Quo vadis ars?
The situation in the cultural sector has been
described and discussed in numerous interviews, corona diaries,
comments and reports in the past few weeks. Our annotated
collection
of currently 193 sources
gathers voices from different sectors and media.
This creates a picture of the cultural landscape in crisis,
whose temporal transformation can be explored interactively
via a dedicated
tag cloud.
Warum wir das Kino brauchen
Why we need the cinema
by Edgar Reitz (04 Jun 2020)
Original source: Die Zeit
In the digital age there are hardly any rooms of privacy left. Like few other places, the cinemas of today offer an offline space in which we are completely with ourselves. Despite the film experience in the community we feel here as individuals. The medium of cinema must seize this opportunity, design the spaces accordingly and network them with the other cultural offerings in a city. In this way, new event concepts can be created that make the cinema attractive again as a space for experience.
tag Kino Offline-Raum Lebendigsein Performing Arts/ Cinema Gastbeitrag
In Zeiten der Abstandsästhetik . Theater unter Corona-Bedingungen
In times of distance aesthetics . Theatre under corona conditions
by Stefan Grund (26 May 2020)
Original source: Welt
In Hamburg, the theatres are currently not yet allowed to reopen. However, in preparation for the new season, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus and the Thalia Theater have resumed rehearsals. Here, too, the rules of hygiene are strictly observed. This has an impact on the plays, in which more distance must now be maintained between the actors. Jan Bosse, director at the Thalia Theater, understands the alienation, which he did not choose himself, as an aesthetic challenge, which produces new solutions during rehearsals. These are also understood by the audience, since everyone can understand and interpret the collective narrative Corona. As an unique experience, he considers the Corona conditions as a challenge. However, the rules of hygiene should not be set in the long run, because especially the distance on stage can quickly lead to boredom.
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tag Theater Probenbetrieb Hygieneregeln Hamburg Jan Bosse Performing Arts/ Cinema Bericht
Kritische Verteidigerin der hiesigen Demokratie . Neues Buch von Juli Zeh
Critical advocate of democracy . New book by Juli Zeh
by Andrea Gerk, Arno Orzessek (25 May 2020)
Original source: Deutschlandfunk Kultur
Juli Zeh's novel "Corpus Delicti" has already been published in 2009. So it is not a Corona novel, even though it fits perfectly into our time. In her dystopia, Zeh deals with the topic of health dictatorship by describing the seductive power of a health policy that promises everyone a long and healthy life. The bible of the system is entitled "Health as a principle of state legitimation" and establishes the METHOD, which in the novel legitimizes the primacy of the health of the individual and society in a purely logical way. In order to keep the promise of health, all possible data is collected from citizens. Zeh's criticism of people's self-subjugation in terms of health, fitness and performance optimization is unmistakable.
Since the novel is school reading, the author has now published a volume of interviews in which she answers the questions that students were asking her. The book is a self-portrait of the citizen Juli Zeh and allows for critical reflection on the Corona crisis. Zeh's statement - »It is really not easy to recognize the unreasonable in reason.« - can certainly be transferred to the present.
The critic Arno Orzessek appears to be very taken with Zeh's book, as he shares her »criticism of comprehensive preventive thinking, of reward systems for correct, i.e. conformist, systems of living«, as they can currently be observed in China. »Once you believe that life and politics are primarily about defending against any form of threat, then all other values fade away and I fear she is right about that.«
With regard to the Corona pandemic, Orzessek considers the book to be quite remarkable. He himself is very irritated by the at times »extreme authority of the virologists« in recent weeks and months. To reduce reality merely to the current case and death figures reported by the Robert Koch Institute neglects many important aspects of our everyday lives. The author and constitutional judge Juli Zeh, together with other philosophers and politicians, also pleaded in late April in »Der Spiegel« for the preservation of proportionality and made constructive suggestions as to how the rights of the individual could be preserved in the present. Read More Read Less
Since the novel is school reading, the author has now published a volume of interviews in which she answers the questions that students were asking her. The book is a self-portrait of the citizen Juli Zeh and allows for critical reflection on the Corona crisis. Zeh's statement - »It is really not easy to recognize the unreasonable in reason.« - can certainly be transferred to the present.
The critic Arno Orzessek appears to be very taken with Zeh's book, as he shares her »criticism of comprehensive preventive thinking, of reward systems for correct, i.e. conformist, systems of living«, as they can currently be observed in China. »Once you believe that life and politics are primarily about defending against any form of threat, then all other values fade away and I fear she is right about that.«
With regard to the Corona pandemic, Orzessek considers the book to be quite remarkable. He himself is very irritated by the at times »extreme authority of the virologists« in recent weeks and months. To reduce reality merely to the current case and death figures reported by the Robert Koch Institute neglects many important aspects of our everyday lives. The author and constitutional judge Juli Zeh, together with other philosophers and politicians, also pleaded in late April in »Der Spiegel« for the preservation of proportionality and made constructive suggestions as to how the rights of the individual could be preserved in the present. Read More Read Less
tag Corona-Roman Dystopie Gesundheitsdiktatur Grundrechte Corpus Delicti Juli Zeh Konformismus Literature/ Text Rezension
»So eine Zeit werden wir nicht wieder erleben«
»Such a Time We Will not Experience Aagain«
by Katharina Fiedler (23 May 2020)
Original source: Zeit
With the cancellation of their commissions at the beginning of the crisis, the Leipzig photographers Felix Adler and Thomas Victor decided to use their free time and to accompany the corona pandemic in a series of documentary photographs. They travel through eastern Germany together and capture everyday life.
