WHAT WOULD MY PRIORITIES BE? WHAT CULTURAL POLICIES WOULD I CHAMPION FOR EUROPE?
“Who among the expert candidates is the most apt to be the pastor of the multitude?” “We know Plato’s answer” - said Gilles Deleuze – “the Philosopher”.
A debate with Gottfried Wagner, Daniel Sibony and Nicola Setari
Moderated by Marie-Noëlle Bauer
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Marie-Noëlle Bauer - Journalist, Paris
“This is an invitation to think out of the box, this is what we’re trying to do at this conference, called 'Culture and Cooperation - A European perspective’. We’ll try to make it an informal chat about cultural politics today.”
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Gottfried Wagner - Director of the European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam
“Art is by nature the most complex approach of human concepts. We need to reconnect the artistic discourse with the political discourse. Therefore we need cultural policies in Europe. Foundations like the Evens’ one, play an important role in laying the ground for that. It’ll be an uphill battle for the next 20 years, because member states, nations, don’t like this approach, but its inevitable, as otherwise the market will decide everything.”
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Nicola Setari - Editor-in-chief of Janus Magazine (Brussels)
“Misunderstanding not only comes from philosophers, but also from the political side. The more you hear of certain kinds of discourses and rhetoric, the ‘cultural industry’, is one of the main keyword in this sense, and you perceive that there is a deep misunderstanding of the cultural field and a deep misunderstanding of how to engage with the cultural field.”
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Daniel Sibony - Psycho-analyst, author, essay writer, Paris
“If I were the president of the commission, I would tell my colleagues that we need to give territories, spaces. At a European level, the mayor of Venice and the mayor of Berlin must free a space which will be floating, where artists can talk about their creations.”
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Corinne Evens
“Why don’t we organize a European referendum on issues like ‘Floating Territories’, or others in the field of art and culture?”
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Gottfried Wagner
“Mobilization is indeed an issue, and then it is about creating a cultural commonwealth on a totally new platform of interest, we have to learn to negociate differences differently and that is new in history, and if this cultural commonwealth should have a chance to succeed, it needs mobilization.”