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

20/03/2012

Magazine Roundup

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

Telerama  15.03.2012 (France)

On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Algerian war of independence the French media is full of stories on the subject. In an interview French historian Benjamin Stora explains that May 1968 helped prevent open political debate about this chapter in French history.  "By calling the state into question, this anarchist movement blanketed all the big questions which emerged from the Algerian war and swept them under the carpet. Not until the 1980s did the memories associated with the war resurface, with the growing strength of immigrant movements, racism and the Front National. The real turning point came in 1992 with the outbreak of civil war in Algeria." This war traumatised the Algerians and also triggered memories in France of the war of independence, Stora says. "It was as if this page of history had been turned, as if Algeria had disappeared from the French imagination, and then it returned like a boomerang, recharged by a new parameter: political Islam."


Der Tagesspiegel
19.03.2012 (Germany)

In an interview with Peter Laudenbach, sociologist and cultural analyst Dirk Backer describes the sort of theatre that grapples with the powerful and ruling classes as naive, not subversive. He would be more interested in questions such as "What do certain people do with the resources of power? When can you have too much of something, and when can you have too little of something – for example in relations between economy and state. The sort of political theatre that you describe is entertainment for people who want to feel reassured in the theatre about doing nothing in their professional lives against circumstances which are actually extremely comfortable for them."


Die Welt 17.03.2012 (Germany)

The historian Dan Diner raises an objection to Timothy Snyder's book "Bloodlands" which has just won the Leipzig Book Prize, and which constructs a spatio-temporal unit out of the Nazi and Stalinist perpetrated murders in Eastern Europe. The gaping hole in the book is Auschwitz, Diner says. "Auschwitz suggests another historical topography of violence that competes with Snyder's 'bloodlands' in pointing to the specific nature of collective and gratuitous death by extermination. [...] That the extermination spread westwards - particularly into those countries that were otherwise relatively untouched by the war and the violence of indiscriminate warfare - reveals a specific Nazi exterminatory intent that was absolute: all Jews should be made to die and this applies everywhere."


Frankfurter Rundschau / Berliner Zeitung 15.03.2012 (Germany)

In interview with Ralf Schenk, Hungarian director Bela Tarr explains that the last thing he wanted to do with his end-of-the-world film the "Turin Horse" was depress anyone. He wanted to give people strength: "The film tells an anti-creation story. We know how this terrible world came about, but we don't know how it will end. Day after day we are caught in our routines, doing the same thing over and over again. But everyday we have less energy and eventually life disappears from us. This is something that we wanted to show clearly in our film: that day after day we lose something crucial to our lives. A coachman loses his horse, loses his work, his power to survive, his universe. We cannot deny the fact that the end exists, we must reckon with it and accept it."


Eurozine  15.03.2012 (Austria in English)

Europeans fear immigrants but not foreign money – Chinese for instance – writes Slavenka Drakulic, just back from a trip through Italy, where she saw that immigrants enrich a country's culture. However, this money is hollowing out a cultural city like Venice, where the Chinese are buying up the last normal shops in order to sell fake made-in-China Murano glass. "And while Europeans ponder future changes and whether to put up a wall around Europe (if only they knew what its boundaries were), while they contemplate measures that will contain immigrants at that same imaginary border and Europe's culture and the values that need to be preserved (...) the Chinese are freely investing, buying palaces in Venice in order to turn them into hotels, thus making even more money out of Europe's cultural treasures."


Lettre International
  20.03.2012 (Germany)

European politicians and the media have the wrong idea about Greek culture and the Greek attitude to the state, writes Heinz A. Richter. During the 400 years of Ottoman rule the country developed very differently from most others in Europe. This had the effect "that the Greeks for the most part experienced the state as exploiter. While in Western Europe a self-confident middle class was forming that regarded the state as part of its own body politic, as its own civic republic, for the Greeks the state was the equivalent of foreign rule - it was important to hate it defend oneself again it. Tax evasion and sequestering state property were classic defense reactions. This attitude towards the state became a tradition which remains in place today." (Excerpt here)


More stories from the Anglophone magazines:

At the Schiparelli and Prada exhibition at the Met, the New Yorker dwells on the charms of the "jolie laide". There is nothing that cannot be bought, Michael J. Sandel discovers in the Atlantic - from prison cell upgrades to the right to kill endangered animals. There too, philosopher Patrick Stokes visits the dead on Facebook. Jonathan Steel travels to Syria for the London Review of Books. Paul Berman reviews a book on liberal Muslim thinkers for the New Republic. The TLS reads a history of rhetoric.

Get the signandsight newsletter for regular updates on feature articles.
signandsight.com - let's talk european.

 
More articles

Magazine Roundup

Tuesday 27 March, 2012

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.

read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

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.
read more

Magazine Roundup

Tuesday 13 December, 2011

TeaserPicAndre Glucksman in Tagesspiegel looks at the impact of the Putinist plague on Russia and Europe. In Letras Libras Martin Caparros celebrates the Kindle as book. György Dalos has little hope that Hungary's intellectuals can help get their country out of the doldrums. Le Monde finds Cioran with his head up the skirt of a young German woman. The NYT celebrates the spread of N'Ko, the West African text messaging alphabet.
read more

Magazine Roundup

Tuesday 6 December, 2011

TeaserPicMicroMega cheers recent landmark Mafia convictions in Milan. Volltext champions Hermann Broch. Elet es Irodalom calls the Orban government’s attack on cultural heritage "Talibanisation". Magyar Narancs is ambiguous about new negotiations with the IMF. Telerama recommends the icon of anti-colonialism Frantz Fanon. Salon.eu.sk quips about the dubious election results in Russia, and voices in the German press mark the passing of Christa Wolf. And in the Anglophone press Wired profiles Jeff Bezos, while the Columbia Journalism Review polemicises the future of internet journalism.
read more