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Accepted Paper:

Re-Negotiating 'Legitimate' Art: Syrian Cultural Production in Exile and the Role of German Public Diplomacy Organisations  
Felix Lang (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on German public diplomacy organisations - primarily Goethe Institut and Heinrich Böll Stiftung - and the case of Syrian artists and writers since 2011 this paper examines the deployment of German soft power in the field of cultural production in the Middle East.

Paper long abstract:

Foreign governmental and non-governmental organisations are important players in the field of cultural production all over the Arab world. Classic examples of the deployment of soft power, organisations such as the Goethe Institut, British Council, Alliance Française and a large variety of other institutions and foundations from Europe and the US, as well as from the prosperous Gulf states, provide crucial infrastructure, platforms and funding lines for writers, musicians, artists and film-makers from Morocco to Jordan and beyond. In the aftermath of the uprisings of the "Arab spring", the war in Syria and the ensuing refugee crisis these activities have reached an unprecedented scale.

Focusing on German public diplomacy organisations - primarily Goethe Institut and Heinrich Böll Stiftung - and the case of Syrian artists and writers since 2011 this paper examines the deployment of German soft power in the field of cultural production in the Middle East. Shifting the focus away from the artworks produced in these processes of collaboration, I argue that the working processes and procedures, the organisations' set-up, selection of staff and their formation which implicitly transport notions of legitimate art and artistic practice are important instruments for spreading conceptual and ideological frameworks which are dominant in specific segments of contemporary German society. How - and to what extent - these conceptual frameworks are (re-)negotiated in the concrete practical interaction between artists and public diplomacy institutions is the central question of this paper.

The paper is based on qualitative interviews with Syrian artists and PDO staff.

Panel P134
What is soft about soft power? Critical engagements with an emerging form of statecraft
  Session 1 Friday 17 August, 2018, -