Category: Uncategorized @en

Flying from Cairo to Beirut takes only a bit over one hour but the differences are immediately noticeable. The capital of this tiny country – encompassing ancient history, the sea as well as the mountains – is a mixture of Paris and Cairo. A Western city with a dust of the Orient.

It’s in Lebanon – one of the world’s most sectarian countries – that I met my first peace-journalist: Vanessa Bassil, a 26-year old engaged young woman.  In this interview from Beirut I’ll try to explain her ideas.

Who is the woman hiding behind the joyful, round, colourful sculptures that she became famous for? That’s what we can discover this fall during a large retrospective in Grand Palais.

We have grown accustomed to his ready-mades (such as the famous urinoir – called La Fontaine) but much less to his paintings. This fall we have the chance to get acquainted with another aspect of his works at Centre Pompidou in Paris.

There were several reasons to celebrate in Berlin this autumn: Women’s International Network (WIN) held it’s yearly conference there and the city celebrated its 25th jubilee of the wall’s fall and East and West Germany’s unification. This was therefore in a double meaning a ”Magnificent leap of change” – the title of this year’s conference.