This rhetorical question illustrates perfectly well the reasons why San Sebastian deserved the title of the European Capital of Culture 2016. As the choice of Wroclaw has provoked lengthy discussions in Poland, similarly the choice of San Sebastian in Spain became a very controversial topic that was discussed in the whole country. Córdoba was the favourite but everyone is familiar with this city, right? To begin with, let’s explain what it means when a city is chosen as the European Capital of Culture. The tradition started in 1985 and, according to the official website of the European Commission, the title is supposed to express and promote the cultural diversity of Europe. The city is chosen as a European Capital of Culture not “solely for what it is, but mainly for what it plans to do for a year that has to be exceptional” (for more info go to: http://ec.europa.eu/culture/our-programmes-and-actions/doc413_en.htm). Similar charges have been made against Wroclaw which is a well known and popular city, visited by a vast number of tourists. Why not to award the title to a city that is interesting and has a rich cultural offer but needs some good marketing? And this is exactly what Spanish did. Why then, so many controversies?

The opponents of the selection of San Sebastian explain that the city is the cultural capital of the Basque Country, a separatist region of Spain that is mainly linked to a terrorist organisation ETA. San Sebastian is the capital of Gipuzkoa province, the most Basque part of the Basque Country. What’s more, the last local election was won by nationalists from a new coalition called Bildu. The critics point out that Donostia will reinforce itself as a stereotype of the Basque Country struggling for independence, which will present all of Spain in a bad light. And the reality is completely opposite.

San Sebastian’s application for the European Capital of Culture title was based on a programme called “olas de energia ciudadana” which loosely translated means “waves of citizens’ energy”. You can read more about the idea here: http://www.sansebastian2016.eu/web/guest/ss_ciudad_candidata/porque_ss. In a nutshell, the project intends to engage citizens through culture. As a result, Donostia aims to battle negative stereotypes and images of the Basque Country as either the most dangerous or boring region. There is a lot happening in San Sebastian e.g., apart from the international Film Festival, every year the city organises an international Jazz Festival (Jazzaldia).

San Sebastian also holds many local celebrations and festivals. The most famous one is Tamborrada on 20th January (the city’s festival), when the entire city follows the drums’ rhythm for 24 hours. Local festivals give a great opportunity to familiarise oneself with Basque culture and traditions which are very interesting and so different from the Spanish ones. It’s difficult to eat paella or drink sangria in San Sebastian. However, you can listen to some traditional Basque poets (bertsolaris), see Basques playing pelota and instead of tapas try Basque pintxos.

The title of the European Capital of Culture, awarded to San Sebastian, gives the city a long-awaited opportunity that was greeted by its citizens with great joy when the results were announced. Bilbao is famous for the Guggenheim Museum, Pamplona for its San Fermin festival (crowds running away from bulls on the streets of Pamplona) and what about San Sebastian? 2016 brings an opportunity for this Basque city to gain popularity among tourists and culture admirers from all over the world.

Spain is a clearly divided country where the particular regions are more important than the country as a whole. The Basque Country is the region where the separatist feeling is the strongest.  It’s also the only region where terrorism has managed to spread. For this reason one can understand why the rest of Spain was reserved about the news of awarding this city in this particular part of the country. Donostia, however, is not only about fighting for autonomy and demonstrating against Spanish government, it’s also a beautiful city, amazing people and considerable cultural diversity. It’s a city which, as a result of its actions in the recent years and plans for the future, definitely deserves a chance that comes with the title of the European Capital of Culture.

Zorionak (congratulations!)           

*I’m not sure what would be the best way to translate a phrase “Aupa Donosti” as “aupa” literally means something like “hi/hello”, in this context though, it may be translated as “go Donostia, go”. The Basques often use this phrase while supporting one of their cities, the people of every city of the Basque Country had lots of flags and banners with exactly this slogan when watching the regatta.

Translation: Anna Martinsen

Günter Grass wrote about Israel and Iran, about their increasing conflict – the main reason of which is that one part of Tehran’s official foreign policy is a quite difficult-to-negotiate-goal – a “wipe-Israel-off-from-the-Earth” goal. Grass, however, as a writer always being original, recognizes Israel as a threat to the peace and he calls on to stop it from the murder on the Iranian nation.

While constantly analyzing the reality in a doctrinaire manner, one eventually loses contact with that reality. Grass has definitively lost that contact. He is right when he writes that Israel and Iran both have (or, as in the case of Iran, soon will have) nuclear weapons that are out of the international community’s control. Yet Israel and Iran are not in the same situation. Israel has never threatened any country with the use of weapons of mass destruction. Such actions against Israel are among the major foreign policy statements of Iran. The nuclear weapon is safe in Israel’s hands, because the leaders of this country are a guarantee that it will not be used in any aggressive manner. The Iranian leadership evidently has other plans.

Grass criticizes any possible Israeli plans of launching a first strike against Iran’s nuclear program infrastructure. Even if it occurs, it will not be an attack with weapons of mass destruction. Does the writer prefer that Iran attacks first using nuclear weapons and Israel is passively waiting for it? Is it serious?

photo: Das blaue Sofa

This is not serious of course and Mr. Günter Grass is not a person that deserves serious consideration in the political debate. He has his works, outstanding literature and this is what he is good at. In the field of politics, he appears as a primitive demagogue, populist, and a utopian storyteller, he often resounds with the facts. Now all the above comes with the anti-Israeli bigotry that infected a large portion of the extreme left in Europe, the Communists, Trotskyists, Maoists and other groups of this kind. Their irrational, instinctive hatred of the U.S. “imperialism,” which has been instilled into them one day in the era of “useful idiots” by the USSR, now pays off in the form of automatic hatred towards Israel, according to the logic of the ‘big Satan, the little Satan.” Little Hitler of the 21st century, Mr. Ahmadinejad, turns out to be an acceptable partner for anti-Israeli propaganda campaign.

Contrary to all the hopes of the people like Gunter Grass, Israel will not be anxiously waiting to see if nuclear-armed Iran fulfills its threats and attacks, for example, Tel Aviv. Israel has a right to defend itself against those threats.

As far as my opinion is concerned, Günter Grass has gone mad. I do not claim that, as a German citizen, he has no right to preach such views, because he has. I do not say either that by doing so, he has become an anti-Semite, because still it is not true. To have such views, you do not need to be anti-Semitic. You must be just crazy.

Translation: Martyna Kozik

Eva and Adele’s lives are not easy, though. I don’t have problems connected with the lack of acceptance for their image, sex or relationship in mind. Their personal lives require strong discipline and self-organization. The ceremonial of making perfect make-up and carefully picking outfits (they have two identical copies of each costume – in different sizes) lasts over 3 hours! There’s little space for private sphere. Eva & Adele epitomize their art themselves and that’s why there is no possibility of seeing them on the street without complete outfit or full make-up. Yet, it is because of their determination that they are ubiquitous in the world of art – for over 20 years they have been showing up at the most important festivals, biennales and exhibitions. However, not as artists, nor ordinary spectators, but as walking, not ordered by anyone products. This is what their performance is all about. Wearing ultra feminine, fancy creations of their own design, with strong make-up and heads shaved bald, they saunter around art galleries. They were shocking, causing sensation and arising interest. Sometimes artists were accusing them of “stealing their show” but it has to be given to them, that the idea itself, hard work and consistency have marked their position in the world of art. Symbolic, yet with clear style – it’s a wonder that nobody has yet ventured for a variation to place Eva & Adele on one of the Bruegel paintings or as pink spots on some impressionist canvas…

photo: C-Monster

As far as I’m concerned I’d say that intransigence and totality are those words that best describe their living art, on which, during presented exhibition, focuses MOCAK. We can look at amateur photos of artists (taken by their fans), their costumes, copies of pink mirrors, in front of which they do their everyday make-up or copies of their notes which exactly say how and when wear given costumes. Exhibition takes up the subject from the performance perspective. It lacks, however, the material art made by Eva and Adele, which is their main source of income. I’m aware that, on the one hand, MOCAK wanted to focus on the idea of promoting openness and tolerance towards transsexual people, which is really needed in Poland (the invitation of MP Anna Grodzka to co-author the catalog, which accompanies the exhibition, proves that), but on the other hand, is the lack of presenting at least a few of their paintings (which often have the form of futuristic projections, very autobiographic) another form of labeling? I think that, those works would make a nice completion, as they contain – just like their authors – many contradictions. They are diverse and fraught with tension. They combine the strength and delicacy, bold eroticism and pastel colors which evoke the image of a child’s world.

