publisher”, which will contain products of creative work from the most diverse sectors. Besides review and short stories, it will also cover political bills and research projects.

So you want to open up the culture section, thematically speaking. What do you hope to achieve by this?We want to revive the idea of culture on the street. The emerging blogger scene has been leading the way on this for several years now. Bloggers experiment with different elements of style, and use mixed forms of Classical Arabic, Standard Arabic and slang. The goal of this is to allow simple people with little education to understand these texts and songs as well. Many of these blogs have subsequently been published as successful books. Their ffect was evident during the revolution. In a short time, they achieved what established political parties hadn’t managed over a period of decades: they shook the population awake and led

them to take their fate into their own hands.

How far does blog culture influence traditional media?The most famous example is probably Ghada Abdelaal’s blog, “I Want to Get Mar-ried”, in which the author writes about the Egyptian marriage market and the prob-lems faced by modern young women. The blog became a bestselling book, and was made into a television series. The papers then want to gain bloggers like her for themselves, and invite these bloggers to write for them.

Anyone and everyone can write a blog. It’s not prepared for publication by an editor or a subeditor. Where’s the quality control?There is a huge multitude of blogs. Society has become very dy-namic. There are no longer any clear guidelines and criteria. That’s the case for blogs and bloggers too. You can find every level out there, from very good to very bad, everything is there. They employ language in numerous different ways. Some peo-ple write only in curse words, others in a very nuanced way. Blog-gers also have the possibility of commenting in the papers on what they’ve read or seen. We permit all of this without editorial interference or censorship, because the public can decide for themselves what is good and what is bad. The bloggers, however, have to live with the reactions they receive to their comments. This is a kind of quality control by the readership. I am for allow-ing all of this. The good will win through in the end, and the bad will be weeded out.

We want to revive the idea of culture on the street. The emerging blogger scene has been leading the way on this for several years now. Bloggers experiment with different elements of style, and use mixed forms of Classical Arabic, Standard Arabic and slang. The goal of this is to allow simple people with little education to understand these texts and songs as well. Many of these blogs have subsequently been published as successful books. Their effect was evident during the revolution. ”

“

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Are there debates on cultural policy in the Egyptian media?No, debates have largely been stifled. There is no cultural policy with anything other than money at its heart. Cultural activities are seen by many as a form of income insurance. This goes back to the mid-1970s, when Anwar al-Sadat was in government, and his concept of “Liberalism and Capitalism”. Everything to do with the mind – art, beauty, criticism – was wiped out. Human beings should eat, drink and earn money, but not even think about think-ing. In the universities, students were forbidden from engaging with politics. The journalists’ or laywers’ unions only got involved in pension rights. Earning money became the most impor-tant thing, while culture fell by the way-side. The authors’ or writers’ associations also remained concerned with pensions, income and decent accommodation, but that was all: there were no more debates about literature and society. In the era of Mubarak, the culture minister Faruk Hosni systematically advanced this position. The concept of the “culture cowshed” came into being, in which producers of culture stood around in the ministry’s stall like cat-tle, being fed.

Where does cultural criticism – a critical debate about art and culture – take place today?In the 1980s there were attempts at cultural criticism, but the jour-nals that fostered these lost a lot of money; some went bankrupt. There is still cultural criticism going on in the corridors of the academies. But in the media there is no critical engagement with literature, music or art. In the media you often read things that are mere adverts for books, put together by the author himself. Liter-ary criticism is a demanding endeavour that requires a great deal of learning, knowledge and skill. The state literary journal Al-Akh-bar al-Adab has lost a lot of its significance. Its authorized literary critics are officials who earn money by doing this job, not people who seriously engage with a book and read it twice. But I think a lot of things will change in the years to come, because the revolu-tion has made the people much braver and more critical.

In Europe, social debates about things like Islam can also be found on the culture pages. How does this compare to Egypt?Culture can’t be separated from societal issues. Advice columns about life’s questions belong there as well, the search for happi-ness. We produce social supplements with basic themes like the relationship between parents and children, man and wife. Here we realize that the family is losing its significance. Instead, it’s the friends you meet at the club who become more important.

Are taboo themes like religion also addressed?There are always delicate subjects, like gender relations, for exam-ple. With careful wording, you try to defuse the subject a little. While taboos have been broken in politics, religion and sex con-tinue to be problematic. I’ll give you an example: a journalist

wanted to write about dancing, and used the term “dance teacher”. But the word “teacher” has a religious connotation in Arabic, so the editor intervened and decided that the word couldn’t be used in connection with dance. Eventually he cut the whole page.

So there is also censorship in cultural journalism?Yes, though mostly in the form of self-censorship.

Debates have largely been stifled. There is no cultural policy with anything other than money at its heart.

Cultural activities are seen by many as a form of income insurance. This goes back to the mid-1970s, when

Anwar al-Sadat was in government, and his concept of “Liberalism and Capitalism”. Everything to do with the

mind – art, beauty, criticism – was wiped out. Human beings should eat, drink and earn money, but

not even think about thinking. ”

“

The Egyptian cultural journalist Gamal El Gamal, born in Cairo, studied in the archaeology faculty of Cairo University, and holds an MA. Today he works as cultural editor and critic at Al-Masry al-Youm, Egypt’s first and largest independent daily newspaper, founded in 2004. This interview took place on 12 March 2011 in Cairo, one month after the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Ola Abdel Gawwad acted as translator during the interview. Susanne Schanda is a freelance journalist focusing on the Middle East. Having spent long periods living in Egypt, she has an insider’s knowledge of Egyptian day-to-day life, culture and society. She works for various German-language print and online media, as well as for Swiss Radio DRS. Translated from the German by Ruth Martin

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t may be that a great deal of the internet commentary pub-lished these days on literature, literary criticism and the lit-erature industry will one day be among the documents of cultural life that are worth preserving. But at the moment, it does not look like that day will arrive. While many people

become very enthusiastic when they talk about the possibilities and the future of the Internet, they have also not yet developed a historical awareness of the genres, writing techniques and text types used in this new medium. The archive, the chronicle and the public diary, for example, are all being seen as types of written doc-umentation specifically connected with the new technology of the Internet (in the form of a blog, or in the storage of digital data), but the often centuries-old history of such genres is forgotten. The great ideas inspired in the past decade by new technology (the blog as a new, universal, perhaps fundamentally democratic medium of discussion with anyone and everyone; the free review sites on the net; the digital novel) have all fired imaginations for a while, only to then gradually lose their importance (as with the literaturkritik.de portal, for example) or even completely disappear, like the Internet por-tal ampool.de produced by the group of writers around Elke Naters and Christian Kracht, or the digital Lesesaal (“reading room”) run by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Web presence: a tributary of the print media

