With so many conflicting situations in the Middle and Near East, with the war in Iraq having begun in the early hours of this day, the urgent need to strengthen a dialogue among civilizations and especially with this region is felt by many.

If we would perceive this war as an unavoidable clash, we would be framed by those, who believe, that the conflict between civilizations will be, to quote Samuel Huntington: “the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world.”

Edward Said called this book about the clash of civilization “a crudely articulated manual in the art of maintaining a wartime status.” And in fact, it seems, that is, what we experience today.
The war has begun, and the House of World Cultures is, like many people in all parts of the world, clearly opposed to it.
We are deeply concerned, because innocent people have to suffer from this war and we fear, that this might even not be the end of the scenario.
But a clash of civilizations would only take place if we would allow it to happen.
Instead we hope for the strength and power of those,
- and we know they are many –
wether in the Near and Middle East, in Palestine or in Israel, in Europe or in America, who insist that this war will not be the frightening model, of how the community of nations will deal in future with difference,
and who insist on the even strenghtend dialog among cultures.

Cultural exchange, on which such a dialogue is based upon, is clearly a necessity of survival and orientation, and not just a beautification and enrichment of our lives, as it was perceived in the past.
Perhaps it even can be the vision of a new paradigm, of how we perceive and construct our relations with others.

The emotions in this conflict might provoke strong and debatebel arguments and statements, but I think, it is better, to exchange them, than to suppress them.
Only, we should not allow, even if it is by words only, hatred or hostile actions and thus again fall into the trap of those, who predict the unavoidable clash of civilizations.

Even though this war gives an urgency to the project DISORIENTATION and even though the conflicts in this region provide a context for many art works, it can not be seen through the lenses of these conflicts only.
This project DISORIENTATION might against all our intentions be used for political purposes, but it is and remains an art project, a project of cultural exchange. It also not a project of exclusion or against anybody, it is a project about contemporary Arab art from the Near and Middle East.

In agreement with the curators and the artists therefore we did neither change the opening nor did we change the programme.
But of course, the situation as it develops will be discussed and arguments will be exchanged in the programmes.

This project of the HWC has been planned since long time. The exchange and dialogue with this region is a continous effort.
Since 1990, since the founding of the HWC, about 900 different programmes have been staged on the Arab World.

Disorientation, the title Jack Persekian, the curator of the exhibition, proposed for the project, implies many aspects:

Europe named this region, which is so deeply connected through history to Europe, the “Orient” and from a distance we associated this “Orient” with magic and mystery. But we created images of submission, too.
In the Arab World, this Region is called Mashreq meaning East in contrast to Maghreb meaning West. In the English language it is the Near East and the Middle East.

But whatever names we give to this cosmopolitan region, once called Levante, we are refering to images and thus reducing the complex ethnic and religious situation.
The Arab World is by no means, as often perceived, a monolith, but is made up of different communities, peoples, states and governmental and societal forms. Neither does it form linguistically, ethnically or culturally an unchallenged unity. The majority of its inhabitants adhere to Islam, but other religions are presented in the region too.
To include such a heterogenous region in a single project is problematic, if we would try to find only one image for it.
Against all general conclusions, against a rigid and closed picture of a region, we want to set the personal and individual statements of artists, writers, filmmakers, theater people and musicians.
This project deals less with a region as such, than with the artists from the Mashreq. It is about art, which takes a stand on questions and problems in this region. These questions and problems are closely linked with Europe and Germany, our past and our present political situation, too.

The project DISORIENTATION shows young art, works created in the last years.

These artists, curators, intellectuals do not represent the national cultures of the countries, as produced by operas, museums or academies. They have found a space of independence against any label or monopoly.

Disorientation is a project against all odds.
Many of the artists have met in Berlin for the first time, because it is difficult to travel the region. Jack Persekian describes the minimal possibilities in the introduction of the catalog in a very moving way.
Disorientation is therefore a platform of encounter, not only for the artists from the Middle East themselves but also between visitors and artists and between the invited artists and artists from Berlin.
In panels and workshops they will offer an insight into the circumstances they live in and the way they work.