Of course, I don’t scorn the fact that Eva & Adele are gender-fighters. Their mutual career has begun in 1991 with their acted out wedding, which they performed (wearing marvelous dresses of their own design, of course) in Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin.  This event has started the battle for the right to enter into legal marriage. Eva, being a biological man, has long applied for a sex change operation, which was connected with the necessity of getting various medical assessments and continuous walking from court to court. When she managed to prove her rights – Eve and Adele could finally get homosexual marriage. Some would call it lunacy and unnecessary complicating of life, as they would deal with the problem much quicker and easier if they had decided for the traditional wedding, especially that Eva makes use of the constitutional decision by the German court from 2011, which gives transsexuals the possibility of legally changing sex without the necessity to change the body. Physically, for the artists, nothing has changed. They could get legal marriage earlier or do not take any apart from their 1991 performance and live just like many present couples – taking for nothing legal instructions. However, they decided for an uncompromising fight until they have reached their aim. Their fight was symbolic. Through their persistence they set a good example, not only for homo- but also for transsexuals, how to live in harmony with oneself, avoiding hypocrisy.

Eva & Adele’s main slogan is “Wherever we are – there’s a museum”. It is not said in defiance to dissociate from social labels. They want their fans and audience to associate them with the world of high art. The idea for mobile museum brings to mind Marcel Duchamp and his boîte-en-valise. Through the aspect of “mobility”, Duchamp wanted to draw attention of art institutes to increasing movement of works of art, and thus call into question the significance of originality of artistic works.  What Eva & Adele criticize is the typical perception of their art by the audience. By walking out to people, they awake their interest and rise demand for their personas. Being a walking work of art is what makes up for daily devotions, they agreed to, when choosing their path.

Translation: Piotr Gmitrowicz

This backlash was easy to predict. Turkey has been negotiating joining the European Union since 2005 but its real chances of succeeding are rather small. They have even decreased over a past few years. On the one hand, French and German are strongly opposed to this nearly 78-million, mostly Muslim country, entering the EU. On the other hand, Turkish people, feeling unwanted, slowly start to lose patience and enthusiasm trying to become a member of the European Union.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, particularly explicitly demonstrates his objections. In Turkey, people view him as the main obstacle on their way to the integration with the EU. Candan Azer, former Turkish ambassador in Warsaw, stated: “For centuries we have had good relations with France but since Sarkozy took power it cannot be said to be true anymore. His comments on Turkish candidacy are arrogant and impolite” (“Gazeta Wyborcza” 12/23/2011). Alican Talya, the expert on French-Turkish relations at the Paris Institute for International and Strategic Relations, voiced an opinion that France’s move will only cause “a wave of nationalism and it will only hinder the internal discussion in Turkey”, rather than make its government officially own up to genocide.

photo: Argenberg

The disrespectfulness of “powerful and wealthy” of this world towards “weaker” nations, their inability to establish partner relationships and unwillingness to make effort to understand other than their own way of thinking – or it could be just an ignorance – is one of main reasons of disagreements and conflicts, not only on world diplomacy level but also on socially build world-views. The other is the characteristic and psychologically understandable oversensitivity of the “less important” nations over their own pride and dignity. It concerns mainly those nations, which thought of bygone greatness and, at the same time, trauma caused by its loss are still alive in their subconsciousness – nations like Turkey, Iran or even Poland.

Meanwhile, the number of supporters of Turkish membership in the EU is steadily decreasing. Europe sets high requirements for Turkey, claiming that it does not meet many standards of democratic country. While the EU is struggling with the crisis in Eurozone, Turkey is growing in strength – its economic growth reaches 11%. Moreover, Turkey is recently more interested in strengthening its position in the Muslim world rather than in knocking on the EU doors, which is humiliating and of no effect. In the relations with France, Turkey takes the firm counteroffensive and in retaliation for the act introducing penalties for negating the genocide of Armenians, it accuses France of genocide in Algeria: “French president has started to look for electoral votes by taking the advantage of hatred towards Muslim and Turkish – stated on Friday Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. – Voting in the country where 5mln Muslims live, has clearly shown, how dangerous proportions racism, discrimination and islamophobia have reached in France”. He added: “As it has been estimated, 15% of Algerian population has been slaughtered by French after 1945. It was genocide”. According to Turkish Prime Minister, President Sarkozy may ask about it his father, Pal Sarkozy, who served in French Foreign Legion” (wyborcza.pl 12/23/2011).

2. The book “Bitter-sweet home”. Report from the heart of Turkey by Necla Kelek is a critical voice about the integration of Turkey with the EU. Listening to it helps to get more conscientious insight into issues derivatively presented as a subject matter of diplomatic games, in which those issues get manipulated.

The author, born in Istanbul, came to Germany when she was 10 and she presently lives in Berlin. She is a sociologist dealing with the issues concerning religion and migrations. She has rather ambivalent attitude to her first motherland: she feels a strong, emotional bond with it, but on the other hand, she judges many facts, phenomena and states of affairs that constitute present nature of Turkey negatively and emotionally.

The concept for Kelek’s book was born out of the feeling of eradication, the lack of specific place that could be called “home”: “Home? What does it really mean? Maybe she was then in Istanbul, when the sun was rising and people living on Hürriyet street, were we lived, were unshuttering the windows to let refreshing breeze from Bosphorus in” (p. 7). “No one from my family can name one place, where they would like to come back: it’s not our parents house in Central Anatolia, nor Istanbul, Ankara or Bursa, where our relatives live; neither it is Ayvalık nor Lower Saxony, where we grew up – my siblings and I. Home it’s not a place” (p. 8).

If it is not “a place”, then what it is? Most certainly it is a state of mind, feeling, conviction, “a place in one’s heart”: “Maybe it is strength, longing for the lost. I was looking for it while on visit to Turkey. I was making the «sentimental journeys» hoping to find it, but the very first attempt has fizzled out, as it existed no more. ” (p. 10); “Maybe it’s the intimacy that is established when one spends childhood together” (p. 7). However, childhood passes and the feeling of identity – experiencing so far, as data entitled to human to some extent “naturally” – evolves, during the process of socialization, into a task to do. It is even harder to accomplish it, especially when the environment of existence living in it, diametrically changes. “One who leaves, forever loses the place that was their home” (p. 10). They also lose themselves, in a sense of whom they were and whom they will never be again. The reflection always comes too late. “I came to Germany 40 years ago, when I was 10. Leaving Turkey, I left not home, but my cat Kocabaşa, the Big Head. It was it I cried after, not Istanbul. The feeling, that I’ve lost something more, came later” (p. 8). This “something more” is, at the same time, “home” and inextricably coupled with it the feeling of identity, that establishes itself through the relations with “the world” – when “the world” changes, identification procedures are also changed. “My parents have never felt completely at home in Istanbul. They remained guests from Anatolia, who have left it after 20 years. In Anatolia we were Circassians, in Istanbul – Anatolians and in Germany we are Turkish. Whenever we go to Turkey they call us Almancis – those who have become Germans. Together with my siblings we have become helpless; where should we bury our mother when she dies?” (p. 8-9).

The author had a twofold “task to do”: to arrange/establish from scratch relations with “home”, or even two “homes”, and what remains in a close relation, to regain strained identity. “Before I started to square up with the country I was born in, I had to make it clear where I belong to. Am I Turkish with the German passport or German with Turkish origins? Am I writing this book, about my fellow countrymen, as a Turkish? Or as a German? And who gave me the right to judge Turkey? Me, who have left?” (p. 10). It is a legitimate question, considering that Muslim societies function as inseparable communities, leaving which or even distancing from which, establishing ones individual “I” is treated as betrayal: “How can I be myself and not betray my parents, my own country? – a Turkish teenager asked me once” (p. 11). The key to dispelling those doubts can be found within them: it is that distanced, laying between cultures, individualized and “speaking its own voice” (s. 11) “I” that is capable of seeing the world in a more “clear” way. “Immigrants ready for that confrontation have double capital at their disposal: we know the culture we come from, we learn local one, and from the differences between those two, something good may spring into existence. The look sharpens, a person sees some social connections more critically than someone who grew up within them and treat them as obvious” (p. 11).

And with this “sharpened look” – both more attentive and critical – Kelek looks at her “bitter-sweet home”, where she comes from. “Bitter-sweet is the most accurate adjective. There is still so much in Turkey that seems to me incredibly familiar, like Orhan Veli’s poems, novels by Halide Edip and Orhan Pamuk, sociability, dishes tempting with their sweetness, songs full of nostalgia from Istanbul or the shimmering of Bosphorus. What makes me angry and cause frustration are girls and women from Diyarbakır, Malatya, Gaziantep, who do not know their rights and are left alone to themselves by politicians; small Christian societies forced to protect themselves from Muslim hostility behind high walls; readiness to commit «honor killing»; human indifference to everything that is the testimony of history, what comes from the times before Ottoman ruling, tabooing of the past, in which Turkish were persecuting, chasing away and murdering Armenians and Greeks” (p. 11-12).

