To Wiels to see an exhibition, Sculpture Undone, of the work of Alina Szapocznikow (1926-1973). This is one of the first major exhibitions of her work outside her native Poland and it is well worth a visit. A survivor of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt, she went on to become, in her own words, ‘A sculptor experiencing the failure of a thwarted vocation.’ Convinced that ‘of all manifestations of the ephemeral, the human body is the most vulnerable,’ she set out ‘to praise the impermanence in the recesses of our bodies’ by making ‘awkward objects’. Body parts emerge from glutinous, resinous, undefinable organic slime and formless agglutinations. Casts of wrinkled bellies become scowling jowls.  Lips and breasts hover, rendered alien through detachment from their context. The mechanical and the organic merge. Parts of her body and of her intimate wardrobe are frozen in polyester resin. Casts of her head become tumours. A life-size cast of her son floats ethereally. Flattened casts of body parts, glued to wooden boards, hint at the awfulness of past experiences. But there are also upbeat dreams, like her project to install an ice-skating rink in the crater of Vesuvius (never realised, of course). In the last room there is a short film of an interview with the artist herself. She was clearly shy but determined to get her point across. ‘All artists are exhibitionists,’ she says, fluttering her eyelids endearingly and looking down…

I can recall my mother crying upon learning of the assassination of J.F. Kennedy. I was just five at the time but I still remember a vague sense of innocence lost and outrage at a heinous act. My children, at a roughly similar age, witnessed the appalling events of ten years ago in New York and Washington, the images broadcast repeatedly across the media in a way that made them as inescapable as they were unthinkable. And yet I wonder what my children will remember after fifty years. In that context, perhaps the most thought-provoking of all the articles of commentary that have covered the op ed pages of newspapers and magazines for the past two weeks or more was a column by Francis Fukuyama (he of ‘end of history’ fame) in today’s Observer. His basic argument is that, ‘Since 2001 the most important world-historical story has been the rise of China. This is a development whose impact will almost certainly be felt in fifty years’ time. Whether anyone will remember Osama bin Laden and al-Quaida at that remove is a different matter.’ Fukuyama surely intends no disrespect to the almost three thousand poor souls who lost their lives when he argues that the attacks and the ensuing ‘war on terrorism’ were a ghastly distraction that masked the strong socio-economic trends that have since become so visible in the Middle East and Asia. I think my children will still remember 9/11 fifty years hence, if only with a sense of innocence lost and outrage at devastatingly heinous crimes similar to what I remember of JFK’s untimely death, but Fukuyama is surely right in arguing that, in retrospect, the events of ten years ago will be seen as a (particularly hideous) punctuation mark in the relative decline of ‘the West’ rather than as a tipping point. Perhaps, as a cogent editorial in this week’s European Voice implicitly argues, the best way we can honour the dead is by reflecting on how we might have reacted differently.

Quick! The moody Old Man is coming!

There are two fascinating articles about languages in today’s Economist magazine (here and here). One is a review of a book on translation. The other is about linguistics. An important part of my professional life is spent in dealing with languages in one way or another: interpretation, interpreters, meeting rooms with interpreters’ booths, translation, translators, offices for translators, salaries for translators, software for translators, buildings with meeting rooms for interpretation and offices for translators, budgets to cover all of this… That is an observation, and not a complaint, for languages, and the cultures that stand behind them, are what give the European Union its richness and diversity, and the EESC is an advisory body composed precisely of representatives of that richness and diversity. As always, the articles provide some fascinating facts. New Guinea is the place with the largest number of different spoken languages – 830. But guess which place is second? New York! There are an estimated 800 languages spoken in New York, though many are close to extinction. Altogether, there are some 7,000 languages in the world, but they are thought to be dying out at a rate of one a fortnight. Presumably, that rate will decline but still, sadly, the thought occurs to me that we are returning to Babel. Those familiar with the story will know that the ruthless, jealous, moody God of the Old Testament cast mankind into different languages in order to create confusion and hence stop man building a tower to heaven (which he otherwise seemed on his way to doing). But by giving man languages, the OT God also gave man cultures. As languages disappear, so do cultures. Can we expect building work to recommence soon on the plain of Shinar?

There are evolutionary changes, too, at my writers’ workshop. One of our members, in his eighties, has sadly but entirely understandably, decided to hang up his pen. Another, just turned seventy, has decided to take a sabbatical. Since both were founder members of the workshop their departures are sad and significant events, though the workshop will doubtless survive.  Just last Sunday marked the second anniversary of the untimely death of one of our members. At the other end of the scale, this evening we went to the fiftieth birthday party of another member of the workshop (spring chickens most of us ain’t). Such existential milestones remind me just how time consuming ‘real’ writing is, if you want to do it ‘properly’. For getting the text down is only the beginning (which reminds me of Capote’s put-down of Kerouac – ‘That isn’t writing, it’s typing’). Because we all have ‘day jobs’ we have to devote our ‘spare time’ to our common passion, and spare time is scarce. Hence it takes us, relatively-speaking, a long time to produce. But produce we do and we will continue to do.

