Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer/Autumn 2018 | Page 55

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
focus on the Humanities in the spirit of Edward Said. Beyond scholarships and housing
provided in form of subsidies by the German Federal Foreign Office, the Academy offers
the opportunity to perform regularly in the Pierre Boulez Saal, an innovative 360-degree
concert hall designed pro bono by Frank Gehry and the Japanese acoustician Yasuhisa
Toyota. 5 As the Academy’s mission statement clearly emphasizes, “it is through playing
and listening that students of the Barenboim–Said Akademie accept the differences of
others [ ... ], bridging the fierce ideological divides first broached by their West-Eastern
Divan Orchestra, and sustaining a dialogue that defies the political rifts that plague our
world today” (Barenboim–Said Academy website).
The Other Sides of Symbolic Transformation
However, this movement in favor of another symbolism has some limits: four phenomena,
both exogenous and endogenous, affect and curb the process of symbolic transformation.
(1) Limited audiences: the geopolitical map of musical activism. First of all, the
WEDO is struck by a double exteriority concerning its sponsors and donors (mainly
Europeans) on the one hand, and the audiences (mainly Western) on the other hand.
Looking at the orchestra’s statistically most frequent concert venues since 1999, the corresponding
tour plans hardly differ from those of other internationally active institutions
within the field of classical music: given the major project phase in July/August every
year, the Divan established itself as a permanent guest to some of the most prestigious
summer festival locations in Europe such as London (at the BBC Proms, among other
venues), Salzburg (Festspiele), Berlin (notably as visiting orchestra to the famous openair
Waldbühnenkonzert since 2008), or Lucerne (Festival) (see Figures 1b and 2).
In light of Barenboim’s self-declared goal of having played once in all of his protégés’
home countries (Shemer 2016), the maestro resumed the two past Divan decades, that
“from an extra-musical point of view, it’s well below what we expected” (Bourdais 2018).
This map of public musical activities is by no means the mere result of a self-imposed
restriction to eurocentrism, but subject to a variety of inhibiting geopolitical factors: in
fact, the WEDO (and Barenboim himself, despite being in possession of four different
passports) are depending on the political will of the respective governments to support
or at least tolerate transboundary mobility, especially as regards circulation and (re-)
entry requirements on national territories (Ramel 2014:225–229). Beyond the ongoing
5 Supervised by Frédéric Ramel, Michael Jung has been preparing a Master’s thesis (unpublished) on
“The Barenboim–Said Akademie: Towards a Hybrid Form of Federal Cultural Policy and Diplomacy
in Germany” at the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs. This first in-depth study devoted to the most
recent institution in Barenboim’s universe will not only examine his role as a cultural entrepreneur,
but also discuss the unconventional multi-stakeholder cooperation and the strong impact of lobbying
that enabled successful institution building. Furthermore, the work will illustrate how the Academy is
showcasing Germany’s post-national approach to domestic and external cultural action.
52