Martin Luther is said once to have been asked from a shoemaker he would have to do to become a better christian. Luther answered: Make better shoes!
It is one of the best things that Martin Luther (probably) not have said. What is kulturlivets task in a time plagued by polarization and political klantänkande? How will the culture keep the lust and joy alive in a time when powerful forces want to turn it into an ideological stridsfält or use it as an instrument for the one or the other purpose?
It is in such a situation, you must insist that the writers’, actors’, musicians ‘and artists’ task is to create good art: shape people’s dreams and ideas, to touch our interior and to light up the world – not least when it feels as if our civilization threshing through their darkest oxveckor for many years.
dagens nyheter’s culture prize more important than ever. It is the only cultural award with the genre-bending ambition to coalesce the arts, and let them enrich each other. A workshop for all kinds of shoes, if you like. All of this year’s nominees – Hedda Stiernstedt in the television series ”Our time is now”, the singer Neneh Cherry, actor Erik Ehn and artist Britta Marakatt-Labba – has followed its own track, without looking at the passage of the tender specifications.
This applies not least to the winners of dagens nyheter’s culture prize, the author Johanna Peace. No one had been able to anticipate or ”order” her wayward literary breakthrough ”Nora or Brinn Oslo brinn”. Therefore there is a novel to fall in love with – a novel that portrays the timeless miracle that happens when a writer finds his own voice.
It unites Johanna Peace with Jens Liljestrand, this year’s winner of the critic award Lagercrantzen. Both prize winners shows how to make the written word urgent in a heavy time. It makes better shoes, simply. Or in this case: the rivets where the letters with the good mood. And in the right place.
also Read Johanna Peace: ”They give shiny fan in the middle and the other swede’s authorship”