Heute sind in Bagdad die ersten Bomben gefallen. Mit tiefer Bestürzung, mit Sorge und mit Protesten haben Menschen in aller Welt darauf reagiert. Bis zuletzt hat die Bundesregierung versucht, die Entwaffnung des Irak mit friedlichen Mitteln sicherzustellen. Der Beginn dieses Krieges ist darum für uns besonders bitter. Krieg ist immer eine Niederlage. Eine Niederlage für Politik und Diplomatie. Es hätte eine friedliche Alternative gegeben –
die Fortsetzung der Inspektionen. Krieg kann immer nur das letzte Mittel sein. Mit Sorge sehen wir auf die möglichen Folgen des Krieges, bei dem, wie bei allen Kriegen dieser Welt, unschuldige Menschen – Frauen, Männer, Kinder –getötet werden; und dessen langfristige negative Folgen nicht abzusehen sind.

- auf die Region des Nahen Osten
- auf die Entwicklung des Terrorismus
- auf die moslemische Welt

Wir werden unsere ganze Kraft daran setzen, eine humanitäre Katastrophe zu verhindern.
Vor dem Hintergrund des Kriegsausbruchs fällt es nicht leicht, Worte zu finden für ein kulturelles Ereignis, das eigentlich für Freude, Fantasie und Kreativität steht.

Meine Damen und Herren,
wir haben nicht nur immer wieder erklärt, dass wir gegen einen militärischen Angriff auf den Irak sind, wir haben auch immer wieder unsere große Befürchtung ausgedrückt, dieser Krieg könnte als Krieg des Westens gegen die islamische Welt missverstanden werden, als der von Samuel Huntington beschworene "Clash of Civilizations"; als Spätfolge des 11. September 2001.
Umso mehr gilt es heute, nicht zu resignieren, sondern gegenzusteuern, indem wir jede Gelegenheit nutzen, das Verständnis zwischen dem sogenannten 'Westen' und der islamischen Welt zu vertiefen, den interkulturellen Dialog noch intensiver zu fördern. Daher steht die heutige Eröffnung nicht etwa
im Schatten der aktuellen Ereignisse, sie ist vielmehr Teil einer Antwort darauf.
Deshalb freue ich mich, trotz dieser aktuellen Ereignisse, Sie alle heute hier im Namen des Auswärtigen Amtes zur Eröffnung des Festivals "DisORIENTation" begrüßen zu können.

Mein besonderer Dank gilt den Kuratoren dieses Programms,
- Jack Persekian,
- Omar Amiralay
- und Tarek Abou El-Fetouh.

Ich danke auch dem Haus der Kulturen der Welt, das in monatelanger Vorbereitung den Weg für diese einzigartige Veranstaltung geebnet hat.

Meine Damen und Herren,
alleine in den Staaten der Europäischen Union leben 12 Millionen Menschen moslemischen Glaubens, viele davon arabischer Herkunft. Diese Menschen sind ein Teil unserer Gesellschaft, sind Arbeiter, Unternehmer, Ärzte, Wissenschaftler. Sie teilen auch die Probleme unserer Gesellschaft - Wirtschaftskrise, Arbeitslosigkeit. Nicht wenige von ihnen sind davon
sogar noch stärker betroffen. Man möchte hoffen, dass in den modernen Gesellschaften Europas das Verständnis der Kulturen untereinander gut entwickelt ist, dass man solidarisch und gemeinsam lebt.
Dass dies nicht immer der Realität entspricht, bekommen viele dieser Mitbürger oft täglich zu spüren, in Form von Fremdenfeindlichkeit, die sich seit dem 11. September besonders auf arabisch aussehende Menschen erstreckt.
Das europäische Verständnis von der arabischen und islamischen Welt
ist eben immer noch stark von Stereotypen geprägt:
Hier bei uns sehen viele eine westliche, aufgeklärte, christlich-humane, 'zivilisierte' Welt, während Unterdrückung der Frau, Fanatismus, Fundamentalismus, archaische Brutalität, autoritäre Regimes und Terrorismus oft mit der arabischen Welt in Verbindung gebracht werden, als ob es solche Auswüchse nicht auch anderswo gäbe. Vorurteile sind aber kein Privileg der Straße, sie fanden sogar in die Wissenschaft Eingang. Edward Said bescheinigte in seinem berühmten Buch "Orientalism" den westlichen Orientwissenschaften eine gehörige Mitschuld an den Missverständnissen. Das Wortspiel "DisORIENTation", das diesem Festival seinen Titel gab,
greift dieses Missverständnis auf. Unser Bild vom "Orient" ist eben häufig
"dis-Orient-iert".
Said schrieb auch:
"Eine der Aufgaben des Intellektuellen besteht darin, die Stereotypen und vereinfachenden Kategorien, die das Denken und die Kommunikation der Menschen untereinander so sehr behindern, zu durchbrechen."
Genau damit ist das Ziel von "DisORIENTation" beschrieben:
Mittels kultureller Brücken Stereotypen zu verändern, Wissen übereinander zu vergrößern, und damit letztlich gegenseitiges Verständnis zu schaffen.

