 Hello and welcome to Standard Time. This is a display Europe production presented to you by Eurazine. And today we talk about Eurazine and where it comes from. Eurazine is a two-fold project. It's both a professional network of more than a hundred cultural journals and magazines from across Europe and an online magazine presenting and showcasing the publishing of this more than a hundred partners amended by Eurazine originals quite like Standard Time. But where Eurazine comes from I'm not the best qualified to talk about. Today we have some Eurazine founders and early partners with us at the Alte Schmiede to tell the story from 1983 to 1998 to today. From the early internet to AI and whatever's ahead. In this episode we celebrate the 25-year anniversary of Eurazine, the magazine with some Kaiser Schmahn, a typical Viennese winter treat. We'll also discuss how this new venture, Display Europe, will expand on the original tree. Judith Vidal Hall came from London to celebrate with us. She was the longtime editor of Index and Censorship, a unique magazine dedicated to the freedom of speech and press freedom. Walter Fammler is a publisher, harmonium player and the general secretary of the Alte Schmiede Kunstverein here in Vienna hosting our show. He was the longtime editor of Eurazine's founding partner journal, Vespennest. Andreas Cedebauer is currently the editor of this great Austrian journal Vespennest and Karl-Henrik Friedrichsson was Eurazine's first editor-in-chief for over 15 years and he still serves as a member of our advisory board. He's a Swedish critic and essayist living in Vienna. Very welcome everyone. We have a couple of founders and early partners of Eurazine here to talk on this festive occasion. Now we celebrate the 25th birthday, birthday, so to say anniversary of the founding of Eurazine, the magazine and the 40th anniversary of the founding of Eurazine, the network, which started out with a meeting in Switzerland in 1983 and then in 15 years resulted in an online publication. If I may ask the two of you first, you presented the concept for World Brains in 1997, I understand for the first time and Karl-Henrik, you told me a lot about and you also wrote about what a schism this caused in the network. Can the two of you clarify why online publishing seemed so controversial at the time and what your original concept was, Walter? Hans Götzoksenius, a German radio person, he organized a small meeting of magazines because he was curious about literary magazines and how to work and art magazines and political magazines and this was the nucleus because we were in a situation where we had some start magazines in what was called the East. We had the Friedensbewegung in East and West Germany and it was quite a lively surrounding in political standards. We tried to establish this kind of magazine conferences and then it came to an end where we said, okay it's not enough that we meet once a year and in between we are just disbanded. Could there be a common publishing project beginning from the 90s when this internet came which we deeply doubted but then it was an option and then we presented on a magazine conference in Moscow, the first concept where also you have been on board in Moscow. So this is in short how I could describe the atmosphere, the goals, the aims and what we did in organizing ourselves. The real goal was to stay independent and also to grow because we were limited. There was definitely a second aspect of that as well because when the first concept was actually presented at this conference in Moscow 1997 I gave a speech there called World Brains and Super Encyclopedias and this was all about the revolutionary leap publishing was taking at that time namely with the advent of the internet. Most of the people, editors present in Moscow, described or subscribed to an idea of the World Wide Web being a place for pornography and for short snippets of information. However we, a handful of us decided to continue and with time our friends and colleagues saw that this was not such a bad idea after all, joining forces in order to meet the challenges of this new technology and in 1998 the association Neurisin was established and registered here in Vienna. Ten years later the network had 75 partner journals from 34 different countries published in 32 different languages. As fast as that I hadn't realized how fast it was as you would have gathered from my accent, I'm the outsider here, but have been a passionate and devoted admirer of Neurisin. For most of our audience listening now, 89 won't have any serious meaning. It was that impassioned tearing down of the wall that divided Europe physically. Walter organized the first conference and the leaders of cultural journals got together. There was a common culture and I think for me that remains the very precious discovery and legacy of Neurisin. The Europe we're talking about 40 years ago is a very different place from today where the beginning of division is beginning to show in a rather alarming way from Hungary in the east to the Netherlands and Sweden in the west. I do want to pick a bone with this at some other time when we have time for that this whole I think very English notion of being away, being outside of the EU okay but Europe is not the EU first of all and very importantly it's not the same one and the same and I very rarely hear this from Scots or the Irish that they wouldn't belong in Europe and would be away it's a very English thing to say I understand why it's an important point the United Kingdom is now I always use the phrase United Kingdom with a question mark I am not popular but it's a reality. But may I remind you dear Judith of course without the British 60s and then the punk and whatever happened I mean the whole Yugoslavia in the 70s was completely influenced by punk musicians and we have been influenced by the 60s culture and we were taught English at schools. I'm not quite sure whether he's beating me up or praising me. I want to come back to English as a lingua franca and what kind