todays events / education

view list

news / reviews

view list

guides

view list

publication

UMELEC 4 - 2007

DIVUS
Magazine
Soft Cover
98 pages
32 x 22 cm
2007
4
£5


We all want an SUV
The European Union was not created out of regional cultural interest but rather to support free, cross-border investment.
If you have a full wallet or a credit card, then you are an investment. This is a given concerning EU residents, and therefore
they can travel where they want. We don't want poor people, and thus there's an iron curtain at the eastern border of the Union.
It's just they don't call it that. It's such an ugly word.
Nation-states are getting poorer, companies richer and there's nothing essentially wrong with that. It's immaterial who's getting
rich as long as enrichment is the general principle for functioning. So it's not surprising that multinational companies take on
the role of cultural administrator and financier. Companies set up their own institutions
much like ministries. They are often criticized for not acting consistently and democratically like State-run institutions.
But they cannot and they do not want to. Even if it's not immediately apparent, we are talking about very pragmatic projects
with clear marketing objectives. In this regard, they are much more transparent than their cousins in the State sector.
Corruptibility and non-systematicness in State-run institutions provide for a state where projects belong to no one.
In Eastern Europe only these new private institutions are willing to pay their employees well. There are still not enough to provide
a living for all intellectuals and artists willing to commit their services. And until the situation gets better, criticism from
the lower-paid ranks will be heard even louder. Even if the programs of these self-sufficient initiatives are impeccable. But apparently
even oil and telco giants have plans in this area, so perhaps things will get better.
We can only hope that these corporate cultural networks will have a longer shelf-life than the Soros program's cultural centers.
The program's collapse at the end of the 1990s only deepened skepticism,
failed to

 Writers Chris Gill, Lenka Vitkova, Ruth Estevez, Irving Dominguez, Petr Brozka, Lenka Dolanova, Ivan Mecl, Clemens Foscher, Marian Serrano, Ruben Bonet, Sasa Janjic, Edith Jerabkova, Palo Fabus, Konstantin Rubahin, Tony Ozuna


 

todays events / education

view list

guides

view list

add a review