Meine Damen und Herren,
In allen Gesellschaften dieser Welt spielen Künstler eine bedeutende Rolle für die Entstehung einer differenzierten Gesellschaftskritik Kunst, ob Literatur, Tanz, Film, Musik oder bildende Kunst, gibt Denkanstöße, die Wirklichkeit aus unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln neu zu betrachten. So entstehen Ideen, die in die gesellschaftliche und politische Entwicklung einfließen. Der besondere Charme des Festivals "DisORIENTation" liegt in der Kombination vielfältiger Sinneseindrücke, der Inspiration durch oft unerwartete Facetten arabischer Kunst, und dem Angebot, diese Eindrücke in Symposien mit Hintergrundwissen zu ergänzen, vielleicht auch zu revidieren und damit sogar eine Neu-ORIENT- ierung vorzunehmen. Manche von uns werden erstaunt zum ersten Mal erleben, wie in Beirut 'ge-rappt' wird, welche zeitgenössischen Filme in Syrien gedreht werden und wie ägyptische Schriftstellerinnen in ihren Romanen Identitätsfragen der jungen Generation thematisieren. Die hier vertretenen palästinensischen Künstlerinnen und Künstler zeigen eindrucksvoll, dass das in den westlichen Medien oft verbreitete eindimensionale Bild der Palästinenser viel zu kurz greift. Mit besonderem Interesse sehen wir dem Konzert von Ilham Al-Madfai aus dem Irak entgegen. Er stellt unter Beweis, dass es auch in den Zeiten der Krise eine lebendige Musikszene in Bagdad gab und gibt, von der wir hier viel zu wenig wissen. Ich freue mich besonders, dass "DisORIENTation" sich nicht nur mit einem Programmschwerpunkt an die Jugend, die Generation der Zukunft wendet, sondern durch die starke Präsenz von engagierten Künstlerinnen auch die in Europa weit verbreitete Vorstellung widerlegt, Frauen seien in der arabischen Welt von modernen Entwicklungen weitgehend ausgeschlossen. Arabische Frauen berichten über ihre Wünsche, Ziele und Kämpfe; Vertreterinnen verschiedener Richtungen des Feminismus aus der arabischen Welt werden ihre Erfahrungen zur Diskussion stellen; und Erwartungen an die Politik formulieren Die Ausstellung kann verantwortliche Politik flankieren, nicht ersetzen. Der direkte Dialog der Kulturen ist vor allem Aufgabe von Politik und gesellschaftlichen Repräsentanten. Wir, die Politiker müssen unsere Hausaufgaben machen. Deutsche Außenpolitik setzt auf Friedenserhaltung und Konfliktprävention. Auswärtige Kultur- und Bildungspolitik ist dabei ein zentraler und integraler Teil. Nicht erst mit dem 11. September 2001 wurde uns klar, dass wir die islamische und arabische Welt besser kennen- und verstehen lernen müssen. Der Versuch, unsere Beziehungen zur arabischen Welt, dem unmittelbaren Nachbar der Europäischen Union, konstruktiv zu gestalten, wird unsere Außenpolitik in den nächsten Jahrzehnten prägen. Dies muss einen Dialog mit der arabischen Welt, aber auch einen interreligiösen Dialog zwischen Christen, Muslimen und Juden beinhalten. Im Jahr 2002 haben wir mit dem Sonderprogramm "Europäisch-Islamischer Kulturdialog" einen Schwerpunkt gesetzt.

