A round of discussions on how European culture is viewed from the inside and outside.
The countries and regions of the southern Mediterranean are increasingly entering our cultural radar. The reasons for this are political and religious, geographical and cultural; but often enough the approach resembles exotic curiosity about divans and Arabian Nights. Or is at least driven by the patronising attitude that we Europeans could be of use as mediators, because we imagine ourselves as people who are interested in the culture and therefore uninvolved in the conflicts. “… as seen from the middle of east ...” inverts this perspective: The main theme of three projects featured at musikprotokoll is not on what we find interesting about foreign regions but rather on the way artists there focus on Europe and European culture. The launch of a new inter-media project by Sebastian Meissner is followed – in co-operation with the Berlin festival ‘Beyrouth: The Beirut of Education’ – by a concert of works hardly ever performed in Austria, selected together with composers from Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine.