Contribution to European Excellence and European Competitiveness

This research project contributes to European excellence and European competitiveness by recruiting Dr. Markin into European research network. Formal participation of Israel in the Framework Program for Research of the European Union will fall short of realizing its potential without researchers that are willing to trail-blaze unexpected directions of scholarly inquiry and are able to productively work with their Israeli, European and international colleagues. Dr. Markin's research project proposes to explore culture-driven strategies of urban development. As the imperative to diversify the sources of economic growth becomes prevalent internationally, the cities that are capable to successfully divert their resources away from industrial production and towards creative economy are going to be the next leading global cities. European excellence relies on combination of heterogeneous expertises across the European region. The addition of Israel into the European institutional framework only starts the process of cultural, social and economic collaboration across the respective centers of excellence. The Center for German Studies at the Euopean Forum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem promises to be one such leading center for Israeli-German and Israeli-European cooperation in the emerging area of metropolitan studies.

The areas of overlap and synergy between regional, urban and cultural studies have their counterpart in the mutualy reinforcing effect that the strengthening of cooperation between Israel and EU can have. While the emphasis on linear economic growth has historically involved the logic of zero-sum game of international competition, when one country's gain is another's loss, as the rationale behind protectionist policies maintains, the stress on non-linear cultural development allows for the logic of positive sum relations to structure the economic and social development as is happening with open-source software, creative commons licensing, and open-access encyclopedias. This culture-driven economic development has a signficant urban component since Europe of centers of excellence is, in no small measure, Europe of creative cities where intensive interchange of textual, visual and audio information makes possible qualitative changes in product design, urban branding and inter-urban relations. As cultural advantage becomes decisive in determining competitive advantage not only of products, but also of cities, the importance for European economic competitiveness of diverse cultural competences cannot be overestimated.

As art biennials become multidisciplinary events that theorize, mediatize, and professionalize their existence, as art curators, contemporary artists and interdisciplinary scholars densely populate the international geography of numerous biennial exhibitions, the indirect effect of the interplay between these localized events and globalized networks translates into the competitive advantage of the cities that excel at hosting successful cultural meeting points. The success of Documenta exhibition, Kassel, Germany, and Berlin biennale not only has its counterpart in the growing international profile of German contemporary art but also positions Berlin and Germany as a center of cultural excellence and competitiveness. Likewise, the recent increase in visibility of Israeli contemporary art and cinema may not only be owed to the role that global cities, such as New York, have as launching pads for aspiring artists or filmmakers, but can be taken as a point of interdisciplinary reflection on the culture-oriented strategies of development that European cities can adopt from that best practices that more successful multicultural cities, such as Berlin and Tel-Aviv, apply.

An explicit focus on the relations between urban spaces and global culture that this research project proposes puts an analytically realist foundation for a productive discussion of various factors that determine excellence and competitiveness in the sphere of culture. The project will draw lessons from the best practices of organizing art biennials - those in Italy and Germany - while adding diversity to this theoretical sample by including Israel, and potentially other countries, such as Canada and Brazil, into the multidisciplinary discussion of the role that culture can play in urban development in Europe and elsewhere.