Meine Damen und Herren,
was sich "interkultureller Dialog" nennt, muss auch echter Dialog sein. Mit DisORIENTation hat sich das Haus der Kulturen der Welt auf so einen echten Dialog eingelassen:
Hier haben nicht deutsche Kulturakteure bestimmt, was das Publikum von der arabischen Kultur sehen soll. Es sind arabische Kuratoren, arabische Künstlerinnen und Künstler, die sich hier präsentieren und re-präsentieren Das Festival "DisORIENTation" beginnt zu einem dramatischen Zeitpunkt. Zu einem historischen Zeitpunkt. Krieg ist eine Zeit der Sprachlosigkeit.Umso mehr müssen wir den Dialog jetzt suchen. Für die Gelegenheit, ihn hier zu führen, danke ich dem Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Den Kuratoren und allen Künstlerinnen und Künstlern danke ich herzlich für ihr Engagement und wünsche uns allen ein erfolgreiches Festival.

I wonder what can be said in the opening of a cultural event when we are in the midst of a devastating war, which is threatening the world international order and jeopardizing all the possibilities and perspectives of peace in the Middle East. Can the world face the sword, or we will be obliged to swallow the humiliation of the values of justice and kneel before the might of the new Atlantic Rome governed by the desire to revenge, and by a neo fundamentalist discourse?

What can an intellectual say in the eve of dramatic change, which threatens to put the whole world under the domination of ruthless Empire, which is governed by militaristic ambitions, and the blindness of power?

What can an Arab intellectual say when he or she is sourrounded by the fact that oppression, violence, occupation and war are the syntax of a new dominant language forged by the rule of the Empire and by the tragic political and cultural situations which is making from the Arab world the battle field, where the Empire can experiment not only its new arsenal of sophisticated weapons, but also its new arsenal of simplistic fundamentalist language.

Am I adequate to speak about a culture, which is torn between exile, oppression and the threat of the American war on Iraq? Can I speak but with a broken heart being a witness to the Israeli long occupation where we have to face the blood thirsty gods and devils occupying the landscape of Palestine, and where military dictators destroyed the Arab civil societies and paved the way for the blind American and Israeli power to dominate both the land and the discourse.

The optimism of the will, can articulate only if the pessimism of the reason is based upon a new cultural resistance, which gives it legitimacy. The Anti war world wide demonstrations declared not a rift between the two shores of the Atlantic, and an new anti Americanism, as the dominant discourse in the U.S. administration is trying to say, on the contrary it declares that the world can not be dominated by one super power, and that there is a new emerging moral and cultural power in the world, which can balance and even defeat the super power not with arms but through a build up of a new consciousness of justice freedom and democracy.

I want to share with you ladies and gentlemen three ideas that can help in opening the debate about cultural production and the idea of a possible cultural resistance in these times of oppression and wars.

1- On February 5, while the American secretary of state was delivering his supposed indictment against Iraq at the U.N. security council, the television spectators all over the World noticed that Picasso’s Gernica on the United Nations wall was hidden with a bleu cover. The New York Times reported that the bleu cover was used upon a demand from the American government in order not a link would be made between Collin Powell’s discourse and the memory of the fascist destruction of Gernica during the Spanish civil war.

The issue is about memory, the war is not only waged in the battlefield, but it is waged in the field of memory. This American demand reminded me of my feelings while watching Roman Polanski´s new movie:“The Pianist“.
Following the tragedy of the Warsaw ghetto I couldn´t prevent myself from seeing the devastated cities of Palestine under siege and curfews and the merciless Israeli checkpoints.
How can the Americans dare to order the covering of Gernica, and from where the Israeli army brought a blue sheet to cover the tragic memories of Warsaw?

The issue of memory has nothing to do with nostalgia; it is anchored in the struggle against forgetfulness. Forgetfulness is a tool in the hands of the powerful to impose his will on his victims. The victims are to be deprived from their memory, while domination will create from forgetfulness a screen where new images are to be drawn.

One can ask, how could the Israeli military practice resemble the scenes in Polanski´s film? Can an eraser take a collective memory towards blindness, and push the victims to imitate unconsciously their oppressors?

