Haus für Poesie

Talk

Panel Discussion: The Vertigo of Reality – Civil Disobedience

With Canan Bayram MdA Berlin, Bündnis ’90 / Die Grünen Carsten Gericke Lawyer, Hamburg Prof. Bernd Lindner Cultural/Art Sociologist, Leipzig Selma Wels Binooki Verlag, Berlin Serhiy Zhadan poet, Kharkhiv / Ukraine Moderation: Johannes Odenthal Program Coordinator, Academy of the Arts / Thomas Wohlfahrt Director, Literaturwerkstatt Berlin

Civil Disobedience is often the only possibility to influence the machinations of society. Its forms often possess imaginative, poetic characteristics.

The phrase “We are the people” became the slogan for the fall of socialism in the GDR, the book-reader in Gezi Park the symbol for those non-violent actions, and the protests in the Maidan released the energies that brought down the Yanukovych regime. The spied-on-world was shaken awake by the civil courage of Edward Snowden.

Civil disobedience refers to the straining of societal conventions, and acting in the grey zones of criminal law. That is a result of the world, as it currently is, and the art, that reacts to it. But how willing is a society to accept the transgression of its own conventions – even in the name of something loftier? And to what extent can this transgression be understood as a poetic act? Our guests in this panel discussion will address these questions.

A collective event of the Academy of the Arts’ series “The Vertigo of Reality” and the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin as part of the poesiefestival berlin.

Project Management: Bettina Henningsen.

Location:
Academy of the Arts
Halle 3

Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin

Entrance fee:
Eintritt frei