tag Fotografie Felix Adler Thomas Victor Visual Arts/Design Interview
»Die Blockbuster haben ausgedient« . Museen nach dem Shutdown
»The blockbusters had their day« . Museums after shutdown
by Hans D. Christ, Iris Dressler (23 May 2020)
Original source: Welt
In a conversation with WELT newspaper, the heads of the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ make an argument to take advantage of the lockdown for a deeper reflection on the art world. Their text is not only a plea for a reasonable payment for the artists, but at the same time an invitation to the art institutions not to focus on a mass audience in the future, but rather to understand the houses as spaces of ideas and discourse, in which sociopolitical issues are negotiated.
tag Museen Blockbuster Honorar Visual Arts/Design Interview
»Wie ein Rennauto, das in die Wand fährt« . Erfolgsproduzent Oliver Auspitz über die Film-Branche im Corona-Modus, Ulrike Lunaceks Rücktritt, Kanzler-Hilfe und die ROMY
»Like a racing car driving into the ground«
by Oliver Auspitz, Christoph Silber (16 May 2020)
Original source: Kurier
tag Filmproduktion Ausfallfonds ORF Performing Arts/ Cinema Interview
Es gibt sie, wie bald Martin Meyers Erzählung »Corona«, es gibt sie nicht . Der Hype um die Corona-Literatur
It exists, as soon Martin Meyer's novel . The Hype around Corona Literature
by Gerrit Bartels (06 May 2020)
Original source: Tagesspiegel
Do you want to read a Corona novel now? This is the question posed by literary critic Gerrit Bartels in the taz. For two months, one could hardly escape the subject of Corona, and he can hardly imagine enjoying it now in literary adaptation. Especially since the plot of Martin Meyer's story "Corona" promises little that is new. After all, the old bookseller Matteo helps himself in quarantine by reading epidemic literature, as thrashed out by the feuilletons in recent weeks.
The publication of the story prompts Bartels to ask some publishers whether a Corona novel is already planned for the fall, or whether an author has announced that he or she will work on one. Klett-Cotta, Luchterhand, and Kiepenheuer & Witsch have no plans for corona novels. Either they had no corresponding manuscripts on the table or they were afraid they would be outdated by the time they were published. Only the author Joachim Lottmann is writing a current novel on the subject, according to information from KiWi, but it will not be published this year.
Doesn't it take some time to reflect on the topic? With a view to 9/11, he notes that the really good novels on the subject needed a distance of several years. But it doesn't necessarily have to be the case that Corona has to be at the center of a novel. It can also change a narrative being out of focus - as well as the quality criteria of the readers. Read More Read Less
The publication of the story prompts Bartels to ask some publishers whether a Corona novel is already planned for the fall, or whether an author has announced that he or she will work on one. Klett-Cotta, Luchterhand, and Kiepenheuer & Witsch have no plans for corona novels. Either they had no corresponding manuscripts on the table or they were afraid they would be outdated by the time they were published. Only the author Joachim Lottmann is writing a current novel on the subject, according to information from KiWi, but it will not be published this year.
Doesn't it take some time to reflect on the topic? With a view to 9/11, he notes that the really good novels on the subject needed a distance of several years. But it doesn't necessarily have to be the case that Corona has to be at the center of a novel. It can also change a narrative being out of focus - as well as the quality criteria of the readers. Read More Read Less
tag Corona-Roman Seuchenliteratur Qualitätskriterien Martin Meyer Joachim Lottmann 9/11 Literature/ Text Interview
New New Deal . Toward a New Era of Social Imagination
by Hans Ulrich Obrist (05 May 2020)
Original source: artnet news
In this essay curator Hans Ulrich Obrist recalls conversations with photographer and film maker Helen Levitt (1913–2009) and reflects public programs to support artists in the US which were initiated a few years after the Great Depression in 1929 in the context of president Roosevelt’s New Deal. Interestingly, he mentions an early Mexican program in 1926 with artists paid by the government to decorate public buildings with murals. A similar scope had the federal US program Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in 1934. The most prominent program was the Federal Art Project (FAP) starting in 1935 to support fine arts and practical arts by commissions, but also to promote educational services resulting in 107 new community centers giving arts and crafts classes to everybody. But demands as formulated by the American Society of Painters Sculptors and Gravers to pay rental fees to living artists for exhibited art works didn’t succeed.
Obrist not only demands a New Deal for the arts in times of the Pandemic, but also connects it conceptually to the ecological question referring to Jeremy Rifkin’s book “Green New Deal”. Read More Read Less
Obrist not only demands a New Deal for the arts in times of the Pandemic, but also connects it conceptually to the ecological question referring to Jeremy Rifkin’s book “Green New Deal”. Read More Read Less
tag New Deal Kunstvermittlung Stipendien Auftragsarbeit Ausstellungshonorar Kunst am Bau Ökologie USA Visual Arts/Design Statement
Vor dem Ersticken
Before suffocation
by Andreas Kilb (18 Apr 2020)
Original source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The initial easing of the situation towards a normal everyday life allows the citizens in Germany to breathe a sigh of relief. But that does not apply to the cultural sector. In the »name of epidemiological reason« culture is being squeezed all the breath out. With this image, Andreas Kilb illustrates very impressively the situation in the creative industry since the start of the lockdown and fears that many will not survive the stranglehold for much longer.
