Lost in translation: Efforts to convey an image of a nation through cultural diplomacy, and the role of the audience
Abstract
Artists as national representatives face audience's expectations that do not mirror the societal relationships, values and narratives being represented (Reyes 2016). This gap brings specific and significant, even though insufficiently ascertained, challenges to the field of cultural diplomacy.
The paper demonstrates this argument on the case of Israeli cultural diplomacy in the Czech Republic - two countries that despite their rootedness in the West are strongly tied to non-Western contexts. Although they share certain narratives, the realities of the two countries are far apart and their images abroad are co-created by media and various transnational actors (Spagnolo 1999).
The paper demonstrates the confrontation of Czech audience with Israeli cultural diplomacy, showing how diverse messages about Israel reflected in artistic production fall into the framework of Czech audience's expectations. The paper builds on existing works about representation of different segments of Israeli society through arts - from the mainstream Jewish Israeli culture (Apple, Irony, Schmerz, Ziv 2008) to the arts representing minorities such as Ethiopian immigrants (Webster-Kogen 2014), Arab Jews (Saada-Ophir 2006), Israeli Palestinians (Sherwood 2010) and others (Talmon, Peleg 2011).
The paper relates these ways of representation to the existing preconceptions about Israel in the Czech Republic that are derived from opinion polls, semi-structured interviews conducted at the performances, and analysis of media coverage of these events. Using this case, the paper illustrates the frictions in transmission of a message through cultural diplomacy that can, contrary to assumptions, lead to widening gaps.
The paper also briefly suggests a path forward.