of cultural hegemony that comes with and it has implications for Eurozine but first let's hear from Andrea who who is the editor of one of the founding journals Vespinist you also have an issue with you I brought some of the founders issues with me. This is one of the early issues with the picture. No no no. No this is one of my childhood pictures. Oh sorry all right fine I quite like the wars. Vespinist is one of these journals which is still very firmly rooted in the print you have an online presence but only to signal that Vespinist exists and you refuse to budge to put everything online. The magazines were reluctant to the to the internet and this Eurozine tried to change their position on that and I think that we tend to forget what using a website was not an everyday experience. In 95 before the association Eurozine was founded we organized a conference in Vienna so then it was still the loser network of cultural magazines in in Europe. It was somewhat an understandable and natural move to use the internet for this further dissemination and wider wider audience and the second function why I think it was so compelling for for printed magazines to use Eurozine as a tool is that they are have these archive functions. You see that magazine articles really age well and you can highlight this you can use their archival character so to say to put it in a different context. And now a word from today's sponsors. This program is supported by my aunt Koti. She provides me with pickles and bacon which keep me going through a long working day. Thanks aunt Koti. Please come visit me in Vienna you've been promising for months. You can also become a supporter of the show and you don't even have to feed me. All I ask is that you pledge your support at patreon.com slash Eurozine that is Eurozine the magazine presenting this program. You can pledge anywhere starting from as little as three euros a month or whatever you can afford you know go crazy if you can and I promise we won't buy pickles from them. Instead you'll get access to bonus materials even invitations to the tapings of the show and you will even get to suggest topics and questions. I usually say that this kind of work that cultural journalism does it works toward eternity. The way I like to look back on the Eurozine archives you can see kind of an imprint of the time. I was sitting as an editor editor-in-chief of a Swedish journal Udo Bild which is still a partner of the network and was very proud of what I was doing in Sweden. I was introducing international artists philosophers thinkers opinion makers to a Swedish audience but I had all these contacts and it all went in one direction. It was a one way street. We presented this to a Swedish audience but why couldn't I turn it around as well and make use of all those contacts and knowledge that I had of the Swedish culture and make my colleagues in Hungary in Austria in Germany become part of that knowledge. I can share that with them. So open up the traffic going in in both directions. We have an earlier issue of Udo Bild just in case you want to flaunt it as a previous editor and the current editor. Still one of the best journals in Europe founded in 1892. And if somebody is interested in this history of Eurozine you can get this anthology co-edited by Karl Henrik and Klaus Nelen. Is this an obvious obvious issue when you found Eurozine that English would be the primary language of the publication is it even the case? English is the lingua franca and it for practical reasons we needed to do that but already from the start it was thought and conceived as a multilingual project. The opposite of you know global mainstreaming and the hegemonial efforts and powers of you lot. I allow these people to say these things because in principle I allow free speech. That's good that you're an advocate for free speech. The purpose was not to promote English or idea specifically from America or the UK. Instead it was the small countries and the small languages that were in focus. So typically a publishing history could look like this. Slovenia is a fantastic country when it comes to journals and literature but it's small. In Slovenia an article that the editorial office in Vienna found very interesting not only for Slovenians but for a wider European audience is then picked up translated from Slovenian with a potential readership of two million if we count it high translated into English made available not on print as the original was but on the web there's an editor sitting in Tallinn in Estonia just a small language also an editor of a printed journal he realizes reading this text in Europe this is exactly what I'm dealing with in my next issue so he translated of course not from English but from the original Slovenian into another small language Estonian and the text has then traveled via this lingua franca platform from a very small printed public sphere in a small language via English into another small public sphere and small language across Europe but it's not just the ideas that travel it's also the authors that find a pathway through international publishing you are of course right because it multiplied their audience enormously and Slovenia is always mentioned as a very successful example because she traveled her text traveled I think I don't know if it's still the record if I still have the right record but she traveled so to say in most languages which means that she multiplied her reach enormously because she comes from a very small language too even if she writes also in English and so for writers this was really very important to to have editors who were connected via Euro scene because editors didn't use it only as a source of information but they they looked of course also for texts which would fit in their next context at this point English being the lingua franca coming from a from a small language if this is the only foreign language you learned you it's kind of like having a matura it's probably now as opposed to having a matura a hundred years ago so this