MANN | FRAU
MAKERS, THINKERS AND OTHER
Natalie Stypa
An event about Berlin’s creative scene past and present. There is going to be a discussion with different protagonists from the wild 90’s who created new spaces for arts and culture.
A hall with tiered seating and a performance area. A man enters the stage, welcomes the audience. He introduces another man, the host of the discussion. Present on stage are: four more men. An artist, a policy maker, and two others who have something to do with culture. After the discussion, two documentaries are shown, both by male directors. In between the films, you can watch a performance by a male artist in the adjacent hall. You can also view an installation by the artist who was present on stage. For an event that claims to bring Berlin’s cultural makers together, this is a very male affair. Is it that only men do culture in this city? Or are they just the ones who like to talk in front of an audience? Two female panellists were invited but couldn’t make it. While their presence would have countered the gender imbalance a little, it’s not just the panel that is dominated by men. One of the documentaries is about a group of people who turned a derelict building into a thriving centre for the arts and culture (the well-known Tacheles) just after the Berlin Wall came down. Almost all the leading figures, the talkers, the makers are male. The same goes for the travellers from all over the world who passed by and stayed to help create the centre. For me, this is a striking but by no means singular occurrence. It’s everywhere. I read a book about the sacred. Texts by Lyotard, Deleuze. They refer to Hegel, Kant. I read a book about Pica, the desire for and consumption of non-food items like earth and starch. The scientist who wrote the book is female. The majority of the scientists she quotes are male. I search for a book in my friends’ bookshelf. I see Dostoevsky. Paul Auster. Don DeLillo. Men. Men. Men. Men. Looking at the past, the most influential philosophers and thinkers were male. All female philosophers that were influential wrote about gender. Maybe they were too preoccupied with their feminist agenda (= advocating equal rights for men and women) to develop grand theories about ourselves and our world that could be of general interest and continuing importance. Looking at today’s media, publishing world and academia, the situation hasn’t changed. Sometimes a little scene plays in front of my inner eye: fast forward 200 years. Someone looks back at our present state of non-present women and thinks: how strange. How repulsive. How was this possible? Like we, today, look back at those times when women couldn’t vote, or when people held other people as slaves. How strange. How repulsive. How was this possible?, we wonder. |