3. Her journey to Turkey, Kelek made under the banner, which Turkish Chamber of Commerce & Industry used to advertize itself in German newspapers. “It’s time to change the stereotype of Turkey, it’s time to take a fresh look at it”. The author has decided to take the advice but in more perversive way: “I listened and I went to Anatolia. Most of the time I was traveling alone, but in some districts of Turkey, where women were not allowed to travel by themselves, my partner, Peter Mather, had to accompany me. The aforementioned perversity manifests itself not only through the suggestion that Turkey is basically unfriendly or even hostile towards women – unless they remain single, without man’s “protection” – but also in the choice of Anatolia as a place of peregrination, which needs to be taken a fresh look at. Such a look, however, brings up many negative, even scandalous (from the European point of view) aspects of living in a Turkish province, the whole country has been changing into for some time now.

Kelek’s thesis is daring and controversial and for many simply unacceptable: Turkey is as much civilized, in the European way, as the geographical position indicates, which is 3% – the rest is more or less an anachronistic savagery. “Turkey is not this 3% of Europe – if we take into consideration geographical position and citizens’ attitude, these are not those, who partying in Istanbul circles of high society or in Cihangiru or Nişantaşı cafes, call themselves modern, open to world and they do not want to accept that the city by the Bosphorus is inhibited for a long time by «village people», mocked as shepherds and peasants. Such ignorance costs a lot: «It’s our turn now» – I’ve heard from MP’s brother on behalf of Tayyipa Erdoğan’s party. «We» these are the million of people from Anatolia, strongly holding to tradition, forever despised by ruling elites – Ottomans, Kemalists – regarded as backward, remaining in archaic clan structures” (p. 12).

According to German sociologist, Anatolia has always been exploited and harshly treated. It has always been just a province for the “proper” state or civilizational center: “For warrior Ottomans, Anatolia, which covers 97% of the country’s area, was a transitory camp. They pressed to the West, because there they could get more loot. For Atatürk and the founders of the republic it was a Pan-Turkism recruitment base, a region where all Muslims have been chased away and everything that belonged to them was distributed to believers, «who could be trusted», and thus, made them dependent” (p. 11-12). This way, those enormous tracts were becoming relatively – in relation to the “European” part – more backward and anachronistic. The further to the East, the worse. “During my journeys in the last two years, I’ve visited a great number of Anatolian places, talked to locals, experienced reality, which has nothing to do with «colorful reality» praised by Turkish government . It’s rather quite distant from the standards valid in decent European democracies” (p. 13-14).

According to Kelek, the situation all over the country has worsened. The sudden westernization of Turkey, which has started after the WWI – along with Mustafa Kemal Pasha, “the father of Turkish”, Atatürk rising to power and the proclamation of the republic (1923) – has been gradually losing its violence, and in 2002 when Justice and Development Party [AKP] with the current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at lead seized the power, it has undoubtedly weakened. Although the aforementioned party, in the eyes of the West, represents the “moderate wing of Islam” and is sometimes viewed as buffer protecting against fundamentalism expansion. In the author’s opinion, creating such an image is just an element of the strategy, which aims at complete Islamization of the country and restriction of democratic freedom: “The call to prayer is issued five times a day from the minaret, with the earliest one at dawn – it’s all the same, even in the most remote parts of the country. Through screeching speakers resounds the truth that the only God is Allah and Mohammed is his prophet, as somebody could forget about it over the night” (p. 246).

The culture of Islam has an authoritarian character and, in its essence, even antidemocratic, aspiring to gain full control and subjection over human: “the whole society is dominated by the culture of control and distrust – it’s especially effective in small cities. People watch over each other. They feel authorized to do that” (p. 246). The society modeled in this culture has a patriarchal, tribal and clan structure: “People live in groups. The ideals are family and community. From the youngest years children are taught that: the family takes care about you and protects you; the family is what you are. But it is also true that the family is a system of control, in which the word «father» means the law and where brothers are their sisters watchmen” (p. 246). On the next page we read that: “There exist thousands – both written and unwritten – laws, orders and bans regulating social or even everyday life of the non-believers. Freedom of an individual is suspicious in this culture. They do not have any rights” (p. 247). As one can easily guess, it applies particularly to women: “Over the Muslim society, just like curse, there hangs mistrust towards own wife and other people’s wives making it pusillanimous and oppressive” (p. 247).

According to the author, authoritarian and dogmatic in its every form, religion itself is not a factor determining Turkish unadjustedness to the EU norms: “Turkey does not meet the conditions allowing it to join the EU, not because it is a Muslim country, but because it cannot distinguish religion from nation, does not respect women’s rights nor guarantees religious tolerance. Moreover, its political situation is not stable enough, which makes Turkey an unreliable partner”.

The social reality of Turkey as presented in the Necla Kelek’s book has an oppressive character, that degrades an individual “I” to the form of totally subordinated to archaic social norms individual, presenting itself as a part of larger whole, all-embracing “we”, supported, on the one side by effective mechanisms of integration and on the other side by an absolute exclusion. This other side, the “bitter” one, dominates, according to the author.

Translation: Piotr Gmitrowicz

Dear all,

On February 10th, 2012, the President of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Serhiy Kvit banned the exhibition of the Visual Culture Research Center “Ukrainian Body” that explored the issues of corporality in contemporary Ukrainian society. Serhiy Kvit explained his decision in the following way: “It’s not an exhibition, it’s shit”. After the act of censorship, which drew a wide response in the Ukrainian and foreign media, the President of NaUKMA has initiated a number of bureaucratic restrictions against the Visual Culture Research Center as the organizers of the exhibition. On February 23rd the Academic Council of the university led by Serhiy Kvit passed a resolution to bar the activities of VCRC.

On March 12th, the President of NaUKMA Serhiy Kvit made a resolution on the prohibition of all events and exhibitions in the Old Academic building, where the Visual Culture Research Center has been working since 2008, referring to the building’s “condition conducive to accident”. Despite its “accident rate” the galleries of Old Academic building are shortly to be used as the library archives. Hence the President of NaUKMA closed the VCRC’s exhibition “Ukrainian Body” at first, then the Center itself, and eventually the premises where the VCRC is conducting events, announcing their “condition conducive to accident”.

We consider such gestures unacceptable acts of censorship against public dialogue on crucial social and political problems. The present sanctions are blocking the Visual Culture Research Center’s current and future activities. The Center has become a milieu that provides critical thought and alternative knowledge for NaUKMA community and beyond. One can see the scope of Center’s activity on its webpage http://vcrc.ukma.kiev.ua/uk/archive/, it includes many international conferences and seminars, exhibitions, presentations and talks, and other events that attracted many students and broad public. NaUKMA has already received letters of support, asking to resume the Center’s work in full scope, among them from Slavoj Žižek, Eric Fassin, David Elliott, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Serhiy Yekelchyk, Tarik Cyril Amar, John-Paul Himka, Aleksandr Bikbov, Michel Onfray, Artur Zmijewski, Vitaly Chernetsky, Oksana Timofeeva, Mikhail Mayatskiy, Sara Goodman, Alek Epstein and others.

We call for the immediate restoration of academic and artistic freedom at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and ask the President of NaUKMA Serhiy Kvit to resume the Center’s work in full scope in its current working space.

Please join this initiative to support the activities of the Visual Culture Research Center. Please sign the petition responding to this letter with your name, title and affiliation or write your own letter to the President of NaUKMA Serhiy Kvit (kwit@ukma.kiev.ua) asking to resume the Center’s activity in the Old Academic building.

Please spread this petition.

For more information about the situation, please read the following:

http://ua.euronews.net/2012/02/14/ukraine-modern-art-controversy/

http://derstandard.at/1329870496526/Ende-eines-Kulturzentrums-Kiew-Kein-Raum-fuer-den-ukrainischen-Koerper

http://ukraineanalysis.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/sex-nationalism-and-academic-freedom-the-controversy-at-kyiv-mohyla/

Thank you for your attention and support!

