{"title":"Michael Schindhelm","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"solution-262-lavapolis-book-michael-schindhelm-9783956790706","title":"Solution 262  Lavapolis","description":"\u003cp\u003eI am not sedentary and I am not itinerant. My home is a heterotopia with a thousand imaginary landscapes. . The island is the buffer zone between the places of the outside world. Those that exclude one another outside meet here. Those that are at war with one another outside negotiate here. Those that steal from one another outside trade here.\u003cbr\u003e--Simone, 38, resident of the island for three years\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSeventy years ago, the small island nation of Lavapolis was founded. It began as an alternative, a gambling destination to rival Las Vegas, and became a model for a new way of living. With its principle of universal solidarity, the nation counters the pitfalls of contemporary global society. It is an ever-shifting utopia; a volcano jutting out of the Mediterranean Sea; an extension of the open frontier. The biographies of its inhabitants are integral to the whole. If the world backs down from the challenges of Lavapolis, the island is destined to erupt.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSolution 262: Lavapolis\u003c\/i\u003e is the tenth volume in the Solution series edited by Ingo Niermann. The speculative novel accompanies Friday in Venice, a transmedia storytelling project about a possible Europe that took place at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, August 1-17, 2014 (www.lavapolis.com).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49582091665681,"sku":"GOR013610794","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/3956790707.jpg?v=1751285272"},{"product_id":"dubai-high-book-michael-schindhelm-9780955889479","title":"Dubai High","description":"In early 2007, writer and theatre director Michael Schindhelm was appointed by the Dubai authorities as consultant on a projected opera house, and in early 2008 found himself with a broader remit as director of the newly founded Dubai Culture and Arts Authority. His diary of 2008 is a partly fictionalized account of his first twelve months of both working and living in Dubai. It is a meditation, from a cultural perspective, on the nature of this extraordinary city and its project to reinvent itself according to new rules of its own devising.   From the outset there were profound cultural issues to be faced. Can essentially alien art forms be transplanted effectively? Can they be imposed top-down by the authorities? Can high culture ever be financially self-supporting? In a society run like a business by a tiny, unaccountable elite, in which freedom of speech is limited and 90 percent of the inhabitants are transient, expendable expatriates, can the arts realistically be nurtured as a form of social expression and self-examination?   The author's efforts to create projects were undermined by misunderstandings over the nature and purpose of the arts - in his employers' conception, little more than a marketing tool to boost Dubai's brand as a premier global tourist resort. His woes were compounded by the lack of clear distinction between government and private enterprise, and by the very Arabian custom of bringing in privileged outsiders to advise on, and occasionally to compete with, schemes supposedly under his direction. Ultimately, his projects were undone by the global financial crash of late 2008.   Despite such travails, the author is able to see the funny side and retains some sympathy for the Dubai project. He remains optimistic, seeing in Dubai and other Gulf States a glimmer of hope for international cultural dialogue, leading to increased understanding between the Arab world and the West.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50486578282769,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50486578577681,"sku":"GOR007085818","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0955889472.jpg?v=1751078009"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-michael-schindhelm.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}