Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen

ifa blog

Interviews, essays, reports and videos

The ifa blog takes a lively look at the many different areas of ifa's work and international cultural relations.

The blog articles can be filtered by topic, such as human rights, civil society, media, and (post-)colonialism, as well as by contributions from ifa's individual projects, such as exhibition funding, the Martin Roth Initiative's protection programme or the CrossCulture programme.

Blog [Translate to english:] Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Learning to See in a Visual World

Interview with Christiane Lange

For Christiane Lange, Director of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, museums are places that offer the opportunity to find individual answers, especially in times of crisis. She explains that art can be effective even when it isn’t didactically and politically correct.
Blog Akademie der Künste, Front View

Places of Reflexion

Interview with Jeanine Meerapfel

The experiences of the past few months have shown Jeanine Meerapfel, President of the Akademie der Künste, that personal encounters are indispensable for interpersonal exchange.
Blog "Boryana Petkova and Michail Michailov. Craving Nothing" exhibition at the Structura Gallery Sofia, 2020

An Island of Free Speech

Interview with Maria Vassileva

For Maria Vassileva, director of Structura Gallery in Sofia, lockdown was a time to challenge political exploitation of the crisis and to engage more profoundly with artists, visitors, and societal issues.
Blog Visitors of the exhibition 'Leila Alaoui' in front of a photograph

Activist Behind a Lens

Interview with Christine Alaoui

When the young photographer Leila Alaoui was shot in a terrorist attack in 2016, her activism against racism received revitalised attention. At the ifa Gallery Stuttgart her mother Christine Alaoui talks about Leila’s connection to the people she photographed and how her legacy shall be continued.

Specialist Article

Tétouan – Andalusian Cultural Heritage in Morocco

By M'hammad Benaboud

The medina, or old town, of Tétouan is one of the smallest in Morocco. Here, no house is like another, each building has its own identity. A small group of dedicated citizens from Tétouan has made it their mission to help preserve the medina. Can their restoration project be a role model for other cities?
Video A look into Kraftwerk Berlin, photo/©: Paul Hahn

"What Can Culture Do?"

The first Martin Roth Symposium focused on the challenges for culture, art and politics. How can museums become more transparent and networked? How can culture build bridges? How to respect national heritage without falling into nationalistic attitudes?
Essay

No More Paternalism

By Ayoko Mensah

The European Union has made culture a strategic area of its development aid policy and international relations. However, cooperation and cultural exchange between Europe and Africa are still strongly marked by colonial representations. This has to change.
Essay Illustration: On the left edge of a large white hand is a figure feeding soccer balls into a television set. The TV is pointing to a soccer stadium in Qatar, which is sinking into the hand. On the right edge of the hand is a large World Cup trophy, the ball of which represents the globe and is about to tip over onto the stadium. To the right are broadcast towers that will broadcast the whole thing.

The Rules of the Global Game

By Ladislau Dowbor

If sport is reduced to watching great people on TV and drinking beer, sport is not something we produce ourselves. We are merely busy on our sofas watching the Olympics or football.
Essay Illustration that shows a Bulldozer running over Chinese tradition, pictured here by Chinese letters.

Made in Europe

By Jia

A young Chinese artist has settled in Berlin in order to practice calligraphy, providing her with the necessary distance from the destruction of traditional Chinese characters wrought by the Cultural Revolution. It also provides the inspiration of a vibrant, artistic city, a place for art that is ‘Made in Europe‘.