Even Perlentaucher, the most ambitious project of its kind, may aim to be not only a daily overview of the Feuilletons or culture sections of the major newspapers but also (at least as far as its ambitions are con-cerned) a kind of “überfeuille-ton”, but it has remained a site that is primarily for semiprofessional readers, most of whom surely see Perlentaucher (like artsandlettersdaily.com) as a table of con-tents rather than as an independent intellectual organ. The reader reviews on Amazon could be said to be more important (at least with respect to book sales), but it is not entirely clear whether the texts published there should be understood as reviews or as reader testimonials. Ten years ago, it was frequently asserted that the am-ateur reviewer or the blogger could seriously compete with the professional reviewer primarily connected to newspapers, but this has not come to pass: such dilettantes do exist, and the canny pro-fessional critic will read them sometimes, if he comes across one – not least because the amateur (in the original sense: the lover) often has a great deal of positive knowledge at hand. But in the print media, the culture section in general and reviews in particu-

lar have not lost any significance in the past few years because of competition with the Internet – even if blogs and internet journals do sometimes produce better, more informed and more precisely argued reviews than those in newspapers.

To be sure, the Internet is a public space, one in which every-one can be present at least semi-publicly, which in turn makes the development of firm structures, or indeed classifications and hier-archies, difficult. This has frequently been attempted, but it seems to be quite hard, in the German-speaking world more than in Eng-lish-speaking countries, to construct a stable intellectual infra-structure in the Internet capable of accruing public validity over a protracted period. This problem is also made visible by the fact that the websites available on the German-speaking cultural scene, from Perlentaucher to S.P.O.N. (the joint site of the Internet arts journalists of Der Spiegel), essentially feed on the culture sections of the print media: they consist in large measure of commentaries

on what colleagues have pub-lished in the paper press. The ironic, often condescending and occasionally ill-tempered tone frequently taken by net commentaries (in particular on Perlentaucher) with re-gard to the traditional culture section may have its objec -tive reasons – occasioned by the attempt to make up for a structural inferiority by way of an increased degree of sub-jectivity.

Constraint as quality

There are three reasons for the superiority of print media in the realm of criticism, and none of them has any neces-sary connection to the quality of the texts. The first is brev-ity: in a printed culture sec-tion, only a limited amount of space is available for criticism

– no more than one or two pages a day. The competition for this space does not necessarily mean that better reviews get published – yet the constraint itself makes journalists conscious of the need to make choices and distinctions. This is part of the inner logic of the newspaper as such. For there is indeed a grain of truth in the Munich comedian Karl Valentin’s early twentieth-century joke that every day just enough happens to fit into a newspaper. For in providing news, commentaries, reports, opinion pieces and re-views, the newspaper compresses the multiplicity of events into a strict format of great durability. In contrast, every post on the In-ternet has infinite potential for development, and not just in terms of its own length, for it is also an element in a potentially infinite network. And if an Internet diary appears as a book after the pas-sage of some time, as in the case of the blogs of the Berlin writer

The Internet: No Competition

Culture blogs, review platforms, digital novels – for a while, all these Internet

phenomena fired many people’s imaginations. By now, though, says Thomas Steinfeld,

most of them have disappeared again or lost their significance, so the journalists

writing in the traditional culture section have no reason to worry about the future of

their profession.

By Thomas Steinfeld

I

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Rainald Goetz (and then becomes more successful than the same text was as a blog), that is also evidence of the effectiveness of brevity.

On some literary blogs, this structural point leads to the con-clusion that more texts, and more frequent publication of them, are an appropriate way to establish a position on the net and thus to attract attention. The opposite is true: a newspaper also involves the presentation of a small number of texts in one place for a more or less limited period of time, texts whose physical presentation is also limited. This is the second reason for the continuing and prob-ably also fundamental superiority of print media in the domain of culture and criticism: its essential connection to paper. For a medium is determined by more than just its circulation, its speed, its general accessibility and its adaptability to individual needs (all of which give the Internet more potential than print media). It is also positioned on a spectrum of heaviness and lightness, of durability and fragility.

Within its limits, paper has the advan-tage of being infinitely variable: it can be very “heavy” and still lie in the garbage the next day, or it can be very “light” and still be worth keeping for centuries. And it can transport the information it contains over great temporal and spatial distances. And that brings us to the third argument for the superiority of the print medium as far as re-viewing is concerned: in its material structure, in the relationships of top left to bottom right, of front to back, it is related to the book. The literary (or cultural) criticism in newspapers and magazines will thus share its future with the book, which surely cannot be said about reviews of popular music (reviews of classical music be-

have differently, because of the educational prerequisites involved, and thus look considerably more threatened) and film reviews (such as those on aintitcool.com or slate.com). Conversely, there appears to be an affinity between film and criticism on the Inter-net, which presumably derives not only from how clips can easily be integrated into the digital medium but also from the fact that there is more social overlap between moviegoers and intensive us-ers of blogs or digital magazines than between book readers and Internet users.

Culture as a site for social confrontation

Literary critics in particular (and cultural journalists in general) should thus stop worrying about the future of their profession in traditional media: for the time being, no serious competition will

come from the Internet – up to now, its importance, seen in terms of its professional possibilities, has been primarily in the qualifica-tion and recruitment of young cultural journalists as well as in the documentation of large volumes of text that are otherwise harder to manage. Because of its very high growth rates, the Internet, of

Ten years ago, it was frequently asserted that the amateur reviewer or the blogger could seriously compete with

the professional reviewer primarily connected to newspapers, but this has not come to pass: such dilettantes do exist,

and the canny professional critic will read them sometimes, if he comes across one – not least because the amateur

(in the original sense: the lover) often has a great deal of positive knowledge at hand. ”

“

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Ruedi Widmer is a graphic artist, cartoonist and writer of satire. He draws and writes regularly for the Tages-Anzeiger, Der Landbote, WoZ Wochenzeitung, TITANIC, SALDO and many other periodicals. Ruedi Widmer lives and works in Winterthur. He counts more than one film journalist and more than two music critics among his acquaintances, with whom he enjoys drinking a few beers and carrying on lively debates; these last would be shown on television if the broadcast truck were allowed to pull up outside the pub (unfortunately there’s a no-stopping zone). He is a passionate Facebooker and perilously uninterested in Twitter.www.ruediwidmer.ch

Cartoons translated into English by Rafaël Newman

Philippe Becquelin lives in Lausanne. Following studies at the Beaux-Arts de Lausanne he devoted himself to creating illustrations for the press. He draws under the pseudonym Mix & Remix for the French-language Swiss magazine L’Hebdo as well as for “Infrarouge”, a show on the French-language Swiss television station. His drawings can be seen outside Switzerland in Le Courrier International newspaper and the magazines Lire, Clés and L’internazionale.Philippe Becquelin is not a great consumer of culture. He buys a CD every now and then and occasionally goes to the cinema. He rarely reads film reviews since they have the bad habit of giving away the entire story. He lets his daughter advise him on music or sees what his friends are recommending on Facebook.http://mixremix.ch

