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Migration, Displacement and Identity (p7)
The cultural attaché of the European Commission Representation in the UK, Jeremy O’Sullivan has initiated a timely series on “Migration, Displacement and Identity”. The series comprised music, poetry and writing about foreign lands. It included the readings and views on languages of a Finnish writer, Selja Ahava, who had lived in London for a long […]
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Revolution at the V&A (p6)
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world” This quote from the nineteen-sixties by Margaret Mead was greeting visitors to the Revolution exhibition, currently at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It is an encouraging thought in our times of globalisation, dominated by corporations with turnovers well above […]
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Franco German Friendship
European heritage In the heart of Munich a marquee was erected in front of the Italianating loggia façade of the Feldherrnhalle (Field Marshalls’ Hall), a monumental building with military connotation. Perhaps not the most appropriate backdrop for the commemoration of the Anglo German Elysee Treaty of friendship signed by Adenauer and de Gaulle fifty years […]
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Revolution – Almost But Not Quite
Two aspects came to mind from the conversation between the translator Donald Nicholson-Smith and the art historian Timothy J Clark: one was the challenge of ‘translation’, the other the revival of interest in ’68. Transposition The occasion was Nicholson-Smith’s new English translation – ‘The Revolution of Everyday Life’ – of the “Traite de savoir-vivre a […]
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Rifts in the public realm
Ownership of public information One of the few surviving local papers dropped through my letterbox at regular intervals is informing me about events in the area. It includes various phone numbers of services provided by the local authority which cannot be reached face to face at a town hall or elsewhere by its rate payers, […]
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Generation E
The BBC in Europe A rare treat: the BBC is allocating a modest weekly quarter of an hour to European issues. The second Radio 4 series of five programmes is called “Generation E” fronted by Lucy Ash. It deals with the younger generation of fellow Europeans beyond the Channel and how they are “facing up […]
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Spirit of ’68
This is a new spontaneous experiment. The working group “Spirit of ’68” emerged spontaneously from a discussion at the third TINAG -This Is Not A Gateway Festival in autumn 2010 on the events in and around 1968, in Paris and elsewhere. The question was why this promising social movement did not have lasting effects, and […]