BALKAN
CULTURAL
CO-OPERATION
CULTURAL
CO-OPERATION
Prof. Dr. Andreas Wiesand: Start Thinking About Yourselves
Prof. Dr. Andreas Wiesand from Bonn was one of the organizers and initiators of the recent Sarajevo conference, "Reconstructing Cultural Productivity in the Balkans". He is one of the most significant experts in cultural policy and how it relates to the situation in Europe. He has always considered the Balkan region as an integral part of the continent and supported development of intercultural cooperation between Yugoslavia and other parts of Europe.
Three decades ago Prof. Wiesand founded the Center for Cultural Research. He has been running it ever since. He has published a large number of books on cultural anthropology, cultural policy and statistics. In addition, he is a professor at the Music Academy in Hamburg as well as the general secretary of the European Research Institute for Comparative Cultural Policy and the Arts (ERICArts).
I SUPPORT BALKANKULT
Thanks to Prof. Wiesand, ERICArts, which includes more than 70 significant European research institutions and individuals, has supported the project, "Reconstructing Cultural Productivity in the Balkans". In the past few decades, Prof. Wiesand has visited Yugoslavia a number of times and is an expert on the culture and the cultural circumstances of the Balkans. In this context, he has conceived the need for development of cultural cooperation in the Balkans and Yugoslavia and also for direct aid for the cultural life of this region.
"Re-establishing and re-vitalizing Trans-border artistic and cultural ties within the Balkans and with other European countries is not only important for the return of mutual trust between different peoples”, Prof. Wiesand wrote in the program of the Sarajevo conference. “It is, as well, a precondition for the moral and economic reconstruction of this Region and for upholding cultural diversity in all parts of Europe."
He reminded us of the May Declaration of the EU Conference in Essen that "...the culture industries (including book publishing, film, music and AV production and the fine-art trade) can reinforce indigenous regional potentials and improve the underlying conditions affecting general economic development; in other words, they could contribute to a democratic cultural environment in the Balkans."
Today, after considerable direct--and vital--support to the Sarajevo conference from the region, Prof. Wiesand further supports the processes that this meeting has launched. Among these is of a regional association BALKANKULT (Balkan Cultural Co-operation) with main office in Belgrade. This is an organisation that should help revive old connections between the newly independent Balkan countries and the rest of Europe and establish new ones.
We were interested in Prof. Wiesand's impressions of the Sarajevo conference because he had the chance to hear and meet about 60 other participants of the meeting, mostly workers and practitioners of the culture industry from the region and Europe.
How does he see the future development of the Balkans?
“I think that it is most important to start considering and applying a principle- that people of the Balkans have to start thinking about themselves and organise on their own. I am happy to have seen the start of such a process and that there are already, right after the Conference, three such networks: first was begun by the publishers, the second is BAN, established by artists, and the third is BalkanKult. What happened in Sarajevo today gives meaning to your work and mine”, says Prof. Wiesand.
For example, he says: publishing books that would be read in all parts of the Balkans, wherever that is possible and where there are no language barriers. If this fact, a free flow and communication of books, is thwarted by sharp duty and other conditions and regulations, than it should be changed by concrete measures, but this can be done only by united people from the region. "They can help themselves the most", says Andreas Wiesand.
Did you get an impression in Sarajevo that the cultural workers from the region wanted to co-operate?
"I am not sure that they want to co-operate, but I think they all understood that this was their only chance. That is why they will do so. The Balkans are really not the main theme in Europe anymore and there is a real hazard that it might become a forgotten region! But if people started co-operating on concrete projects (not the political ones, forget the politics!), and these are exhibitions, movies, festivals and so on, they might return to the European platform. That is the reality! Therefore, people from the region have to understand and learn to organise themselves on a different platform, normal economical and cultural base, and not anymore on political or military one."
About culture and development of cultural co-operation in the Balkans, Prof. Dr Andreas Wiesand emphasises at the end:
"The future exists, without doubt, but only if people from the region create it, no one should force anything from the outside… Of course, that is always a matter of money, too… And today, the Balkans are an excellent area****** Someday, I wish to return to that region, to travel freely, without visas and without problems, to sit on the bank of the Danube and talk to everybody. Right now, that is not possible." - Says the great expert and admirer of our culture, Prof. Dr Andreas Wiesand.
Published: 2000-01-15
Updated: 2003-11-20
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