The Cartoonists

course, has seemed to be the more successful medium in the past few years, and many publishing managers have begun to judge tra-ditional formats according to the standards of digital presence. This mistake has generated hybrid forms that tend to make the pa-per culture section look quite hapless. Instead, it is necessary to develop the particular laws inherent in each individual medium and to use them appropriately. This has become especially true since the temporal difference between event and news has been re-duced to an absolute minimum by the social media. So far, with varying degrees of success, all media have measured themselves on the scale of the fastest medium, but now they are all drifting apart in their own particular ways. This is already visible on the In-ternet itself, which increasingly has not only the function of a gi-gantic archive but can also present very long texts in places spe-cifically designed for them. At the same time, printed periodicals, including such weekly magazines as Die Zeit, have begun to profit from their relative slowness: the delay is seen as a benefit, provid-ing distance and time for reflection.

But the most striking change is in the daily newspapers: they are increasingly relieved of merely providing information – for they cannot compete with the speed of audiovisual media, especially the Internet. They react to that by giving more space to slower (and

longer) text formats such as the background article, the dossier, the editorial, the portrait – and the review: in short, the reflective and narrative genres. Such a culture section does not have to get bigger. Its techniques, styles and working methods will also be used by other departments to report on politics, business and not least sports. In many respects, then, we are currently returning to old relationships in which culture was the site where all the other spheres of society were discussed – except that culture itself, along-side sports, the lives and deaths of celebrities, and a political sys-tem increasingly limited to symbolic acts (for the real decisions are made in the economic world), now only receives a fragment of the social attention it once received in, say, the late eighteenth century. And yet these are actually not bad prospects for cultural journalism. However, it is easier to understand them with a bit of knowledge of the history of the field.

Thomas Steinfeld is editor of the culture section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich and Extraordinary Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Lucerne. Translated from the German by Andrew Shields

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28LocaL T ime

swissnex San Francisco is getting young Swiss game designers in touch with the

lively gaming scene on the West Coast of the United States.

The Swiss will show their stuff at a travelling exhibition

in San Francisco in October.

Gaming between

Technology, Science

and Culture

Game Over, a video game by artist Yan Duyvendak, encourages players to think about the act of playing.

By Bettina Ambühl, San Francisco – From simulations on home computers and Su-doku on mobile phones to digital yoga trainers, electronic games and applica-tions are becoming ever more varied. With its Game Culture programme, Pro Helve-tia has begun to explore the bewitching

Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council, maintains a global network of branch offices, which serve cultural exchange with Switzerland and support worldwide cultural contact.

LOCA L Time

phenomenon of computer games and to draw attention, both at home and abroad, to what is going on in the field in Switzer-land. A traveling exhibition called “Swiss Game Design” will make a stop in October on the West Coast of the United States. in collaboration with Pro Helvetia’s partner

organization swissnex San Francisco, the show will be an interactive occasion for both professionals and anyone interested in gaming.

As a bastion of digital technology that is a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley, San Francisco offers the growing gaming in-

san francisco

san francisco new york paris rome warsaw cairo cape Town new deLhi shanghai

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29LocaL T ime

more significant to him is that, thanks to the Game Culture programme, lively ex-changes have begun among game makers inside Switzerland as well.

The traveling exhibition Swiss Game Design created by the House of electronic Arts in Basel makes immediately clear that in Switzerland, too, interest in gaming does not end with entertainment. Collab-orations between game designers and sci-entists go both ways. Computer scientists from the eTH have been working closely with the entertainment industry at the Disney Research institute in Zurich to de-velop ever more realistic animation. else-where, rehab patients are being encour-aged to do their exercises with games that speed up their recovery: the therapy soft-ware Gabarello, for example, which was created in 2009 at the University of the Arts in Zurich in a joint project with the Zurich Children’s Hospital, the eTH and the Uni-versity of Zurich, is used in the motor re-habilitation of stroke patients. Their move-ments are transferred to a playing figure on a screen, which has to go through a variety of adventures. While the patients try to get as far as they can in the game, they retrain the motor skills of their legs, with the goal of someday being able to walk again.

Art reflects on gamesGaming does not just connect technology and science with entertainment, it also has an artistic side. But the degree to

which digital games them-selves can be regarded as art is another issue. Christian Lorenz Scheurer, a Swiss heavyweight in the design of console games and ani-mated films, who has lived and worked in Hollywood for years, has this to say on the subject: “Not every game is art, just as not every film can be regarded as artistic – but there is always at least some artistic potential.” The designer’s creativity is cer-tainly one artistic feature of a game; when Scheurer takes on a design project, as in his latest, still secret film project, whole worlds are created under his guidance. They are then built as back-

opment studios were also presented. Reto Senn, co-founder and COO of the Rappers-wil company Bitforge and the developer of the successful iPhone game Orbital, sees the opportunity for Swiss game designers to participate directly in the lively ex-changes in San Francisco as an important step in the development of an independent Swiss gaming industry. But what is even

dustry an especially lively and exciting platform. While reservations about com-puter games, such as their potential for encouraging violence, are often the first thing to be mentioned in Switzerland, people in California are primarily inter-ested in new developmental possibilities in gaming technology. The Game Developers Conference has already been taking place here for 25 years; every year, it attracts 18,000 gaming professionals to the Bay Area. A quick glance at the conference programme from last march is enough to show how broad the interest in gaming is here: workshops on the latest technolo-gical advances in game development are offered, along with lectures on legal, ethi-cal and psychological issues associated with gaming. For example, mia Consalvo, a professor at the massachusetts institute of Technology, gave a lecture on the types of social interaction that actually take place in “social games”.

Serious gaming: more than a pastimeThis year, with the support of Pro Helvetia, Switzerland had its own stand at the con-ference for the first time, while swissnex, a branch office of the State Secretariat for education and Research that is dedicated to Swiss innovation abroad, set up an in-teractive exhibition about the degree pro-gramme in Game Design at the University of the Arts in Zurich. And of course the lat-est games from the mills of Swiss devel-

In the simulation game Spore, players create their own creatures. Christian Lorenz Scheurer contributed to visual development.

The successful iPhone game Orbital was designed by Reto Senn of Switzerland.

