Avoid unnecessary contacts, that’s what it’s all about now, for the fourth, barely bearable time. Politicians had clear ideas about what is necessary and unnecessary from the start. In the economy they are more necessary, in the case of culture – even if it is transformed into a “cultural economy” – rather unnecessary. Even now, with the end of the “pandemic situation” and the replacement of the Infection Protection Act, little has changed in this regard.
While the restrictions on business are limited, culture has hit it again. Perhaps not entirely through no fault of its own: Anyone who has been to festivals, major performances or the clubs in the past few months has experienced a company that has not always wanted to admit that a third of the population is still unvaccinated.
It is still bitter what Prime Minister Markus Söder announced for Bavaria on Wednesday: discos, clubs and bars completely closed, for the rest 2G plus at 25 percent of capacity, with a mask and 1.5 meters away – there is no other public segment a tougher regulation. And none that divides so economically and morally. Because what is still practicable for some is not at all feasible for others.
There are many questions, especially of the organizers: What do you want, what can you expect from artists and visitors, for example in the theater, as an “experience”? And is it morally justifiable – or even vital – to lure someone out of the house at all?
The result is an insane patchwork quilt: some large houses can keep art present under the prevailing conditions, but some don’t want to either. Some small stages or organizers shut down completely for economic reasons or for reasons of solidarity, others get involved in absurd constructions, for the sake of their artists or simply in order to somehow survive. Until then the 1000 incidence may give everyone the rest. It is pointless now to weep again for what has been neglected or to search for the guilty. But it is also clear that this must have been the last great bloodletting of culture. Otherwise there is none left.