The project ‘European Cultural Capital’ was launched in 1985, on the proposal of the former Greek Ministry of Culture Melinne Mercury, as a way of making closer contacts between different European nations and the promotion of diversities and threasures of the European cultures, with the accent on the common cultural heritage. Until 1999 the annual title was hold exclusively by the megalopolises – Athens, Florence, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Glasgow, Dublin, Madrid, Anthwerpen, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Thessaloniki and, last year, Stockholm.
This year’s annual program will start on the 19th of February and during the year there will be over 300 various cultural manifestations, organized in five themes: ‘Goethe Complex’, ‘Weimar in Europe’, ‘The Difficulties of Memories’, ‘Ten Years Later’ and the separate thematic block devoted to the beginning of the new millenium.
As a city where Joachan Wolfgang Goethe, Joachan Sebastian Bach, Franc List, Friedrich Nietche… lived and worked – Weimar will, in its titular year, celebrate several important jubilees: 250 years of Goethe’ birth, 80 years of the establishment of the Weimar Republic and the Bauhaus School in that city, 50 years of the division of Germany and ten years of its reunion.
The dark side of the former artistic mecca consist is the existence of holocaust Buchenvald, several kilometers away of the city, where during the Second World War 56,000 people died.
Within the complex ‘The Difficulties of Memories’, on 22nd of January will be opened symbolic path that links the castle on the hill Etersberg, ‘the emblem of humanistic refinement of Weimar royalty’ and holocaust Buchenvald, the emblem of spiritual collapse.
Despite all the ambitions of the organizers, this year’s events in Weimar are in the shadow of the grandiose project planned in the year at the turn of millenium. During 2000 the title of the European Cultural Capital will hold nine European cities – Avignon, Bergen, Bologne, Brussels, Krakow, Helsinki, Prague, Reikawik and Snatiago de Kompostella. As the organizers announce, they will be linked into the grandious communication network that should present and promote scientific achievements in the sphere of communications and explore their impact on the everyday life.
Announced 'spectacular' openning of the exhibition 'Communications' is due to December this year in Helsinki. During 14 months, up to the 21st of March 2001, interactive exhibition that include the transmission of voice, picture and data, together with the reminders on history of communications, presentation of current high tech achievements and the visions of the future will visit nine cultural capitals and will be available in 13 languages.
Organizers invite visitors of all profiles and professions to take part in discussion about the potentials of new technologies and the question what indeed we expect of them. The exhibition should offer response on the question how new communication technologies change our everyday life and how the speed of communication affect society. It should help in understanding new technologies and crystalize the vision of future through, it is said, ‘real’ interaction.
The leading role in this project will have Finnish scientific center "Eureka", sponsored by the European commission.
Except for "Communications", nine cities will present their own projects as well: ‘Nine Self-Portraits of the European Cultural Capitals 2000’ – big exhibition of cultural varieties and similarities of these cities in Avignon; ‘ARCE Net Project’ – virtual museum in Bologna; ‘Urban Challenge’ in Brussels, ‘God’s Faces’ in Krakow, in cooperation with Avignon, Brussels and Santiago de Kompostella, including subprojects ‘The Pictures of God’, ‘The Voices of Eternity’, ‘Mystery Places’, ‘Magic Words’, ‘The Pictures of Earth’ in Santiago de Kompostella – the exhibition of Earth maps, from ancient to satellite-made, through which history of different regions should be told.
European commission, under whose umbrella the project of European Cultural Capital lasts from 1985, did not announce new capital after 2000. According to initial idea, the project was supposed to last only during 15 years of the current millenium. However, it could be continued in the next millenium as well, what depends on the Network of European Cultural Capitals, an organization of the former and future capitals that exist from 1991 with the mission of exchange of experience. From 1994 this organization works on the study about 15 years’ results of the project. On its evaluation possible continuation will depend.
