Physical Dramaturgy: Ein (neuer) Trend?

Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen. more more

GoetheInstitute

06/12/2011

Magazine Roundup

Magazine Roundup, which appears every Tuesday at 12 p.m., is originally published by Perlentaucher.

MicroMega 01.12.2011 (Italy)

Largely ignored by the German press, a 'Ndrangheta trial came to a close on November 19 in Milan with over one hundred convictions - an epochal trail, enthuses Roberto Saviano, author of "Gomorrha". For the first time, the Mafia structures of northern Italy led to convictions. The decision "showed once and for all that mafia organisations are also largely at the helm in northern Italian business. In the South they apply more violent means to get the business they want. They see the Mezzogiorno as a territory utterly at their disposal. The North, by contrast, is a place of polite silences, lucrative businesses, an absence of anti-mafia culture within institutions, and a robust Omerta respected on all sides. A perfect place." In the same issue Paolo Flores d'Arcais and Marco Travaglio discuss euthanasia. And Giona A. Nazzaro has written an obituary of the great documentary filmmaker Vittorio De Seta.  See here his six-minute film "Articolo 23" on the new inhabitants of an abandoned village in southern Italy - a small lesson in globalization:




Volltext 05.12.2011 (Austria)

Bernhard Fetz, Director of the Austrian Literary Archives, takes up the cudgels for Hermann Broch, the most underestimated author of Austrian modern literature: "In what Thomas Bernhard deemed his best book, the 'Esch' section of his 'The Sleepwalkers' series, the bookkeeper Esch despairs that in the world accounts do not tally as neatly as they do in the ledgers. The author, who was forced into exile by the Nazis, also failed to keep his books neatly. Much of his work remains fragmentary, and his literary production, which included one of the most daring literary experiments in the history of modern literature, the novel 'The Death of Virgil' was also accompanied by increasing doubts. But this is precisely what makes this author so fascinating."


Elet es Irodalom 02.12.2011 (Hungary)

Sociologist Maria Vasarhelyi views the Orban government's attack on the cultural heritage of the country as "Talibanisation". But the Left and the Liberals are not free of guilt either, she opines. "For the past century they have allowed themselves to be shut out of the nation and the fatherland. Whether out of mental inertia, cowardice, or a sense of guilt of indefinite origin, they accept with bowed heads that they are being denied their Hungarian identity, their bond with the nation and the fatherland. This hate-filled politics of division led the country into the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, and is holding together Orban's right-wing supporters today."


Magyar Narancs 24.11.2011 (Hungary)

A good two weeks ago the Hungarian government made the surprising announcement that it would engage in new negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. Too late to prevent being degraded by the rating company Moody's. Since the financial crisis of 2008, Hungary had depended on credits from the IMF (and the EU), until after being voted in as head of the government Viktor Orban accused the IMF of asserting "foreign rule" over Hungary and terminated all contact with the organisation. However, the old leftist philosopher Miklos Tamas Gaspar cannot relish in Orban's defeat: "Regardless of whether the system of Viktor Orban, which operates against the people, is brought down by a ... vote or a protest on the street, this must happen through a free act by the Hungarian population. Now and then solidarity from other countries is quite nice, but this kind of influence on our institutions is not desired."


Telerama 06.12.2011 (France)

After a long wait, la Decouerte is finally publishing the complete works of Frantz Fanon in a single volume. Like Guevara, Fanon is an icon of anti-colonialism and died fifty years ago from leukemia at the young age of 36. Juliette Cerf emphatically recommends a rereading of Fanon, less for his most famous work "The Wretched of the Earth" than for first book "Black skin, white masks". "Shortly before his death Fanon ceased to fear the gaze of the white settler: 'His gaze no longer convulses me, paralyses me.' Precisely the perspective of 'the fundamental experience of the black person' is at the core of 'Black skin, white masks', a breathtaking work published in 1952 and an 'essay towards understanding the relationship between black and white', which is also a philsophical statement and clinical study. Just like the anti-Semite makes the Jew Jewish (Sartre), so too does the black exist only in the eye of the whtie: 'I am a black – but naturally I don't know it, because it is what I am.'"


Salon.eu.sk 01.12.2011 (Slovakia)

Why is there an underlying sense of dissatisfaction spreading throughout Russia, when the election results are so clear, jeers author Victor Erofeyev: "The great Russian writer Nikolai Gogol once noted in a private letter that his unwritten works were his 'heavenly visitors'.  That is, they already existed in heaven and just had to descend to earth, safely landing in the author's mind. That's basically what I have to say about the Duma elections due on 4 December, as well as the presidential election in March. The good news is that their results have already been written in Kremlin heaven and all state politics has to do is bring them down to earth safely without any scandals and misunderstandings."


