Berliner Zeitung, 05.09.2006

Ömer Erzeren reports on new charges being brought against an author in Turkey. "After Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak, now the Istanbul journalist Ipek Calislar is being arraigned. Prosecutors are calling for four and a half years' imprisonment for 'crimes against Ataturk,' stipulated in a law dating back to 1951. Calislar is the author of 'Latife Hanim' (Mrs Latife), a biography of the wife of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. The trial is scheduled to start in October. The case rests on Calislar's portrayal of an incident from the early days of the Republic. During an attempted putsch, Latife organised Ataturk's escape by dressing him in a chador, while she fooled the putschists by dressing in men's clothing and impersonating her husband."


Die Welt, 05.09.2006

The new Russian architecture orients itself towards the pre-Soviet past, Philipp Meuser has observed. Historical correctness, however, is beside the point, as Moscow's stately block of flats "Patriach" illustrates. "The conspicuous variety of colour and form makes this house for the new elite a style mix nonpareil. The neo-baroque facade piles up towards a convoluted affair which looks like nothing on earth. And the finishing touch is provided by an edifying quote: on the roof a mini copy of the unrealised Tatlin tower from 1919 protrudes into the Moscow sky. That this incunabulum from the early years of Constructivism was in fact intended to be several hundred metres high seems to disturb neither the architects nor the inhabitants. Nor does the fact that the richly ornamental facade and the Utopian steel construction spring from utterly antithetical architectural notions."


Die Tageszeitung, 05.09.2006

Writer Klaus Modick criticises literary criticism in an interview with Frank Schäfer: "For a long time now I've been observing an increase in malice and slander in criticism, and even the major quality papers aren't free of it. The point is no longer to show why a book displeases, or why it is perhaps unsuccessful. That's a critic's right, and as far as I'm concerned even his duty. But what we're seeing now is the denigration of an author's very existence.... I think it's all a question of power. Even if criticism is losing its control over the book market, within the business it's still as important as ever, because it establishes a sort of ranking. This ranking is in turn hugely important for an author's reputation, and this reputation is important when it comes to grants and prizes. And here literary criticism is still enormously powerful. Writers can be excommunicated or ennobled, depending who they are and who's writing."

Harald Fricke introduces the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, a "shooting star of the international art scene" who is currently showing at the Deutsche Guggenheim museum in Berlin. Fricke wouldn't mind a touch more depth of focus in the pyro-spectacles, as when Cai Guo-Qiang exploded a full-scale mock-up house in a cascade of fireworks in front of the ruins of Berlin's Anhalter Bahnhof station. "The result was breathtaking and created the shock effect of mindless destruction which hinted at war and expulsion."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 05.09.2006

Thomas David can't contain his enthusiasm for John Banville's new book "The Sea" which won this year's Booker Prize. "The Sea" is one of Banville's most beautiful books. A calm, utterly unpretentious masterpiece, weighed down by little external action, in which the author succeeds absolutely convincingly in assimilating the motif currents from his previous books into the inexorable, river of prose propelled solely by the fluctuating tides of memory. And in doing so Banville condenses the atmosphere of the novel so intensely that he seems almost to penetrate the 'membrane of pure consciousness', tranferring Morden's astounding monologue into another state of being."

Christina Thurner has seen the world premiere of Heinz Spoerli's ballet "moZART" (accentuating the word "zart" - tender) at Zurich's Opernhaus, with music by Mozart and Kaija Saariaho. "At first the pianist Alexey Botvinov plays the adagio from Mozart's piano sonata in F major, K. 332 for minutes in the dark, before the curtain rises just high enough to reveal four legs which tiptoe forward cautiously. The couple (Seh Yun Kim and Vahe Martirosyan) that then appear become so gingerly and kittenishly entwined, it's as if they were trying not to step on a single note.... Then Mozart is interrupted abruptly by cello pieces by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Claudius Herrmann draws such a humming, screeching, buzzing and rhythmic panting from his instrument that a pleasant shiver runs through the audience. Yen Han steps into the light dressed as a vamp and manifestly confounds the senses of the dancer Dirk Segers, and then also of Jorge Garcia Perez." For Thurner, juxtaposing the two composers suggests that Mozart alone is too tender to depict today's hectic world.