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With the guiding principle “Learning from Athens” the 14th edition of documenta in 2017 was presented in the form of two nearly simultaneous, separate and at the same time related exhibitions in two historically very different and rather distant cities, Kassel and Athens, respectively in two different countries, Germany in the middle of Europe and Greece on the outskirts of Europe. With this curatorial approach Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk obviously goes against the principles of the venerable art institution, which was founded in 1955 by artist and art educator Arnold Bode in Kassel and, since then, is implemented as a periodical exhibition with a 100-day duration at its venue in Kassel. Moreover, Szymczyk disengages documenta from its well-established position as a hosting institution that traditionally invites artists and cultural creators from all over the world to Kassel, and assigns it a new role as guest with the aim to manifest “the dissolution of barriers separating those who lack the simplest means from those who are usually all-too-willing to give them lessons but seldom a hand”, as he articulated in his concept in 2013. In this paper, I will investigate how the curatorial concept of documenta 14 challenges not only the institutional history, structure and status of documenta but also how it resumes and transforms documenta’s initial understanding of an ethics of cultural connectivity in times of crisis and traumatic historical ruptures for today. From a transcultural perspective, I will critically examine, how far the curatorially initiated “terms of invitation” and “forms of collaboration” for the exhibition between Kassel and Athens can be acknowledged as a shared cultural practice within an open process that goes beyond the simple logic of oppositions between North and South, or the West and ‘the Rest’, binaries of exclusion and inclusion, or any essentializing and reducing criteria of national identity. According to this, I will also discuss how documenta 14’s claim “Learning from Athens” addresses and implements fundamental ideas of critical art education, which are strongly related to democratic conditions of participation and the legitimacy to produce knowledge and meaning in a globally interconnected and increasingly unpredictable world., The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Vol 10 No 1 (2019)

With the guiding principle „Learning from Athens“ the 14th edition of documenta took place in 2017 both in the Greek metropolis of Athens and the German city of Kassel. As such, documenta 14 did not appear as a touring exhibition but as two single and at the same time correlated exhibitions in two different countries located in the middle of Europe and on its outskirts. With this curatorial approach, Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk goes counter the basic parameters of the well-established Western exhibition institution, which was founded in 1955 and, since then, is implemented as a periodical exhibition with a one hundred-day duration at its venue in Kassel. Taking a transcultural perspective, this article considers how the curatorial concept of documenta 14 challenges not only the institutional history, structure and status of documenta but also how it resumes and transforms its initial understanding of an ethics of cultural connectivity in times of crisis and traumatic historical ruptures for today. Moreover, it critically scrutinizes, how far the curatorially initiated „terms of invitation“ and „forms of collaboration“ for the exhibition between Kassel and Athens can be acknowledged as a shared cultural practice.

The book contains the partial effects of the research realized within the project 'Technologies of Imaging in Communication, Art and Social Sciences' (TICASS). It presents the material gathered and analysed referring to visual messages in urban public spaces in Kenya, on the case study of the Kilifi county, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. These investigations and analyses, based on Paul Martin Lester model of visual communication analysis, are important because all contemporary societies in Europe, Africa and the rest of the world have at stake solving the problems of communication in their urban public spaces saturated with images which may be diversely (accurately, incorrectly, falsely) read by individuals in the city whether by residents, tourists, visitors, or researchers. The urban text has a polyphonic character in its diversity of contents and forms, but also is full of contradictions, and sometimes absurdities, paradoxes, and palimpsest, what requires specific competences for its reading and cognitive-functional use.

Urban memories are remediated and mobilised by different - and often conflicting - stakeholders, representing the heritage industry, municipal city branding campaigns or anti-gentrification struggles. Post-punk ‘retromania’ (Reynolds 2011) coincided with the culture-led regeneration of former industrial cities in the Northwest of England, relaunching the cities as creative clusters (Cohen 2007, Bottà 2009, Roberts & Cohen 2014, Roberts 2014). Drawing on my case study of the memory cultures evolving around Manchester‘s post-punk era (Brunow 2015), this article shows how narratives and images travel through urban space. Looking at contemporary politics of city branding, it examines the power relations involved in adapting (white homosocial) post-punk memories into the self-fashioning of Manchester as a creative city. Situated at the interface of memory studies and film studies, this article offers an anti-essentialist approach to the notion of ‘transcultural memory’. Examining the power relations involved in the construction of audiovisual memories, this article argues that subcultural or popular memories are not emancipatory per se, but can easily tie into neoliberal politics. Moreover, there has been a tendency to sideline or overlook feminist and queer as well as Black and Asian British contributions to post-punk culture. Only partially have such marginalised narratives been observed so far, for instance in Carol Morley’s documentary The Alcohol Years (2000) or by the Manchester Digital Music Archive. The article illustrates how different stakeholders invest in subcultural histories, sustaining or contesting hegemonic power relations within memory culture. While being remediated within various transmedia contexts, Manchester’s postpunk memories have been sanitised, fabricating consensus instead of celebrating difference.

Resilience, defined as the ability to overcome the difficulties encountered in achieving personal, professional or academic goals, is a topic of recent interest within the field of social sciences; more specifically in Psychology and Positive Psychopedagogy. From the transcultural study of Grotberg in 1999, held in twenty places distributed in twenty countries, to transcultural research conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in its TIMSS 2011 study, knowledge about children resilience has been incorporating relevant data and factors related to both students and its context in the exploratory phase, which is this line of research. Transcultural research about resilience have also been responsible for changing the preventive institutional approach to promotion models, committed to optimizing strengths and resilience factors of subjects at risk.

