HRN-Music 
Cultural governance – the task of a European Cultural Capital City
Let me briefly make at the outset some remarks about the work done for this meeting in Patras 2006, work ongoing since the ECCM network held its symposium in Athens last October.
Alone the fact that Spyros Mercouris traveled 10 times to Patras, and I with him three times (5th of December / 9th of February / 24th of February) says a lot about the effort needed to secure the contract for the exhibition. In particular, the last time we went the appointment was 11.00, but we were left stranded in the corridor for one and a half hour with no coffee being offered. I have never seen Spyros hurt as much as at that time. Here a man who has spoken to presidents and great personalities, a bundle of energy for everything he does, was kept waiting. This is no little matter. After all to drive all the way from Athens to Patras, and we started early in order to be on time, and then find out that the people of Patras 2006 were not really available until the time suited them, that underlines a lack of correspondence and of responsiveness. May there be whatever differences, politeness and hospitality should be the underlying premise of any European Cultural Capital.
I had been very critical of Patras 2006 and the discussion within the ECCM Network turned into silence due to the reason given if the network receives money from Patras, it would be impossible to do any evaluation. But here I would say the network was not really informed properly about what was going on or to put it differently, Patras was let off the hook too early since the message that reached the members was the contract had been signed, when in fact this was not the case.
It is not difficult to image without contract no money. Spyros Mercouris was clearly in a huge dilemma in having to do the work and to invest without guarantee on how to pay for everything. Having been beside him throughout these difficult months since October 2005 and the holding of the symposium, I found it disturbing to have to take this squeezing of time as condition to do tremendous work while the uncertainty of payment hovered over everything. As artistic director Alatsis puts it, this is a Greek illness, namely to let things start very slowly and only in the end they accelerate to get such a great event as the Olympics or now the European Cultural Capital done. He added in the interview I made with him for Heritage Radio Network that this has historical reasons too difficult to make any meaningful analysis; he recommends it is better to say it is like that and then to try to go forward. He advocates seeing the year of being the European Cultural Capital not as an end but as a start and hence views it as construction site where work – debate – on the future of Europe is being started. My question with regards to such conception is whether we deal here with reality or not again with a kind of rationalization that does not allow any learning process as Thomas McCarthy described in the case of Cork going through a tremendous journey of maturation from the first application brief to the full implementation of what is after all a complex concept.
The concept of European Cultural Capital is complex because culture demands quite a different approach than the organization of festivals or carnivals. Again Artistic director Alatsis in his interview for Heritage Radio Network pointed out something relevant to this point. He said that to invite a famous dance choreographer, to show his work, that is easy, but to organize a debate around his dance concept with local artists, that means to fill the European dimension with life, that is not easy but should be done for this is what being a Cultural Capital should be about: the start of debate with people as to what they live in their daily lives and what they need as European vision if it is to become concrete in their lives.
Already at the symposium you may recall the brief exchange I had with the mayor of Patras about the concept of ‘cultural governance’. This remark of mine came after Hassemer from Berlin said to the address of Patras that as European Cultural Capital it has responsibility not only to Patras or to Greece but to the whole of Europe. In other words, cultural governance has to do with ‘assuming responsibility’ for what is happening to culture in Europe during that year. That responsibility needs to be passed on to the next Cultural Capital City. Therefore, it will be crucial to know what is entailed in this concept of ‘cultural goverance’.
In working on the online exhibition parallel to the ECCM exhibition about “Twenty years of history of European Cultural Capital Cities” there come to one’s mind naturally many questions and observations. All of them are based on own experiences that started with organizing in Athens 1994 when Greece held the EU Presidency the Fifth Seminar for the Flemish government about “Cultural Actions for Europe”. The conference was sub-divided into ten workshops, including one evaluating under the chairmanship of Eric Antonis Cultural Capital Cities of Europe. When Thessaloniki was Cultural Capital, Spyros Mercouris and I organized the symposium about “experience and vision” and when Brussels was with eight other cities Cultural Capital City in 2000 I was working as advisor to the Committee of Culture, Media, Sports, Youth and Education of the European Parliament. In knowing Bob Palmer and others of his team I got to know in particular the project Café 9 which attempted a horizontal organization for dialogue between all nine cities in order to exchange experiences about 80 different projects such as ‘fear in the city’ and ‘favorite travel routes through the city’. Café 9 became for me the starting premise for what is now Heritage Radio Network, namely an Internet Radio aiming to promote and to protect cultural heritage in Europe and this with the conceptual understanding that cultural heritage does form the common base for a potential European identity. I also organized when Weimar was Cultural Capital City a photo exhibition of 16 photographers grouping their works around the theme ‘OSMOSIS’ to indicate that culture in Europe is very much about seeking a balance between own cultural articulation and taking in the impulses of other cultures. Diversity is not static; it lives off this cultural exchange or rather mutual challenging of each other’s identities so that European identity must be very much as Adorno would put it a non-identity. Therefore, European Cultural Capital Cities need to keep open the space for further inputs and creativities to enrich that European non-identity.