is like the starting point that is probably true because of course it reaches I mean not only is it the natural national language of the United States the language reaches as far east as it does west if you think Australia it's very good that we remind people of how important your resume was in making the connection from east to west but I think it's also important at this moment to look to the future I think we are at a very critical moment not only in the history of your resume but Europe itself and I think we should look at the future of Europe through the vehicle of your resume I think it has the capacity to play a unique role in the future of Europe that is to say by connecting with it and through it but Kyle Henry you pointed out just a couple days ago when we're talking about this that that publishing in and of itself is also changing at a turning point and you likened it to the point 25 years ago a little bit more than 25 years ago when digital publishing was making yes it's more serious entry it's a good point yes I think that structurally we're now in a similar situation like the one we were in when we were in Moscow with the the escalation of this technology with AI being added to it we take another leap in this and and this ancient genre this ancient part of the publishing industry the cultural journal the cultural magazine is again faced with that challenge should it address and try to grapple with this challenge try to make use of the opportunities that it actually represents while at the same time retaining its own identity and bringing that into a new into a new era and now some more words from our sponsors or shall I say funders and founders the European Commission and the European Cultural Foundation the European Cultural Foundation is based in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and they have long been keen on connecting Europeans across borders languages and cultural backgrounds they've been supporting arts research and much more since 1954 they also created the erasmus student exchange program which has allowed over 10 million Europeans to travel and study abroad now they are bringing together partners from across Europe to build a content sharing platform that syndicates articles audio and video programs in 15 languages and somehow miraculously doesn't abuse your user data display Europe offers content on politics culture community and so much more it also brings you this very talk show standard time produced by one of the co-founders yours in this all wouldn't be possible without the support of the creative Europe program of the European Union thanks folks now let's get back to where we were before all the challenges that ai poses one of the big opportunities affects the use of language because the quality of language tools compared to let's say what was foreseeable from the 70s is just unimaginable so there could be a barrier a language barrier broken through technology with very cautious application cautious and editorial and and strategic application not just pouring on top of all things because technology is just poured on top of existing things doesn't tend to have a good track record but Walter you wanted to come back in I wouldn't like to stress out too much the importance on the role of the momentary or long-term meanwhile a prime minister of Hungary but he's a perfect example for somebody who started out as a liberal politician I personally saw him in I think in the mid 80s when he gave a lecture at the IWM a smart young politician he pushes and was pushed in a way also to rightist and far rightist positions and what we face now is we face a complete fascization in Europe we have a Nazi party in the German parliament which is very dangerous we have the follower party of the NSDAP in Austria which is pushing pushing all the other parties to a rightist direction and Eurasian still holds the flag of a kind of liberal leftist open-minded society and we face now a lot of rightist publications especially in the net and I would say they have a hegemony Walter how could Eurasian begin to be the flagship again how could it lead this change to more positive waters I think it can play a role we are facing a militant right it's not a play for a militant leftist movement but to formulate strict positions again and it's a battle ongoing for the last 150 years I would like to just call back to an anchor point because in essence I believe that the editors who doubted the relevance of the internet suggesting that it's mostly porn and then tidbits on the side they were right I also think that cultural journalism has more evolutionary forms and we try to create this point where you can look to in this like in deep insanity around us in current affairs in politics in culture and just check against this board like am I insane or is everybody else hopefully this helps the readers get out of a reactive mindset because what this technology does is and that's online publishing and everything based on online publishing is that it inundates you what people need more and more I believe and what I need myself more and more is a place where I can actually get my mind a little bit still and think about what is really relevant I would take an issue with what Walter and Judith said before namely that we are now in a very unique situation back in the year 2000 when Euracine was newly founded and was recruiting partners here and there the opening speech at the 2000 conference that was held here in Vienna and in in Bratislava was written by Slavin Kadrakulic the title of that speech was who's afraid of Europe in Austria at the time the what the nsdrp follower party was entering into the government which resulted in sanctions from the european it's not politically that very different and Euracine found its role then in order to retain a certain anchor position right and I have no doubt that it will do so today as well I think Carl Henry's idea of anchor is a very good one I think it's well the two of them it really anchors where I think our position at the