Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen.
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In the Spectator, John Cleese tells a critic what a critic is. In Tygodnik Powszechny, philosopher Jean-Luc Marion has no problem proving the existence of God. In Prospect, Hanif Kureishi wishes authors had more balls. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh outlines the sort of sophisticated diplomacy that the Obama team needs. Espresso watches the Calabrian mafia using PTT. Wired visits a prison to hear the tale of the world's biggest diamond heist. n+1 is glad that the weirdness has been put back into German sex. The Gazeta Wyborcza drowned in the earnestness of a Berlin production of Dorota Maslowska's new play. And in the NYT, Freeman Dyson heats up the climate.
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Since being diagnosed with lung cancer last year, Christoph Schlingensief has made his illness the subject of a theatre trilogy. In what he describes as a readymade opera, "Mea Culpa", the final part now playing in Vienna's Burgtheater, is a mature, elegiac and exhibitionistic parody of everything the world has ever constructed around the big C. By Peter Michalzik
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The idea that 1989 came out of thin air speaks volumes about historical insensitivities and limited horizons. The fall of the Berlin Wall was preceded by years of erosion and attrition. Historian Karl Schlögel looks at the molecular movements on the margins of history that are much more powerful than any deeds of "great men".
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Lettre International prints Bela Hamvas' 1960 essay on direct morality and bad conscience. The Nation demands state subsidies for old media. In El Pais Semanal, Javier Cercas waits for a novel about Hitler's moustache hair. In the Guardian, Mary Beard dispels all hopes for a good death. In Novel Obs, Alain Finkielkraut does not mention the Kundera Affair. In the New York Review of Books, John Gray learns all about debt from Margaret Atwood. Elet es Irodalom dwells on otherness. The TLS celebrates Josef Skvorecky. Umberto Eco eyes up the bodies of Mussolini and Berlusconi for L'Espresso. And Carlos Fernando Chamorro sheepishly tells the New York Times how he opposed his mother.
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In Osteuropa, Jachym Topol takes the subway and instantly spots the difference between East and West. In Frontline, the physicist Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy decries the Saudi-ising of Pakistani culture. ResetDoc sees an army of dissidents in the Arab world. In the Guardian, Roger Norrington plays Beethoven in the right tempo. Not the sciences but the humanities can deconstruct religion, the New Humanist asserts. Elet es Irodalom takes a swing at Hungarian lobbying. The Economist is fascinated by an archive from the Warsaw ghetto. The New York Times portrays music tycoon Valeri Gergiev.
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In local elections at the beginning of the month, the Austrian state of Carinthia effectively granted a governing majority to a dead man. Eva Menasse looks at an idyllically beautiful corner of the world that has been dumbed-down to death. Photo by pixel0809
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Reality exists! But only when we're not looking, the Economist declares. Blindness is the purest form of sight, Claude Lanzmann assures the Nouvel Obs. Vanity Fair tracks down the Viking gene in the Icelandic man. In the American, James V. DeLong looks into the forked future of a paid and a free Internet. In the Believer, author and filmmaker C.S. Leigh fondly recalls a fetid human experience. Italy's rotting, cries MicroMega. The polluter pays! Joseph Stiglitz declares in the Nation. And Jonathan Littell's novel "The Kindly Ones" induces visions of sausages in the New York Times.
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The doors have just opened on the third major rennovation project on Berlin's Museum Island. British architect David Chipperfield has revealed the vestiges of history in the Neues Museum. By Bernhard Schulz
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In Salon.eu.sk, Jaroslav Formanek takes aim at BHL's arrogance. Prospect succumbs to the charms of Odessa's Black Sea hedonism. In Dissent, historian Michael B. Katz describes his experiences on the jury at a murder trial. In Edge.org, Dennis Dutton links aesthetics with evolution. Fareed Zakaria seeks peace with the Islamists in Newsweek. In Outlook India, the Islamist Maulana Sufi Mohammed describes what this peace will look like. The Observator Cultural opens up the world of Stefan Agopian. And philosophers, Europa discovers, even have their own way of dying.
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Günter Grass has just published his diary from 1990, recording the tumultous events after the fall of the Berlin Wall. "From Germany to Germany" is a list of ominous predictions for the future of German unity. The former GDR writer Monika Maron looks at how blinded Grass was by his own preconceptions.
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