EUROPEAN ALLIANCE OF ACADEMIES 12
OVERCOMING DIFFERENCES CELEBRATING TOGETHERNESS
Jeanine Meerapfel
The European Alliance of Academies was founded during a threeday conference at the Akademie der Künste at Pariser Platz in Berlin in October 2020. Around seventy representatives of European art academies and cultural institutions came together from almost all countries of the European Union as well as from Norway and the United Kingdom. It was a powerful signal that showed how necessary a transnational alliance borne by solidarity is, especially in view of the Covid-19 pandemic and its political consequences, national border enforcements, and right-wing populist isolationist fantasies. All academies agreed to speak out for the freedom of art – not only in their own countries, but across borders throughout Europe. The founding manifesto, “Open Continent”, dated 9 October 2020, commemorates the anti-Semitic attack on the Jewish community in Halle on Yom Kippur a year earlier on 9 October 2019. It urges us to vigorously confront undemocratic and right-wing populist tendencies. Solidarity and the defence of the freedom of art are our explicit goals. For this, we need mutual support. The European Alliance of Academies is working in various working groups on the question of how this can be achieved – on all levels of cultural policy and the arts. A digital platform is being developed that creates new spaces for internal and public networking, and formats for artistic exchange aim to bring the institutions into fruitful cooperation. One working group is addressing the rise of anti-Semitism across Europe and how it can be countered. The Alliance of Academies is campaigning on behalf of artists exposed to intimidation and persecution with declarations of solidarity. At the same time, we are also beginning to reappraise, clarify, and partly revise preconceived views of the situations in the countries represented. We’re listening to each other. This is a good first step. For the current issue of the Journal der Künste, we have received some articles through members of the European Alliance of Academies. In her essay “When Freedom Dies (Centimetre by Centimetre)”, Radka Denemarková outlines the interconnectedness of local specificities and international tensions as well as the conflict between neoliberalism and capitalism on the one hand and human rights, democracy, and freedom of expression on the other. To this end, she traces the historical freedom movements in the Czech Republic (which were “wiped out in 1989”), draws attention to the fate of persecuted authors worldwide – those of the Turkish author Aslı Erdoğan, the Kurdish author and politician Hevrin Khalaf, and the Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo – and reminds us of one thing above all: “Freedom is responsibility”.
In an interview conducted by Matthias Krupa (Die Zeit), the issue of how to respond to the instrumentalisation of negative emotions in current political debates is addressed by Dominika Kasprowicz (Villa Decius, Cracow) and historian Philipp Ther. Where does hate come from and what can we do about it? Matei Bejenaru’s photographs testify to the achievements and decline of the scientific and industrial infrastructure in post-communist Romania since 1989. He shows spaces that once stood for science and technological progress but have been forgotten on society’s transition to capitalism; whose productivity has come to a standstill; and whose protagonists from the fields of science and technology are having to battle for new spaces in the present. These are examples with the potential to bring each other closer to the realities of our respective lives. In cooperation with lawyers from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the alliance has launched an online petition to the European Parliament and filed a complaint with the UN Special Rapporteur Karima Bennoune. The European Alliance of Academies calls for the violations of the freedom of the arts in Hungary to be countered with the full range of legal instruments available and for enforcement of the legal framework to protect the independence of cultural institutions and cultural workers. On Europe Day of the European Union (9 May 2021), we discussed this with those responsible for culture and politics – with welcome addresses from Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Sabine Verheyen, and contributions from artists and cultural workers from different European countries. In the coming months, we will intensify the contacts initiated with MEPs. The work of the European Alliance of Academies is supported by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, by the Society of Friends of the Akademie der Künste, and also by the Federal Agency for Civic Education – without our autonomy being affected. This is a blessing. And it ought to apply to the whole of Europe. We will work to achieve this together.
JEANINE MEERAPFEL, a filmmaker, is president of the Akademie der Künste.