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grounds that come to life in the films he contributes to. But Scheurer adds that this form of art still lacks a metacriticism along the lines of the art works of Joseph Beuys.

interestingly, the Swiss Game De-sign exhibition does include a few works that stimulate reflection about them-selves and about gaming, as in the artist Yan Duyvendank’s video game Game Over, in which the artist himself can be seen shooting at invisible opponents. But with the addition of a self-referential level, such works also distance them-selves from the primary goal of offering the player an entertaining pastime. This is made clear by how these works mostly fluctuate between game and video instal-lation; they confront the player or ob-server with content that justifies itself in-dependently of the course of the game. This creates a possible distinction be-tween gaming culture itself and the art that reflects on that culture. Such criti-cal reflection in the works of artists shows that gaming today is recognized as playing a formative role in many peo-ple’s lives.

information on further events can be found on the swissnex website: www.swissnexsanfrancisco.org Bettina Ambühl studied German at the University of Zurich. For a year now, she has lived with her husband in California as a correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Translated from the German by Andrew Shields

LocaL T ime

By Stefanie Thiedig, Shanghai – Per-formance and video, form and medium – these are the grand concepts addressed in the exhibition series Action and Video – CH/CN Art Now, on show in Shanghai from April to December 2011. The series is a joint production of the minsheng Art mu-seum and the Chinese artists exhibiting there and Pro Helvetia Shanghai and the invited Swiss artists – and between them is Li Zhenhua, a curator who divides his time between Zurich and Beijing and serves as the link tying the whole show together. This intermediary position is also occupied by the work of intercultural understand-

ing, which requires a great deal of patience from both sides, as well as the willingness to engage with one another.

Contrasts and parallelsRetrospectives of contemporary Chinese art have been booming in China since the summer of 2010. This past September, the minsheng Art museum staged a major overview of Chinese video art. The new Pro Helvetia office in Shanghai and curator Li Zhenhua have also taken up the topic. By juxtaposing contemporary video art from Switzerland and China, the Action and Video – CH/CN Art Now project aims

The Attempt to Find a Universal Language

Art students from Shanghai produce the works under the artists’ supervision.

The exhibition series Action and Video – CH/CN Art Now in Shanghai shows video art from Switzerland and China and offers

artists from both countries a platform for dialogue.

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to point up contrasts and parallels and of-fer artists from both countries a platform for dialogue. As part of this dialogue, Swiss artists Yves Netzhammer, Bernd Schurer, Roman Signer, Yan Duyvendak and marc Lee, along with art historian Beat Wyss, encounter Chinese artists Liu Wei, Lu Jie, Aaajiao, Zhang Peili and Lu Chunsheng. The series was inaugurated on 19 April in the presence of Swiss Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter. The first exhibition featured Yves Netz-hammer accompanied by computer and visual artist Bernd Schurer – the original title, Die Anordnungsweise zweier Gegenteile bei der Erzeugung ihres Berührungsmaximums (The Configuration of Two Opposites dur-ing the Generation of Their Maxi-mum Contact) was abbreviated in its english version as Nature Fear Entity.

Hoping for the butterfly effectThe exhibition series is not meant as a classical object of contemplation but is intended instead to serve as a means of communication rendering palpable the process of artistic crea-tion as it unfolds. For this reason, the project heads also engaged the min-sheng Art museum along with nu-merous Shanghai art students. Once the first murals have been painted, when the installations are in place, the videos in-tegrated and the sounds synchronized – once the basic framework of the exhibition is standing, the show receives finishing touches from the students under the su-pervision of the artists. Chinese art schools continue to focus mainly on methods and production processes – the Chinese educa-tional system doesn’t leave room for much else – but the perspective of contemporary artists is also discernible precisely by way of formal aspects. in reference to the drill system favoured at Chinese schools, Li Zhenhua notes: “Of course our approach cannot change the Chinese system, but who knows, perhaps it will produce a but-terfly effect.” Accompanying workshops, lectures and visits by schools and institu-tions are intended to contribute to this process.

The two cultures must also learn to-gether: “Although i’ve been working with Swiss artists for quite some time already, i

find that i am in the midst of a tremendous learning process as far as the different working methods of Chinese and Swiss art-ists go,” says Li Zhenhua. The Chinese ex-pression Manman lai (“easy does it”) gets to the heart of cultural misunderstandings, and europeans often have difficulty grasp-ing it. Another reason for such misprisions

is the fact that so much is planned and implemented simultaneously in China – which is why it was decided to produce the exhibition series as a work in progress.

New Pro Helvetia office in ShanghaiBecause Netzhammer’s work is not simple, and cannot be understood at first glance, the students are very cautious with their commentary and often use his animal fig-ures to approach his subjects. “As unen-crypted elements not laden with value, an-imals are ideal bearers of emotion, and afford room for associations,” says Netz-hammer. The artist’s preoccupation with the individual, culture and nature raises questions for him about existence. The surface can no longer be trusted – it pro-vides a glimpse of the psychological space beneath: of our fear of breaking with con-ventions, of the labile nature of our view of the world. Not everyone is able to read eve-rything, but the aesthetic experiences rep-resented in his scenes have a vital and en-

compassing expressive power that offers participants from both cultures the oppor-tunity to discover a universal language.

The new Pro Helvetia liaison office in Shanghai, officially inaugurated in October of 2010, is also counting on such an effect. Since 2008, almost seventy artistic pro-jects have allowed those involved to test

the waters for a cultural exchange between China and Switzerland. The office has a staff of three local em-ployees: head Sylvia Xu is assisted by Cathy Fu in Shanghai and eliza Wang in Beijing, who serves as a liai-son between Pro Helvetia Shanghai and the capital. “We are a small of-fice, and thus extremely flexible,” says Xu, “and our structures are not as hierarchical as they are among the representatives of many other coun-tries abroad.” The office’s specific fo-cus is renewed each year: this year features video art, while design and architecture are planned for next year. All the same, artists are seldom supported directly; instead, Xu works mainly with Chinese institutions, which provide financial and network-ing support for individual projects. The minsheng Art museum, partner of the current project, is doing pio-neering work in this regard, since it is China’s first and, so far, only mu-

seum of contemporary Chinese art to be entirely financed by a bank. “Now other banks are planning to found museums,” says director Zhou Tiehai. “We are break-ing new ground in China – at the moment we are still preoccupied with the funda-mental processes of museum work, and with building up our collections.”

