What is Interculture Really?

Mark Terkessidis

Interculture – often not much more than a fashionable synonym for multiculture. Polemically speaking, many people still associate the term with Turks playing Russian folksongs on Greek instruments, underlaid with hip-hop beats by Nigerian DJs.

Projects of this type are sponsored through funds earmarked for social affairs, sometimes also through special allocations  for “intercultural art projects”. They are thus meant to fulfil societal purposes rather than artistic ones: they are supposed to educate the young, promote dialogue between cultures, inspire crossovers and even prevent fundamentalism and terrorism.
This concept of interculture is antiquated, because actually it concerns all of society. In the large German cities, in the under-six age group, children with migration backgrounds are in the majority; in Austria similar trends are developing in some regions. For cultural institutions – theatres, opera houses and museums – the way they respond to the new composition of the population, the increasing number of people with different backgrounds, circumstances and attitudes, is therefore becoming a question of survival. Intercultural opening is required in the cultural sector. The fact is, however, that most cultural institutions are still places where certain people feel at home and others feel out of place. In audiences, in ensembles, in administrations and in the subjects on programmes of events, the standard of the “affluent, educated citizen” still dominates. Such places do not even appear on the cognitive maps of many people with migration backgrounds. For most of them, the idea of visiting one of these places would even be frightening, because they would not know what to wear, how to act, or what to say about the various works. What has to be done, therefore, is to remove the barriers and give all these people access to the cultural sector – it is essential that state subsidies benefit the entire population.
There are widespread fears that opening up the cultural sector in this way could endanger artistic quality, supposedly through censorship or trivialisation. But in fact, such an opening can be a profoundly creative process. New people enter the arena with new stores of knowledge and new potentials. In Great Britain, for example, the Community Dance has combined avant-garde principles with the everyday dispositions of “normal” people – and the quality is impressive. In many British cities, multifunctional cultural centres have been established, in which theatres and exhibition spaces can be found alongside day-care facilities and fitness clubs – in this way, prohibitive thresholds are being lowered naturally and easily.
However, interculture is not only a matter of respecting existing differences, but also of exchange and new invention. The term is not “intercultures”, in the plural, but “interculture”, and “inter” means “between”. If we see culture not as a closed unit, but as a relationship, then the term can mean something like the connection of relationships. In this sense, the principle of action in interculture is the creation of new relationships. The German-speaking region needs an out-and-out intercultural literacy campaign. Then everyone would learn a new language.

About the author:
Mark Terkessidis is a psychologist, writer, journalist and migration researcher. His areas of specialisation are youth and pop culture, migration, and racism.