Sadanand Menon: Invoking cultural activism

Germany has decided that the next phase in international affairs belongs not to economics or politics, but to culture. This was driven home to me with great force last week when, along with five other international journalists known for their art/cultural writing, I was part of an intense visitor’s programme of the German foreign office in Berlin.

The programme included visits to crucial cultural hubs and institutions in the city, face-to-face meetings with important designers, educators, institutional heads and parliamentarians and a ringside seat at the conference and festival of German foreign cultural policy, ‘Menchen Bewegen’ or ‘People on the Move — Cultural Relations Policy in the Era of Globalisation.

 

At the Conference, the opening remarks of the German Foreign Minister, Frank Walter Steinmeier, was an eye opener. In my experience, I have seldom encountered the foreign minister of any country expound so eloquently on the crucial and central role of culture in building international relations. Of course, the former German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, too had rather articulate views on the subject of cultural identities. But this is the first time I’m hearing a foreign policy discourse through a cultural route.

There was a decade or so from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s where many nations, including India, adopted the slogan of ‘culture as an arm of diplomacy’. That was a purely instrumentalist idea and merely resulted in a series of bureaucratic ‘festivals’ which saw cultural/artistic goods being showcased in a representational way.

The current re-engagement with culture seems to have arrived at the site once again with the plus of a new understanding. Culture is being projected here as the key agency for ‘peace-planning’, problem-solving, re-configuring new mobility in new urban planning, communication networks as a factor for emotional sustenance and the reciprocal synergy between culture and climate.

Foreign Minister Steinmeier was categorical that ‘cultural activism’ needs to be pulled into the centre of things at a time when, internationally, the world seems to be facing a horrifying crisis of escalating conflicts, which tend to be deeply affected by foreign policy. He was clear that ‘classical diplomacy’ would be woefully inadequate for dealing with food and water shortages, cultural differences and conflicts shaped by religious oppositions.

Steinmeier felt that without falling into the trap of dubbing all this ‘a clash of civilisations’, ways must be found for dealing with the new realities. No progressive goals can be achieved by aggressive stand-offs or snapping relationships. He felt the only way out was through increased investments in ‘cultural zones’ which inverse equations of contention or competition and swing it towards exchange and interaction.

Of course, he said, cultural exchange by itself is not enough. It cannot, for example, replace a peace treaty. But it permits people to see through issues with more openness and transparency. In this context, he made a rather important point which, once again, I personally have not heard anyone express in our context. He said, “Culture is a part of the responsibility of any public authority.” In that sense, politics and foreign relations need to work within the premise of “international cultural responsibility.”

Generally impervious to ‘minister-talk’ except to pick holes in the broad generalisations that politicians tend to make, I must admit that these public formulations made without any written text before him, were rather impressive, if not provocative.

Of course, there are a series of projects they can show in terms of illustrating what they mean by such cultural sharing. One that impressed me the most was a film project called ‘Orient/Okzident’ which involved the students and staff of the Film and TV Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg working closely with counterparts in the Sooreh Institute of Higher Education,Teheran and creating a series of short documentaries on the lives of migrant labourers in either city. The resulting packet of eight films is more than impressive — it is a frank meeting ground of an ‘ideas commons’ which clearly establishes the importance of the cultural gaze at contemporary urban issues of migration, loss or hybridisation of identities, rootlessness, alienation and a sense of devalued humanity. The works by the Iranian students, in fact, sharply etches out the ability to state political values through the cultural frame.

Berlin also plans to utilise the occasion of the World Athletics Championships in the city, August 15 – 23 this year, to project the idea of ‘sustainable sports for all’. It plans to invite athletes from 37 out of the 213 countries affiliated to the International Amateur Athletics Federation, two weeks prior to the Championships and support their training and workout schedules. They plan to use the opportunity to suggest the idea of developing support structures in sports at a cultural rather than a competitive level.

In the era of marketisation of culture through the notion of Creative Industries, these seem to be some unusual steps for a superpower to take. It remains to be seen if ‘cultural activism’ does not become a mantra for re-productivising a tired economy.