What is interesting, though not surprising, is the fact that when everything relating to sex has been shown and validated, it has become uninteresting to art. At several dozen national pavilions scattered around the Venice Biennale there is not a single work exuding the spirit of Eros. Tanatos, however, is doing well – he is present at the majority of the pavilions. Does it mean that he has won? Not really – he is just following his brother’s footsteps, only several years later. Images of death will soon become as trite as images of sex. Today they still seem to be worth being shown in different ways, however usually in political and multicultural contexts.

photo: giacomo.gras

Film death

At the Danish pavilion, probably one the most connected with politics, death is present thanks to an American photographer Taryn Simon. The „Zahra/Farah” picture was made as a still for the final scene of the film “Redacted”. The art of make-up reached the top here and Simon knows how to adjust light and focus. As a result, the Iraqi actress Zahra Zubaidi looks like a real corpse.

In reality Zubaidi is alive but the film in which she starred did not bring her success. Since the family of the actress saw the film, they have been threatening to kill her. Friends and neighbors also express their disapproval – they all think that the role played by Zubaidi was pornographic. Therefore, the actress applied for asylum in the USA, though considering the film’s plot, this is not an obvious choice. The screenplay of “Redacted” is based on events that took place on 12 March 2006 near the Iraqi Al-Mahmudijja. That day four American soldiers barged into a house on the outskirts of the village next to which they had their post. The group’s leader, Steven Green, had been impressed by the beauty of a 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi who lived in the house. Planning the rape and persuading three other soldiers to complicity took him several days. The girl’s both parents and her 6-year-old sister were shot in order not to disturb the action and not to complain. Abeer was raped by all four soldiers and then killed. Her body, from the waist down, was poured over with kerosene and burned to cover the tracks.

The case came to light after three months because the perpetrators were unable to keep their silence. They got arrested and judged. Green was sentenced to unconditional life imprisonment and the remaining three soldiers got 90, 100 and 110 years in prison with the possibility of shortening the term of imprisonment. Some months later Brian De Palma started shooting “Redacted” for which he was awarded with the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The film cost $5 million but its distribution revenues amounted to almost $800 thousand, of which merely $65 thousand in the USA.  As a consolation, the French film magazine „Cahiers du Cinéma” claimed “Redacted” the best 2008 film.

Three years later we became convicted again that not only crime can inspire art but also art can inspire crime. On 2 March 2011 at the Frankfurt am Main Airport a 21-year-old post office worker opened fire on a bus transporting American pilots. Two people got killed and other two injured. When asked for the motive, the attacker – a Germany-born grandson of immigrants from Kosovo – said that the day before on YouTube he had seen American soldiers raping a Muslim girl. What he had seen was the scene from “Redacted”, the same scene that made Zubaidi flee Iraq.

Press death

While the Danes invited to their pavilion many world-famous artists, neighbors from opposite focused on their fellow countryman. As opposed to Simon, who showed in Venice only one picture but it was made by himself, the Swiss Thomas Hirschhorn, the author of “Crystal of resistance” installation, used someone else’s pictures – a lot of them and depicting the corpses as if they were real. Yet again the reality outdid stage production: no actor is obviously capable of performing headless and there are no models who would agree to have their stomach split open. The origin of Hirschhorn’s horrific idea is unknown – the only thing that comes to mind is police archives and pictures that were taken by war correspondents and were too graphic to be published in the newspapers.

Simultaneously, the public reaction to the picture of Saddam Hussein with a noose round his neck or  to an image of a Hispanic girl whose leg had been torn off by some unknown force is oddly calm, which is probably the most alarming thing noticed during the visit at the Swiss pavilion. Nobody runs out screaming and even though the pictures make people feel like vomiting they somehow manage to see the whole exhibition. Maybe the visitors are not aware of what they see. It is highly probable, since death in the pictures selected by the mountain crystals lover is not terrifying. Saddam cut off the rope looks like he did when he was pulled out of the underground bunker. Losing a half of one’s head, however, seems to dehumanize so much that we perceive the mutilated corpses as unknown objects – they are so unobvious that they encourage to be scrutinized.

Sensitivity is dulled probably by the fact that Hirschhorn’s installation consists of much more than pictures of headless corpses or bodiless heads. At the Swiss pavilion one can also find hundreds of garden chairs with cellphones, dozens of Barbie dolls, a dozen or so aquariums (including several smashed ones), numerous cans and about a million of cotton buds attached to them with sellotape. There are also two Paper Mache mountain grottos inhabited by stuffed eagle and a marmot, a few punching bags wrapped in oriental carpets, gym equipment tightly covered with aluminum foil and several dozen of worn-out tires covered with the same material. Apart from gruesome pictures, we can see the covers of last year’s magazines (e.g. German “Focus” asks if it is high time to standardize the GCSE exams in the whole country) and variations on the Brancusi’s famous “Endless Column”. The title crystals stick out of disemboweled mannequins and smashed old TV sets.

However absurd it sounds, everything composes well and the pictures of sudden death seem to be an appropriate counterpoint to the gathered items. According to the optimistic interpretation, it should remind the inhabitants of the wealthy and safe West that getting injured is a part of everyday life, as is cleaning your ears, talking on the cellphone and playing with Barbie dolls. In the realistic version, Hirschhorn familiarizes us with the death of Muslims, Black men and Hispanics by making it a part of our esthetic habitat.

Real death

In January 2010, in the gardens of the Cairo Opera House, an Egyptian artist, Ahmed Basiony, launched his installation “Thirty Days of Running in Place”. In the room with transparent walls, dressed in plastic overalls tightly covering the whole body, he run – bearing in mind how small the room was, virtually in place – every day for an hour. The overalls were equipped with digital sensors measuring the number of movements and the amount of the secreted sweat. The data was processed electronically (Basiony wrote the relevant program himself) and displayed in a visually attractive form to the public.

Officially, running in place was supposed to be art on the solely individual level – recording the amount of energy consumed by the artist. When interpreted in such a way, it would be a part of a popular trend in contemporary art of treating the artist’s body as the material to be artistically molded. In the description of installation for the Egyptian censorship, Basiony was doing something similar to the thing done a decade earlier by Joanna Rajkowska who was preparing an advertising campaign for the series of drinks “Satisfaction guaranteed” apparently containing pieces of her own body.

Obviously, it was not the only possible interpretation. According to Basiony’s friends, one of whom is currently a curator of the Egyptian pavilion in Venice, thirty days were supposed to be a symbol of thirty years that passed between the day of assuming the presidency by Husni Mubarak and the day of launching the sports-plastic-electronic installation. The runner running in place – losing his energy not for pleasure – was not the single artist but the entire Egypt.

A year later, the “place-runners” unexpectedly got close to the finish line. Historians are the ones that will be performing the detailed analysis of factors that drew the Egyptians to the Tahrir square, though financial advisers also played an enormous role – speculating with food, they raised its prices, which enraged the people. Therefore, motivated by Facebook, the crowds took to the streets. On 26 January Ahmed Basiony wrote in his profile update: “If we manage to withstand, I have great expectations. I got severely beaten by the police. But tomorrow I am going out there anyway. They want war, we want peace. All I am trying to do is to regain a part of my nation’s dignity”. Whereas on the 27 January his update read: “One has to be well-equipped to be able to participate in a revolution: a bottle of vinegar to fight the tear gas, protective masks and shawls to inhale the vinegar; gas for self-defense, sore throat lozenges, food and beverages… You mustn’t use violence against security agents or insult them. Vandalism is also prohibited, since it is our country. Bring the camera with you, don’t be afraid and don’t be a wimp”.

The following day Ahmed Basiony died from a police bullet, confirming what he was trying to convince the censors of: the body of the artist, the artist himself, can become a material of which the work of art will be created. At the Egyptian pavilion in Venice, apart from the records from “Thirty Days of Running in Place”, you can see the films that he was making during his last days on the Tarhir Square.

Political death

Unluckily, the Polish pavilion is right next to the Egyptian one thus it is difficult to avoid comparisons. In the light of the accidental but true death of Ahmed Basiony, the three movies by Yael Bertana seem to be tomfoolery. Just to remind, the movies are “Mary Koszmary”[Nightmares] (2007), “Mur i wieża”[Wall and Tower] (2009) and “Zamach” [Assassination] (2011), which make up a trilogy “I zadziwi się Europa” [And so will Europe marvel]. The main protagonist is Sławomir Sierakowski played by himself. Unfortunately, he is much more convincing as the leader of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland than young guru of the Left and even his assassination (in the third part Sierakowski is shown in a coffin) does not help him appear more serious and reliable.

