The writer´s hand
In his novel “Das Treffen in Telgte” (Meeting in Telgte), Günter Grass, Nobel prize winner for literature, described a meeting of intellectuals: In 1648, after the war that had wreaked havoc on Central Europe for thirty years, destroying towns, churches and people’s beliefs, a group of authors who had survived this war met near the German towns of Münster and Osna-brück to talk about peace. Günter Grass is an author, painter and sculptor. His picture Die Hand des Schreibers (the Writer’s Hand) shows a hand holding a quill emerging from a dead stone landscape of war.
Defence of the future
Brussels and the European Union are not just sources of money. The citizens of Europe came together again after the devastation of the Second World War seeking peace and prosperity, but to find them they also had to overcome hatred. Soon after 1945, before the founding of the European Community, people were buying goods from neighbours who a short time before were still being depicted in Goebbels’ propaganda as the arch-enemy.
There can be no prosperity without peace. There can be no peace without overcoming hatred. That is why we initiated the culture container In Defence of our Future.
The idea
The mobile.culture.container is set up for a few weeks in each location as a place where young people can meet freely. It is a place for older schoolchildren to come to reflect, to produce their own school newspaper, but it is also a place for discussions, workshops, exhibitions, dancing, listening to music, writing, reading, chatting, a laboratory and a café. It is intended as a creative venue - a place for ideas and a place to relax. Its task is to create something of lasting continuity.
Questions
Questions are raised in the mobile.culture.container:
What does the personal future of young people in South-Eastern Europe look like? How can lasting peaceful coexistence be achieved? And what are the prospects in a world which is at present undergoing a technical revolution? What skills will people need in order to be part of this process? hat future awaits these young people and how can they begin, today, to defend their own future?
Europe
The mobile.culture.container informs young citizens about the tasks and objectives of the European Union. The way to European integration of the countries which the project visits is the way to a future of peaceful coexistence. The mobile.culture.container regards the young people with whom it talks of the future as the generation that can lead their own country into a united Europe.For this reason there are “Europe Days” providing information and an opportunity to discuss this goal.
Discussion
In the mornings, school classes and youth clubs are invited to discuss the future. By arrangement with school heads and youth group leaders, young people can get to know the mobile.culture.container, use it and talk about their prospects for the future. The project supervisors lead these discussions in the young people’s language.
School newspapers
School newspapers can serve as a platform for the free expression of the pupils’ own thoughts and opinions. The content and form depends on the pupils’ interests, and the pupils themselves take responsibility for the newspaper’s design and layout. This activity calls for independence and responsibility and also for a democratic approach.
A first editorial office was founded in 2001 at the secondary school in Cacak. In 2002 the mobile.culture.container will be able to set up several school newspapers and to create a transnational network of correspondents between these editorial offices.
The peace library
The mobile.culture.container has a small library containing both contemporary literature and books on the economic and political rapprochement of Central Europe after the Second World War. These books, which are available to all, help readers to find out the reasons for nationalism and war in the twentieth century, how hatred and isolation were overcome, which strategies were successful and which were not.
In addition there are books about the European Union, journalism, film theory and new technology.
New technology
The mobile.culture.container has an Internet room. The Internet can be used during the communal discussions and also during the afternoons. Project workers show people how to use this technology and what can be found with it so that users can research questions about the future in the Internet, prepare subjects for the school newspaper and establish contacts with institutions, other Internet cafés, interested persons or school projects around the world. Each guest at the mobile.culture.container also has the opportunity to use digital video, photo and event technologies.
Workshops
The workshops develop on the discussions in practical work. In 2001 there were workshops on the following subjects: literature, theatre, newspapers, research, painting, fashion, scenography, radio and public relations. The workshops follow a fixed weekly schedule. Young people enter their names in lists for a place in a workshop. At the end of the visit to each town, the results of the workshops are shown at the final party.
Evenings
The mobile.culture.container is also a public venue for events. Clubs are planned for some evenings in the week where there is music and dancing. Films can also be shown. There is a small stage for musicians, dancers and actors and for presenting books, pictures and opinions. In 2001 these evenings were frequently used for discussions. The mobile culture container is a place for reflection and relaxation.
The Tour
The mobile.culture.container spends a few weeks in a town at the mayor’s invitation, because the support of town councils is indispensable in realizing the project. Early on contacts are established to young people, teachers, youth group leaders, the press, artists and institutions. In winter 2001 the project was suspended to be restarted in the spring of 2002 when it will visit six further towns.
What remains?
Apart from impulses for people to think about their own future, the mobile.culture.container aims also to leave behind something that is very concrete. Therefore there are plans to set up a series of editorial offices for school newspapers. In Osijek a youth parliament was founded with the assistance of the mobile.culture. container. In Cacak an information club with an Internet centre was set up. These pro-jects which remain after the mobile.culture.container has left contribute to the continuity of our work.
