Opinie
The Role of the City in building Europe
Impressions from Forum Amsterdam, 10 December 2006, by Simon Mundy (Permanent Fellow Felix Meritis).
For the first year or two after the Euro became a reality, the cultural sector in Europe seemed to be catching up with the momentum of political integration. Now, at last, there is a sense once again that new ideas are emerging. As usual, they are not the ones the political elite or the populist media, locked into the business of national legitimation, are particularly keen to hear. That is because those chewing over culture in the European context have discovered that the real energy for innovation and artistic invention is coming not from the national EU Member States, but from the much more flexible and exotic major cities within them. However they are ideas that hold the key to delivering a Europe that has the energy for the future and an appetite to compete with Asia and South America this century. The fresh ideas hatching from the cultural sector are becoming more sophisticated and radical than they have been in Europe in the last twenty years.
In the 1980s and 1990s there was a doomed expectation that culture (by which politicians usually meant nice inoffensive art and decorative crafts) was going to deliver post industrial success that made up for inadequate employment, housing and education policy. The badly paid, under-valued and gently shambolic cultural operators handed these responsibilities were, not surprisingly, bemused and quickly exhausted - though they actually achieved an amazing amount given the ludicrously inflated expectations they had dumped upon them.
At the start of this decade cultural activists ran around calling for a mention in the proposed constitution and urging the European Commission to take culture seriously. Now they are, of course, we are not entirely sure we like it. The culture they want to take seriously is not necessarily the part of culture cultural practitioners regard as the most adventurous or important. Instead there is a depressing trend to fall back on definitions of heritage, whether national or pancontinental, that validates the political status quo. Just as worryingly, the political sector is now desperate for the cultural sector to sort out the problems in communal tension created by ten years of bad American foreign policy and forty years of European post-colonial mismanagement.
Intercultural dialogue is suddenly the most fashionable concept around but creating dialogue that leads to a calm yet creative atmosphere will take more than conferences. It requires a real understanding of the pressures on cities, towns and rural districts and their potential for dynamic change. There is a growing disjuncture between the Europe of countryside, medium sized towns and the certainties of national identity on the one hand, and fluid, restless, cosmopolitan cities of over a million people on the other. Some of these cities enjoy a global in reach and see themselves in that context. Others personify regional Europe and a third group draw their energy locally but from precisely the clash of civilisations that artists find so exciting and that politicians find so frightening and bewildering.
In the context of a unified (though not always united) Europe the cities with a critical mass are becoming as attractive to creative practitioners as the 19th century industrial conurbations were for displaced agricultural workers. The pressures are less extreme and the conditions (mostly) better but the pull is there. Even if the sheer weight of events, performances and experiences sometimes leads to empty halls and a feeling of shouting into the wind, any peddler of ideas would rather be half heard in a major crowd than be the isolated voice, listened to with rapt attention in a pleasant backwater. It is the terminal curse of the small town, just as it was in the twentieth century of the inconsequential nation state.
When it comes to building Europe, the conundrum is which Europe will cultural activity build? From the experience of Istanbul and Berlin, London and Rome, Barcelona and Amsterdam, the answer is a Europe that goes way beyond geographic location and state consensus. The Europe they are knitting has textures, colours and couture that is provocative and shape shifting in equal measure. It expands and contracts like heart muscles, drawing in the world's blood and pumping it full of oxygen. Shanghai and New York do the same but no other area of the world yet does it in so many nearby cities or with such continuous reinvention. The possibility of constant human contact that great European cities provide is proving that digital mobility is not enough. The intercultural cosmopolis is becoming the liberal vehicle for hope - liberal not just because of the relaxed attitude to personal behaviour and working practice, but because of the emphasis on individual opportunity and achievement.
This Forum nudged the ideas further forward than it's organisers probably intended or its participants realised. It was the first conference where discussions moved on from notions of economic and social regeneration to ones of redefining the intellectual energy base of Europe. A Europe without borders is going to be a space where nations are only a small part of personal identity and operation. As long as the environment allows easyjet mobility - and as the same environment constrains the affordability of cars - then the city's attraction as a cultural hub more interesting than a repository for homogenous heritage will continue to grow. There are new networks to form, clubs to open and menus to rewrite.
This speech was spoken by Simon Mundy (Permanent Fellow Felix Meritis) at the conference Forum Amsterdam: The Role of the City in building Europe, 10 December 2006.