Through her literary works, Francophone Lebanese writer Vénus Khoury-Ghata who resides in Paris, suggests an alternative idea to that of the isolated representation of Lebanon and of the Lebanese identity. Expressed in French from the outside of her motherland’s limits, her point of view makes good use of her marginalization towards the national literature which worries about its “cultural authenticity” while aiming to invent other images of her own country.The literary effect produced through the writing of her poetry and novels, which is situated and placed in the meeting point of cultures and languages, is thought particularly striking through her use of the metaphor. This figure of speech is contemplated primarily through the issues about the representation of the Nation, and it is then dealt with its function of “cultural crossing” through text, firstly in an intercultural perspective and secondly in a transcultural one. Seeing that they consider culture as a process rather than that of heritage, the khouryghatien metaphor in the text stands as a way of disclosing the realms of “possibles” in the Identity studies. In this sense, it plays the same role in Vénus Khoury-Ghata’s work as the Relation in Glissant’s total world. Through the metaphor task, khouryghatien poetry and novels widen national consciousness to the world by encouraging the meeting among multiple cultures and it also works for understanding and reconstructing the identity of the Lebanese people., À travers ses créations littéraires, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, écrivaine libanaise francophone vivant à Paris, propose une alternative à une représentation cloisonnante du Liban et de l’identité libanaise. Son regard, développé en français depuis le « dehors », met à profit sa marginalisation à l’égard d’une littérature nationale soucieuse d’« authenticité culturelle » pour inventer d’autres images de son pays d’origine. L’effet littéraire et stylistique produit par une écriture poétique et romanesque, qui se situe à l’intersection des cultures et des langues, est particulièrement saisissant dans son emploi de la métaphore. Cette figure de style est envisagée d’abord à travers les problématiques de la représentation du national, puis dans sa fonction de « passeur culturel » dans le texte, dans un premier temps dans une perspective interculturelle, et dans un second temps dans une perspective transculturelle.Dès lors que l’on considère la culture comme un processus plutôt que comme un patrimoine, la métaphore khouryghatienne se présente comme un dispositif stylistique dans le texte qui ouvre des possibles dans les discours identitaires. En ce sens elle joue chez Vénus Khoury-Ghata le même rôle que la Relation dans la totalité-monde glissantienne. Par le travail de la métaphore, l’œuvre khouryghatienne ouvre la conscience nationale à la conscience mondiale en réalisant la rencontre entre de multiples cultures et œuvre à la compréhension et à la reconstruction identitaire du peuple libanais., Attraverso le sue creazioni letterarie Vénus Khoury-Ghata, scrittrice libanese francofona residente a Parigi, propone un'alternativa ad una rappresentazione separativa del Libano e dell'identità libanese. Il suo punto di vista, elaborato in francese "dall'esterno", mette a profitto la propria marginalizzazione rispetto ad una letteratura nazionale attenta a preservare un’"autenticità culturale" per creare immagini diverse del suo paese d'origine. L'effetto letterario e stilistico prodotto da una scrittura - e in versi e in prosa - situata nell'intersezione di culture e lingue, riesce particolarmente incisivo nell'uso della metafora. Questa figura stilistica viene esaminata anzitutto attraverso le problematiche della rappresentazione del significato nazionale, quindi nella sua funzione di "passeur culturale" nel testo, dapprima nell'ambito di una prospettiva interculturale e poi entro una prospettiva transculturale. Qualora si intenda la cultura come un processo "in fieri" anziché un patrimonio esclusivo da salvaguardare, la metafora khouryghatiana appare come un dispositivo stilistico atto ad aprire dei "possibili" nei discorsi identitari. In questo senso essa gioca nell’opera di Khoury-Ghata lo stesso ruolo della Relazione nella totalità-mondo di Édouard Glissant. Tramite la creazione della metafora, l'opera khouryghatiana apre, dunque, la consapevolezza nazionale a quella mondiale favorendo l'incontro tra più culture e concorre alla comprensione e alla ricostruzione identitaria del popolo libanese.

The book contains the partial effects of the research realized within the project 'Technologies of Imaging in Communication, Art and Social Sciences' (TICASS). It presents the material gathered and analysed referring to visual messages in urban public spaces in Kenya, on the case study of the Kilifi county, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. These investigations and analyses, based on Paul Martin Lester model of visual communication analysis,are important because all contemporary societies in Europe, Africa and the rest of the world have at stake solving the problems of communicationin their urban public spaces saturated with images which may be diversely (accurately, incorrectly, falsely) read by individuals in the city whether by residents, tourists, visitors, or researchers. The urban text has a polyphonic character in its diversity of contents and forms, but also is full of contradictions, and sometimes absurdities, paradoxes, and palimpsest, whatrequires specific competences for its reading and cognitive-functional use.

The book contains the partial effects of the research realized within the project 'Technologies of Imaging in Communication, Art and Social Sciences' (TICASS). It presents the material gathered and analysed referring to visual messages in urban public spaces in Kenya, on the case study of the Kilifi county, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. These investigations and analyses, based on Paul Martin Lester model of visual communication analysis, are important because all contemporary societies in Europe, Africa and the rest of the world have at stake solving the problems of communication in their urban public spaces saturated with images which may be diversely (accurately, incorrectly, falsely) read by individuals in the city whether by residents, tourists, visitors, or researchers. The urban text has a polyphonic character in its diversity of contents and forms, but also is full of contradictions, and sometimes absurdities, paradoxes, and palimpsest, what requires specific competences for its reading and cognitive-functional use.