Die Zeit, 25.05.2005

In the "future of capitalism" series, Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych tells of developments in his country since the fall of communism, and describes his visit to the West in the early 90s. "The very first place our host took us was a gigantic Cash & Carry market. The magnitude and scope of products on offer overwhelmed us. Civilisation seemed to be made up of 99 percent superfluous products, and for just that reason it was beautiful." But the thrill did not last. "Then capitalism was heavy-handedly grafted onto our own home turf: shock without therapy, wild appropriation of property, a total depreciation of all savings, open and hidden unemployment, social decline right down to the level of the lumpenproletariat – and as an antithesis the first 'fat cats', later known as oligarchs." Andrukhovych reacts more than sceptically when people say you have to choose between freedom and welfare, pointing to Belarus. "'Lukashenko is better than Kwasniewski', says my Polish friend, 'because Lukashenko gives the people social protection.' He should go live there for a bit! 'Even today there's a lack of just about everything possible, and journalists are liquidated without a trace', I tell him."

French philosopher and social critic Paul Virilio writes on the upcoming French referendum on the European constitution. "To better understand the pseudo-democratic absurdity of this referendum, we should permit ourselves a little political fiction: let's imagine there will soon be a referendum on reproductive cloning in Europe, in which the citizens should express their views on this controversial topic. To this end, the hundreds of millions of citizens in the expanded European Union are sent a 500-page textbook on molecular biology. Add to that a dozen treatises either supporting or rejecting the introduction of therapeutic cloning in Europe." Virilio's conclusion: "It's not hard to imagine the angry reaction of the average voter. 'Are you kidding? I don't have the competence to vote on that.' The same goes for the constitution today, but no one says it."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25.05.2005

Richard Kämmerlings reports from the Warsaw Book Fair, "The Polish public has discovered the underground, and the traditional literature business can't ignore it." Kämmerlings cites as an example Dorota Maslowska, who published her first novel "Snow White and Russian Red" at 19. Following its great critical success, she went to university, had a baby and has now written a second book. "The book is a 150-page reckoning with the mechanisms of the media business. It's based on her own experience with the media, with mental desertification, and with the omnipresent terror of consumption, and it's all written in Hiphop verse. 'The Gospel according to MC Doris' was the cover title of the Polish issue of Newsweek. Critics heaped praise on Maswlosk's linguistic creativity and bitter, self-ironic look at contemporary Poland."


Die Welt, 25.05.2005

In an interview with Iris Alanyali, writer and cabaret artist Frank Goosen, whose novels feature "the lovable losers of the Ruhrpott" and their "manly abysses", describes the changes in West Germany's formal industrial heartland, North Rhine-Westphalia. "Is Bavaria still the state of Alpine farmers? No. And yet the still Bavarians still like to dance around, slapping their Lederhose asses. By which I mean: they still stylise themselves on their supposed traditions and customs. And now exactly the same is happening in the Ruhrpott. For several generations, life was nothing more than work, and this attitude was passed on in the genes. Our generation watched our fathers destroy themselves with work, and we don't aspire to the same fate. And nonetheless, we climb up the former blast furnaces in what is now the Landscape Park Meiderich North and get all proud... for decades the talk was of bad air, ugly cities and ugly people who only had fries, beer and soccer on their minds and the municipality countered with 'A strong piece of Germany'. And so green! Today we have a new self-confidence: we're audacious, we're loud and we get things done. Whether it's true or not: we're stylising ourselves. With mining lamps rather than Lederhose."


Berliner Zeitung, 25.05.2005

Ingeborg Ruthe went to the Mies van der Rohe Haus in Berlin, where works by 97 year old painter Rupprecht Geiger, the last representative of the German postwar artistic avant-garde, are on display. "After ! 1945, Ge iger - like his German colleagues Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Willi Baumeister or the 'informel' painter Emil Schumacher - sought continuity with the discontinued, ostracised art the Nazis had destroyed." Like Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Frank Stella, Geiger focused his work on the intense experience of colour. "Now his most recent paintings hang in the two bright rooms. But why say 'paintings?' What is commonly called an individual signature in painting is missing in his works. In its place, warm contends with cold, red meets yellow, then changes into strokes of green, magically, before our eyes. Circles, squares, triangles of garishly cool pink hover on the warm grey of the canvas. Sometimes the edges vibrate, pulsate." Throughout his career, Geiger explored pure – his word is "total" – colours. For Ruthe, "all his earlier and later periods were just the preparation for this recent work in red, with its almost indescribable clarity of colour, which in the end remains a mystery."