A hybrid festival on the state of freedom today with voices from all over Europe
The Freiraum Festival will be held on 30, 31 October and 1 November 2020, during Germany’s EU Council presidency. The local festival in Brussels is cancelled but the digital Summit is still on offer.
In digital as well as physical formats in Berlin and other European cities, the Goethe-Instituts will be joining forces again with partners in culture and the arts, the research community and civil society to ask: What is the state of freedom today in Europe in corona era?
Over the past few months of the coronavirus pandemic, life in Europe has been constricted by curfews and quarantines, closed borders and surveillance, and restrictions on public and private freedoms. What is the state of freedom in Europe today? How important is it? Where is freedom at risk and how can we protect it? The Freiraum Festival will be hosting open conversations about the new (post-)pandemic realities in Europe, the role of social movements, active forms of solidarity and new artistic formats for a resilient and inclusive society.
The Freiraum Festival will feature both physical and digital formats.The local festival at BOZAR and Beursschowburg is cancelled but an
online summit of pre-recorded talks, live discussions and experimental performances will be streamed Europe-wide on 30 October, 31 October – and screened in all the locations covered by Freiraum’s partner network, including Brussels itself – and on 1 November 2020.
To open the festival,
Bulgarian political scientist and winner of the 2020 Jean Améry literary essay award Ivan Krastev will be taking part in an online debate of a series called Neue Wir-Erzählung held by the Goethe-Institut Brussels in association with the ARD Liaison Office in Brussels and the German weekly Die Zeit.
Eva Illouz, a sociology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, will be opening the online programme with a talk about the concept of "home" (French: "foyer") as both a refuge and a prison in this age of the coronavirus.
Artistic direction and concept: ArtBOX.gr | Creative Arts Management & Goethe-Institut.
Partners for the Brussels edition: BOZAR and Beursschouwburg; ARD-Verbindungsbüro Brüssel and Die Zeit.
Freiraum is a Goethe-Institut project working with 53 partners in culture and the arts, the research community and civil society in 42 different countries to explore the state of freedom in Europe and related questions together since 2017. The Freiraum Festival is co-organized by a team of curators from our partner network under the artistic direction of ArtBOX Creative Arts Management. It is part of a series of Europe-wide Goethe-Institut projects held during Germany’s EU Council presidency. For more information, go to: www.goethe.de/EU2020
© Goethe-Institut / Design Sandra Kastl
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