Monday, 2 October, 2006

Frankfurter Rundschau 02.10.2006

This was art fair weekend in Berlin, with the Art Forum and a handful of smaller alternative ones such as Preview. Star gallerist Gerd Harry Lybke declared sculpture as the new big thing and accordingly "left his Neo Rauchs at home," writes Elke Buhr. "It's still warm in the evenings and the culture surfing at the gallery openings circuit refuses to come to an end. People mill around in packs in Auguststraße (a street full of galleries in Berlin Mitte -ed.), a sprinkling of industrialists' wives mingling with the bottle-beer swilling local art crowd. It's all about being laid-back and Mediterranean while staging the myth: Berlin is cool, that's why we've all travelled here. Berlin the art city has long functioned like a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more everybody talks about it, the more real it becomes, because when everybody comes, everybody's there."


Der Tagesspiegel 02.10.2006

Jan Oberländer writes that for the second year running, the Lettre Ulysses Award for reportage has gone to a British woman writer. This year in Berlin Ryszard Kapuscinski handed over the prize to Linda Grant (more) for her reportage on young soldiers in Israel, "People on the street" (excerpt here). "Since its premiere in 2003, the 'Nobel prize for reportage literature' has gained in international renown. This is thanks to the high-ranking jury, the quality of the winning texts and the 100,000 dollar prize. Add to this the increasing cynicism of the reportage industry. As one reporter repeated in whispered tones something another correspondent had shouted out during the war in the Balkans: 'Is anybody here who has been raped and speaks English?'"


Saturday 30 September, 2006

Frankfurter Rundschau 30.09.2006

With India as the guest country at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair which starts on Wednesday, the Goethe Institute has organised a residency programme, where Indian writers visit Germany and and vice versa. Mahesh Dattani's decription of some of the cultural differences was published in the FR: "A young couple were busy smooching just a couple of rows ahead, facing my direction. Smooching in public is also an art to be perfected. The smoochers in Mumbai hide in the shadows in parks or by the beach away from the watchful eye of the policeman on duty. Here it is done in full public view, showing their love for each other while exploring tonsils."
(Read more of the German and India writers' impressions in English here.)


Süddeutsche Zeitung 30.09.2006

In an interview Nobel Literature Prize laureate V.S. Naipaul discusses his next book, the misery of revolution, the future of the small Indian farmers – and happiness. His interviewer Burkhard Müller tells him about two surveys: one concludes that the Danes are the happiest people in the world and the other says it is the Bangladeshis. Naipaul is more convinced by the latter: "They are not very ambitious, their sole concern is religion. As long as that is going well, they are happy. I think that's fair enough. When the water rises and their houses are destroyed by floods, they climb the trees, when the water level returns to normal, they climb down again and build up their little huts again. It is a drama for them, it dramatises their year. But they are content. I have never seen happier people... All sorts of effort is put into trying to make everyone happy, development projects, this and that. They don't want this. They want their religion, they want to pray five times a day. When they die, they want to go to paradise. We can't help them with paradise, but we must understand what they want."


Die Welt 30.09.2006

Saul Friedländer's examination of Nazi Germany and the Jews (Vol.2: The Years of Annihilation 1939-1945) in his work about the Holocaust is almost unusual again according to historian Dan Diner. Friedländer "focuses on the general hatred of Jews," which Diner says is no longer the norm. "Books about the Holocaust which have won the favour of readers over the past years and hit sales records strive to refrain from depicting the hatred of Jews as the main cause for the murder and destruction of European Jews. The fact that the murdered Jews were in fact Jews is often a minor fact or seen as a sort of secondary argument. This reasoning is well-liked because it reduces it to the material aspects, to robbery, plundering, greed and financial calculations. Everyone understands these sort of human evils, which are believed to stem from a negative anthropology. (...) Saul Friedländer's history of the Holocaust bucks the trend."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 30.09.2006

The cabaret artist Alfred Dorfer sneers at the political status quo in Austria as the country goes to the polls. "The election in Austria is over and on Sunday the ballot boxes are opened. Political apathy has reached chronic levels. The failure to give a damn is the obvious symptom. The reasons were written on the wall in capitals. With the talent of a group of amateur actors, the electorate has been eavesdropping on the silent speeches of aspiring politicians. The choice is greater than ever which confirms the suspicion that choice doesn't necessarily mean freedom."


Die Tageszeitung 30.09.2006

Nina Apin was listening in as Norbert Lammert, Adolf Muschg and Seyran Ates (see portrait "Stepping out of the fire") began to discuss the book "Patriotismus, Verfassung, Leitkultur" (Patriotism, constitution and the defining culture) and then went for the jugular: "As the debate veered towards a lesson in constitutional democracy, Muschg mentioned the cancellation of 'Idomeneo' and suggested that most Muslims would also protest against Jesus' head being severed. The audience reacted audibly. Seyran Ates hit back at this naive charge. 'There are Muslims who are more than ready to cut the head off other Gods,' she said, refering to the Buddha statues which were destroyed in Afghanistan and demanded that the 'intolerable tendency to be submissive' to radical Islam must be stopped."