Roundtable: “… Innere Ferne …” moderation: Christian Scheib and Oliver Schneller with: Yoav Pasovsky, Elia Koussa, Mazen Hussein, Saed Haddad, Joëlle Khoury, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Saad Thamir, Sebastian Meissner a.o. The countries and regions of the southern Mediterranean area are moving more and more into our cultural focus. This has political as well as religious, geographical and cultural reasons. But quite often our approach resembles either the old exoticism of a curiosity full of images stemming from the Divan and fairytales about 1001 Nights if not revealing a patronizing attitude, that we as Europeans could proof being useful as mediators while practically not being involved into existing conflicts as merely culturally interested people. We would like to reverse the point of view, “...as seen from the middle of east...”: Not our perception of the foreign region but how artists from these regions view Europe and their examination with European culture is considered to be of main interest in our discussion.