For information about the current exhibitions and events of Action and Video see www.prohelvetia.cn Stefanie Thiedig works as a freelance arts agent under the name Kulturgut in Beijing. in September of 2010, together with Katharina Schneider-Roos, she co-edited the volume Chinas Kulturszene ab 2000 (Chinas Cultural Scene as of 2000), about the arts in China during the first decade of the 21st century (published by Christoph merian Verlag). Translated from the German by Rafaël Newman

Aesthetic experiences become art: Yves Netzhammer at work

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It’s a warm afternoon in March and in the air hangs the end of winter. Honeyed sun-shine streams in through long windows and creates pretty patterns on Cosey’s stu-dio floor. It’s quiet outside; Lajpat Nagar, a usually bustling South Delhi neighbour-hood, is buried under a dusty yellow haze. “It livens up in the evening,” Cosey tells me, and he should know: after all, the city has been his home for almost three months now. Cosey is in India on a residency sup-ported by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council. He finds his neighbours pleasant and has made a few good graphic novelist friends in Delhi, including Vishwajyoti Ghosh (author of Delhi Calm), Sarnath Banerjee (author of Corridor, The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers and, most re-cently, The Harappa Files) and Anindya

Roy (who runs Manic Mongol, a publishing house for graphic novels). They are, accord-ing to Cosey, “talented and lovely people. And funny!”

Poetic stories full of detailYou can see how he has added personal touches to his living space to make it his own – carefully chosen chicks (curtains made of cloth and bamboo) hang over the windows and a variety of things he’s bought lie neatly on the divan. These in-clude a toy autorickshaw, a colourful pic-ture frame, a mounted Ganesha (the Hindu god revered as the remover of obstacles), a furry Tiger-face cushion,a beautifully em-broidered Rajasthani wall-hanging and cushion covers. His work desk is in the cor-ner and it is befittingly littered with paper

World Traveller with a

Sketchpad Swiss graphic novelist Cosey is on a six-month residency

in India, a country he has visited before on a number of occasions and loves. He is spending time in the capital

city New Delhi, where he battles chaos to find pockets of vibrant inspiration for his future visual works.

By Janice Pariat (text) and Ankur Ahuja (photos)

RePoRTAGe

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Breathing in the city: comics artist Cosey (above left) sets down his impressions in sketches. Nizamuddin (middle) is a destination for Muslim pilgrims in Delhi.

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and tubes of paint. An earthenware pot holds an assortment of paintbrushes.

“At the moment I am working on a story set in Japan,” he says, “the book is due out at the end of this year.” Cosey shows me a page in progress – a transpar-ent plastic sheet with black ink sketches and another painted in colour. Placed to-gether, the former over the latter, they make a complete picture, a page out of a graphic novel. It reminds me of what Sar-nath has to say of his work – “Cosey is the master of watercolour. He practises the tra-dition of great european album style and tells straight tales that are poetic and transcendent. They are beautifully, intri-cately drawn.”

even before I ask my next question – “Are you sketching a story on Delhi?” – I am quite certain of his answer. Cosey, who has travelled across the world in the past three decades, from Tibet and Burma to the USA and Nepal, has a method of work-ing that is uniquely his own. Rather than rushing headlong into a project inspired by the place he is visiting, Cosey prefers to al-low things to simmer – like a witch’s caul-dron slowly brewing many strange and magical things. So it’s no surprise when he says, “It’s too early for me to answer that.

At the moment, I am absorbing the city, breathing it in. Maybe a year on, or even later, I will use what I have seen and col-lected.” This is how Cosey’s creative pro-cess functions and at its heart lies the ele-ment of travel. “Travel helps me know my

subject better; I can bring back things that I will not find in beautiful touristy books.” These items, as can be seen in his previous works Saigon–Hanoi, Le Bouddha d’Azur, Joyeux Noël, May! and Le voyage en Italie, include cigarette packs, beer labels, road-side banners, intricate little details that bring Cosey’s world to life.

Delhi’s first Comic Conference – a commercial eventIn his time in Delhi, Cosey has been busy. He attended the capital’s first-ever Comic Conference – “It was rather a commercial festival, but why not?” he says. “Comics need to be sold. And cartoonists to live. It’s funny to remember that the first festivals in France (Angouleme) were very intellec-tual and elitist, and now Angouleme is a huge commercial phenomenon. Maybe Delhi will follow the opposite way?” He has also visited a number of sights, such as Hu-mayun’s Tomb, the atmospheric Purani Dilli (old Delhi) in the north and the cha-otic Central Market, located down the road from where he lives. During his expedi-tions, he has taken many photographs (“it helps to later recreate architectural detail and urban-scape,” he explains) and has captured myriad local details through pen-and-ink sketches. He lays them out for me – a hand decorated with mehendi (a herbal paste that leaves a reddish stain on

RepoRtage

Meticulousness and love of detail: portrait of a Muslim fakir

Cosey Born in 1950 in Lausanne, Switzerland, Bernard “Cosey” Cosendai is a well-known comic book creator with a series of widely successful graphic novels un-der his belt. The young Cosey started out working as an illustrator for an adver-tising agency before becoming an apprentice to Swiss comics professional Claude de Ribeaupierre or “Derib”. They share a common interest in oriental philosophy and have become lifelong friends. After a number of small projects, Cosey joined Tin Tin in 1975, creating his most popular character, Jonathan, and launching an extremely successful phase of his career. The Swiss graphic novelist began his worldwide travels in 1976 to Ladakh, India, and has since ventured to the USA, Nepal, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Tibet. His travels inform his beautifully illustrated stories, filling them with intricate de-tail, vibrant settings and insights into local life. His list of awards for his works includes the Grand Prix Alfred for best album in the Angoulême Festival, the Grand Prix Soleil d’or in Solliès and the Bonnet d’âne, the career prize of the Quai des Bulles comics festival of Saint Malo, among others. Cosey was on a residency in New Delhi supported by the Swiss Arts Council from January to April, 2011. http://cosey.rogerklaassen.com

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the skin), a graceful dancer practising Kathakali (a highly stylized classical In-dian dance form) in Khajuraho (a town in Madhya Pradesh that boasts World Herit-age Jain and Hindu temples), a statue of a ten-armed Kali (the Hindu Goddess of time and change) and a great number of portraits. Sarnath calls them “nice, acute observations of day-to-day life in In-dia.” The drawings are delicate in touch and one in particular, of a Mus-lim fakir (a religious ascetic), is exqui-sitely washed in soft watercolour. It is the one image with the most amount of care and detail, explaining perhaps why Cosey suggests that we make a trip to Nizamuddin Dargah, the place that inspired it. “I choose this place for its people and scenery,” he tells me, “and also because it reminds me of old Delhi.” Close to the historic Humayun complex, this is a holy spot for Muslims across the country and visited by thousands every week. It is a maze of dark, crowded alleys that have sprung up around the mauso-leum of Nizamuddin Auliyah, one of the world’s most famous Sufi saints, buried here in the early fourteenth century. The dargah forms the heart of the labyrinth, and is perpetually bustling with devotees and hawkers.

