In an article issued last year in the culture magazine La Lettre, the Russian, Germany-based philosopher Boris Groys puts his finger on a crucial cultural-historical landmark in order to explain the European understanding of the arts and its factual domination. Groys claims that the adoration of the art object in the Western hemisphere is directly linked with the idea of dignity with regard to the human being in the humanistic traditional sense. In the arts as well as in the humanistic tradition, the object as well as the human body are considered untouchable - they both can by used as a means but mustn’t be functionalized. This ideal is defined –- and here lies the risk - as a genuinely European value, and the humanistic thought considered equivalent with European thought per se, states Boris Groys. Resulting from this conviction is the denial of the ability of dignity, humanity, democracy and tolerance to everything and everyone non-European, quasi per definitionem.
For a few decades now, a new order is rendering itself visible or audible in Europe, which is going beyond the separation into West, East, Central and Middle Europe, to name just a few “Europes”. It seems that the ‘West’ moves steadily East-towards on the map and in people’s self-perception. Formerly set agreements seem to shift and stir, while one thought still stands there solidly: The idea of one real Europe within Europe, which is based on the European ideal - the Humanistic tradition itself being located in the West, the West of Europe, while the East (reaching beyond Europe) is planned to be ”converted” through economical and cultural funding and sponsoring. At the same time, more and more investors from the European and Asian East invest in mammoth culture projects in the West or West-West. The question resulting form all these observations and economical, cultural and political interdependences is: Where is the West, today, and what is it’s connection with a place formerly defined as ‘Europe’?
The Sahara Project wants to discuss the “repressed part” (verfemter Teil, Groys) of the Western tradition of thought, that fraction, which questions and always has interrogated the European hegemony and geographical position.
Crucial questions include the following:
- Where does the West end, where does the East start and based on what historical and present-day consciousness within the arts?
- Can the terms ‘East’ and ‘West’ still be applied in any illuminating way, especially with regard to an internationally connected and globally communicating art world?
If it is, what and who profits from it and what does it mean to be form the ‘East’ or the ‘West’?
If the terms ‘East’ and ‘West’ cannot satisfactorily be applied for a political, personal and artistic state of being what terms or concepts could we replace them with?
- Is there a border free/transgressing art (practice) and who is receiving it?
- Central questions are: Does this “we” even exist, in the West, or the East, and whom would it include?
The Sahara Project attests: We stand in the desert, and we stand there together. Paralyzed between overcome cultural stereotypes and an art terminology that needs further distinction and accuracy, feeling estranged, not at home within ones own geographical accountings and (second-hand) reflections in the world. The Sahara Project wants to attempt to step across this polarity of East and West with the question “West, where is that?” and gather representatives of both sides researching mutual fantasies, visions, as well as images of envy and disgust.
In collaboration with Wooloo Productions, Kopenhagen.
Idea and concept: internationalcoffeeshop.org
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