In the post war Beirut we witnessed the fiercest battle against memory, and we discovered that erasing the memory of the civil war was the only way for criminals to escape justice and for a country to be deprived from appropriating its history and reaching a real reconciliation.

Arts and literature, while defending memory, are defending the right of the victims to their history and to justice. This is why neoconservatism loaded with pseudo messianic and fundamentalistic religious discourse is fighting memory. The End of History is the door from where the idea of the clashes between civilizations is trying to penetrate in order to replace the historical memory with an absolute discourse, which will pave the way to facism.

2- While working on a research about prisons in modern Arabic Literature I was astonished by the discovery of the unlimited power of the imaginary of oppression. And I was fascinated by the way art and literaure produce the imaginary of life as a new dimension to make resistance possible.

Imagination is the second battlefield. While the imaginary of oppression tries to replace reality, and make it irrelevant, literature enlarges reality by adding to it new dimensions.

The struggle between the tyrant and the artist finds ist incarnation in the relationship between Shehrazad and Sharyar in „One thousand and one nights“. The king blinded with jealousy and power tried to destroy life, while the woman-narrator with her unlimited imagination defended life through forging the possibility of unlimited stories.

In Albert Camus Caligula, Miguel Anguel Asturias El Seniore Presidente, Gabriel Garcia Marquez El Otono Del Patriarca, Gamal Ghitani’s Zeiny Barakat, and Abdel Rahman Munif Ard Al Sawad, the reader discover that the pathos of the tyrants render their ability to imagine, uninhibited, to the point where they perceive themselves as god-like and they behave as such. Moreover, because this crazed understanding of themselves as divine remains unchecked, it dissolves all boundaries of reason and rationality from their realms of imagination. It ushers them to deepest, darkest domains of the unconscious where the instincts of murder and tyranny reign unharnessed, and hence become the primary engines driving their actions.

Regardless how unbridled the zeal with which the literary or artisitc imaginary can release itself in the domain of exaggeration, it nonetheless never substitutes the real for the imagined. Al Mutanabi’s claim to prophecy and his coveting for power cannot be compared with the Ottoman stakes that tore through the souls of their captives. The poet’s passion for the moon is entirely unrelated to Caligula’s demanding the moon and as a consequence the justification he used for killing all around him, for failing to get a hold the moon. Similarly Andre Breton’s famous claim that a surrealist act is a random firing of bullets from fictional gun in a fictional street is laughable when contrasted with the sight of the cities destroyed by the tyrants of the Arab world, and the Arab prisons in whose darkness graveyards have been raised.

The struggle is between the imagination of the artist and the hallucinations of a tyrant or a mad emperor, and it is taking ist new shape now in the attempts to marginalize the south and in building an illusive wall to seperate cultures and civilizations and to impose a new form of slavery.

3- The voice of Emile Zola with his J’accuse (I accuse) facing anti-Semitism in the 19th century and paving the way for the emergence of the idea of the intellectual as a public figure and a representative of the consciousness, is the most needed now facing the treason of the clerks and the voices of the chien de guarde, that are trying to destroy the role of culture as a critical approach and as the voice of the voiceless.

It is the moment for intellectuals to accuse. The time for a collective work to face the ghost of barbarism, which is haunting the beginnings of the 21st century, has come.

I accuse the military tyrants of the Arab world.
I accuse the Israeli occupation and the apartheid regime emerging Isreal.
I accuse the American war in Iraq.
I accuse fundamentalism being Islamic, Christian or Jewish.

Accusing is not only a statement it is rather a project and a responsibility. The Arab World is under the mercy of the merciless imaginary which invented the MOAB bomb (the mother of all bombs which wighs 1000 tons of explosives according to its American inventors), and whose intellectuals are facing exile, prison and murder, this Arab world whose Palestina wound is bleeding since 55 years needs today and now to regain the right to its reality and memory, a horizon which can be opened through democracy and liberty and through a just solution to the Palestinian problem.
Liberty and democracy are the common human heritage threatened to be confiscated by the image of the power.

The voice of the Arab intellectuals is part of this huge human awareness that our world is facing the danger of a moral catastrophe, and we can prevent this coming - exisiting catastrophe with the optimism of our will, and with the values of justice and freedom.