Under the heading There lies Europe, the 22nd poesiefestival berlin from 11 to 17 June 2021 is investigating the poetry of Europe in all its diversity of forms and languages, and in spite of the pandemic is building poetic bridges across the continent. Multilingualism, the ambivalence of language policymakers to the languages, migration and diaspora – these are the thematic lines along which the Festival will be putting Europe to the test.

“There lies Europe. What does it look like?” asked Kurt Tucholsky in 1932 in his poem ‘Europe’ written under the pseudonym Theobald Tiger, in which he describes the drifting apart of European states in favour of national interests and to the detriment of common interests and of diversity seen as something positive. The 22nd edition of the poesiefestival berlin is setting out to point up the linguistic, cultural and poetic diversity of Europe and find common denominators through poetry.

150 poets from around 40 countries will be coming together during the Festival in digital readings, talks, concerts and workshops. Some of the videos will be filmed in Berlin, with others cut together and elaborately post produced from digital discussions or submissions from around the world. In addition, 70 interviews, essays and anthology contributions will be posted as text content on the Festival website to provide a deeper experience. From 1 June to the end of the Festival, Festival visitors will have the opportunity to write together about the continent’s possible futures in a collective live poem. And this will be joined by other participative live formats during the Festival as well.

The poesiefestival berlin is a project by the Haus für Poesie.

In cooperation with the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

The first event in the Debates on Europe series took place in Budapest in 2012. Meanwhile, almost a decade on, Hungarian „illiberal democracy“ has developed into one of the biggest challenges facing the European integration project.

So, it is high time to revisit the issue of Hungary’s role in Europe. We are happy to present our programme for Debates on Europe: Budapest & Beyond. Defending Intellectual Freedom. In five events from 4 to 7 May, Zsófia Bán, Győző Ferencz, Anna Gács, Timothy Garton Ash, Rüdiger Görner, Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger and other wonderful participants will discuss the importance of academic and artistic freedom and what it actually is.

You can view the full programme here. The events will take place exclusively online and will be available on the website and  YouTube channel of the German Academy for Language and Literature. No registration is necessary.

How can artistic cooperation take place in the digital space? What legal and political possibilities are there to protect the freedom of art in Europe?

These questions were addressed by the members of the European Alliance of Academies on March 12, 2021. Digitally connected from thirteen countries across Europe, 40 member representatives presented the progress of the seven working groups and formulated further Alliance ambitions.

When founding the Alliance the members agreed that, besides artistic possibilities for action, legal and political measures had to be taken in order to advocate the autonomy and freedom of the arts in Europe. Consequently, the Alliance decided to cooperate with the European Centre for Constitutional Rights (ECCHR). The measures taken so far as well as the further proceedings were presented by the ECCHR’s general secretary, Wolfgang Kaleck. 

Another item on the agenda was the implementation of a digital platform that shall enable the sharing of knowledge, artistic production, activism, information and communication. Taking into account concepts such as temporalities and imagination, Kristoffer Gansing, Marina Warner and Prof. Norbert Palz deliberated how artistic cooperation can be transferred into the digital space.

At the end of the meeting, the members decided to accept the requests of The Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague – UMPRUM and the Freie Akademie der Künste, Hamburg, to join the European Alliance of Academies.

Continue visiting the website and its news-section to stay up to date on the latest information and upcoming events.

What should the future of Europe look like? What do we wish to achieve together? What do we want to change when it comes to the European Union its institutions, regulations, and its inner and outer workings? Initiated by the European Commission, the Conference on the Future of Europe is set to seek answers to these questions all over Europe for the next months and years. A Berlin based Initiative is trying to bring together civic organizations and public partners to help frame the discussions on our future from a Berlin perspective.

That way, the European Academy Berlin wants to activate and offer its civil society networks and educational expertise in order to support a braod based approach to discussing the future of the EU. The initiative is bringing together foundations, civic organizations, representatives from various departments and half a dozen members of different parliaments. Their goal is to find common grounds on when, where and how to discuss the needs of Berliners with regards to their European future.

The initiative is open to any organizations that wish to bring in their specific perspectives and needs. More informations can be found online: www.CoFoE.berlin. 