Contact
Contacts are maintained in particular via the Internet, even after the mobile.culture. container has left for other towns. Contacts will also be kept up over the winter period. In addition, young people from the former “mobile.culture towns” are invited to visit the new locations. In 2001 there were visits from Tuzla at Osijek and from Tuzla and Osijek at Cacak. In Gorazde young people came from all of the towns that had been visited previously to follow the project’s work and continue to take part in it.
Structure
The mobile.culture.container consists of 16 containers assembled in a circle and covered with an awning 20 metres wide and 7 metres high. Underneath this awning there is an open space and a stage. In the containers there is an Internet room with a video lab, an exhibition and discussion room with a library, office, dressing room for the stage, kitchen, toilets and washrooms, and a storeroom. The mobile. culture.container requires a space of 35 square metres. This construction has satisfied structural acceptance criteria and there are also fire and safety measures.
Local assistance
The mobile.culture.container needs the help of town councils to find a flat, hard court of the necessary size, to cover the electricity requirements (2 x 135 A), to supply water, to remove sewage, to dispose of rubbish and to use the telecommunication lines. There should be connections for each of the supply lines close by. The towns are only expected to provide free of charge for the use of the area, water, sewage and rubbish disposal.
Naturally, the assistance of schools is necessary in order to implement this collaborative project successfully. In addition, contacts are required to the local press, local NGOs and youth clubs etc.
The fund’s board of trustees
The nonprofit foundation Fonds Verteidigung unserer Zukunft (Defence of our Future Fund) with headquarters in Vienna is responsible for the mobile.culture.container.
Lieselore Cyrus, the High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina Dr. Wolfgang Petritsch, Hans Koschnik and the Austrian Vice-Chancellor Emeritus Dr. Erhard Busek are among the funds honorary trustees.
The fund curator is the Viennese lawyer Dr. Gabriel Lansky.
The fund’s board
The chairperson of the fund’s board is Freimut Duve, the initiator of this project and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. The Swiss Ambassador Emeritus, Marianne von Grünigen, is deputy chairperson of the fund’s board.
Other members of the board are Annemarie Türk (Kultur-Kontakt Austria) and the Luxembourg Ambassador Jacques Reuter.
The team
The mobile.culture.container is run by a team of eight members, the majority from South-Eastern Europe. All members of the team that is responsible for debates, discussions between the young people, advice regarding the Internet and the video lab, press and public relations work and assisting the director are from South-Eastern Europe.
Achim Koch, who is director, technical supervisor and project designer, comes from Germany. Other colleagues providing technical assistance could
come from Western or South-Eastern Europe.
Financing
The project mobile.culture. container is being implemented in the framework of the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe. The main state sponsors have so far been the Federal Republic of Germany, the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, Switzerland and Norway. Further support has hitherto been received from the Principality of Liechtenstein, Republic of Austria, Spain, and the Czech Republic. Other countries will be offering support in the future. The main private sponsors so far have been Volkswagen AG and Allianz Kulturstiftung. The fund has been supported by mobilkom austria, Kultur-Kontakt Austria and Korridor X Line.
Documentation
The work of the mobile.culture. container is being evaluated in various ways. A book is planned for 2002, which will present the experiences from the tour of 2001. At the beginning of 2002 there will be a documentary about the project’s work. This film will show excerpts from various video clips produced by the young people during the video workshops of the 2001 tour.
At the same time the film will offer an insight into the mobile.culture.container’s work. Press coverage is being archived and a scientific evaluation will also be drawn up.
In 1904, the Manaki Brothers decided to move to Bitola. The city was an important political, economic, and cultural center at the Balkans in that period. One year later, they opened their well-known “Atelier for Art Photography” in Bitola. Another important year for the Brothers was 1906, when, on invitation from the King Karol I, they took part in the big world photography exhibition in Sinaia, Romania. There they won a Golden Medal for their photographic collection, and as a result they received the title of Royal Photographers of His Majesty Karol I. Later, in the year 1911 they became photographers of the Turkish Sultan, and in 1929 of the Yugoslav King Alexander Karadjordjevic. The experience with photographic camera was excellent visual preparation and gave them a strong base from which to work with a film camera. During the transition from the 19th to 20th century, there were the Ilinden Uprising and the Krushevo Republic, the Balkan Wars and the First World War, the time of the flourishing of Bitola, which had then developed into a consular and military center on the Balkan wing of the Turkish Empire, with consulates of the European forces and the Balkan countries. Here, the Third Turkish Army, consisting of over 30 thousand soldiers, was stationed. Bitola had a military academy, plus other schools, banks, and printing houses. It was a trade center, influenced by European fashion, with rich families, but also poverty was present in its suburbs. In one word, an interesting and attractive life conglomerate that irresistibly provoked curiosity with the Manaki Brothers, who worked intensely with their photographic camera.
