As everyone floods back into Munich for the start of the new semester/the return to the daily grind, it’s also time to seek out those interesting exhibitions and good gigs (along with hitting the gym and generally fulfilling those dreaded New Year’s resolutions). It seems that musicians are taking an extended Christmas break – unfortunately there aren’t a great many worthwhile concerts this week, but after such fantastic concerts in November and December, we can’t complain. However, in terms of art, you’ll be spoilt for choice.

In the final part of the Interview with Rainer Langhans, he'll talk about his experiences in the 1960s, the United States und Uschi Obermaier.

Being alone scares people a lot. Being ordinary even more. Since childhood we have been told that we are each something special. But no matter how often we hear it, it takes a lot of self-confidence to believe it. In puberty—when we first begin to doubt ourselves—I discovered that I was not like everyone else. I changed schools and was confronted with a new reality about myself, a reality that everyone must face at a certain point in his life, and one we are unable to change.

On both sides of the Atlantic the media industry is undergoing rapid and profound changes. Although, one must say, this process experiences a faster and more advanced development in the United States than in Europe, all around the globe digitalization finds its way into the classic terrain of print media. With services like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter the internet has strongly modified the relation of media and politics.

Edward P. Jones shines new light on a world we’ve only known in black and white: the pre Civil War American south.  But it’s not a grey light—not simply a story told from a point mid-spectrum—unbiased, politically correct, and all too expected.  If Jones knows of this banal color scale, claiming the dichotomy between black and white impossible (or irrelevant), he gives no such indication.  He doesn’t explain away slavery with excuses in varying shades of charcoal and ash.  Rather, we’re left discomfited, wondering if we ourselves can distinguish black from white, right from wrong, heroes from villains.  As the story progresses and we lose our ability to judge, so too do we lose our preconceived notions of the American slave trade.