IETM Annual Plenary Meeting in Budapest, 2004 IETM(Informal European Theatre Meeting)

represented by Mary Ann De Vlieg, Secretary General, Budapest, April 22 - 25 2004. The IETM Plenary Meeting is a large conference of around 450 international professionals and includes working groups, seminars and showcases of artistic productions. This year's Plenary Meeting coincides with the finishing touches of the enlargement process of the EU. Being both witnesses and participants of this historical moment, we chose to debate issues on Traditional Culture & Contemporary Arts & Cultural Identity as the central theme of the Budapest meeting.

Internet INTERVIEW with Beral Madra

1. What is the first thing that comes to your mind about the notion of 'traditional culture'?

The first thing that comes to my mind is modernism, which banned traditional culture and post-modernism which called traditional culture back and globalization which exploits local and regional traditional cultures...Postmodernism was - if we may call it so - a fury for chaos, uncertainty, otherness, openness, multiplicity and change. Postmodern surfaces are not landscapes but see-scapes, with continuous flux and change with no boundaries.

Zygmunt Baumann categorizes the cultural shift between 'solid' or 'heavy' modernity and the new situation of 'liquid modernity'.

Zygmunt Baumann, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press 2000 Solid modernity, to a certain extent melted the traditions of the past, but also produced a new stable order in which production, plant, expansion, boundaries, norms and rules provided rational structure. Liquid modernity (which is post-modernity), is related to consumption which replaced production, and determined norms which are defined by change and flexibility, and identity became multiple (gender and class are not the only identity categorizations).

This liquid modernity creates new ways of construction for identity. Baumann, wittily distinguishes between 'peg', 'cloakroom', and 'carnival' communities. Peg communities are those constituted around events or interests, which provide a temporally limited focus; Cloakroom communities allow for the construction of a stylised identity for a certain occasion; Carnival communities involve the provision of a temporary and entertaining centre of belonging.

These liquid and flexible constructs of identity are contrasted with 'ethical communities', which require long-term commitments, and offer absolute rights and a planned future. Tradition is the basic way of life for these communities. Deep-rooted traditions are ambiguously preserved within the heavy modernity, however in constant jeopardy. Bauman's recognizes that what has previously (in solid or heavy modernity) been solid - in other words traditional - in the construction of social identity and belonging, is now (in liquid modernity) dissolved into an endless sea of terrifying possibility. The traditions are drifting as rescue boots for ethical communities.

The second thing that comes to my mind is all kinds of cultural manifestations related to religions and patriarchal societies. The tradition in this sense mostly influences the life and fate of women, particularly in Islamic societies. March 2004, I have curated a show with women artists entitled "The sphinx will devour you!". I think, women artists have been producing assertive, attractive and probing works since the mid eighties, and currently they are receiving the international attention. Still, one cannot deny the male dominant discourse within the modern and postmodern theory and practice. Women struggle to get their economic and social identities accepted in Turkey where traditional structures still prevail along with the transitions of postmodern processes. Postmodern phase is a break for women but it is not an easy task to change the status quo. We know that to improve the condition of the outcast or repressed individuals - and women of any class and occupation make up a majority of these- we must deconstruct the meta-narratives; to be able to do this, the modernist mentality and structure of the masses and institutions has to be radically changed. Within this context, the probing, questioning, and shocking examples of contemporary art works carry an important mission and among them, the sharing, communicative, flexible and contributive qualities of women artists' works produce favorable results.

In Turkey, although we can't yet refer to an active arts related organization of an attitude/movement on behalf of women artists -in spite of the momentum gained by non-governmental civil organizations since the early 90's-, we have to distinguish the importance of the productions of women artists in quality and quantity. Their appearance on the art scene has been sporadic and singular rather than aiming and in contribution with each other; more over, we can even trace the dominant pattern of women artists who appear in exhibitions monitored by male artists. We cannot speak of a feminist art or the female identity expressed as a political manifesto through art works in the past, nor within late or early modernisms.