The afternoon is waning as we set out on our expedition. Vegetable carts appear along the roadside, the nearby park is filling with walkers and boys playing a game of cricket. As the city cools, it comes to life. Along the way Cosey talks about his mixed feelings for Delhi. “I don’t know where I am – Istanbul, London. It’s such a melting pot of different things. There is nothing typi-cally Indian here, unlike say Hampi (a vil-lage in Karnataka and site of the ruins of the Vijaynagar kingdom) or Khajuraho; maybe that’s because Delhi is a city of im-migrants and refugees.”

We leave our slippers at the entrance with a man selling mounds of rose petals and candles. He urges us to buy some but Cosey waves him away politely and firmly. When we enter the dargah, it’s as though we have stepped back in time into a differ-ent world. Cosey is right: Delhi is made up of different cultural pockets, all sewn to-gether to form a rich and vibrant social fab-ric. Lining the alleyways are make-shift

stalls selling pictures of Mecca, cloth ban-ners printed with Islamic prayers, copies of the Quran and other holy souvenirs. Cosey carries pen and sketchpad in hand, search-ing for inspiration. We pass the water tank rumoured to be over a hundred feet deep, the poet Mirza Ghalib’s tomb and finally enter the dargah complex with its mosque

and latticed walls. Burkha-clad women sit outside (women aren’t allowed into the dargah), praying and chatting, fakirs beg for alms, while a slow stream of people tie long orange thread to the dargah’s latticed walls. I explain to Cosey that it is believed that doing so makes your wishes come true. We move deeper into the complex and finally Cosey makes himself comfortable in a corner opposite a group of women and children. He begins sketching and rapidly a crowd gathers. “What is he doing?” I can hear them whisper. “See that firang (for-eigner), he is drawing pictures.” A group of young men watch him intently. one of them walks up to Cosey and peers over his shoulder. Behind me, a lady asks shyly, “Where is he from?” Unperturbed, Cosey

deftly sketches on, capturing the portrait of a burkha-clad woman. The crowd pa-tiently watches. At that moment, as though on cue for a period film, from the other side of the dargah, in the far dis-tance, comes the faint sound of drums. The Thursday-evening qawwalis (Sufi devotional music) is about to begin. This

haunting music and the tall dome of the mosque form the backdrop to the scene – the cinematic setting is com-plete! When he finishes, Cosey walks around taking photographs with his small digital camera – the archways of the structure, children playing, a woman devoutly praying. Not much misses his eye.

Just colour and form“When I work on a book on India, I want to do something completely dif-ferent from my other works,” he tells me as we make our way out. “Stylisti-cally, it will not be a comic strip or a graphic novel. There will be no charac-ters. Perhaps it will be a visual docu-mentation with just colour and form. That is how this residency has in-formed my senses.” He explains that he wants to do this to be “free to draw whatever inspires him.” “In a graphic novel, you have to follow the script, even if you wrote it by yourself, you are not completely free.” As we exit, a group of pigeons flutter up into the sky. Cosey stops to admire an amulet inscribed intricately with an Islamic prayer. He walks on. Sooner or later he will bring these details to life. Janice Pariat is a freelance writer based, depending on the weather, in Shillong, Delhi and Kolkata. Her work has appeared in OPEN magazine, Art India, Outlook Traveller and Forbes India, among others. She is currently working on a collection of short stories. www.janicepariat.blogspot.com Ankur Ahuja has worked as a cinematographer, photographer and editor for over ten years. She is based in New Delhi and has several documentaries, short films, music videos and ad films to her credit. She is presently exploring video art. www.ankurahuja.com http://oddends.wordpress.com

RepoRtage

“What is that firang doing?” Cosey is unperturbed.

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36Pro Helvetia NewsflasH

The subject of arts outreach is being talked about everywhere and growing in importance, whether in work in the cul-tural field, arts promotion or education. Nevertheless, there is as yet no consensus on many basic issues. Whom is it intended to reach? Is arts outreach a mandate for the educational sector, or for cultural poli-cy-makers? And who should pay for it? Experts from Switzerland and beyond will discuss these and other fundamental questions in four forums held between September and March. The knowledge ex-change is intended to help raise awareness and improve the quality of arts outreach. Pro Helvetia launched the discussion series as part of its Arts and Audience programme in conjunction with four partners from two linguistic regions, the canton of Valais and the cities of Bern, Basel and Biel. The forums are intended for decision-makers in cultural and educational policy as well as heads of cultural institutions, but are also open to the general public.

9 September 2011: www.ferme-asile.ch25 November 2011: www.dampfzentrale.ch20 January 2012: www.literaturhaus-basel.ch1 March 2012: www.theater-biel.ch

Conversations about

Arts Outreach

Swiss Stagecraft, Experimental and to the Point

If you’re interested in Swiss theatre, you’d be well advised to go in December to – France, where the Comédie de Saint Etienne, sixty kilometers southwest of Lyons, is presenting Made in Suisse, a major in-depth look at Swiss dance and drama. From 5 to 17 December the programme features productions distin-guished by experimental artistic ap-proaches and a precise aesthetic. In addi-tion to such noted performance artists as Yan Duyvendak and Massimo Furlan, young talent the likes of Eugénie Rebetez and François Gremaud will also be on show. The roster is further en-hanced by a film series offering Swiss feature and documentary productions as

In December, Massimo Furlan – shown here with Anne Delahaye in a restaging of the Eurovision Song Contest – was a guest at the Comédie de Saint Etienne.

PRO HELV ETI A NEWSFL ASH

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well as a range of musical, literary and architectural events.

Made in Suisse is an offshoot of Pro Helvetia’s La belle voisine programme, which in 2007 promoted exchange be-tween institutions and cultural figures in Switzerland and France’s Rhône-Alpes region. The festival continues the en-counters and partnerships initiated dur-ing that period.

www.comedie-de-saint-etienne.fr and www.prohelvetia.ch.

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37Pro Helvetia NewsflasH

La Ribot in Southern

Africa

Are you a jazz musician in need of finan-cial support for your foreign tour? Are you an author hoping to spend a sig-nificant amount of time on a literary project without worrying about money? Then submit an application online to www.myprohelvetia.ch. The Swiss Arts Council’s application portal will take you through your submission quickly, simply and without red tape and give you infor-mation on deadlines and support criteria specific to your project. Data is accessi-ble anytime, anywhere, which means an event organizer in New York can add to a dossier just as easily as an accountant in the Emmental. Up until submission, applicants have no problem revising their data and enhancing them with au-

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La Ribot – dancer, choreographer and visual artist – tours southern Africa from 7 to 22 September. At festivals in Cape-town, Johannesburg and Maputo, La Ri-bot, who now makes her home in Gene-va, will present three works on the interface of performance, video and live art, featuring a medley of dance and visu-al arts. In Llámame Mariachi she goes in quest of a new theatrical language, an intimate combination of dance and film: while a moving camera captures the ex-perience of the dance, the dancers them-selves slow their movements to the point of abstraction. In Laughing Hole, meanwhile, La Ribot challenges the usu-al conventions, spends hours tumbling

through the room in fits of uncontrolla-ble laughter and takes over the space with handwritten cardboard signs. Final-ly, PARAdistinguidas, her newest work, takes up her series of pièces distinguées from the 1990s – performance pieces that the choreographer sold at the time to collectors as if they were artworks. In

dio or video examples as well as additional documents.