So we have already a first definition of cultural governance: namely to keep each other’s identities open and willing to be challenged by other identities so as to keep European self-understanding free of orthodoxy and fundamentalism, dogmatism and assertiveness. We have these peculiar forms of hard definitions of cultural identities which can become violent in the belief to be threatened by other cultures as was the case in Ireland with regards to the British influence in the 1920s and we have the danger of larger cultures constantly trying to prove their superiority even if this means in reality just having one national identity linked to the nation state. Certainly France has here huge problems with its diverse cultural groups coming from countries like Algiers and not integrated at all as the street riots showed in especially the poor suburban districts. Here one can just wonder if the rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty robbed these people of that extra European dimension for then it becomes a mere matter of being French citizen or nothing else. Had the Constitutional Treaty been ratified, there would be besides the French the European dimension making possible a mediation between someone having a different cultural background than French and still living in France. That point reflects also what cultural governance should be about in Europe: a cultural mediation between the national traditions and this something added over and beyond any kind of national claim of identity and of well being as Greeks are fond to express when explaining their stance on the identity issue.
Of interest when reviewing some of the concepts implemented by past European Cultural Capital Cities, there stands out Antwerp with Eric Antonis focusing on not wishing to show what has already been achieved in the past, but to perceive the task of a Cultural Capital City to bring out something new. The fact that twenty composers were asked to write new pieces of music of which 19 had their premieres during that year of being Cultural Capital underlines this type of cultural governance I wish to explain. It is linked very much to the concept of philosophy as advocated by Kant who said philosophy is the art to draw out of people the best thoughts and creative aspects by asking good questions. This method involves several things aside from good questions which are not so easy to come by for my mother said that the world needs artists but artists need people who can listen. In other words, cultural governance is about creating the space for new expressions and thereby it is about strengthening the receptivity of the arts and of European cultures. If people are only interested in expressing themselves and to show what they can do, they risk remaining locked in what are ‘cultural tautologies’ preventing any European debate. In Brussels I could experience this repeatedly at the European Parliament for when the Welsh delegation came, it was only about Wales; the same happened with the Spanish or Italian delegations. They would use the European stage to project themselves but in the audience there would be only Welsh, Spanish or Italian members who would live and work in Brussels. There was no European audience and so each member state remains relatively isolated in their respective cultural articulations. Hence it does matter if cultural governance is understood, as the case of Antwerp ’93 as making “a conscious choice in favor of art: in favor of nuance, criticism, asking questions, exploring doubts and looking for answers.”
I mentioned beforehand ‘cultural governance’ has something to do with responsibility for what happens to culture in Europe. Responsibility in the moral sense is something expressed by Solshenitzyn who said about himself as writer that he feels responsible for everything what goes on in Russia, including human rights abuses, as if a ‘second government’. This concept of responsibility relates to Adorno’s definition of art and culture, namely in seeking redemption while bestowing everything to the ‘imaginary witness’, we should try re-construct things as it happened and shall happen. This reaccounting and anticipation should not be beautified but be very realistic. We know from novels which characters have an independent mind and which ones are but puppets of the writer and thereby express his political opinions and fulfill his determination of people and life. Yet culture is about the freedom of articulation and thus Adorno would say, by reaccounting things as it happened, this gives us a second chance to avoid in future making the same mistakes. Consequently culture is very much learning out of failures, including such massive failures as was the Holocaust and the perishing of millions of people throughout Europe.
It should be noted that such a concept has nothing to do with ‘success stories’ as wished for by the media and business. The smile of a child once understood and loved by his mother can become a theme for dancers as the case with Heike Henning in Leipzig who started a dance performance under the title “A smile goes through Europe”. Cultural governance has to do with safeguarding the balance of life, including the upholding of a ‘friendly attitude towards the world’, something Cassirer said is the perquisite for any cultural creativity.
So ‘cultural governance’ means each European Cultural Capital City has to take responsibility for what is happening to culture and undertake everything so that Europe retains the ability to uphold such responsibility. To bring out the best, this means also giving recognition to such cultural activities that point into the future. Herbert Distel, creator of the ‘museum of drawers’, the smallest but prestigious museum of the world containing 500 art works of artists like Picasso, May Ray, Beuys, said Europe needs similar visions and expressions as Greek poets and thinkers managed in Ancient Greece and whose expressions stayed with us for the next two thousand years. Nothing less is demanded of every European Cultural Capital City, namely to contribute towards the making of such future visions which will be able to sustain our lives for the next 2000 years. If we succeed in that then European Cultural Capital Cities will make their contribution to Europe’s ability to face the challenges of the 21st century.
Last updated: 31. December 2005