The third thing is popular culture - the counterpart of traditional culture - destroying traditional culture... Traditional culture became somehow a dangerous field or one can say that soon it will be trouble number one in the global agenda only comparable to ecology! Man is destroying nature and traditional culture in the same pace and rhythm. Multiple simulations for the sake of capitalism are destroying traditional culture. The consumer attitudes and the metaphor of shopping have replaced the traditions in the everyday structures of human life.

2. What about safeguarding the traditional culture and traditional artists?

Safeguarding the traditional culture is a delicate issue; USA rooted consumerism and by tourism and related branches abuse the traditional culture... All the cities in the Middle East, South Caucasus, neglected because of state capitalism or destroyed during regional wars etc. are now restored or renovated in the same style; becoming History-Disney-lands The artisans improvise with bad taste (kitsch) and produce more or less the same objects.

Popular culture and kitsch elements destroy the purity of traditional arts and crafts as well as daily life cultures and habits; transforming all traditional rituals into entertainment and event-culture. How to preserve, might be the theme of a world congress...

3. Do contemporary creation and traditional culture cross each other at certain points? What is the nature of the interrelations between the two?

Contemporary art concepts and forms have opened new vistas for research, examination and critical exploitation of traditional culture. In comparison to modernism were all traditional forms were articulated as forms rather than concepts (abstract art with its Eastern philosophical references may be excluded) post-modernism allowed the artists to deal with traditional culture as identity source and as a tool for deconstructing the myths, meta-narratives and dilemmas. Joseph Beuys, was one of the prominent artists who based his work on traditional culture. Most of the Arte Povera artists with exquisite examples of time and space related installations have ...On the other hand, theatre, dance an music has organic links to traditional culture, which to our joy is not yet vanished!

4. In our globally connected world, inhabited by people with multiple and shifting identities, what place is there for the traditional?

Globalisation uses and misuses traditional culture. The main stream of globalisation blowing with the global economy systems and media sweeps away the traditional cultures - for example that happens all over Mediterranean in cities, whereas in the rural areas there is still a kind of resistance; the counter stream replies with the resistance of local and regional traditional cultures. Again all disciplines of contemporary arts are dealing with all kinds of traditional culture revivals, especially in workshops that is being organised in so-called peripheral cities and regions.

KEY NOTE PAPER FOR WHOSE IS THIS SONG? Documentary Film by by Adela Peeva

The film is a documentary, not only of a traditional song, but also of a quest for truth and identity, with a vigorous performance. It is almost a political act of deconstructing the trauma in the Balkans. The seek for the source of the song becomes the seek for thr identity and the film displays a rising crescendo in the determination of the communities to prove their ownership. While the Istanbul episode is nostalgic and arabesque, the finale is disastrous and dangerous. At first a guideline for a common traditional past, the song becomes at the end almost a reason for war. We know that with the implosion of communism in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the societies of central and eastern Europe found themselves devoid of an internal market, an economic sponsor, or a military umbrella and faced democray and capitalism. The countries of central Europe - from Slovenia to Hungary, the Baltic, the South Caucasus etc. dismissed their communist phase as a "historical accident" and entered integration with Western Europe. The communities of eastern Europe are bitterly divided into the "nostalgics" or "reactionary" versus the "European", or "progressive". After the iron curtain was lifted total integration has been achieved but massive economic disparities prevail.

Poverty is a potent disappointment. Economic problems are effecting the lives of these communities. Between two thirds and four fifths of the denizens of the crime-infested societies of the countries in transition registered delinquency as a major scourge, followed by corrupt political leaders, AIDS and disease, moral decline, poor drinking water, emigration, poor schooling, terrorism, immigration and ethnic conflict. Ironically, the more chauvinistic the society, the more concerned its members are with ethnic hatred. The countries of east Europe, it seems, are unable to catch up with"western Europe. Their transition is tortuous and unpopular among their subjects. Some of the societies are being left behind and the Western communities seem to be indifferent. Hopes for a better future are repressed by insurmountable economic and social problems. The transition from totalitarian communism to liberal capitalism had its impacts. The film displays all the aspects of this unpleasant reality.

