>From Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung www.faz.com Hong Kong Teaches Berlin By Mark Siemons BERLIN. Hong Kong came close to hosting the first Love Parade on Asian soil next month, as the climax of a major Berlin Festival organized by the local Goethe Institute. The plan was evidence of a discreet but unmistakeably new cultural optimism that has been developing in Germany in recent years. According to the program, the Love Parade was to "demonstrate the power of art and culture as a genuine economic factor." For as well as being consumers, ravers are also "creative individuals" and therefore potential creators of jobs in the future. Apparently, Germany's rebirth as a cultural nation is in keeping with established West German traditions, where cultural identity was always defined primarily in economic terms. But there is more to it than this. The desire to export the Love Parade demonstrates a missionary awareness that is based on a new interpretation of universality. Wherever people succeed in freeing themselves of their origins and their national and cultural prejudices as the Germans have done, they will be able to come together in the same rush of mindless ecstasy. In the words of the Goethe Institute document: "Local forms of identity are becoming increasingly mobile, nomadic and hybrid." For the time being, this dream has clearly fallen victim to one local form of identity that has yet to achieve such a degree of mobility. The government of Hong Kong, now a Special Administrative Region of China, expressed concern at the drug-taking for which the Love Parade is notorious and announced strict checks. The organizers in Hong Kong then advised the Goethe Institute to cancel the parade in order to prevent Germany from being closely associated with drug-related crime. Instead, the parties agreed to stage an Aids Concert at an indoor location. Meanwhile, German representatives have expressed their disappointment, saying Hong Kong obviously isn't capable of grasping the potential synergies generated by such an event, the links it can create between the public, business and the art scene. The word is that Asia lags somewhat behind in this respect. In fact, the affair is above all an indication of how Germany is currently deluding itself. According to Marc Wohlrabe, responsible for presenting the "young creative industries" at the festival, Hong Kong has an interest in finding out more about the "Relaunch of Berlin." He plans to show how art draws capital and innovative potential to a city, acting as a source of new ideas for the economy. But it is doubtful whether this argument works for Hong Kong. Unlike Berlin, whose dire economic situation forces it to grasp at each and every straw, including cultural options, Hong Kong is a city that bristles with economic vitality. New business ideas are constantly being born, on a scale beyond Berlin's grasp. The question here is reversed: How can the arts present their own value in the midst of such a thoroughly successful political and economic complex? Increasingly, business leaders are placing their trust in upbringing, education and cultural identity, categories detached from immediate profitability. From this point of view, drugs are not an issue to be left to the free flow of public forces. And far from being an act of repression, combating drugs is seen as a cultural measure. There is a discrepancy between Hong Kong's interest in Germany and what the official German bodies find interesting about themselves. Presented with the extensive festival program, which excels especially in ballet, representatives from Hong Kong's cultural scene insisted on several minor but telling changes to the original. Alongside the Turkish-German transvestite show Salon Oriental (demonstrating Berlin's new "transnational" identity,) the film "Marlene" (as proof of the international caliber of German cinema) and a live broadcast from a café in Berlin's trendy Mitte district (showing the capital's urbane credentials), the program will now include a series of lectures by local academics on German thinkers from Kant or Marx through Siegfried Kracauer (in spite of reservations expressed by the German side). Beyond the young and fresh, swift and futuristic, unusual and avant-gardist elements that the Germans see as the reflection of their true essence today, the Hong Kong representatives insisted on this anachronisms. Hong Kong is currently searching for its own identity, an enterprise where philosophers are more help than young creative industries. In contrast, the new lightness Germany is currently peddling has an explicitly economic background. The air of superiority with which it manifests itself is based on past economic successes, and the rationale connected with it is based on current economic deficits. And here lies the blind spot in Germany's self-presentation. Cultural globalization, of which it considers itself a pioneer, is revealing itself as an illusion. A fitting symbol for this was the mirror-lined Art Deco marquee that, according to the original plan, would have been set up among the skyscrapers of Hong Kong Central, a sign of the endless, ubiquitous process of self-reflection that leaves no traces. In its place, the architect Rocco Yim will now erect a modern Chinese bamboo pavilion. _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