The subject raised in  trilogy “And so will Europe marvel” is undoubtedly important and so sensitive that it is difficult to imagine such a way of dealing with it that it would not be considered a provocation. However, Bertana’s provocation turns out to be exceptionally simple, shallow and predictable. It is a wonder that there are people in Israel – but not in Poland, which also proves the extent of failure – who were actually outraged at this idea. Everything starts with the speech made by Sierakowski to weeded tribunes of the 10^th Anniversary Stadium. I doubt that he wrote the speech himself and I am very surprised that he agreed to deliver it. Posing as a former member of the Association of Polish Youth (ZMP), the leader of the new Left, he appeals to 3,300,000 Jews (this is approximately how many died in the Holocaust) to come to Poland. However, surprisingly enough, he does that using a tone of voice of a priest delivering his first sermon and his arguments are, on second thoughts, nationalistic. The Jews are supposed to return neither because they can freely choose the place to live nor because by living for centuries between the Warta and the Dniester rivers the Jews have acquired moral right to this land. What Sierakowski aims at is merely conducting a psychotherapy on Polish soul, thanks to which the Poles “will become Europeans”, Europe “will marvel” and everybody “will learn from us”. Nonetheless, bearing in mind the fact that it is the Poles who have more to apologize to Jews for, rather than the other way round, it seems a bit ambiguous. The reason to reconcile is clearly the willingness to improve our own well-being and not to make amends. This is more or less like if we said: “I’m sorry I beat you up because no one likes me anymore”.

In “Wall and Tower” the Jews accept Sierakowski’s invitation. They come to Poland, though instead of integrating into the Polish society, which he encouraged them to do (because in what other way could the “Polish monotonous faces change”?), they occupy the Warsaw Muranów, the area of the war ghetto, building a miniature kibbutz between the buildings from the 50s. Inside the kibbutz, they seem to learn Polish eagerly but the settlement appears ominous. The title tower reminds of the Auschwitz watchtower and at the top of the wooden fence there is a barbed wire. It seems that Sierakowski managed to convince the Jews to come back but he did not manage to convince the Poles (many of whom “are still sleeping under the Ryfka’s duvet”) to receive them with open arms. The message to the Venetian public is clear: although there are some noble individuals, the majority of Poles are still anti-Semites.

This premonition proves to be right in the third part of the trilogy. Sierakowski is assassinated in Zachęta, under the picture of Schulz (anyway,  I am wondering what would “Krytyka Polityczna” do if the death of Narutowicz was parodied by “Fronda” and Pospieszalski). The funeral is attended by crowds, though it seems difficult for Bertana to show those throngs of people: both Plac Saski and the Congress Hall are too big to be filled by about a hundred of extras. Moreover, during the memorial meeting it turns out that the great vision of Sierakowski – the leader of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland – was a great naivety. One of the speakers, addressing the public while standing under a grey golem which is supposed to be a naturalistic effigy of the protagonist, states that “the Yiddish culture is dead and missed by few” and “Jews see the comeback not as a promise but as a nightmare”.

From the leaflets distributed at the Polish pavilion we discover that the film trilogy is only a part of Bertana’s artistic project – it is equally important to create a political movement named the same as in the film. If so, it seems that even less successful artistic project may have its political victims. Having starred in “Nightmares” and “Assassination”, Sławomir Sierakowski will not be able to become a real politician, especially if real politics and the project of the repatriation of Jews, for which the leader of “Krytyka Polityczna” is to be the martyr, will be implemented at the same time. Turning everything upside down and using paradoxical symmetries are just some of the art’s main motifs. In Venice, the proximity of Polish and Egyptian exhibitions resulted in a perfect example of such phenomenon. By dying unwillingly but for real, Basiony, the artist, has become a political symbol, whereas Sierakowski, the politician, by dying a false and directed death has (forever?) become an artist at the most.

Translation: Marta Gajda

source: M4D GROUP

Without doubt, this Austrian is one of the most original, intriguing as well as the most controversial film makers of the Old Continent. Critics often describe him as an instigator, stressing that Haneke, like no other contemporary film maker, can touch upon the core of the problems in a blunt and straightforward way by immersing into social, political and cultural context. It is impossible to be indifferent to the Austrian’s cinema, his films provoke reflection and serious deliberations. However, Michael Haneke’s stories are not to be found among the simplest and easily assimilable ones. The director himself is a greatly educated person, acquainted with philosophy, psychology, with a perfect knowledge of history and rules of the visual arts, including mainly theatre and cinema. Haneke gained this knowledge during studies at the University of Vienna, which he decided to use in practice quickly .

“The White Ribbon“, one of the Austrian artist’s most recent productions awarded the Palme D’or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, appeared on the screens of Polish cinemas in November 2009. On one hand, it constitutes the essence of Michael Haneke’s style; on the other hand, it brings in a completely new quality.

Born in 1942, the director started his adventure with the cinema quite late, as, in fact, his first strictly speaking film production, „The Seventh Continent”, was created around 1989. Since mid-seventies, Haneke had created various kinds of productions for television, like many young directors in Austria at the time, but first of all, before he was engrossed in the cinema, he had been a man of the theatre. He directed several dozen performances for stages in Berlin, Munich and Vienna. Nevertheless, none of the theatre plays was able to convey exactly what Haneke had to say about the world which he closely observed and phenomena that preoccupied him. For that reason, at the end of the 1980s, he definitively turned to cinema.
An expert on German-speaking cinema, Mattias Frey divided the Austrian’s artistic work into two stages (1). In his opinion, the first one is a period between the years 1988–1997. At the time, Michael Haneke was particularly interested in Austrian society, working mainly in his homeland, criticizing and stigmatizing phenomena that disturbed him. It is possible to include “The Piano Teacher” from 2001 to this period on account of the subject matter of the film. The second stage of the Austrian director’s artistic work is marked by his latest films, financed by French subjects. Highly regarded actors from France appear in these stories, and they touch upon more universal problems. Michael Haneke appeared in the awareness of a Polish viewer after „Funny Games”, although, in fact,  it was only “The Piano Teacher” that brought the Austrian international publicity and encouraged a closer acquaintance with his cinematography .

„Benny’s Video” (1992) and „Funny Games” (1997)

Between the years 1989–1994 Michael Haneke made three films, which he described as Vergletscherungs-Trilogie (“The Emotional Glaciation” Trilogy). It includes “The seventh continent”, „Benny’s Video” and „71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance ”. The first part of this trilogy may seem a bizarre experiment, although it is “only” enough to acquaint oneself with sociological theories of Marca Augé to understand the whole production. The last story of the cycle, „71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance”, constitutes a continuation of the issues from the trilogy’s second film, and „Benny’s Video” is one of the more important productions as far as the Austrian’s perception of films is concerned.

In „Benny’s Video”, Haneke portraits a boy from a wealthy family who shuns contacts with the outside world. The teenager does not feel the need to communicate with his surroundings as he believes that his audiovisual equipment, which fills the room in which Benny lives day after day, will help him in this. During one of the visits to a video shop, the boy meets a girl, invites her to his house and shoots her because he sees a picture of a slaughtered animal in his head, which he watched on television (“murder for fun, to see what it’s like”). The boy has no remorse. In addition, he cynically persuades his parents to cover up the murder skillfully .

Mattias Frey, already mentioned above, devoted a whole article to „Benny’s Video” (2), analyzing the film from the angle of narcissistic inclinations of the main character, negative outcomes of capitalist reality (the parents had no time to look after their son, but they were able to buy him audiovisual gadgets), and the treacherous role of the mass media in today’s world. The last issue particularly deserves special attention in the context of Michael Haneke’s artistic work.

On the occasion of the premiere of „Funny Games”, the director warned against a distorted image of the world presented by the media. He blamed them for creating rather than describing reality, creating simplifications, generalizations, and relativizing. It seemed especially dangerous to him in the context of the issues connected with violence which became a topic for entertainment thanks to television and simply grew stale. The Austrian’s films devoted to violence are deliberately anti-Hollywood, because American productions in a great degree propagate a light-hearted, sensational, light image of acts of violence. Haneke wanted „Funny Games” to be in opposition to such stories as Olivier Stone’s “Natural Born Killers”, which, in the opinion of the European artist, show violence in a positive light. I try to depict violence as it really is: pain, harm done to other people – said the director (1).

The Austrian, unlike American film makers, burdens the viewer with the necessity to observe an act of violence and draw conclusions, while he presents everything in the most distanced and austere way (here, he refers this way to the precursor of this kind of narration style Robert Bresson). Haneke counts on the intelligence of the viewer who watches his films.