About the EAB: As a disseminator of knowledge the Academy aims to explain policies and politics and to communicate European political connections since 1963. By strengthening the critical ability of each individual citizen, EAB in this way makes its contribution towards a vital civil society in Germany and in Europe. In Berlin, the Academy is a well-established location for meetings of all kinds for an international clientele – addressing always current and relevant topics. And it does so as ever at the highest standard of substantial and pedagogic-didactic objectives. (www.europainberlin.de)

At the Re:Writing the Future Festival, the State of Artistic Freedom 2021 report is  launched by the non-governmental organization Freemuse. The report shows widespread attacks on freedom of artistic expression on a global scale as practices of censoring artists’ voices continue.

Freemuse is an independent international non-governmental Organisation, advocating for freedom of artistic expression and cultural diversity. Freemuse has United Nations Special Consultative Status to the Economic and Social Council (UN-ECOSOC) and Consultative Status with UNESCO.

Dates:
Thursday, 25 February 2021, 12am

How to watch:
This event will be streamed live on rewritingthefuture.org

Featuring:
Srirak Plipat (executive director, Freemuse)
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara (visual artist)
Shurooq Amin (visual artist)
Aslı Erdoğan (journalist)
KAK (president, Cartooning for Peace)

Presented by:
Nazeeha Saeed (journalist)

More Information: https://rewritingthefuture.org/schedule/report-on-the-state-of-artistic-freedom-2021/

In view of the persecutions of students and teachers of the Belarusian State Academy of Arts, the European Alliance of Academies fully supports the statement of Prof. Jan Hančil, Rector of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague from 24 November 2020:

Allow me in my capacity as the Rector of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague to issue this public statement as a means of expressing my deepest concerns over the violations of human and civil rights of students and academics in Belarus.

Thousands of students and academicians joined the peaceful protests against the rigged presidential election, and hundreds of them are currently facing criminalisation and are expelled from universities. Each male student also receives a draft card along with being expelled from a university. Students are often arrested on the premises of universities, and are imprisoned and beaten.

I appeal to the rectors of Belarusian universities to thoroughly consider their responsibility for the future of their country, overcome their fears and resist the pressure towards expelling students and dismissing employees, however difficult this may be for them in their positions.

Namely, allow me to express my solidarity with the teachers and students of the Belarusian State Academy of Arts who suffered from repression and with those who have expressed their support for the expelled and arrested students.


Read the original statement here: www.amu.cz/en/official-desk/1772/

Text by Gábor Schein, writer, critic, literary historian, translator and member of the Society of Hungarian Authors

„Europe is György Soros‘ gas chamber: toxic gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society, deadly for the European way of life, while we, the nations of Europe, are doomed to fight for the last breath of air, trampling and clambering over each other. The Liberaryans now want to exclude Poles and Hungarians from a political community where we, as members, still have rights. We are the new Jews. No matter whether these verbal bludgeons are called open society, the rule of law, or solidarity, they all serve as tools of disenfranchisement. By questioning the will and ability of Hungarian voters to choose how they want to live and who they want to see in power, they actually say that we have a big nose, we stink and we have lice.” (Szilárd Demeter, origo.hu)

Just as a reminder: the person who had the nerve to put these sentences on paper, and who coined the word “Liberaryans”, is not a nobody in Hungary. Szilárd Demeter is Viktor Orbán’s most important confidant in cultural policy. Institutions such as the National Széchenyi Library, functioning as the state archives, and the Petőfi Literary Museum, preserving documents of modern Hungarian literature, are under his direct control. He also controls the popular music life and is a member of the so-called National Cultural Council operating around Viktor Orbán. His voice belongs to those who receive power from the state to speak today in Hungary. He needs to resign because he openly speaks the language of Nazis, but his resignation doesn’t change anything. What happened, happened, and followed from the logic and rhetoric of the Orbán-system.

A speech that equates the rule of law with gas chambers, solidarity with the deprivation of rights, and the European Union with Hitler’s Third Reich, erases the language itself. These words appeared on the origo.hu website only a week after the centenary of Paul Celan’s birth, on the Saturday before the beginning of the Advent period. The voice that Orbán’s cultural chief speaks, whether he is aware of it or not, floods a thousand darknesses of speeches that bring death. When this language refers to the right to national self-determination, the freedom of lifestyle, or when it speaks of Christianity, it immediately gives itself away. Yes, ultimately, it is murder and the evil that has become routine, that speaks this language. Those who negotiate with, bargain with, or accept support from this language, need to know this.

