Tawasol network supports democratization in the WANA region

تواصل [Tawasol] means to be in contact, to expand contacts and to network. After a kick-off workshop was held at the Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth in Lebanon at the end of September 2023, the members of the newly founded research and cultural network met for a second workshop at Zeppelin University in November. Other partners of the network, which is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), are the Institut Supérieur de Musique de Tunis at the Université de Tunis, the Syrian organization for the promotion of independent culture Ettijahat - Independent Culture and the Goethe-Institut (Cairo, Tunis and Beirut).

The تواصل [Tawasol] network has set itself the goal of researching artistic activism and democratic participation between the MENA region and Germany. In addition to intercultural dialogue, the focus is on participatory cultural formats that help to create and stabilize democratic structures. Cultural activism plays an important role in both Lebanon and Tunisia.

Another aim of the project is to jointly test the transfer of knowledge between university and society. In cultural studies in particular, there is often a lack of opportunities to make the results obtained there widely accessible to everyone. The project is therefore not only based on theoretical knowledge, but also seeks interactive dialog with civil society actors.

The lack of an official cultural policy is also a form of cultural policy - this is how Lebanese actress Hanane Hajj Ali and cultural activist Dr. Abdullah AlKafri introduce the first workshop in Beirut. Since the catastrophic explosion at the port of the Lebanese capital in 2020, state cultural funding has been almost completely suspended, leading to the closure of many cultural organizations.

The network focuses on promoting and implementing jointly developed cultural formats as well as exploring new approaches in cultural policy. To this end, it is essential that the participants themselves are familiar with the political and cultural structures surrounding them and can formulate their goals in relation to these. Furthermore, new perspectives on their own cultural environment should be developed through mutual exchange.

Art can develop a sense of what is possible - this is what Professor Dr. Karen van den Berg says in the second workshop at Zeppelin University. Following Joseph Beuys, the holder of the Chair of Art Theory and Staging Practice argues that artistic creation can be used to negotiate realities beyond concrete concepts by finding specifically holistic ways of expressing certain phenomena.

Such spaces of possibility are essential for cultural change: in Beirut, we accompanied an activist from the Dalieh of Raouche, in which civil society engagement saved the city's last sea access from privatization, and got to know actors from the Zoukak Theatre, who create spaces to negotiate social issues through their plays. In Friedrichshafen, we spoke to the artistic director of the KinderKunstLabor in St. Pölten, Dr. Mona Jas, about art as a space for utopian dreaming and met Stephanie Milling, who guided us through the exhibition "Into the deep. Mines of the Future" at the Zeppelin Museum.