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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 How can we enhance the situation 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 freedom of information and speech is a collective challenge, who or where is the collective?

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

Rasmus Ohlenschlaeger Portrait© Sigrid Nygaard

Rasmus Ohlenschlæger
Denmark Can the decisions of "artificial intelligence" better guarantee freedom 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 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

Teaser Marseille© Caroline Lessire

Photo-Essay Marseille Together in Diversity

Marseille is said to be unique, extreme, marginal; people describe it as poor, dangerous, cosmopolitan; they delight in its Provençal accent, glorify its rebellious spirit and vilify the corrupt workings of this city, which is also used as a laboratory for testing dicey policies.

A street in a snowy landscapeJohny Goerend © unsplash

Coming to Grips with the Far Right

March 26th, 2019
A political shock mobilized civil society in Slovakia several years ago, but it’s only sporadically active now. At the Embargo Festival for Human Rights, Tolerance and Mutual Understanding in December 2018 in Banská Bystrica, a small Slovak city, activists exchanged news and views on strategies for dealing with the far right.

By Uwe Rada
 

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

Essay We Were Like Brothers

Our author was friends with neo-Nazis – and had to run away from them. That paradox was part for the course in 1990s East Germany. And today? Daniel Schulz describes life as a youth in the 90s after reunification in East Germany. 

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Short Stories

Der Autor Oliver Rohe© C. Hélie (éd. Gallimard)

Oliver Rohe Counter-Attack

Oliver Rohe has a solicitor tell the story of his client, a German of Lebanese origin. It is an equally familiar and shocking tale of innocence, biased police work, discrimination and radicalisation. Islamist terror appears as a distorted mirror image of interaction with the other.

The writer Arian Leka© Roland Tasho

Arian Leka Paranoia

Arian Leka casts an elliptical spotlight on everyday life in Albania, a candidate for EU membership. Whether young people or senior citizens, journalists or café-goers: everyone senses conspiracy and surveillance, everything seems to be on the verge of disaster, nowhere are there signs of hope and power to act. A life paralysed under the perceived diktat of adaptation.

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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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