The plot of „Funny Games” revolves around the appearance of two guests at a weekend estate of rich city dwellers – young, innocently-looking boys who turn out to be aggressors towards a three-person family. Their violence directed towards the hosts will not be of a particularly stunning character, it will be dominated by a discourse between the torturers and their victims, as well as between each other. Suffering in „Funny Games” is reflected in the reactions, gestures or facial expressions of individual participants of the events, not in specific scenes full of dramatic effect, as these are simply not present in this film. As the story progresses, Haneke eliminates the possibility of a happy or just ending, the victims are totally helpless in the face of their torturers, whereas the murderers are calm, balanced and ruthless. An act of crime is for them great and natural entertainment. This is how the two protagonists of „Funny Games” should be perceived, as people – creations of the media, from whom the ability to distinguish between right and wrong was taken away by the relativization of violence in mass media. Haneke would wish that this parody of a thriller ( as he believes „Funny Games” to be) provoked the viewer, evoked anxiety, forced to react. In 2007, the director agreed to do an English-speaking remake of the old film, thinking that it is the only way to reach a definitely wider public than previously with the message of „Funny Games”, because the film’s message has lost none of its relevance with time. (3).

“Code Unknown” (2000)

Before Alejandro González Iñárritu analysed interpersonal communication in “Babel” and recognized essential mankind conditions associated with it, one man had already done it, and in a much sensible and intriguing way. It was Michael Haneke. “Code Unknown” is the first film created outside Austria by this director. Haneke explained the collaboration with French filmmakers by a lack of sufficient funds for the production in his homeland. He believed that in order to develop his own art, he had to consider other alternatives, as Austrian market simply began to limit him at some point. Besides, the subject matter of Haneke’s films was supposed to become more international, and thus changing the working environment seemed only natural.

“Code Unknown” is not driven by a typical plot. The film consists of multiple scenes that occasionally interweave with each other, but generally seem to be presented in a random order. However, this is not an issue at all. By means of those scenes Haneke illustrates, in an evocative manner, the failure of communication between people on interpersonal, social, political and family level. Moreover, the director questions the belief that each picture is meaningful (according to the saying “appearances can be deceptive”) and asks: can we really always correctly interpret the reality? Haneke seeks the point of communication processes, their disturbances, human behaviours that distort the message and successfully presents these in a wide spectrum. Why did he become interested in this issue at all? The new technologies, of both media representation and the political world, allow greater damage with ever-increasing speed. The media contribute to a confused consciousness through this illusion that we know all things at all times, and always with this great sense of immediacy. We live in this environment where we think we know more things faster, when in fact we know nothing at all. This propels us into terrible internal conflicts, which then creates angst, which in turn causes aggression, and this creates violence. – explains Haneke (4).

“The Piano Player” (2001)

You could joke that the English translation of “La Pianiste” is a great example of a communication error. The German title of Elfriede Jelinek’s novel, “Die Klavierspielerin” (“The Piano Player” in English), is supposed to indicate that the person is lower in the social hierarchy. Klavierspielerin is not equal to Pianistin, which refers to a person who makes a living by playing an instrument, who is genuinely talented, someone more than just an artisan. Haneke decided to change the title of the film, so that he could, as he puts it, treat the heroine with greater respect.

“The Piano Player” seems exceptional in his filmography, as it is riddled with paradoxes. In 2001 Haneke gained his popularity thanks to this film. The Grand Prix at Cannes Festival made him famous and renowned. It also helped the author of the book. The famous adaptation of her novel, allowed Elfriede Jelinek’s fascinating literature to go beyond Austria. However, it was not until 2004, that she reached the peak of her career, when she was honoured with  Nobel Prize for Literature. Nevertheless, in comparison with the novel, Haneke’s “The Piano Player” comes out rather poorly. The director emphasized the love theme and the character of a young man connected with it, whereas in the novel it is only of secondary importance. Erika’s relationship with her student was integrated with destructive mother-daughter relations – the key theme of the novel. The readers are presented with a complex, sublime and cynical study of a woman, who desperately wants to become independent in a conservative society, both as a human and as an artist. She does not succeed in it, though, and that is why she becomes a mentally unstable neurotic. Haneke put the emphasis on what is responsible for the situation of the main heroine – conservative customs of Austrian society that repress individuals, and a family as its primary cell that generates all possible interpersonal conflicts.  The director did not avoid obscenity and presented Erika’s sadomasochistic tendencies in order to shock the audience. Haneke himself stressed that he tried to find a balanced way of showing those bold scenes, so that they would not be pornographic. Since “The Piano Player” is often viewed and assessed from the angle of its obscenity, it is difficult to say whether he succeeded or not. The Austrian filmmaker apparently did not fully understand Jelinek’s perception of woman’s sexuality – which in her case was heavily marked with personal experience. So perhaps it was easier to show it from the angle of the relations between the teacher and her pupil (who, contrary to the book, was presented positively) or of sadomasochistic activities. For people not acquainted with the original book “The Piano Player” may seem a powerful, insightful masterpiece (mainly due to a perfect perfomance of Isabelle Huppert), however when contrasted with the novel, it seems to be a failure – perhaps not a complete, but still a failure.

“The Piano Player” was praised not for artistic values of its plot, but rather for the subject matter, its boldness or Huppert’s performance. The problem with this film, just like with Elfriede Jelinek’s work, lies in its local nature. The writer naturally deals with other subjects, which may relate to broader issues, but focuses mainly on mentality of Austrian society. The local context seems to be very meaningful in “The Piano Player”. The film was controversial in Austria not because of its nearly pornographic scenes, but because of a negative social diagnosis presented both by the film and the book. Being her compatriot, Michael Haneke naturally understands various notions from Jelinek’s book. It is rather unlikely that audiences outside Austria view these works of art in a similar fashion. But Haneke returned to a different, more universal subject matter in his next movies.

“Hidden” (2005)

Portraying a family is Haneke’s one of the most favourite subject matters. What is so remarkable in his work, is that he is mostly interested in the dysfunctional aspect of a family. He likes to present the collapse of this social entity, which happens due to previously unknown internal or external factors. A perfect example of this aspect of Michael Haneke’s work is “Hidden”.

The Austrian director once more addresses the issue of violence in his 2005 film, however he does not directly present violence on screen. The starting point for the film’s plot is the French occupation of Algeria. The director applied the characteristics of a thriller genre and thus creates suspense and the feeling of anxiety in the film. However the viewers, unlike in other thrillers, will never know if the situation of the family eventually resolves, who exactly harasses those people and for what purpose. “Hidden” works on two levels: an individual and political. The former analyses the feeling of guilt, which is attributed to the main hero. He tries to wipe the guilt from his memory until someone reminds him of it. The man is forced to reflect on past events, but his motivation does not come from remorse or guilt that disturbs his existence, but rather from the uncertain consequences of his past, shameful actions. Dilemmas of an individual are Haneke’s starting point for finding the culprits when we do not deal with a definite subject (e.g. a society), when the guilt has a collective nature. Is it possible to administer justice in such cases? The director also points out the danger of unsettled past crimes and silently accepted despicable deeds becoming a burden for the next generation. This political aspect is quietly present in “Hidden”, but Haneke takes this issue further in “The White Ribbon”.

“The White Ribbon” (2009)

The newest film by the Austrian filmmaker takes us to a little town in Germany, just before the outbreak of the First World War. Life goes on in a tranquil and tolerable manner, people earn their living thanks to a wealthy landowner who lives with his family in the area. The peace of the village community is disturbed by a series of dangerous acts of violence, which makes the inhabitants look for culprits among themselves. Haneke once again presents a family from a dysfunctional angle, however unlike his other films, this unrecognized dysfunction leads to disastrous consequences, which were only implied in “Hidden”. The director abandons the concept of innocent children, who this time inherit a whole range of experiences and problems left unnoticed, unrecognized and unsolved by their parents. “The White Ribbon” shows a burden of the past and present that leads to tragic actions of an entire generation.
In his newest film Haneke reveals hypocrisy of a conservative mentality, exaggerated restrictions and strict moral rules. “The White Ribbon” is extraordinary in the way that the director implies a lot in the film, but the final answer for all questions is left for the viewers, who may on their own come to a conclusion that the film is meant to be interpreted as a study of the origins of fascism. Haneke creates only formal foundations that constitute a starting point for various reflections: black and white image, straightforward plot, believable and unbiased narrator, indirect presentation of violence. Seemingly the film lacks any literality, but frightening conclusions arise automatically.

So far, the origins of European totalitarian regimes have only been discussed in serious literature. But Michael Haneke with “The White Ribbon” proves that a film can contribute to such deliberations as well. The cinematic analysis can be thorough and accurate, which can be seen in an interview with the director from couple of weeks ago in the German magazine “Spiegel”. Two interviewers seem not to realize what the film is actually about or its significance. They seem to consider the entertainment value of the cinema as superior and thus focus on formal elements of the plot (7). Speaking of the interview, its title is “Every film rapes the viewer”, which could be a perfect punchline for the article dedicated to Haneke’s work.