moment can most usefully be what I appreciate so much about Euracine working with this huge network of publications we don't act like we report something from some kind of arbitrary center point right and this is important to me what what Andrea emphasized that ideas and new voices and perspectives have to enter through these journals yeah I think not only ideas but the decisive moment and also the charm of Euracine for the magazines has always been it was built bottom up so we built something which didn't exist every of these journals had the experience either they were very small print run publications connected to academia or they were what Walter mentioned very small print run independent publications not connected to anyone and by connecting we built a sort of trust which is very important because you knew that the editor and the magazine is they will fight the same problems and issues as far as I understand Euracine until now still the backbones are the printed magazines all our printed magazines are in danger yes to go out of print to disappear the predictions for the future of printed media is really really really very dark and I for my point of view I see they do everything to disappear because they really only promote the electronic issues that of course have a lot of distribution problems print is threatened and print reading has a very different effect than than digital surfaces but also digital publishing is not at a sustainable place it's incredibly volatile it's way costlier than most people perceive of it and the editorial costs does not go away yeah that's that's the thing our cultures have this very deeply misplaced belief that human labor is disposable and and is practically the worst thing to have to pay for right the editors work becomes more precious in my eyes because they are liable for they are responsible for maintaining quality maintaining sense understanding what would be comprehensible and what wouldn't toward eternity if not for an eternity but for a much longer term but when we talk about eternity I want to bring in Gabi Zipfer who can't join us today because she has passed away and she's one of the founding one of the founding partners of Euracine with the way 630 this is the book she authored with Regina Murchhäuser and Kristen Campbell published posthumously on on sexual violence incredibly heavy topic only editing a fragment took me quite a couple of hours of crying could you please tell us a little bit about Gabi just to have like a just a moment to honor her Gabi was one of those handful of people who immediately saw a way forward a path forward in Moscow and without Gabi's extreme critical input informing this concept Euracine will not exist today she was a long-standing editorial board member but she was also securing funds for the projects in different ways at her home institution in in Hamburg she also organized back in 2012 I think it was a fully fledged Euracine conference which she conceived together with us of course but she was the the brain behind it shortly put on a formula without Gabi Zipfer Euracine would not be Gabi Zipfer was an extraordinary person when it comes to the political stance of Euracine the cultural journals as a collective throughout Europe is in to a large extent a left of center liberal endeavor this is absolutely clear however it's leftism is not the only game in town also when it comes to intellectual endeavors therefore tried as much as I could to find and identify publications that were center or right of center but shared the same fundamental view of the importance of a public sphere and intellectual exchange in my own magazine index was of course not at all it was very centrist and I think open center is a very good good way of describing it with the current editorial board we were discussing most recently updating our so to say public definition of a cultural journal we have more or less centered around the notion of the essay as an organizing idea how do you see the essay faring now do you think it keeps its boundaries or is it transforming in the foreseeable future we did an issue on the on the essay and there are were both voices saying it's the end of the essay has come now and well in times where so to say of poly crisis this is the time of exactly that genre it takes your months it takes a writer months to write a decent essay and there is no money so far I have seen that you can take these months off so this is a very practical problem but the form is interesting I don't know how it can be transformed to to be applicable for all the partners or for other formats than a printed magazine or or the respective long essay on on the web just to finish it I mean as we are sitting here in Arte Schmiede we have here a literary program we have the gallery of magazines but we also have a music program and an art program and I think we shouldn't finish without having some music here thank you everyone is that what it was now listen I'm having brain in the wind at my funeral and it ain't gonna sound like that this program is presented by eurozine an online magazine bringing you reads from more than a hundred partner publications and across dozens of european languages this talk show is a display euro production a content sharing platform that offers you content on politics cultural community and so much more and somehow miraculously doesn't abuse your user data shocker I know now if you like what you see and wish to support our work please go to patreon.com slash eurozine that is eurozine the magazine presenting this show you can pledge as little as three euros a month or whatever you can afford in return you'll get access to bonus materials invitations to the taping of the show or even get to suggest topics and questions this program is co-funded by the creative euro program of the european union and the european cultural foundation importantly the views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and the speakers they do not necessarily 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