London Festival of Europe

By Niccolo Milanese, Festival’s organiser

Three days in.

Bauman opened the festival to an absolutely packed lecture theatre at the Courtauld, despite the snow outside: there were people sitting on the stairs, people standing in the corners and doorways, people who couldn’t get in because there was simply no space. I am delighted that the audience were very mixed: with a large young contingent, many people of different nationalities, a number of ‘VIPs’ we’d invited sitting next to people who found out about us themselves or on the floor if they got there late.

The lecture was on ‘Making the world hospitable to Europe’.

Bauman argued that the logic of global responsibility and aspiration could offer a new role for Europe as a global-pattern setter:

‘it may enable Europe to deploy the values it has learned to cherish and managed to preserve against odds, and the political/ethical experience it has acquired of democratic self-government, in the awesome task of replacing the collection of territorially entrenched entities engaged in a zero-sum game of survival with a fully inclusive, planetary human community.’

I heard widely differing opinions and interpretations of Bauman’s lecture during the reception that followed: some strongly agreed with the logic of multilateralism and multi-polarism that Bauman claimed Europe could reintroduce to the world, others saw the references to the ‘global aspiration’ of Europe as still too dangerously close to European imperialism of old. I thought the question of Europe’s relationship with America, and the nature of Europe’s global role were both left rather sketchy by the speech. Still: an opening speech doesn’t give all the answers, it gets people talking.

Bauman closed the lecture with a quotation from Kafka, as a premonition, a warning and encouragement:

‘If you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, if you find nothing behind these doors there are more floors, and if you find nothing up there, don’t worry, just leap up another flight of stairs. As long as you don’t stop climbing, the stairs won’t end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards.’

The Kenneth Clark lecture theatre at the Courtauld is on the fourth floor, so I felt pretty sure most people were receptive to this recommendation.

Back to the top of the Courtauld yesterday for more Eastern European art. After the Bauman there was Romanian video art; we saw more of that today, and listened to artists and curators from Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania. I was struck in particular by the two Polish artists Pavel Leszkowicz and Tomek Kitlinski talking about the prejudices they encounter in Poland arising from their homosexuality and the intimidation of some artists by the state. I was even more interested to hear about the increasingly well-organised civil resistance movements throughout parts of Eastern Europe. I hope we’re able to work with all the speakers today again, to bring some of their art to London and also to establish cross-border projects.