Bibliography (also referenced in the text):

(1) Mattias Frey: Michael Haneke (http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/haneke.html)
(2) Mattias Frey: Supermodernity, Capital, and Narcissus: The french connection to Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video (http://cinetext.philo.at/magazine/frey/bennys_video.pdf)
(3) Michael Haneke Interview by Martin Brady (http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/interviews/michael-haneke-interview/)
(4) The world that is known – Michael Haneke interviewed by Christopher Sharrett (http://www.kinoeye.org/04/01/interview01.php)
(5) Nina Hutchison: Between action and repression: The piano teacher (http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/26/piano_teacher.html)
(6) Helen Macallan, Andrew Plain: Hidden’s disinherited children (http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/07/42/hidden.html)
(7) Philipp Oehmke, Lars-Olav Beier: SPIEGEL Interview with Director Michael Haneke (http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,656419-2,00.html)

Translation: Monika Mokrosz, Maciej Rogoza

source: www.mmbialystok.pl

Wislawa Szymborska died on February 1, 2012 – a Polish poet, columnist, literature critic and Nobel Laureate in Literature. The poet’s death made people around sad; her family and friends are overwhelmed with grief as well as other people who had an opportunity to meet Wislawa Szymborska only through her poetry.

Szymborska’s literary works cannot be classified to any specific writing style. The poet also tried to avoid being assigned to any literary genre. In the preface to Selected Poetry (1967), Szymborska wrote: “I am a non-specialized poet who does not wish to be associated with any particular themes and specific manners of expressing my thoughts on important issues”. In Antoni Krauze’s film The joy of Writing, Bronislaw Maj described her poetry as “indefinable”. Stanislaw Zak said: “it is hard to classify Szymborska and her literary works into a particular literary genre. It may be even impossible due to the fact that Szymborska’s poetry has still been changing its form.  The major theme of her works is the human-being and problems one has to face in life, which she introduces to the reader from different points of view”.

Szymborska’s poems give us a chance to learn what kind of person she was. On one hand, the poet was subtle and had a friendly attitude to the world and people, on the other hand, her literary works were marked by irony, aloofness and distance from the reality. Szymborska’s friends were aware of  her characteristics, which she reflected in the poetry. For instance, Bronislaw Maj said: “Szymborska is made up of two different characters – on  one hand, she is a strict wise woman who has no illusions about the human fate, one’s condition on the Earth and the sense of one’s life; she seems to be the person who bravely and pitilessly explores the human experience. On the other hand, she is cheerful and spontaneous just like a young girl”. Also Grzegorz Illg regarded Szymborska as a poet who was “full of contradictions and somewhat surrounded by secrecy”.

The circle of readers of her poetry was always wide but the number of her fans drastically increased after she had received the Nobel Prize in 1996. At that time, some people alleged that Szymborska was “flirting with a utopian ideology”. It seems to be obvious that Szymborska’s first two collections of poems (That’s why we are alive – 1952 and Questioning yourself – 1954) are, according to Stanislaw Balbus, indicative of “her socialist poetry”. Michal Glowinski argues there is no sense to hide the fact that Szymborska, in her early years of life, supported the socialist ideology as the youth is entitled to making such kind of mistakes, and “there were also other representatives of the literary generation of 1950s who shared her interest in the socialist realism”. Szymborska never disowned she was fascinated with the socialist ideology. In one of the interviews, asked about her youth and the impact of the socialist realism on her early works, Szymborska replied: “It was the youth. I made a lot of mistakes but I took all my actions in good faith. At that time, I was naïve and wished to save the world”.

Szymborska’s poetry was evolving over the years. In her first collections of poems, the poet’s major character was an entity who spoke for the community but in her later literary works she started to pay more attention to – as we read in “Tygodnik Powszechny” – “a single man who was chosen from large number of people of all times and from all places, just – the humankind”. According to Jerzy Kwiatkowski: “Szymborska’s poetry deals with important issues and personal matters. In her poems, serious issues are as important as personal matters, which become the part of an average man’s life”. Szymborska ceased writing for one specific kind of readers and as a result, her poetry started to enjoy an increasing popularity. Her poems were translated into other languages and distributed abroad. The themes she touched upon in her works were so common that anyone, regardless of one’s gender, age or nationality, could find a poem for oneself. Stanislaw Zak wrote: “Undoubtedly, Szymborska is a great moralist strongly rooted in the intellectual tradition and culture of Poland and Europe and that fact largely influenced the decision about awarding her the Nobel Prize in Literature. Embedded in the philosophical, cultural and aesthetic tradition, the poet uses in her literary works a specific code and a set of symbols, which are understandable to Europeans. It should also be noted that Szymborska touches a wide array of subjects and the action of her poems takes place at different times and places”.

Although, it is possible to find a lot of autobiographical fragments in Szymborska’s poetry, the poet does not provide her readers with any details that can be applied to specific facts in her life. She analyses and ponders on her feminine awareness. In the book “From governess to Cassandra”, Malgorzata Baranska wrote: “In Szymborska’s poems the main character is unquestionably a female, who is introduced to the readers imperceptibly. […] The poet is aware of her full participation in a social and cultural life and at the same time, she has an “intact” sense of privacy”. Szymborska avoided the media and publicity and treated any public speaking as a “necessary evil”. She made a lot of effort to protect her personal life and used to say that more than six people in one room were already a crowd, which she really hated. Her secretary, Michal Rusinek, has been the person who successfully helped her avoid the media and made around Szymborska some kind of a cocoon or filter which separated her from the world outside and let her focus on writing. In “The joy of writing” Joanna Olczak – Ronikier describes Szymborska as “difficult to depict. I do not know how many layers should you remove to get to the interior of her soul. I am absolutely sure she would never like to be uncovered”. If you wished to reach Szymborska’s internal world, you could do it only through reading her literary works. Tadeusz Nyczek confirms: “She seems to be a very nice lady that nobody would take notice of when one sees her on the street. If somebody wished to get to know who she really is, one would have to reside in her body. Of course, it is impossible to happen. Reading her poetry is the only way to understand what kind of person she is. While reading Szymborska’s poems, you can get an impression that she hides an incredible world inside her body”.  She used to say that everything people should know about her could be found in her works.

Wislawa Szymborska died at the age of 89, at home in her sleep. She will be buried on February 9 at the Rakowicki Cemetery in Cracow. In the poem “On death, without Exaggeration”, she wrote: “There’s no life that couldn’t be immortal if only for a moment […] As far as you’ve come can’t be undone”.

Translation: Joanna Senska

source: OK - Apartment

Carmen Maura

Without a doubt, she is one of the most important actresses of the Spanish director. She appeared in his first feature-length movie in 1978, and in one of his recent productions Volver in 2009. Carmen Maura’s popularity in Europe grew undoubtedly thanks to Almodóvar, who in the 80’s made her an icon of his movies. The culmination of their collaboration was “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown“,  where Maura played Pepa – a voice-over actress abandoned by her lover. She received many awards for this role, including the European Film Award. Although “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” is the most fruitful cooperation of Almodóvar with Maura and the first Almodóvar’s movie which was so successful internationally, the roles she played in his earlier productions: “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” and “Law of Desire“, were much more recognizable. The phenomenal Gloria’s creation- as a women tired of life and constantly struggling not only with problems of mothers and wives, is still one of the most distinctive and feminine characters of the Spanish cinema. In turn, her role as a transsexual Tina in “Law of Desire” made Carmen a visual icon of the local gay communities. Almodóvar and Maura’s several-year-long cooperation was stopped by a fierce quarrel after shooting “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”. The couple made peace only a few years ago, during auditions for “Volver“. Maura played the role of a returning from the dead mother of two adult sisters, Raimunda and Sole, who would help them organize their chaotic lives.

Victoria Abril

Beautiful Victoria Abril is one of the most successful and well-known, not only in Europe but also around the world, Spanish actress. In contrast to Carmen Maura, she does not owe her career that much to Pedro Almodóvar. Thus, Abril took the position of Maura as the muse of the Spanish director. In his movies, he often picked handsome Antonio Banderas to be her main partner. She repaid Almodóvar with some really great and daring roles, such as creation of a former porn star Marina from “Tie me up!”, full of erotic tension. The movie provided her with a tremendous growth in popularity, even in Hollywood. Abril by Almodóvar is also Rebeca from “High Heels” – a movie that shows typical for the director situation of mother and daughter involved in unresolved issues from the past and a quite recent murder. Moreover, Victoria is a peculiar and original journalist Andrea from “Kika” – perhaps the most kitschy, colorful and quite funny production of the Spanish director.