This language is not identical with Hungary. Today, there is once again dictatorship in Hungary. Voters did not authorize this. Laws, and even the constitution itself, are being rewritten or repealed overnight. It is not possible or requires a disproportionate effort to create, distribute and represent symbolic truths other than those of the power. The symbolic truths of power, on the other hand, are born as lies from the outset. Moreover, the lie is not enough for the lie itself. It has to keep raising the bet, because like all such attempts, this one, too, is ultimately in a terrible battle with the empty sky, not realizing that it itself is making the sky an empty wasteland. This happens day by day, tiring people out, driving them to despair, and rendering them hopeless. Priests and churches, of course, are silent, as their leaders have long since not believed in the Saviour, but are afraid of losing the graces received from the state, and, as they do not believe, they cannot be free either.

In Hungary, the hope of regaining language, truth, and human dignity is a hope beyond hope. The sentences quoted may warn that Europe is still a post-Holocaust continent. And Hungary is still in a post-Holocaust state. The hope of the continent and the country is identical: a wise and understanding hope, adhering to their values, somewhere beyond hopelessness.

Gábor Schein, writer, critic, literary historian, translator

member of the Society of Hungarian Authors
Source: 444.hu

DECLARATION

The Society of Hungarian Authors is a community of creators with a broad vision, acceptance, and healthy irony. Safely and merrily aware of this, we have always tried to formulate our statements, sometimes inevitably political, in this spirit. At the same time, the by now regular and clearly provocative manifestations of Szilárd Demeter have also put our patience and creativity to the test in recent times, and after his last writing, fair deliberation has become utterly impossible. A radical escalation of the war of words leads to a sudden first shedding of blood. The life-threatening system of rhetorical tools that Demeter is now reaching for is unacceptable, even if it was an obvious and desperate compulsion to comply that evoked it in the author. Those who lost their real lives in real gas chambers, the survivors, the relatives, the language, the humane thought, and respect towards acceptance and responsibility are what will not allow our common human tragedy to depreciate to a selfish journalistic tool in the hands of an irresponsible politician. The last statement of the director-general of the Petőfi Literary Museum is one of the symptoms of the long and difficult agony of the system; not the first, but the most penetrating so far.

The Society of Hungarian Authors 1) calls on Szilárd Demeter to make an apology, 2) finds it evident that the decision-makers shall immediately announce a new, open tender for the position to head the Petőfi Literary Museum, and 3) proposes the establishment of a professional committee with a balanced composition that can help rebuild the literary and cultural life of Hungary that has quickly become a battlefield, in the name of justice, solidarity and shared responsibility.

The Board of the Society of Hungarian Authors

29.11.2020
Budapest

Many partner institutions of the European Alliance of Academies have expressed their solidarity with the SZFE University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, Hungary. They are extremely concerned about the measures taken by Hungarian policymakers which are hindering the free development of the arts and artistic expression.

We fully support the DECLARATION OF SOLIDARITY with the students and lecturers of the SZFE University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, published by Saxon Academy of Arts.

Since the beginning of September, students and faculty of the SZFE University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, Hungary, have been protesting against the violation of their autonomy. The takeover of the university by the government-affiliated Foundation for Theatre and Film Arts has already prompted the university management and many distinguished members of the teaching staff to resign.

On 23 October 2020, the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, around 10,000 people demonstrated under the slogan “Art is free” against the foundation’s new board of trustees now running SZFE. The Foundation’s chair Attila Vidnyánszky, who is also the director of Budapest National Theatre, has stated his intention to drive out “elitism” at SZFE, an institution which is 115 years old, and focus teaching in future on “the nation, the homeland and Christianity”. Colonel Gábor Szarka, a former chief of staff at the Ministry of Defence who has now been appointed chancellor of SZFE, has switched off the internet in two buildings on its campus and cut the data cables. In a television interview, he boasted about his personal crackdown and said he would do whatever it took to end “this manner of internal anarchy”.

The Saxon Academy of Arts is highly alarmed at the abolition of the democratically elected organs of SZFE. It emphasizes that freedom in art, research and higher education is non-negotiable and is a cornerstone of Europe’s conceptual self-image. By contrast, a concept of art and education geared towards nationalism definitely belongs on the scrap heap of the disastrous history of the twentieth century.

We hereby declare our solidarity with the students of the SZFE Budapest University of Theatre and Film Arts, the members of faculty who have resigned, as well as the rectorate and the senate, who have also stepped down, and call for the full restoration of the university’s autonomy.

We expect the governments of all EU Member States to put pressure on the Hungarian government to return to the governing bodies of SZFE their full powers.

The Saxon Academy of Arts declares its solidarity with all artists and scholars who champion the freedom of the arts and education.