“For the unsentimentally cerebral Wittgenstein, a photograph is not a memorial, but a ‘probability’. The philosopher’s archive at the University of Cambridge includes the photograph above, a true ‘probability’ in that it does not represent any one person but is a composite image of his face and the faces of his three sisters, made in collaboration with the ‘founding father of eugenics,’ Francis Galton.” (Well, I don’t buy the latter, since Galton dies in 1911…) >full text (c) OPEN CULTURE, 2013
Jasmila Zbanic‘s “brave drama commemorates the victims of atrocities in 1990s Bosnia, making a substantial impression despite a short running time. She commemorates the more than 3,000 Bosniaks murdered during ethnic cleansing in the Visegrad area in the 1990s, especially the women tortured in rape encampments.” Thus, her movie van be seen as a direct response to the nationalitic Potemkin Village project of another Bosnian director: Emir Kusturica. See the full review (c) variety.com 2013 Cf. the text on Kusturica in THE GUARDIAN, 2012
“There is a long & important history of memoirs & fictions, and hybrids of the two, that address the aftermath of war (particularly the Yugoslav Succession Wars of the 1990s). Shards, the impressive first novel by Ismet Prcic, finds inventive ways to interrogate the anguish of enduring and then escaping Bosnia during the war (1992-95). The novel is constructed of fragments — shards — seemingly written by its main character, Ismet Prcic. Ismet grows up in Tuzla and manages to flee shortly before his induction into the “meat grinder” of the Bosnian infantry. He has survived and made his way to America, but is fractured by what he left behind.” >full review & illustration (c) NYT, 2011; interview with the author (c) Suhrkamp/youtube, 2013
“Tt’s the Ukranian feminist group that embarrassed President Putin. Its activists have staged many protests against sexual and political repression by stripping to their waists in carefully choreographed media stunts. (…) Now, a new documentary screening at the Venice Film Festival has revealed that Femen was founded and is controlled by a man.”
Is this a Putinesque publicity stunt to discredit feminist activism or just the truth – or another sly twist of the gender game by the group itself?
>full text & photo (c) INDEPENDENT, 2013
Cf. another article (c) THE GUARDIAN, 2013
And another one (c) DER SPIEGEL, 2013
“Hannah Arendt employed this memorable phrase in both the subtitle and closing words of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, her book on the trial of Nazi lieutenant-colonel Adolf Eichmann. To Arendt’s mind, Eichmann willingly did his part to organize the Holocaust — and an instrumental part it was — out of neither anti-semitism nor pure malice, but out of a non-ideological, entirely more prosaic combination of careerism and obedience. Readers have argued ever since its publication about this characterization, and those with a special interest in how Arendt arrived there can find in the New Yorker‘s online archives the original series of “Eichmann in Jerusalem” articles out of which the book grew.”>full text
(c) OPEN CULTURE, 2013
“While the Prague Castle, above, is a must-see for visitors, a bus tour of a variety of city sites known for corruption has been a growing tourist attraction, according to the tour operators.” >full text (c) NYT, 2013; photo (c) Mlan Bures, IHT
Following its traces in streets & galleries >full text (and more pics)
(c) wieninternational.at 2013
“The 1993 experimental film above—One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin—is part documentary, part low-budget cable-access editing exercise. The film provides an introduction to Benjamin’s life and thought through interviews with scholars, re-enactments of his last days, and montages centered around his many aphoristic expressions.” >full text (c) open culture 2013
>another film: Flâneur III: Benjamin’s Shadow (1998)
Thomas Bernhard, “the great Austrian author, created several curious characters in his short play The German Lunch Table. (…) When I first read the play, I wondered if it could be adapted for Indian stage, especially in the context of the Sikh pogrom in November 1984 in the days following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.” A contribution to the cultural memory debate re: political violence from a cross-cultural perspective. >full text & photo/s
(c) India Ink / NYT, 2013
“The threat that the EU now faces is as deadly as the one that confronted the Habsburg Monarchy a hundred years ago, writes British diplomat Robert Cooper, one of the intellectual architects of EU foreign policy. But getting it right does not need a miracle.”>full text & image (c) eurozine / IM, 2013
delirium clemens 