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<< Is the party over in Berlin? -----Lights and music are off. Discos are dying and clubs are closing. Behind the change – and not just in the big city nightspots of Berlin – are questions surrounding money and cultural change. Use Google Translate to read the article in English or another language. << Ist die Party in Berlin vorbei? -----Lichter und Musik sind aus. Diskotheken sterben und Clubs schließen. Hinter dem Wandel – und das nicht nur in den Großstadtlokalen Berlins – stehen Fragen nach Geld und kulturellem Wandel. Verwenden Sie Google Translate, um den Artikel auf Englisch oder einer anderen Sprache zu lesen.

As with other activites I engage with, the mini.Zuekunft Festival is a space of experimenting with combining what is (too) often left separate. Can we really afford to leave out music&dance in the transformative processes we are already twirling with? Might dance, music & movement actually be powerful non-linear antagonists to be weighted against war&armament, disillusionment&cynicism, division&polarization? Reason tells me no. I mean what has me dancing or enjoying myself ever changed about Putins ambitions or hunger in the world or ...? But what if dancing together is exactly not about following that kind of muscle. But a training of a muscle often left...separate. It appears that dancing releases much more endorphines other kinds of physical activites - allowing for increased activity in the parts of the brain associated with emotional processing. Already the greeks talked about this when they spoke about "catharsis", the process of "purification of the soul" that brings about a state of "renewal and restoration". So it might not change what's "out there" but my perception of me in it. From a systemic-transformative point of view I believe this to be significant.

The signs are bad for innovation, experimentation and diversity in culture and therefore in society and everyone's lives. Last Friday, Konzerthaus Berlin made the difficult decision to cancel the ‘Projections’ festival planned for February 2025 due to the short-term cuts by the Berlin Senate. It not only breaks my heart because it would have been something special and new for Konzerthaus and its audience, and numerous fantastic artists would have shown their music and art there for the first time or developed it for this occasion; or because previous non-visitors had already expressed their enthusiasm for the programme; or because countless hours and people - myself included - had already been invested in and paid for the development and planning, which have now been thrown into the wind. It makes me downright angry, as it is precisely such projects that contribute to the future viability of both traditional culture and (artistic) innovation in Berlin, a city whose greatest attraction is its cultural landscape. These haphazard cuts will make it even more difficult to resolve the actual incrustations and cost and efficiency guzzlers at the bigger institutions. And for the independent scene and smaller initiatives, a practice-orientated overall concept must be developed to create more synergetic and efficient production conditions instead of an uncertain, oversized, multi-stage bureaucratic monster of funding applications. But in order to work on and find solutions for this, one would first have to really get to grips with the cultural sector and really listen to the people involved. THAT would be the task of the Senator for Culture. But he seems to find listening irrelevant. How else could someone talk about increasing resilience but cut precisely these jobs (of resilience dispatchers)? By the way, I can recommend art music and concerts as a way to sharpen listening. And: Hearing is not listening. The latter requires your own activity. #berlinistkultur

Original recognize Original ;)

Happy Halloween my fellow LinkedIn network! 😊 🎃 🧛♂️ 🧛♀️ 🦇 Despite there are many different political opinions, I wanted to say if I have any leftist friends or others who would like to refresh their German speaking like I do, you can read this quote from Karl Marx where he compares capital with vampires. If you translate the quote to English, it should be according to my English copy of Marx's Capital: "Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks." It's from Chapter 10 in Volume 1. Of course you can either agree or disagree with Marx's analogy or just the ideology but still a good way to learn (or refresh your) German and I suppose today is the perfect occasion.

I am delighted with the great results achieved by Tonhalle Düsseldorf gGmbH; there are no better arguments against cuts in cultural budgets. Our protests against these cuts must primarily be directed at fiscal policy makers and chiefs of parliamentary fractions. Cultural politicians can advocate for culture to a greater or lesser extent, but often the sad masses have already been sung in the fiscal, budget and main committees. Our colleagues all over the world are looking at Germany with astonished eyes and simply no longer understand the rationale behind these processes: How is it possible to risk the substance of our culture with our eyes open? All of the major waves of cuts over the past 40 years have shown one thing above all: once cultural substance has been dismantled, it is only with substantial efforts that it can be regained again in better times; this usually doesn't work. It is evident that the cultural (infra)structure has become increasingly smaller over the past 40 years. But it is worth fighting for every Euro, every building block and every position.

Up to 800,000 viewers watched the final of the #ESC live on SRF. On average, 614,000 people (market share of 53.3%) watched the live broadcast. Never before has the market share for an ESC broadcast been as high as it was this year. Among the younger TV audience (15-59 years), the market share was even at 59.0%.  #publicmedia

The deplorable practice of Viennese orchestras hiring freelance musicians for dumping fees has developed to an alarming state since I did my PhD in this city, which always used to be a place of longing for people working in classical music business. Not anymore, it seems, as the Falter magazine reports in a recent article. One organiser of those dubious ›orchestral enterprises‹, making loads of money out of tourist rip-off concerts with run-of-the-mill repertoire, is quoted with his stubborn refusal to pay his musicians more than 80–100 euros per day. There is no need to offer higher fees, he implies, as there are more than enough players willing to perform for those rates. One commenter suggests that this is because of the considerable inflow of musicians from Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Balkan countries to Vienna. As if these colleagues did not deserve fair payment. Cynicism at its peak! This abhorrent business model needs to be stopped. Recently, the Austrian lobby group IG Freie Musikschaffende has released a statement claiming a minimum fee of 228 euros per day, which seems more than reasonable, but even this rate appears to be far from reality. Please spread the word, and help the colleagues from Vienna get rid of those exploitative employers! #fairpayment #freelancemusicians

The German federal Govt gives aid to the Republic of Uganda via the state owned KfW bankengruppe. The contract is implemented by pre-qualified German companies which are exempted from paying taxes in Uganda at the behest of folks @mofpedU! The aid narrative begins to seem a bit naïve when we take these reverse flows into account. It becomes clear that aid does little but mask the maldistribution of resources around the world. Rich countries aren’t developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones. Is this really aid? Where are the Ugandan companies? It makes the takers seem like givers, granting them a kind of moral high ground while preventing those of us who care about global poverty from understanding how the system really works. When we say the system is rigged in favor of donor countries, this is what we mean. This must change at the upcoming bilateral govt negotiations between Uganda & Germany this November! We need win win decisions to stop exploitation of our people. We must create a table where everyone is at the table. This is not Nazi Germany!