Papers and paintings draw visitors to Neuchatel culture centre
Cultural activities at the Dürrenmatt Centre in Neuchatel this year are to include at least one project which might have caused the late Friedrich Dürrenmatt to raise an eyebrow.
On four separate occasions four writers will study the day’s issue of the French-language Swiss newspaper Le Temps, and each will write a text based on one of its contents. “It might be a news report which inspires them, a photograph or even the weather forecast,” says Eugène Meiltz, who is organising the exercise.
That same evening the participants will read out their texts to an audience at the centre. “They are free to write whatever they like,” added Meiltz, “and in any form they choose. For example it might be a short story or a poem.”
Other planned activities are perhaps less unconventional, but wide-ranging. Seminars will be held on recurring themes in the written and painted works of Dürrenmatt – such as the Crucifixion, the Minotaur, the Tower of Babel, and the myth of money.
The third pillar in the programme for 2001 is a series of concerts of contemporary music.
Since it opened six months ago. The centre has averaged over 100 visits a day – far more than anticipated. Designed by architect Mario Botta, it incorporates the house overlooking Lake Neuchatel where Dürrenmatt lived for nearly 40 years.
The centre’s director Janine Perret Sgualdo describes it as much more than a place of research and a home for the archives of Dürrenmatt, who died at the age of 70 in 1990. “Its role is an important one on the Swiss cultural landscape,” she says, “as a bridge between cultures.”
Sgualdo added that many visitors had been surprised to learn that a centre devoted to his written works also reveals that Dürrenmatt was a talented painter.
Pictures on permanent exhibition include “Last General Assembly of Confederate Swiss Banking Association”, which is painted in oil and full of the satirical black humour which was his trademark as a writer. Some bankers are holding guns to their heads while eating dinner, while others have hanged themselves from chandeliers or are lying drunk under the table.
by Richard Dawson
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