Monday 5 March, 2007

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 05.03.2007

Ukrainian author Yuri Andrukhovych talks to Ulrich M. Schmid and Andreas Breitenstein about Ukraine's situation in Europe, Ukrainian literature and his relationship to Germany and Switzerland. Only Austria fares badly: "Originally I idealised Austria, but today the country disappoints me profoundly. I learned about the whole Austrian "kaiserlich und königlich" myth - the myth of the Austrian empire - at the start of the 1990s. At that time the central European idea was totally new for me, I was just writing my first essays on the topic, for example 'Erz-Herz-Perz' (a play on the German 'Erzherzog' or archduke -ed). Today Austria shuts itself off from the Habsburg tradition. No one understands me when I talk about it in Austria. People say: that's old-hat, uninteresting. Austria is a cold land, I dreamed about it a lot but no one understands me there. For this indifference I have taken literary revenge: perhaps this is why I have the Austrian protagonists in my novels killed, thus killing the Austrian in me, as it were." See our feature "The carnival continues," an interview with Yuri Andrukhovych.


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 05.03.2007

Regina Mönch portrays the Iranian activist Mina Ahadi, condemned to death in her own country and resident in Germany, who has just launched the "We have renounced" campaign where Muslims can out themselves, complete with photo, as having renounced their faith. "Like other like-minded people, Ms. Ahadi has found that in a media society provocation is now more effective than finely-chisled argumentation in achieving a political end. Her polite protest against the picture painted by the media that the caricature conflict had the entire Islam-dominated world in turmoil and constituted an insult to every individual citizen of the so-called Muslim states, went unnoticed. She believes it is time to acknowlege the thousands of people in Germany's immigrant society who want nothing to do with headscarves, Sharia, or even Islam. And since, in the run-up to the Islam conference, Aiman Mazyek, the secretary general of the 'Central Committee of Muslims', did not call for better defined rights for 'three-and-a-half million Muslims' and for Sharia to be 'brought in line' with democracy, Ms. Ahadi and those around her decided to found a 'Central Committee for Ex-Muslims'."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 05.03.2007

Sculpture is making a comeback on the art market, and Jörg Heise is not impressed. "It's just like when people postulated the 'return of painting,' but above all meant the return of butter-wouldn't melt reproduction of bits of reality. Now the proclaimed 'renaissance of sculpture' is little more than a display of technical self-suffiency. Just don't ask too many complicated questions that could cast doubt in people's minds about the need for all this technique. Or it could take the wind out of gallerists' sales pitches to trophy collectors. In fact, the only thing left to say, is that future sculptures should all be standardised to European pallet size, to facilitate transport and storage (something that Martin Kippenberger suggested)."


Die Tageszeitung 05.03.2007

Around 90 magazines have joined forces and put out the first edition of Documenta Magazine, for the upcoming contemporary art exhibition Documenta 12. The project's director Gregor Schöllhammer explains the benefits of the project to Brigitte Werneburg. "With this publication, discussion has been initiated between magazines from Argentina and Chile, say, and those from Poland, Romania and the Balkans. South America talks with Eastern Europe. In this way, the whole neglected history of the Non-Aligned Nations is made accessible. Suddenly, entirely different channels open up, a long way off the major trade routes. A colleague from India is now working together with other Asian publications to investigate the incredible schizophrenia surrounding cultural quality control in the major Asian cities. The authoritarian regimes there are becoming increasingly censorial, but anything and everything can be had on the markets. In Thailand you can find every European avant-garde film from the 1960s, even works by Friedel Kubelka."


Berliner Zeitung 05.03.2007

Christian Esch reports that Michael Schindhelm, the former general director of the Berlin Opera Foundation, has announced he is looking forward to "going into the desert in the biblical sense." After much wrangling about the financing of the foundation and talk of "bullying" by Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit, Schindhelm resigned from his position in the German capital on February 14th and is off to Dubai to be the new cultural senator. "The Emirate wants to build a cultural centre on an international scale, a laguna city, which will be under construction until 'at least 2012, 2013.'... He did not wish to comment on the terms of his new contract but made it clear that the offer from the Gulf Emirate had had no influence on his decision to resign from the Opera Foundation."


Saturday 3 March, 2007

Süddeutsche Zeitung 03.03.2007

Sonja Zekri reports on Arab Internet and blog enthusiasm: "The blogger scene is thriving. According to estimates of the initiative for Open Arab Internet, in Saudi Arabia alone, blogger numbers have trebled since the beginning of 2006, and are now as high as 2,000. The most quoted statistics say there are around 40,000 Arab web diaries, and there is even a word for the people who write them: mudawen. 'The number of Arab bloggers still looks negligable on an international level, but in terms of influence and popularity it has exceeded all expectations,' raves Gamal Eid of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information." Zekri is rather more sceptical in her conclusion: "In Arabic blogs Islamist voices now hold sway."