Interviews

Interview Interview with the Secretary General of the Goethe-Institut Johannes Ebert

How can we turn the city into a freedom zone for all? Do you think segregation is responsible for the rise of fascism in big European cities? Where does freedom start and end? Is the Europe we inhabit the Europe we want it to be? These were some of the questions that artists from European cities tried to answer within the framework of the FREIRAUM project, a project involving Goethe-Instituts in 42 European cities. I met the director of the Goethe-Institut, Johannes Ebert, in Berlin and asked him about the project. Here’s what he said.

Interview Think about Freedom Historically

Neoliberalism wants people to serve as ultra-flexible performers, the new fundamentalisms want fixed, Procrustean identities. Philosopher Juliane Rebentisch talks about the pressure to achieve creative personal fulfilment, about the selfie culture, the two-way movement* of freedom, and about love and art.

Interview Tom Bonte speaks about Brussels and the EU

The Goethe-Institut in Brussels is helming the Freiraum (“Free Space”) project together with the Kunstzentrum Beursschouwburg, whose director, Tom Bonte, is looking forward to this collaborative undertaking. In this interview he talks about the very special spatial freedom enjoyed by an art center, the widely diverging perceptions of Brussels and the alarming situation in Europe, which make empathizing with and talking to one another more than necessary.

Interview by Uwe Rada

Interview Experiencing things and comparing them to our own reality

Beata Kowalska, a sociologist from Krakow and a partner of the Goethe-Institut there, talks about the first steps in the concrete phase of the Freiraum Project: how she met her project partner from Sarajevo, how she explained Krakow’s issue to him – and what the tandem’s plans are now.

Interview conducted by Uwe Rada

Photo: 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

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

Photo of Marie Hermann, standing in a group of participants

Interview “I’m still amenable to the argument that the EU can be helpful in averting wars”

French publisher Marie Hermann is the Goethe-Institut Marseille’s partner in the Freiraum project. Besides fiction, her newly founded publishing house Hors d’atteinte mostly puts out books about feminism, populism and urban development. In this interview she discusses the background to her Freiraum question, touching on the unsettling symbolic politics of Marseille’s new skyline, the undeniable crisis of democracy and Europe as a great big utopia.

Interview by Uwe Rada