Simply Red?
Weekly review: SPD-PDS vs "traffic light," NYers in a Berlin state of mind, plus media talk and prizes
This much is clear: Berlin has a new mayor and his name is Klaus Wowereit. But the rest of the city-state's next government is pretty much up for grabs.
Just a few weeks ago, Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) lost its grip on Hamburg after 40 years. But on Sunday, it nabbed city hall in Berlin for the first time in 30 years. That said, it must be added that the SPD didn't perform nearly as well as many expected. Yes, 29.7 percent of the vote is a nice 7.3 percent boost over the party's performance in the last election in 1999, but pollsters were expecting at least 30, perhaps even as much as 35 percent. With an early lead, Wowereit kept his mouth shut throughout the final weeks of the campaign and that may have cost him (see Berlin's Derailed Campaign).
What Wowereit has to decide now is with whom he'll form a governing coalition. There are three possibilities on the table:
Red-red. Led by the sharp wit of Gregor Gysi, the Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS) added nearly 5 points to its 1999 performance for a total of 22.6 percent. Perhaps more significantly, nearly 48 percent of those in what was once East Berlin voted PDS. Gysi has always argued that a red-red coalition would unify the city, and indeed, to shut out the PDS would be a slap to one side of Berlin's face Wowereit must surely be aware he can't afford.
"Traffic light." A coalition of the SPD and the Greens currently makes up both Berlin's provisional government and Germany's federal government. Chancellor Schröder (SPD) and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Greens) would surely like to see that politically expedient harmony carry on, but with the Greens' thin 9.1 percent showing, the two parties don't have a majority on their own. For a variety of reasons, the most commonly named third party to pull on board is the FDP (Liberals, whose color is yellow, hence the term "traffic light" coalition). This arrangement would soothe those terrified by the prospect of the PDS, the reformed heirs of former East Germany's communists, co-governing the city once torn apart by the Wall, but would represent a slimmer majority in parliament than red-red.
Red-red-green. This version could keep the most happiest. Easterners wouldn't be jilted. Keeping the Greens on board would take the bite out of the fears westerners have of red-red. The majority would be solid so that the Christian Democrats (CDU), who plunged 17.1 percent to 23.7, their worst showing since 1948, wouldn't stand a chance, even teamed with the FDP, of blocking the progressive governance Berlin so desperately needs now.
In Telepolis
"One often hears the phrase these days that something -- a conference, a project, a book -- has taken on immense power since the 'events' of September 11. But this assertion is actually quite true in the case of CTRL [Space], an exhibition organized by the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe because it is devoted exclusively to the theme of surveillance." As Armin Medosch writes in his review, even as those who live in societies that strive to be open and democratic are currently expressing a reluctant willingness to give up a few civil liberties for the sake of security, many of the artists featured at the exhibition have been addressing the slow and sly disappearance of those liberties for years.
It was also the overriding theme in the competition for the International Media Art Award presented by the ZKM and the broadcaster SWR on October 13. The work Medosch found on hand was "neither particularly exciting nor in any noteworthy way bad." The problem: "The discourse surrounding media art as presented in its mass media and institutional form hasn't progressed for years."
As for media straight up, illustrious media and political figures alike gathered this week in Munich for the 15th Media Days and Konrad Lischka has filed two reports. In sum, the technology for the long-promised future of digital television is coming along nicely but one problem remains. Television viewers are probably going to be too lazy to put it to use. "Staged realities," that is, the manipulation of media, the orchestration of events and debates dominated another session whose bottom line might read: Stay skeptical.
Also in Munich, the make-world festival, featuring such speakers as Saskia Sassen, Kodwo Eshun, Lev Manovich and Antonio Negri, wrapped up this weekend. As it began, Michaela Simon noted that one panel would be comprised of Telepolis regulars and that the Volkstheater Karawane would perform at the end. This was the theater group held for weeks in Genoa following the protests this summer against the G8 Summit. As Peter Nowak reports, while those events have disappeared from the mediascape, it's only now that the last protestors have been released. The Italian government may have forgiven the police in Genoa, a few officers may still face legal action.
In English
In a lengthy, thought-provoking piece, Chris Hables Gray, author of Postmodern War, argues that what we're witnessing isn't "the first war of the 21st century," as George W. Bush has called it, but rather, the Second Cold War.
How many "degrees of separation" stand between you and the world's most wanted man? Ever played the Kevin Bacon Game? Boris Holzer points out that if mere association is the "conclusive" evidence linking the 9/11 hijackers with Osama bin Laden, then Bush and Blair's case is very shaky indeed.
According to John Horvath, the case of "Little Bundi," a notorious Hungarian underworld figure, suggests that the US is ready and willing to resort to using "dirty assets" in its war on terrorism.
Jelle van Buuren reports that European authorities are raising questions as to whether a proposed privacy directive still strikes "the right balance between privacy and the needs of the law enforcement agencies in the light of the battle against terrorism."
Elsewhere
A movie, a play and a modest stack of new books about the destruction and reconstruction of Berlin have a few New Yorkers contemplating lessons that might be applied to their own city.
In the Village Voice, Michael Atkinson finds that the new documentary Berlin Babylon "generates a desolate ruefulness. The Wall's removal left a huge, ghostly central wedge of Berlin open and undeveloped, and Hubertus Siegert's film focuses on Berliners' efforts to make logistical and aesthetic sense of the space."
The film's soundtrack by Einstürzenden Neubauten marks the first time they've ever completely scored a feature-length film and the site is loaded with valuable interview material (Rem Koolhaas, Wolfgang Nagel, etc.) that didn't make it into the film -- but unfortunately, only in German.
Meanwhile, Rebecca Schuman has torn herself away from CNN to throw herself into the production of Berlin, "an original play going up for a three-week run in a theater mere blocks north of what once was World Trade Center One." As she explains in Ironminds, the theme of her own private tale of two cities is redemption.
Reviewing four newish architectural volumes for the New York Review of Books, Martin Filler is far less forgiving. The gist: Let Berlin's "too much, too soon" approach to rebuilding itself serve as a warning to New York: "Insanely micromanaged by the government on one hand and cravenly abandoned to commercial interests at Potsdamer Platz and elsewhere on the other hand, the rebuilding of Berlin has been a fiasco of immense proportions, the greatest lost opportunity in postwar urbanism."