Import Export

Cultural Transfer between India and Germany, Austria

A trans-disciplinary research and culture project by Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V. (Halle/Saale), House of World Cultures (Berlin), Majlis (Mumbai) and DeEgo (Vienna).

The project Import Export aims to explore the dynamics of mutual perception in the age of globalisation. Which individuals, cultural products, ideologies and consumer goods shape the knowledge of each other - or what is taken for knowledge?

India and German-speaking Europe are connected through a long and complex – sometimes even contradictory – history of mutual attributions, images, clichés and phantasms. For Import Export, we have put up an imaginary screen, which is used by both sides to project their reciprocal perception of the other as well as to reflect self-images and characterises the relationship between the two cultural areas.

Faced with an abundance of associations we have focused on the edges of the disciplines, academic schedules, art exhibitions and economy summits, that are largely underexposed. The choice of topics was lead by the intention to initiate a dialogue between a young generation of artists and scientists – a dialogue that adresses the political dimensions of cultural exchange between metropoles of the North and the South as well as the cultural implications of ecomomic relations and knowledge transfer. The 26 single projects are all independent works in the form of lectures, film essays, photo exhibitions or performances and can be attributed to the following titles:

Moving People: deals with the individual, incidential und uncontrollable forms of cultural transfer under the heading of migration and travel.
Moving Concepts: examines the cirulation of philosophical and political ideas, concepts and theory, between India and German-speaking Europe.
Moving Goods: is concerned with the strategic forms of import and export of material culture, both from economic and cultural viewpoints – im- and export in the original sense.

The involved artists, academics, filmmakers, journalists and activists of all three countries present their projects in the course of four chapters:

The Bombay Chapter will be openend up from March 25th to 27th, 2005 in the Mohile Parikh Center for Contemporary Culture (MPC3) in Mumbai,
the Vienna Chapter from May 19th to 22nd, 2005 at the Künstlerhaus in Vienna and
the Berlin Chapter from August 11th to 14th, 2005 at the House of World Cultures in Berlin.

Each chapter consists of the following project modules: A symposium introducing six independent research projects, an exhibition of commissioned photographs and installations and a film series entitled Moving Images containing exemplary historical and contemporary movies concerned with the ideas of Import Export.

As Chapter Four the publication Import Export: Cultural Transfer. India, Germany, Austria (release August 2005) will merge the basic threads and topics of the local events and summarize the results of the research. Three documentary film essays will be produced by the Import Export network. They will be issued on DVD as part of the publication.