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Thinking Ahead

Chain Reaction: thinking across Europe

Intellectuals and persons from civil society ask each other questions, thereby facilitating a transnational exchange that addresses Europe-wide challenges.

Elnathan John © Alla Sieg

Elnathan John
Nigeria/Germany What kind of new coalitions of commitment can we think to enhance the professional situation and freedom of art laborers?

March 7th 2019
Artists who enjoy the privilege of not having their art being questioned as labor can commit to improving the welfare of all artists by using their privilege to make a stand for fellow art laborers who have not attained this status.

Despina Zefkili© Dimitris Tsitsos

Despina Zefkili
Greece If we assume that freedom of information and freedom of speech is a collective challenge, who or where is the collective?

January 10th 2019
When we think of coalitions that combine social justice and equality we reassert the possibilities of organizing more open and democratic digital societies.

Rasmus Ohlenschlaeger portrait© Sigrid Nygaard

Rasmus Ohlenschlæger
Denmark Can the decisions of "artificial intelligence" based on algorithms better guarantee freedom in the long run than human beings?

November 5th 2018
Nothing can guarantee freedom – not algorithms, artificial intelligence, or human beings. Freedom is something we negotiate with ourselves and our social and political surroundings on an everyday basis against a horizon of unlimited, but unattainable ideals.

The writer Andreas Degkwitz© Die Hoffotografen GmbH

Andreas Degkwitz
Germany Have we perhaps never had even a clue as to what freedom is?

October 11th 2018
Freedom and responsibility are directly related – but we often do not care to admit it. Those who desire freedom without assuming responsibility run the risk of restricting the freedom of others as much as they do their own. Freedom is therefore charged with preconditions.

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Essays

Old mailbox in the wall of a house Al Nik © unsplash

Radio features

January 29th 2019
They hail from Amsterdam and Bucharest, Dresden and Oslo, Belgrade and Paris. The Goethe-Institut has won over about fifty European cultural partners for its large-scale pan-European Freiraum project. The object, amid the aftershocks of the Brexit quake, is to start up an enduring conversation between distant and often very different European cities.

By Simone Reber

daniel-schulz-aufwachen-nach-dem-18-geburtstag_150x150.© Daniel Schulz

We Were Like Brothers

October 1st 2018
Our author was friends with neo-Nazis – and had to run away from them. That paradox was par for the course in 1990s East Germany. And today? Daniel Schulz describes life as a youth in the 90s after reunification in East Germany. The reporter works in the taz for the domestic and weekend departments. He also headed the social department taz2/medien.

By Daniel Schulz

A view of a blue sky between housesAlfons Morales © unsplash

The Flashing Light

July 4th 2018
The Italian writer Erri De Luca on the global South as the source of the future, on the European nightmare and on writers as a partisan vanguard of a new EU. A statement.

By Erri De Luca

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Short Stories

The writer Wilfried Nsonde© Pauline Huillery

Wilfried N'Sondé On the run

Wilfried N’Sondé has written an impromptu about an overnight bus ride from Berlin to Paris. In his story, the narrator witnesses an incident on the periphery, a small drama that makes it clear that freedom of movement no longer applies to everyone, man or woman, in the Schengen area either.

The writer Zinaida Lindén © Katri Lehtola

Zinaida Lindén A Good European

In her story, Zinaida Lindén addresses Europe’s arrogant elevation of its values to the measure of all things - thus rendering those who do not master its codes un-free. Correct, stylish and good enough? Almost impossible for a female Russian academic. Lindén looks at the subtle distinctions that core Europe (still) allows itself to make.

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Interviews

Yasser AlmaamounPhoto: Adam Burakowski © Goethe-Institut

Interview “Without the freedom to be provocative, living here wouldn’t be worth it”

Yasser Almaamoun is from Damascus, works as an architect in Berlin and is the designated “Foreign Minister” of the Zentrum für Politische Schönheit, or Center for Political Beauty. For the Freiraum project, he is one of the Amsterdam Goethe-Institut’s partners with his initiative “Multaka: Museum as Meeting Point  – Refugees as Guides in Berlin Museums”. In this interview Almaamoun talks about his activism during the Syrian revolt, about the differences between freedom in Syria and in Germany – and about the cultural bubbles he inhabits, which are very hard to reconcile.

Interview by Uwe Rada

Photo of the author Milan ZvadaFoto: Adam Burakowski © Goethe-Institut

Interview “Dialogue doesn’t mean winning people over to your opinion at any price”

Milan Zvada is the project manager and Theatre Director at the Záhrada independent arts centre in the Slovakian city of Banská Bystrica. The arts centre has experience in putting together cultural projects even under adverse political conditions: the Banská Bystrica region had a neo-fascist governor for the past five years. As partner to the Goethe-Institut in Bratislava, Zvada bases his involvement in the Freiraum project on what Záhrada is all about: using the arts to fend for minorities, making voices from civil society heard by providing a forum of openness and mutual respect.
 
Interview by Uwe Rada

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