Reactions in the German press to the death of Christa Wolf  02.12.2011

Die Tageszeitung marks the passing of the former East German author Christa Wolf by describing her as a "cultural monument". Various voices recall the earnest humoir of her speech of 4 November 1989 on Alexanderplatz and describe her importance in the West during the 1980s: "Christa was cool. She was avant-garde, also in the West. The misused female body is the truly and singularly enthralling element of her work." Die Welt remembers the highpoint of her fame in the 1980s and the bitter debate about the later disclosure of her essentially insignificant role as the informer "Margarete". And Tagesspiegel states: "She was always only interested in understanding the mistake as a path. Skepticism was for her the best means of combating the self-assurance of all ideological thought, which is why she never gave up hope that a right life must be possible in the midst of a wrong one, because over the long term many rights must be able to correct widespread wrongs."


Here her televised appeal to the East German people in the fall of 1989:




From the Anglophone Press

In Salon.com Will Doig debunks the myth of the "cyclist-as-gentrifier" and David Cronenberg talks about his working methods and film "A dangerous mind". Also, in an interview Al Aswany says that he is less concerned about the election victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt than about the Salafists, who are supported by Saudi money.

In the Guardian, Shaun Tan, a renowned Australian children's book author and illustrator, talks about his work and his fans' tattoos. Also, Kathryn Hughes describes how British publishers are standing up to the eBook, and Nicholas Wroe reports on the Bejing Music Festival and its emphasis on Mahler.

In The New York Review of Books, Yasmine El Rashidi’s blog entry describes the horror experienced by Egyptian revolutionaries at the election results: the majority vote having gone to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. Freeman Dyson presents Daniel Kahnemann's new book "Thinking, Fast and Slow", which explains why we cling to our cognitive illusions.

In response to Evgeny Morosov's much discussed, gloating polemic against Jeff Jarvis' most recent book "Public Parts", the Columbia Journalism Review provides Dean Starkman's better-founded refutation of Jarvis, Clay Shirky and other internet enthusiasts who like to proclaim the end of journalism. Starkman argues for a "neo-institutional" approach: "My model would take lessons from The Guardian/News Corp. case and would be institution-centred, network-powered. In that case, traditional investigative reporting broke the story, while social media propelled it to the stratosphere." Whereas Clay Shirk counters in his blog: "The old landscape had institutions and so will the new one, but this doesn't imply continuity. We still have companies called Western Union and ATT, but as the communications landscape changed, they have become almost unrecognizably different from their former selves. Likewise, as the presses fall silent over the next ten years, even papers that survive will see their internal organization and their place in the ecosystem altered beyond our ability to predict."

Wired features the iPad competitor Kindle-Fire in an interview with aspiring techy star, Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos, and Shahan Mufti sheds light on how Art.sys is finally bringing the digital revolution to the global art market. Also, Benjamin Wallace sketches the rise and fall of the e-currency Bitcoin, and Mike Kessler profiles the IT-wonderboy Christopher Soghoian (website), who has made it his job to find holes in the internet security of telecommunications companies.

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The Republicans are waging a war against women, the New York Magazine declares. Perhaps it's because women are so unabashed about reading porn in public - that's according to publisher Beatriz de Moura in El Pais Semanal, at least. Polityka remembers Operation Reinhard. Tensions are growing between Poland and Hungary as Victor Orban spreads his influence, prompting ruminations on East European absurdity from both Elet es Irodalom and salon.eu.sk. Wired is keeping its eyes peeled on the only unassuming sounding Utah Data Center.
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Tuesday 20 March, 2012

In Telerama, Benjamin Stora grabs hold of the Algerian boomerang. In Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic tells the Venetians that they should be very scared of Chinese money. Bela Tarr tells the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Berliner Zeitung that his "Turin Horse", which ends in total darkness was not intended to depress. In die Welt, historian Dan Diner cannot agree with Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands": National Socialism was not like Communism - because of Auschwitz.
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Tuesday 13 March, 2012

In Perfil author Martin Kohn explains why Argentina would be less Argentinian if it won back the Falklands. In Il sole 24 ore, Armando Massarenti describes the Italians as a pack of illiterates sitting atop a treasure trove. Polityka introduces the Polish bestseller of the season: Danuta Walesa's autobiography. L'Express looks into the state of Japanese literature one year after Fukushima.
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Tuesday 6 March, 2012