Since the quadrilingual portal was launched in 2008, myprohelvetia has been contin-ually adapted to the needs of applicants. Almost half of the producers of culture applying now make their submissions online, and the trend is increas-ing. As of 1 January 2012 appli-cations will only be possible via myprohelvetia. The electron-ic submission form simplifies the process and makes handling applications more efficient.

www.myprohelvetia.ch

addition to the festival appearances there will also be workshops, master classes and roundtable discussions featuring La Ribot and her troupe of dancers. The tour is made possible by Pro Helvetia Cape Town.

www.prohelvetia.org.za

Applications for Grants: As of 2012,

Only in Electronic Form

Submissions made easy: on the online platform myprohelvetia

The dancers in La Ribot’s Laughing Hole beneath the weight of the words

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38PartNer Profile: CouNCil for Culture aNd tHe arts iN BarCeloNa

By Cecilia Dreymüller– According to a Spanish proverb, you shouldn’t expect pears from an elm tree – and yet that’s exactly what’s growing in cultural policy in Barcelona: the Consell Nacional de la Cultura i de les Artes (National Council for Culture and the Arts), which commenced operations two years ago, has just pub-lished its comprehensive second annual re-port. Known as CoNCA, the Consell was established in 2008 explicitly according to the model of the arts councils of the Eng-lish-speaking world and is the only one of its kind in Southern Europe. This consti-tuted a daring step forward for the autono-mous region in Northwestern Spain, with its capital of Barcelona, away from political musical chairs and toward an independent promotion of arts and culture.

This is all the more remarkable since Catalonia, while prosperous, is a small na-tion; nevertheless, in the larger Spanish context, it invests extremely generously in culture. And yet, although it was able to maintain its own cultural tradition in re-sistance to Franco’s dictatorship, since at-taining its autonomous status in 1978 the region has not always been marked by worldliness and the spirit of innovation. In Barcelona, in the wake of the 20-year mo-nopoly on government of the conservative Partei Convergencia, cultural institutions are in the firm hands of a patriarchy that keeps everything just as it has always been.

Binding proposals for all those involved in cultureAll the more laudatory, then, is the initia-tive of the former socialist mayor of Barce-lona, Pascual Maragall, who insisted, aware of this old-boy network, that parliament appoint a commission that would be inde-pendent of the political parties: the CoNCA. Its president, Francesc Guardans, identi-fies a double mandate for his council: its aim is to set out guidelines for cultural pol-icy, and to promote all artists not attached to such state institutions as the national theatre or Catalan orchestra. “CoNCA’s mission is to defend the fragile promo-tional structures and to ensure that their work is visible not only on paper but in the cultural life of Catalan society as well.”

In fact, the conditions for such a mis-sion are good. CoNCA’s proposals and eval-

uations are binding for all those involved in culture, for the Catalan cultural insti-tute, for the region’s schools and univer-sities as well as for programmes supporting musicians, dancers, philosophers, perfor-mers and producers of theatre, visual and circus artists. Syllabi are scrutinized by CoNCA (which also issues reminders as need be) as is the worthiness of an art project or music ensemble for support. In addition, Francesc Guardans delivers an annual report to members of parliament.

Asking uncomfortable questionsThe 11-member commission, a diverse team of experts including professors and critics, an architect, a jazz musician, a gal-

lery owner and a theatre producer as well as such well-known figures as the actress and documentary filmmaker Silvia Munt, meets three times a week. In personal dis-cussions with actors on the cultural scene they develop a comprehensive inventory of the current state of arts and culture in Cat-alonia and promote coordination of artists with public support agencies. To this end, members of the cultural world are invited to ConCA hearings in the Ramblas, says Xavier Antich, an art historian at the Uni-versity of Girona and a commission mem-ber, where they explain their situation and make proposals of their own. That did not use to be a practice of the cultural func-tionaries of the Catalan national govern-ment and the city of Barcelona, he notes.

Resistance and skirmishes over au-thority with the entrenched cultural bu-reaucracy are all part of a normal day at work, according to the pragmatist Franc-esc Guardans. “If ConCA did not ask un-comfortable questions and were unafraid to cause a stir we wouldn’t be doing our job properly!” He sees these difficulties, too, as part a longer process. “This is just the be-ginning – but at this year’s parliamentary hearing we were applauded for the first time!”

www.conca.cat Cecilia Dreymüller lives in Barcelona, where she works as a freelance journalist and literary critic. Translated from the German by Rafaël Newman

CoNCaCoNCA, the newly founded

Council for Culture and the Arts in Barcelona, is

bringing a fresh wind and some bitter-sweet fruit to

the Catalan cultural landscape.

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: Raf

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By Carena Schlewitt – The German-speak-ing world has seen a lot of debate in recent years about the crisis of the city theatre: about its artistic slant, its audience, its fi-nances and its buildings. For me, the ques-tion of the crisis of the city theatre poses itself as a question about its current social claim. The city theatre must be more than a traditional institute of classical enlight-enment, and should play a progressive, ac-tive role in today’s urban society.

A brief look back makes this clear: in the 19th century the bourgeoisie created its own stages with an eye to emancipating it-self from the nobility, and established the theatre as the educational institute of the German nation and “the stage as a moral institution” (Friedrich von Schiller). From the outset, the correlation of city theatre–bourgeoisie–nation was challenged by al-ternative, socially relevant theatrical forms – the Volkstheater (people’s theatre) in the 19th century and the freie Szene (free stage) in the 20th. Since antiquity, theatre has been the art form that addresses issues of relevance to society artistically, live and before an audience. The interaction of the-atre and society is decisive for the artistic and structural forms within which it is pro-duced. Today, the (city) theatre no longer addresses a homogeneous, middle-class public, but rather a mixed and restless ur-ban society: a distinctly heterogeneous audience of the most diverse origins, lan-guages and educational levels.

The dynamic technologization of all areas of work and everyday life and the ge-opolitical changes in Europe since 1989, and in the world since 11 September 2001, have triggered an enormous broadening of theatre’s spectrum: it has responded with new and renewed aesthetics and has at-tempted to establish a fresh relationship with the increased complexity and diversity of society.