There have been a number of significant changes in our neighbourhood this summer.  Sadly, two elderly ladies, in their nineties, passed away. One of them recounted how, as a young girl, she had seen a plane with five wings fly low over the street, and both were eloquent on the rapid evolution of technology. Equally sadly, two sets of neighbours, one Spanish, one German, have moved away – one family to more permanent accommodation in another neighbourhood and one because of retirement. We went to the latter’s farewell party in the early evening. Karl – or ‘Charlie’, as I have always known him – has lived in an iconic house that many a German EU official and MEP has stayed in, if only temporarily, on arriving in Brussels. The good news is that ‘the German connection’ will continue and Charlie is not moving that far away.

To the Palais des Beaux-Arts this afternoon to see The Crooked Path, an exhibition, on the eve of its closure, of the work of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall. The exhibition was not only a gathering of many of Wall’s most important works but also a chronological presentation of his development and of the artists and works that have influenced him, including quantities of Minimalist, Conceptualist and cinematographic work. Wall’s hallmarks are very large format photographs, illuminated from behind through light boxes, of apparently spontaneous but actually very carefully constructed scenes, almost always referring to other iconic works, from Edouard Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe through to Ralph Elison’s Invisible Man. (Independently, the sheer quality of Wall’s prints renders them strongly reminiscent of painted works.) At one and the same time things are not what they seem and are more than what they seem, but the meaning is hidden behind convincing reconstructions of apparent reality. The Thinker (picture), for example, deliberately recalls a Dürer engraving called The Peasant’s Column. But unless the viewer is primed, it takes some time to register the knife sunk in the thinker’s back. One of the accompanying contemporary works was David Claerbout’s extraordinary and intriguing Sections of a Happy Moment. There was a Claerbout exhibition on at Wiels in March (blogged here). This work was not among those on display. If you get a chance, see it. The Wiki entry describes it thus: ‘Claerbout seems to ‘dissect’ a moment in the life of a Chinese family in the courtyard of a nondescript estate. A group of people are gathered around a ball suspended mid-air, all the faces turned towards it, smiling happily. Over the course of 25 minutes, this moment in time is analyzed from a multitude of different angles and perspectives, allowing the viewer an omnipresence that is paradoxical. The fragmentation of time in this piece, through freeze – frames of the same moment, creates ‘visible duration’.’

I spent all of today chairing a seminar of the EESC’s management board. In a first morning session we discussed President Staffan Nilsson’s draft timeline. In a second we discussed a draft development plan for the administration, still very much a work in progress. We held an amiable working lunchtime discussion with the Committee’s Vice-President with responsibility for budgetary matters, Jacek Krawczyk. And then, in the afternoon, we discussed both human resources challenges and the HR and budgetary reform processes and the potential consequences of these for the EESC’s administration. All-in-all, it was a dense and rich agenda with the discussions taking place in an excellent and constructive atmosphere.

Invited to dinner by friends, this evening we found ourselves at table with an interesting fellow guest. An EU official of Italian origin, he has travelled throughout the world for his work (having spent some time in the Central African Republic he was particularly eloquent about the Aka pygmies he met there) and was much looking forward to a less active retirement in the historic Italian city where he was born and brought up. He had inherited a tract of land and an old, disused, ruined factory building. Since this was smack-bang in the middle of the historic centre and right alongside a beautiful ancient church, the plot represented something of a quandrary and he had always assumed that the city authorities would never let him do anything other than essential work to keep the site safe. All the same, he put in occasional applications, though more in hope than expectation. And then, out of the blue, on the eve of his retirement, the city made him a counter-proposal; it proposed to buy up some of the land to build a car park and, in return, would give him authorisation to build. One quandrary was replaced by another; to build what? The site is too small for a hotel and too big for the sort of flat he would have wanted to live in. So he has decided to organise a competition and invite architects to submit ideas and plans. So much for that less active retirement!

Late this morning we had a meeting of my secretariat, the people who work directly with me. It was at one and the same time a poignant and encouraging occasion, for there is a new head of the secretariat, Miguel Colera, who joins us from the Consultative Commission on Industrial Change. The previous head, Eleonora Di Nicolantonio, has moved on to wonderful things. It is no disrespect to Miguel if I write that her departure was a hard wrench for me. I am sure it will be the same when and if Miguel moves on, for the SG necessarily works very closely with his chef. But the occasion was also a happy one, with everybody back and rested and ready for a busy autumn. In the picture, left to right, are me (British), Anna (Slovakian), Laura (Italian), Bernard (Belgian), Jonna (Danish), Zoltan (Hungarian), Miguel (Spanish) and Fabrice (French). I have an excellent team and, the bonus for all EU civil servants, they each bring their different cultures with them, thus enriching daily life (and, alas, also extending my waistline). Oh, yes; the chap in the picture behind us is Jacques Genton, the first Secretary General of the Committee. I wrote about him here.

EESC President Nilsson, EP President Buzek and TEN Section President Buffetaut

This morning European Parliament President and former Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek came to the EESC’s Section on Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society in order to present a proposal made by influential think tank Notre Europe (Buzek is on the board) for a European Energy Community. The President first explained that he saw the EESC as a body of particular importance in this context, since ‘we treat you as experts.’ Sixty per cent of the EU’s energy is imported. The keys to a sustainable future are access to affordable energy, competitive industries and environmentally-friendly solutions. Hence the proposal, which could be done within the existing Treaty structure, he insisted, and which would consist of a common negotiating stance with external suppliers, a common energy market to maintain downward pressure on prices, and common research.  Buzek ended his at times passionate intervention with the observation that ‘solidarity is still the most important principle in the EU.’