An Anthropological Approach Towards 'Open Futures' - Public Lecture by Prof. Stuart Kirsch (University of Michigan)
Wed, October 23, 17.30h-19.00h - Center for Cultural Inquiry / Bischofsvilla
What does anthropology have to contribute towards the concept of ‘open futures’, which refers to our obligations to future generations? Professor Kirsch's presentation considers how we have arrived at this point, i.e., how the climate crisis has altered orientations to the future. Next, it considers the value of anthropological approaches to kinship for analyzing these relationships. This includes the possibility of a concept of sustainability based on intergenerational reciprocity rather than material resources and economics. Finally, it calls for an anthropology of the future that engages with these matters. The presentation draws on examples from both Kirsch's earlier research on environmental disaster and his current work on the postcarbon transition.
Provincializing Europe? Migratory Aesthetics and Milo Rau’s Europe- and Ancient Myth-Trilogies - Public Lecture by Prof. Janine Hauthal (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Wed, January 22 2025, 17.30h-19.00h - Center for Cultural Inquiry / Bischofsvilla
Mobility and migration within and beyond Europe have become a central theme of artistic production around the globe, giving rise to intercultural and/or transnational performance practices that reflect the changing realities of our times. This paper concentrates on Milo Rau’s internationally acclaimed, yet controversial reinvention of the traditional city theatre at the NT Gent (Belgium) by exploring the complex relations between migration, theatre, and (the ethics of) form in works from his Europe- and Ancient Myth-trilogies.
Focussing on Empire (2016), Orestes in Mosul (2019), and Antigone in the Amazon (2023), the lecture shows how the three works critically scrutinize Europe’s relations to its ‘Others’ and ‘provincialize Europe’ in the sense of Dipesh Chakrabarty through their use of intercultural adaptation and multilingualism. Combining intermedial, metatheatrical and documentary modes of representation, Rau’s works reveal spatial interconnections that are based on the construction of cultural alterity but also fundamentally question the latter. In so doing, they delineate an ethics of acting and spectating which ultimately reveals that Rau’s theatre is not just about migration but itself migratory as it is ‘anchored in movement, not just of people, but also of media, of images, and of voices’ (Bal 2007, 24)