Tapio Makela on Sun, 26 Apr 1998 23:12:24 +0100 |
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Syndicate: report fragment 1 from Stockholm |
Dear Syndicated, I am writing this brief and partial report from Stockholm, "The Shaking Hands & Making Conflicts" event; Andreas and others will continue. The event itself was very problematic, but I think it will prove to be very useful for thinking about the future of Syndicate... and how to react to neo-nationalist appropriations of specific cultural initiatives. (wow, that languages sounds like a strategy of war almost). Most of the event felt like a national performance of Sweden´s role in the post Cold War Baltic-Belarus-Ukraine as the generous uncle Dala. (Replace Uncle Sam with Uncle Dala, Dala as Dala horse, the national symbol for Swedish traditional culture). Istead of having had interesting thoughts in the main program, it was about shaking rhetorics. To put it simply: looking at the surface, the event was a stage for old fashioned politics and politicians to present rhetorics of change without any concrete notions of what they mean by "power needs culture", or "democracy", "diversity" etc. Whenever they would be caught of their transparent and clumsy reasoning, they would say, like the Swedish Minister of Culture, Marita Ulvskog that they said so to provocate, to make conflict. She used a quote from Machiavelli to reason cultural diversity... which was promptly criticized by Igor Markoviz. A receipe: use democracy, to claim there exists a homogenous we, and encourage coflict to create a ready place for dissent, a place which is not discussed, but to which the dissent is dumped, sealed and packaged as a medal that the politicians can wear on them as signs of "tolerance". Backstage of the event is perhaps, not foremost cultural, as it is economical, and political. Sweden wants to launch Partnership in Culture in the Baltic region, Belarus and Ukraine. The event was to promote "freedom of expression, cultural diversity, democracy and common security in the Baltic region..." Why this combination of countries, this combination of goals? Does this event have anything to do with the fact that these countries are former Soviet areas that used to be "within the missile range"? Or with the fact that Swedish companies, especially telecom companies, are trying to gain big shares of markets in these countries? And it is a proven fact that social and cultural work paves way for favourable decisions in other fields? This critique does not mean that setting up programs that support cultural initiatives that rise from local needs and ideas, or collaboration across borders would not be a high priority. THAT was what I thought this event would promote. The "audience" or the "guests"... me included, were wittnesses of this play,our names in the list of participants signs of our assumed agreement with the given agenda. This event will be one point in the curriculum vitae of the Swedish Nation. After WW II, United States launched a program called Marshall plan, which was to establish economical, educational and cultural activity into those areas that were "insecure" or under communist influence. USIS (United States Information Service) centers in Sofia, Helsinki are examples, as well as the Fullbright programs (which btw have been decreased in areas that are these days concerned stable). My question would be, whether this kind of thinking is the basis for the Swedish Partnership of Culture? The other Nordic Countries (Finland, Denmark, Norway, [Iceland less]) have similar economical and political intrests in the Baltic region. On the other hand... this is most likely recognized in the Baltic region, and perhaps it is a good moment to utilize the willingness of the Nordic countries to invest into cultural sector as well. Partnership for culture is like a Dala plan for culture, and at the same time a Troyan horse, a Dala horse, where a cultural carrier is not innocent but bears in its belly the geopolitical and economical interests of Sweden. Also Internet, the "IT" acts as such a Troyan horse. The organisers of the conference are making the assumption that the Baltic region needs "A mailing list for intellectuals". Either they imagine that there are only a few people that qualify, or then they do not know anything of mailing lists, how they are formed, and how they can become useless... But, I don´t want to say that their initiative should not be reacted to also in a positive way, Ando and Sirje from Tallinn are crafting a conference as a follow up; and I think you can set different terms for the interaction. Igor was the best vocal critic and commentator during the event, and I look forward to reading his views of the event. We witnessed terribly badly formulated speeches by the Swedish politicians, an institutional self praise by David Elliott from the Moderna Museet Stockholm, badly prepared sentences by the *former* *curator* of Documenta Catherind David, ... (Igor, others, please continue from here...) and in mind a dictatorial moderation by a Swedish Journalist Mika Larsson. (btw, if she will work on the future events in this series, I won´t even want to get further e-mails about them!). It was not only Larsson´s way of suppressing voices and differences of opinion, but the way the event was staged that got to me. I felt that it lacked respect for the visitors from Belarus and Ukraine and the Baltic countries: if they were the matter to discuss, why then they were not the center of the stage? In this, Fargfabriken bears responsibility for the curator discourse, and for the perhaps too over produced tv talk show style of the event. In order to establish a dialogic space, the first condition is to respect the partners in this dialogue as equals, as subjects with their own voice, and to provide the space to express it. I felt this was deeply lacking and being so, the event cannot be a starting point for forming a network based on trust or criss-crossing shared interests. My fingers & wrists are in a poor shape for writing... and I need to take care of Polar circuit applications (which have been really nice - thanks everyone who has sent one!), so I end my reporting here... The main entry point to understand Syndicate´s role in the Stockholm event can be read from the manifesto that Andreas drafted based on the proposals of the whole family present in Stockholm. Melentie performed this text in action with brilliant style (he should be avarded with a viking helmet for carrying the role so well). It gives several proposals for any country that wants to reach cultural supremacy in the region of the Baltic-Belarus-Ukraine. The text is in the next mail, and I hope that other Stockholm visitors will take up from here and I will rest my case, or simply, fingers. Thanks to syndicating during the weekend (meeting so many of you again!) it was worth it. I had a great chat with Lisa Haskel yesterday, which will result in some ideas about the list... that might be fruitful. But - - later alligators. best greetings, Tapio postscripts: - is not PCP a toxic material? (related to the next e-mail) - I hope Fargfabriken could post an edited transscript of the talk that Martha Rosler gave, I wish the rest of the speeches had been as interesting as hers. - This text is also rhetorical... and not really a starting point for much further constructive discourse; rather a reply to a rhetoric. Tapio Mäkelä writer, critic, researcher, producer, X Projektnet Ab Senior Project Manager <tapio@projekt.net> projektnet www: http://www.projekt.net running the server: http://muu.autono.net. Address: Lapinrinne 4 D 30, 00180 Helsinki, Finland gsm +358-(0)40-5071965 fax +358-(0)10-2905004 (1 page at a time to my e-mail) -UIDL: 331a26b4545e0aac3437b44dc2bf6265 >From owner-syndicate@aec.at Thu Dec 25 03:18:47 1997 Return-Path: owner-syndicate@aec.at Received: from aec.at (web.aec.at [193.170.192.5]) by basis.Desk.nl (8.8.5/8.6.9) with ESMTP id DAA12762; Thu, 25 Dec 1997 03:18:46 +0100 Received: (from mdomo@localhost) by aec.at (8.8.3/8.7) id CAA17207 for syndicate-outgoing; Thu, 25 Dec 1997 02:10:37 +0100 X-Authentication-Warning: web.aec.at: mdomo set sender to owner-syndicate using -f Received: from bol-r4 ([195.8.219.151]) by aec.at (8.8.3/8.7) with SMTP id CAA17203 for <syndicate@aec.at>; Thu, 25 Dec 1997 02:10:31 +0100 Date: Thu, 25 Dec 1997 02:10:31 +0100 Message-Id: <199712250110.CAA17203@aec.at> MIME-Version: 1.0 From: syndicate@aec.at To: syndicate@aec.at Subject: Syndicate: Request_for_quotation Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="divider" Sender: owner-syndicate@aec.at Precedence: bulk Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 954 --divider Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Att. 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