Verónica Forqué

Great grotesque movie Kika draws attention to another Almodóvar’s muse – Veronica Forqué, who had so far appeared in minor roles in Matador and “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” Forqué has become a showcase of controversial black comedy of the Spanish director. The role played by her – an optimistic, full of serenity and warmth naive beautician Kika, is perhaps the most striking and memorable character of all Almodóvar’s productions. It could not be otherwise, since Kika is accompanied by many conflicting emotions. On one hand it is a hilarious and deliberately incredibly tacky story, on the other it is a story about sex and death in which you often cannot find the boundary between the deliberate kitsch and tacky vulgarity.

Marisa Paredes

Marisa Paredes for Almodóvar’s movies of the 90’s was as important as Carmen Maura for his productions from the previous decade. Paredes has left a huge imprint on Almodóvar’s best productions from this period. In “The flower of My Secret” she marvelously played the role of a lonely and unhappy bestselling romance novelist, who after the disappointment of marriage and a suicide attempt finds balance in her life when she returns home to her mother.  In brilliant “All About My Mother” Parades partnered Cecillia Roth, the movie’s Manuela, and she helped the director to give the movie an unique atmosphere of the story, dedicated for the first time so directly and openly to women and actresses at the same time. Besides, the role of Huma Rojo was created by the director especially for Paredes, who at every opportunity thanks Almodóvar for the chance to play such an interesting character.

source: OK - Apartment

Cecilia Roth

Cecilia Roth tied acting knots with Almodóvar in the 80’s, but their cooperation then was definitely of superficial character, and the actress appeared in movies rather than played in them. This situation changed after  “All About My Mother”. Anyway, the director stressed that Cecilia Roth from the 80’s and the one that played a major role in his film in 1999, are two very different women and actresses. For several years Roth matured in Almodóvar’s eyes and she greatly improved her acting skills. About her role in “All About My Mother”  the director was to say: “When I watch her in the movie and I feel her heartbeat as Manuela, I know that I am dealing with one of the most moving roles I’ve ever seen.” Besides, this production from the late 90’s is still the most outstanding position in Pedro Almodóvar’s filmography. It is a kind of tribute paid to the feminine world, filled with unique emotions, passions and dramas.  In “All About My Mother”  the director so skillfully combined elements of a trashy romance with artistically perfect American melodrama that today this movie is mentioned as Almodóvar’s masterpiece and his every movie should refer to it.

Rossy de Palma

A fantastic Almodóvar’s supporting actress, thus for such roles she was nominated twice for major awards in the Spanish film industry. Before the girl from Majorca met on her way the famous director in the mid-80s, she was a singer and dancer working part-time in a fancy cafe in Madrid, where she charmed Pedro Almodóvar. Outstanding,  not to say transsexual beauty of Rossy de Palma is the quintessential director’s idea of femininity – of course, suspended between the two sexes image, a little vampire, but extremely expressive.  From the episode in “The Law of Desire” de Palma was appearing in Almodóvar’s  movies until “The flower of My Secret”. But with her remarkable beauty, of course, she best inscribed in a grotesque atmosphere of “Kika”.

Penelope Cruz

The latest muse of the director. When she first appeared in Almodóvar’s plot, Live Flesh in 1997, she was already a fairly well known, even outside Spain, actress.  For many years she had been treated as less talented, except in “Open Your Eyes”, and she was entrusted only with undemanding roles, in which the most important seemed to be her great Latin beauty. It was Pedro Almodóvar who put her on top by giving her the role of Raimunda in “Volver”. Besides, the role of Raimunda, more than Lena in “Broken Embraces“, gave Cruz full opportunity to show her acting skills, especially that there is a context for comparison in the movie.

“Broken Embraces” is the first production created for the Spanish beauty, where not only her acting skills but also her appearance is displayed. Lena is the perfect embodiment of passion, emotions and feelings that accompany the process of creating movies, not just those of Pedro Almodóvar. Yet, “Broken Embraces” – the most personal work of the Spanish director, is about such creation.

Pedro Almodóvar creates an unusual bond with his muses. If such bond did not exist, his kitschy, melodramatic and sentimental stories would become only meaningless and nicely packaged platitudes. The director is gifted with a remarkable sixth sense for finding the perfect actress who perfectly understands the character created by him. And again, if not the perfect agreement, the magic of Almodóvar’s cinema would pop like a soap bubble. The artist undoubtedly understands women like no other, he tries to penetrate deeply in their psyche to understand the complexity of their nature and their emotions. Almodóvar defines femininity in almost every story, the issue of gender is not the determinant, hence in his films we can observe fascinating and thoroughly feminine transsexuals. Under the wings of the Spanish director, the outstanding actresses had the opportunity to show the full range of their great skills. It is doubtful that Pedro Almodóvar’s search for perfect actresses to play leading roles in his movies has finished with Penélope Cruz. Due to that fact, we can predict that the author is still able to surprise the viewer. And it is probably more than once.

Translation: Kamila Kwiecień

Segregation in the cinema

Finding some fresh perspective from which issue of segregation could be shown in the cinema is surely not an easy task. There were dozens and dozens of films made dealing with this theme and they include unquestionable classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) based on famous Harper Lee’s bestseller. There is a wide selection of biographies such as “Malcolm X” (1992) or “The Rosa Parks Story” (2002) and Spike Lee’s films dealing with racial stereotypes – sufficient to mention “Do The Right Thing” (1989) or “Bamboozled” (2000). Even if the theme is narrowed down to black women and evolution of their situation there is still a big number of films to mention, such as “The Color Purple” (1985) or “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (2005). Director Tate Taylor faced quite a big challenge – to make a film which will basically tackle the same issue but from a new perspective, with freshness and originality. A controversial book by Kathryn Stockett turned out to be exactly what he needed to succeed.

American black maids, tell your stories

The main character, Skeeter, is a young woman who has just come back from the university to her hometown Jackson, Mississippi. She wants to be a journalist or a writer (or both), she is kind and open-minded. Jackson turns out to be a place full of narrow-minded, racist people where black maids are treated as people of inferior category. For Skeeter this attitude is completely inexplicable and her growing anger leads to the idea of showing another perspective through interviewing and publishing the stories of black maids – women who are forced to neglect their own families to take care of white rich women’s children, who have to stand humiliation and racist remarks made by white people as if they did not exist. It is very difficult to convince any maid to talk to a white woman but when Skeeter finally succeeds she hears stories about separate toilets for black people – for the fear of white people catching diseases from them, about insulting remarks every day, about heartless white mothers who neglect their children, about stereotypes, racism and white people’s wrongly understood priorities. Some stories are funny – mocking stupidity of white people, others are sad, all of them give food for thought. What is important is that these stories are stories of average people, of everyday life. They are far from civil rights movement, they show normal, mundane reality and how life of black maids really looked like at that time.

No ideology, just life

It seems to be a very good choice made by Tate Taylor – not to go into political, ideological discourse, the film does not show big struggle against segregation. As already mentioned, it rather focuses on everyday reality and how maids were trying to cope with it. This is why this picture sticks out from all the other pictures, it condemns racism but not directly, rather by showing characters undergoing change in their way of thinking after seeing another side’s perspective. And it is not as if all people just suddenly stop being racist, but at least some of them start to think and this is where every change starts.
“The Help” is exceptionally well acted and basically all the characters are very well developed. Viewer can identify with some of them and hate others, but does not remain indifferent towards any of them. It does not happen often to have such a wide array of various characters in one film. Emma Stone as Skeeter is charming and natural and you take to her right away from the beginning of the film, the same as to Octavia Spencer as cheeky maid Minny. You might hate Hilly Holbrook but this is because Bryce Dallas Howard did great job creating villain, exaggerated but somehow fitting in the convention of the film. Cast and characters are probably the strongest point of this film.

Tears and laugh

Even though this film tackles a difficult issue and sometimes moves you to the verge of tears, it also can make you laugh. Thanks to this combination you do not have the feeling of watching politically correct film about how bad racism is, but a realistic, true story of everyday challenges and little pleasures. Don’t get me wrong. This film IS a Hollywood-style picture, it is not any alternative voice of American cinema industry. It can be seen as slightly naive or accused of using simplifications but it is naïve in this rather charming, non-disturbing way. One can also say that we have already seen all this. But have we really? It is a powerful picture which will make you think. Personally I don’t think you can ask anything else from a good film.