The free stage in the German-speaking world has reacted both aesthetically and structurally to the altered social situation since the mid-1990s. It has developed a new theatre for the city, banking on par-ticipatory forms of communication with an audience in flux. It uses other art forms and cultural practices: pop theatre and live art, documentary theatre, media theatre, international collaborations and city pro-jects are the hallmarks of the new theatri-cal avant-garde. These new participatory forms are paralleled by a dynamic quest. Theatre is on the move: it has begun by seeking out new actors and specialists from other occupational domains and areas of life, and in the process is putting a changed urban society on stage. Second, theatre is in search of new spaces, and with them new communities within the city. Plays are now produced in apartments, on the street, in public squares and on construction sites, in streetcars and cafés, among other places.

I call for a nomadic style in contempo-rary theatre: for co-productions, network-ing, exhanges, an international reach and the establishment of new and temporary theatrical spaces. Theatre has the potential to create communities that are capable of functioning beyond professions, social

classes and generations. It can develop communicative forms that transcend the typical social patterns. To this end, theatre must establish a forum that functions as a marketplace, offering a variety of colours, smells, narratives and sounds and perform-ing a social function of encounter.

Nomadic theatre is not determined by the decision for or against city theatre, for or against the free stage. It is time to con-sider a contemporary theatre of the future through the optic of common structural development. City theatre must change, must open itself and redefine its role within the city. The free stage, in its relationship to city theatres, must be afforded additional production opportunities to allow it to further develop its potential. And perhaps someday, the two theatrical forms will meet on an equal footing.

Carena Schlewitt has been artistic director of the Kaserne Basel since 2008. She has worked as a dramatic advisor at various production theatres and venues for guest performances as well as at festivals, most recently from 2003–2008 at the Berliner Theater Hebbel am Ufer. Translated from the German by Rafaël Newman

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40SCHAUFENSTER

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Signs and Wonders

Signs and Wonders, 2009Lambda print on aluminium dibond, 60 × 71 cmby Christoph Schreiber

Christoph Schreiber’s works begin with pho-tographs, which he takes in his studio or on his travels with a medium-format camera. Working in a variety of collage technique he then uses a computer to create worlds of a strange poetry – moments in which time seems to stand still. Schreiber’s cosmos also includes video works and installations.

Christoph Schreiber studied visual arts at the Zurich University of the Arts and law at the University of Zurich. His pieces, for which he has won a range of prizes, have been on show as part of many exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad.www.christoph-schreiber.com

Each issue, Gallery presents a work by a Swiss artist.

G A LLEry

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Passages, the magazine of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, reports on Swiss art and culture and on cultural exchanges between Switzerland and the rest of the world. Passages appears three times a year in 60 countries – in German, French and English.

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Publisher: Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council www.prohelvetia.ch Editorial Staff: Managing Editor and Editor, German edition: Janine Messerli Assistance: Isabel Drews, Elisabeth Hasler and Juliette Wyler

Editor, French edition: Marielle Larré Editor, English edition: Rafaël Newman Editorial Address: Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council Passages Hirschengraben 22 CH-8024 Zurich T +41 44 267 71 71 F +41 44 267 71 06 [email protected] Graphic Design: Raffinerie, AG für Gestaltung, Zurich Printing: Druckerei Odermatt AG, Dallenwil Print Run: 18,000 © Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council. All rights reserved. Reproduction only by permission of the editors. Bylined articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher. Photographs © the photographers; reproduction by permission only. Pro Helvetia supports and promotes Swiss culture in Switzerland and throughout the world. It supports diversity in creative culture, stimulates reflection on cultural needs, and contributes to an open and culturally pluralist Switzerland.

Passages The Cultural Magazine of Pro Helvetia online: www.prohelvetia.ch/passages/en

Pro Helvetia News Current projects, programmes and competitions: www.prohelvetia.ch

Pro Helvetia Branch Offices

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Cape Town/South Africa www.prohelvetia.org.za

New Delhi/India www.prohelvetia.in

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San Francisco/USA www.swissnexsanfrancisco.org

Shanghai/China www.prohelvetia.cn

Newsletter Would you like to stay informed about Swiss arts and culture, and keep up to date on Pro Helvetia’s activities? Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter: www.prohelvetia.ch

PerformanceThe performance scene in Switzerland has undergone enormous change over the past ten years, conquering new places as its stage and giving rise to an amazing variety of festivals. The lines between the traditional art forms are increasingly dissolving and today it seems as if almost everything can be called “performance”. In the coming issue of Passages we ask just what performance is, and why the genre is so in vogue – and not only in Switzerland. We illuminate the explosive political power of performance and what role its audience can or must play. The next issue of Passages appears in mid-December.

PassagesRecent Issues:

Creativity and Culture Shock No. 55

Computer Games:The Art of the Future No. 54

Art Will Make You Happy! No. 53

passages


Creativity and Culture Shock Cultural Exchange around the Globe

By the Suez: Artist in Quest of Evidence | Design: Objects That Testify to Human Creativity | Experiment: Musicologists Meet Sonic Tinkerers

passages

Epiphany in a Petri Dish: Artists-in-Labs p. 6 The Walls Have Tongues: Swiss Sound Art in San Francisco p. 36

Inspiring Rome: Turning Time into Art p. 38

Art Will Make You Happy!


passages

Gäuerle and Chlefele: Swiss Folk Culture in Argentina p. 6Exoticism with a Twist: Chopin as Modern Opera p. 36

On the Heels of a Poet: Writer-in-Residence in Buenos Aires p. 41

Computer Games: The Art of the Future


A subscription to Passages is free of charge, as are downloads of the electronic version from www.prohelvetia.ch/passages/en Back copies of the printed magazine may be ordered for CHF 15 (incl. postage and handling) per issue.

I MPR ESSU M PA SSAGES ON LIN E N ExT ISSU E

imPrESSum / PASSAGES onlinE / nExt iSSuE

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www.prohelvetia.ch/passages/en

Yes, the culture-blogging scene does have its lighthouses, providing anyone who has an interest in culture with useful information quickly and reliably. They also offer readers a guarantee that they will not only find what they are searching for (after all, that’s what Google is for), but also, and much more importantly, that they will find things it would never have occurred to them to search for.

Everybody is cutting and pasting as much as they can. The traditional figure of the critic, a broadly educated expert in his field coming to serious conclusions in his ivory tower and communicating them in beautifully written sentences, is thus dying out.

So Who’s Going to Read All This?Christoph Lenz, p. 12

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The Rapidly Changing World of Swiss Culture SectionsPia Reinacher, p. 6”

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Most reviewers say little more than whether they liked or disliked the objects under discussion, garnished with references to their cultural proficiency. None of Your Friends Like This

Kathrin Passig, p. 15”

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Pro Helvetia supports and promotes Swiss culture in Switzerland and throughout the world.

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