Erika Fischer-Lichte: Yes, thank you very much. Let me make a few remarks. The Transformative Power of Performance came out in 2004. It was written in the context of a research centre, which prioritized the study of performing cultures or Kulturen des Performativen – another phrase which is difficult to translate. In this context I said we have to strengthen aesthetics and so this is why it plays such an important part in my book. It is more or less a continuation of a discussion, which in Germany has been consolidated over the years through a reading of Kant’s On Aesthetics. Quite different to the Anglo-Saxon world, aesthetics has always played a prominent role in the German cultural world. And it was my intention, when writing this book, to show that, over the last forty years, a new aesthetics has evolved within the theatre. So my book does not so much have to do with interweaving cultures.

I started to work on so-called “intercultural theatre” in the 1980s when I got a chair in Comparative Literature in Bayreuth. We had a comprehensive research project in African Studies there. This was also the time when I came in contact with many people from Africa; and it was the time when I got involved in the problematic of “intercultural theatre.” I think, in 1988, we were more or less the first in Germany to hold a conference on this issue. It took place in Bad Homburg at the Reimers-Stiftung and was called “Das eigene und das fremde Theater” (“Theatre, own and foreign”) – a title we would never choose today. At the conference we did not talk about “interweaving” in a broader sense, but we talked about what happens in “intercultural theatre”; and we invited people from Africa, China, Japan, Indonesia, India and Latin America to have a broad spectrum of representations. This led to the writing of my book, The Dramatic Touch of Difference. To be honest, it was only when the “Käthe Hamburger Collegia” programme of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research was announced in 2007 that I thought it would be good to take up again what I did some time ago. But it had to be under a different category and with another perspective, as I see the notion of “interculturalism” very differently today.

In fact, I wanted to get rid of this term for the reasons I explained in my presentation. Needless to say, as you have indicated, Rustom, the problems do not disappear, but, on the contrary, they are laid open. And this is what I like about this approach: it does not try to cover up the problems – pretending everything is intercultural and, thus, all is well. In fact, “interweaving” doesn’t happen by itself; it needs someone who interweaves. In addition, when we chose the term “interweaving”, it was important to us to reach out beyond theatre, to engage with “performances” of different kinds, and see how we can interweave different kinds of “intercultural” projects. That’s what we had in mind.

However, let me emphasize that I’m not clinging to terms. For the time being, I think that, as a term, “interweaving” serves its purpose. If, in two or three years, we come to the conclusion that a different name or term is more suitable, we can still change it. I hope that the conversations and discussions we have in the context of this Centre “Interweaving Performance Cultures” will feed the use of this term or the naming of a new term. And perhaps we will arrive at a point in time when we may consider using “intercultural” again because it is, let’s say, cleansed from all these dimensions with which we do not feel at ease.

Berlin, October 12, 2010.

–

Transcribed and edited by Katrin Wächter.