On the other hand the film implicates the reasons of the Balkan crisis. It is said that the Balkan crisis is rooted in centuries of violent conflict and history. It is also located atop one of the world's major civilizational fault lines -- a point of intersection involving Islam, western Christianity and eastern Orthodoxy. Conflicting religious, political, ethnic and cultural forces are at work here. There are literally centuries of violent history overlaid with a melange of mythic tales, songs, literature, poetry and feelings. Religion and national identification thus emerge as two of the leading civilizational fault-line indicators. The Serbs identify themselves with Orthodox Christianity, distinct from their Roman Catholic Croat neighbors. Muslims, in Albania and Bosnia became an important factor in the current Balkan crisis. Serb-Muslim tensions date back to the 14th century where troops of the Ottoman empire overwhelmed Serbian fighters. The commemoration of this disaster in 1389 is still celebrated on June 28, and has become an icon in Serbian history and mythology. The battle took place in Gazimestan, Kosovo. Toward the end of the bloody conflict, a Serb killed Murad I, the military commander and Sultan, and in retaliation the Ottomans slew the Serbian prince, Lazar. 500 years of Ottoman Turkish occupation -- the fruit of the Gazimestan battle -- fused the elements of Serbian ethnic identity and Orthodox religion. It is this Orthodoxy which links the Serb cause to a greater sense of Slavic identity. They are preserving ethnicity and religious identity -- specifically Orthodoxy -- in its historical stand against both the West and the periodic incursions of Islam.

In most parts of central, eastern and southeastern Europe, feudalism is entrenched in the legal systems of the Ottoman Empire and of Czarist Russia. Elements of feudalism survived in also in 20th century codices and culture mostly in agricultural sectors all over the Balkans and South Caucasus. A journalist says : "What communism did to the lands it permeated was to freeze this early feudal frame of mind of disdain towards "non-productive", "city-based" vocations. Agricultural and industrial occupations were romantically extolled. The cities were berated as hubs of moral turpitude, decadence and greed. Political awareness was made a precondition for personal survival and advancement. The clock was turned back ." Speaking of Islam, none of the major communities in the Balkan conflict are without guilt and responsibilities. The rising Muslim tide in places such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo has brought with it not just cultural diversity, but the presence of extremist Islamic groups which perceive themselves as the ideological and religious descendants of the Ottomans, charged with the divine mission of bringing the word of Allah to the heathen west.

One example is the controversy last December over a statue in Savarjevo's Liberation Square. A gift from Italy and sculptor Francesco Perilli, it is titled "Multiethnic Man." Perilli hopes to have copies of the work placed on five continents -- Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Australia. The sculpture consists of a nude figure looking skyward, surrounded by an orbiting array of peace doves. But what was meant as a statement on behalf of tolerance has been under attack by Islamic militants, who according to the Los Angeles Times, see the sculpture as "pornography at worst, idolatry at best for celebrating the human form over God." Militants originally attempted relatively peaceful protests, such as sneaking up in darkness and covering the enormous statue with black cloth. "Someone always pulls the cover off, though, and 'Multiethnic Man' stand naked again," noted one local observer. This is a wrong example of how art can interfere into the conflict. Or, how art can be articulated as a tool for cultural and psychological healing.

The positive example is ARS AEVI, the contemporary art mueseum in Sarajevo under construction. The museum has been conceived by Enver Hadjiömer spahic during the Bosnian war and is being realized since the end of the war. Renzo Piano has contributed with a plan. The collection was donated by several cities from Europe. One of the works donated to the museum belongs to Bizhan Bassiri, the Iranian origin Italian artist. The scuplture controversially titled "The Beast" belongs to a corpus of work, which has been exhibited in Sarajevo, 2002 and which is currently being exhibited in Istanbul, in one of the most prominent buildings of the architect Sinan, Tophane (16th century canon factory). Beral Madra/2004 April