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Small Media Normality for the East
June 9th, 1997
Heiner Goebbels: Prince and the
Revolution
Part 1: Autopoietic Europe
I
n our imagination, eastern Europe was always black and white. Traveling to
East Germany or Poland meant suddenly leaving colorful western Europe and
entering a movie from the forties or fifties. Later we simply couldn't
remember having seen any color, not the green of the trees, nor the red of
the brick buildings. When we went to the movies to see a film by Wajda,
Kieslowski or Tarkowsky, the filmmaker's experiments with color only
reinforced our image of the east as gray. Europe clearly had an
ideologically motivated neurosis when it came to the perception of color.
This particular brand of European Orientalism has now grown tired. Nearly
ten years after the social upheaval in eastern Europe, these countries have
ceased being part of an "eastern bloc". Each is stepping out of the shadow
of the Soviet empire and taking on once again its own particular face in
the international arena. Each is becoming recognizable as a participating
unit of the European patchwork.
While the European Union attempts to somehow defend the idea of a Fortress
Europe and the negotiations with the central European countries for their
admission into it reveal its own shortcomings, while NATO uses its plans
for expansion to try to hold onto the front of the Cold War by pushing it
eastward, while the arms of western Europe are constantly opening and
closing, opening and closing to refugees and migrants, the network of
business contacts and personal acquaintances branches outward, bringing the
Europe of Europeans slowly but surely closer together. Small media such as
letters, the fax, local radio and Internet mailing lists are contributing
far more to mutual understanding than governmental objects of prestige such
as the German-French television project ARTE or the exclusive efforts of
the European Commission. In order to understand European differences and
put them to productive use, swarms of little sentences, of little images
are needed.
Of course, genuine heroes do occasionally appear on the domestic screens.
In the mid-eighties, a new pop star emerged on the global media scene: Gorby
Superstar, a Soviet Secretary General who could walk, talk and laugh, a
real guy, even if he was a Russian. After the senilocracy of the period of
stagnation beginning in the mid-seventies, from 1985 on, Gorbachev set off
on his travels, speaking to his own people about Glasnost and Perestroika,
signaling his willingness to open up a dialogue with Reagan, presenting
himself as a decent, charming sort of fellow to Thatcher, and almost
penitently to the Pope, chatting with Kohl, building trust -- and all that
in front of television cameras. Finally, here was a salesman who was as
good as the western advertising agencies are at selling bad politics like
cola and ice cream, who could play the modern propaganda machine better
than NATO and the Communist Party combined.
No wonder that for the other countries of the Warsaw Pact -- East Germany,
for example -- Gorbachev was to become a factor of ideological insecurity,
and therefore, a domestic political threat. In June 1987, three British
rock groups played a concert at the Brandenburger Tor. They turned the
speakers to the east where thousands of young people had gathered to listen
to the concert. When the situation built to a confrontation with the East
German security forces, they called out not only "Down with the Wall!" but
also "Gorbachev, Gorbachev!" because they presumed he was on their side in
this matter. Two years later, at the celebration for the fortieth
anniversary of the German Democratic Republic, Gorbachev himself justified
the presumption with the words he delivered to the gentlemen of the State
Council of East Berlin. They'd come too late and would immediately be
punished by life, the demonstrating masses and the television viewing
public.
The changes set
off by the Gorbachev fan club occurred at a time when things seemed to have
actually happened when a camera was present. Like the fall of the Berlin
Wall, the second Gulf War, the coup in Russia or the televised revolution
in Romania can be classified first and foremost as media events. Politics,
national as well as international, is increasingly becoming merely a
reaction to media events, to whatever is perceived by the media, and
consequently, the public which forces its hand. Supposedly, President
Clinton's advisors decided in 1992 that the war in Yugoslavia was not of
U.S. national interest, and so, kept relevant information from the
president. This changed when Clinton happened to see television reports
about the siege of Sarajevo in a Tokyo hotel and insisted on U.S.
intervention.
Such influence of the media, and at the moment, particularly television,
is, of course, not news. As early as the First World War, battles were
fought or halted as a result of public opinion on the home front. And the
photographers of the nineteenth century and Greek philosophers were also
aware that media representation did not merely reflect, but rather,
constructed reality. This is why it's difficult to determine how the famous
Parisian reality crisis came about exactly in the eighties (Baudrillard,
Virilio). One fortunate consequence of the Party's propaganda was that the
media on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain was never perceived as the
source of reality production, whereas in the west, this illusion was clung
to fiercely. The techniques of dealing with media such as whispering,
turning a deaf ear or reading between the lines are aspects of such useful
central European virtues -- hesitancy, skepticism and irony.
Throughout the Cold War, the public propaganda machines of the east and
west told their great stories of the crime-ridden system of exploitation
and of the Evil Empire. At the same time, the readers and watchers in the
east were better prepared for what was to follow and what now not only
effects the pseudo-east, namely, learning how to live, as the Agentur
Bilwet put it, in the society of the debacle. The creative engagement with
the impossible, the avoidance of the seemingly necessary, the refusal to
identify oneself negatively with inevitable failure -- Motto: The reward of
playing dumb is free time -- those are the survival tactics of the
post-industrial society. The small narratives of this tradition most
commonly told by the little independent propaganda machines, the pamphlet
distributors and poster plasterers, the local pirate radio stations,
student papers and the networks circulating forbidden books and records.
This isn't so much a romanticized review as a glance into the toolbox of
the everyday media.
[Yes, we really are running one part of this seven part essay each day this
week. See this
for info on what to expect, translator's notes and the usual REWIRED
editorial blabber. Also, a special supplement! A
report from the nettime meeting in Ljubljana jibes nicely with this week's
extravaganza.../dwh]
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