Conference Papers
Opening speech by
Peter Curman
| Peter Curman, Chairman of KLYS |
Dear friends and colleagues,
it is indeed with pride and great joy that KLYS welcomes you all
to Sweden and Hässelby Castle. The mere fact that we now will
spend some days together face to face already is a victory.
Because culture in its deepest sense means meeting between
people, sharing of hopes, dreams, and sometimes also of despair.
Although we come from different corners of the world and from different cultures, we have so many things in common. Not long ago I met with a local poet in a small Indian village near Bangalore. We sat for hours discussing poetry, and how to write, and why . The pain when you don’t find the words and the sacred seconds when you finally find them. We may write in different languages and in different traditions but the inner song, the creative nerve, is the same. Writers and artists around the world know each other in the same way as - permit me to put it - as dogs do: we smell the same! I believe that this holds true for all of us in the creative field.
Also other features unite us. Even if working conditions differ, sometimes enormously so, you will be met by exactly the same ironical smile when you ask about the economical outcome of your work. What does it mean? And why do most Ministers of Culture avoid that question? There are many important items on the Ministers agenda in Stockholm, but certainly not this one. Is it too simple and vulgar to be brought up on an international conference? We do not think so. We will bring it up. We are familiar with simplicity and vulgarity.
But then, I think I speak in the name of us all when I welcome the UNESCO report "Our Creative Diversity". Because there are many thoughts and ideas in the report that should be implemented in reality.
To promote diversity is to defend culture. Only in societies with respect for cultural and ethnic varieties and minorities, creativity can flourish. On the international level our guidelines must be mutual understanding and respect. No one has the right or the authority to master the other. This does not imply that we all must share the same opinions. On the contrary. Diversity does not mean just one idea but thousands of ideas, not one truth but the multitude of faces truth can show.
But to show this everyone also must have the right to speak out his or her belief. That means that all creative work must be granted freedom of speech. Without freedom of speech, there is no diversity. No culture. No arts. To safeguard this freedom is a common obligation for all of us.
This conference book, which we hope will serve as a sort of practical handbook during the sessions, will be followed by a new edition that you will hold in your hands on Thursday. That 2nd edition then hopefully will also contain a summery from our web pages on the Internet and - if we succeed - a final document as well. Furthermore, we hope that all lacking speeches, names and addresses and those misspelled in this edition will appear correctly in the 2nd edition. If you have any corrections or amendments, please let us know! Our Ministers, too, will be given a copy each so that they may not forget what we expect from them in the future.
Apart from words and discussions: enjoy the beautiful site of Hässelby. Take a walk in the garden. Give the old message stone (in Swedish "runsten") from the 11th century a thought and listen to the silence under the threes. We wish you all the best!
Hässelby, 30 March 1998
Peter Curman
Chairman of KLYS