In Merkur, Stephan Wackwitz muses on poetry and absurdity in Tiflis. Outlook India happens on the 1980s Indian answer to "The Artist". Bloomberg Businessweek climbs into the cuckoo's nest with the German Samwar brothers. Salon.eu.sk learns how to line the pockets of a Slovenian politician. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Navid Kermani reports back impressed from the Karachi Literature Festival.
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Tuesday 28 February, 2012

In La Vie des idees, historian Anastassios Anastassiadis explains why we should go easy on Greece. Author Aleksandar Hemon describes in Guernica how ethnic identity is indoctrinated in the classroom in Bosnia and Herzogovina. In Eurozine, Klaus-Michael Bogdal examines how Europe invented the Gypsies. Elet es Irodalon praises the hygiene obsession of German journalists. And Polityka pinpoints Polish schizophrenia.

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Tuesday 21 February, 2012

The New Republic sees a war being waged in the USA against women's rights. For Rue89, people who put naked women on the front page of a newspaper should not be surprised if they go to jail. In Elet es Irodalom, historian Mirta Nunez Daaz-Balart explains why the wounds of the Franco regime never healed. In Eurozine, Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev see little in common between the protests in Russia and those in the Arab world.
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Tuesday 14 February, 2012

In Letras Libras Enrique Krauze and Javier Sicilia fight over anarchy levels. In Elet es Irodalom Balint Kadar wants Budapest to jump on the Berlin bandwagon. In Le Monde Imre Kertesz has given up practically all hope for a democratic Hungary. Polityka ponders poetic inspiration and Wislawa Szymborska's "I don't know". In Espressso, Umberto Eco gets eschatological.
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Tuesday 7 February, 2012

Poland's youth have taken to the streets to protest against Acta and Donald Tusk has listened, Polityka explains. Himal and the Economist report on the repression of homosexuality in the Muslim world. Outlook India doesn't understand why there will be no "Dragon Tattoo" film in India. And in Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic looks at how close the Serbs are to eating grass.
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Tuesday 31 January, 2012

In the French Huffington Post, philosopher Catherine Clement explains why the griot Youssou N'Dour had next to no chance of becoming Senegal's president. Peter Sloterdijk (in Le Monde) and Umberto Eco (in Espresso) share their thoughts about forgetting. Al Ahram examines the post-electoral depression of Egypt's young revolutionaries. And in Eurozine, Kenan Malik defends freedom of opinion against those who want the world to go to sleep.
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Tuesday 24 January, 2012

TeaserPicIl Sole Ore weeps at the death of a laughing Vincenzo Consolo. In Babelia, Javier Goma Lanzon cries: Praise me, please! Osteuropa asks: Hungaria, quo vadis? The newborn French Huffington Post heralds the birth of the individual in the wake of the Arab Spring. Outlook India is infuriated by the cowardliness of Indian politicians in the face of religious fanatics.
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Tuesday 17 January, 2012

TeaserPicIn Nepszabadsag the dramatist György Spiro recognises 19th century France in Hungary today. Peter Nadas, though, in Lettre International and salon.eu.sk, is holding out hope for his country's modernisation. In Open Democracy, Boris Akunin and Alexei Navalny wish Russia was as influential as America - or China. And in Lettras Libras, Peter Hamill compares Mexico with a mafia film by the Maquis de Sade.
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Tuesday 10 January, 2012

Are books about to become a sort of author-translator wiki, asks Il Sole 24 Ore. Rue 89 reports on the "Tango Wars" in downtown Buenos Aires. Elet es Irodalom posits a future for political poetry. In Merkur, Mikhail Shishkin encounters Russian pain in Switzerland. Die Welt discovers the terror of the new inside the collapse of the old in Andrea Breth's staging of Isaak Babel's "Maria". And Poetry Foundation waits for refugees in Lampedusa.
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Wednesday 4 January, 2012

TeaserPicTechnology Review sees Apple as the next Big Brother. In Eurozine, Per Wirten still fears the demons of the European project. Al Ahram Weekly features Youssef Rakha's sarcastic "The honourable citizen manifesto". Revista Piaui profiles Iraqi-Norwegian geologist Farouk Al-Kasim. Slate.fr comments on the free e-book versions of Celine's work. And Die Welt celebrates the return of Palais Schaumburg.
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Tuesday 13 December, 2011

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