Stage designers is developing more and more into the most important element of stage productions. It is set designers or ?spatial artists? like Johannes Schütz, Muriel Gerstner, Stéphane Laimé and Olaf Altmann who are ?to blame? ? they are the ones who can turn an evening at the theatre into a total work of stationary art....
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Dragan Klaic was in Moscow to run a theatre workshop. He was overwhelmed by the sense of impending financial disaster and nearly missed his plane home.
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A dementi is not enough. Milan Kundera should come out with his version of the story, because Iva Militka and Miroslav Dvoracek deserve the truth. By Anja Seeliger
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Iceland was determined to be a globalisation winner at any price. German-Icelandic writer Kristof Magnusson looks into the culture and history of this mini-state to find out how it became buried in debt.
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Why Austria's far-right under Heinz-Christian Strache and the late Jörg Haider are celebrating their election triumph. By Doron Rabinovici
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Russian author Arkady Babchenko rose to international fame with the remorseless description of the Chechen conflict in his autobiographical novel "The Colour of War". Babchenko was also the millitary correspondent for the Novaya Gazeta during the recent Russian military operation in South Ossetia. Jörg Plath met up with him in Berlin.
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Radovan Karadzic might be on trial in The Hague, but he can sit back in his Hugo Boss suit, confident that his work is done. His heirs are young, healthy and full of hate. And as far as they are concerned, the war is far from over. Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic dreams of a procession of collective shame and a ritual of repentance.
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Philosopher Jürgen Habermas called for a pan-European referendum in the wake of the Irish 'No'. He overestimates the wisdom of the masses and underestimates what has been achieved up to now, counters Alfred Grosser.
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Galicia might be a Ukrainian myth but this is no reason to try to thwart Ukraine's bid to join the European Union. Even its failure to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria would not be enough to eliminate it from the running. The EU's problem is its own crisis, argues Sonja Margolina.
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The dead body of Russian artist Anna Alchuk was pulled out of the river Spree in April this year. She and her husband, philosopher Michail Ryklin, had moved to Berlin in November 2007 after life in Russia became intolerable as a direct consequence of Alchuk's participation in the exhibition "Caution: Religion!". Michail Ryklin looks to his wife's tormented diary entries to help him approximate the causes of her death.
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Author Martin Pollack issues a rebuttal of Richard Wagner's arguments against Ukraine's EU bid, accusing him of Western bias and ignorance. If we follow his line of thought, even Italy has no place in the European Union.
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Last year secularists and multiculturalists converged at signandsight.com to debate Islam in Europe. Both parties want a liberal society where autonomous citizens live peacefully side by side, but the slightest political provocation is enough to unleash an intellectual Kulturkampf. Jürgen Habermas considers both positions and points beyond them to a post-secular society, where religious and secular mentalities are open to a complementary learning process. (Photo: Wolfram Huke)
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At the Durban Conference against Racism in 2001, anti-colonialism bared its anti-Semitic face. The UN is planning a follow-up conference next year in Geneva. Pascal Bruckner tells democracies to keep their distance.
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Advocates of Ukrainian democracy are motivated by old desires for independence from Moscow and, now that political autonomy has been achieved, by the need to get under the protective umbrella of Nato and the EU. From an objective point view, though, there are plenty of arguments against Ukraine turning its back on Russia. By Richard Wagner (Photo: Lothar Deus)
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On the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel, exiled Iraqi writer, Najem Wali, decided to go and survey the "enemy" territory with his own eyes. What he found was an explanation for the reluctance of Arab leaders to let their people make the same journey: the stagnation of Arab societies and economies cannot be blamed on Israel.
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Dragan Klaic arrived in Skopje on the day that Greece vetoed Macedonia's bid to join NATO at the summit in Bucharest. He found a nation reeling from this unexpected slap in the face.
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