How are global capital and world politics linked under the smoke screen of attempts to “improve” the world? What role do exclusive meetings of the rich and powerful such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos play in this? On the occasion of Rimini Protokoll’s production Weltzustand Davos (State 4), which he helped shape as one of five “experts of the everyday”, the sociologist Ganga Jey Aratnam examines the history, background, and networks of the global players’ WEF. A contribution in excerpts. To article...

Who benefits from ideas of ownership, control, and exploitation of music? And what could alternatives look like? The legal ethnographer and DJ Larisa Kingston Mann talks with Jan Kedves about Dub, dancehall traditions and sound systems, about collective authorship, oral tradition strategies, and the reproduction of colonial relationships in the global music industry. To article...

Home office, sleeping rooms in the schools, and android teachers: These are just some of the things that students of all grades in German schools, at home and abroad, would like to see according to the results of the ideas competition Our School! The pedagogue Robert Pfützner, scientific advisor to HKW’s project Schools of Tomorrow, in discussion with Elisabeth Wellershaus. Talking about young people and their idea of a school of the future without heteronomy and the pressure to perform according to global standards – around one hundred years after John and Evelyn Dewey’s publication Schools of To-Morrow and other early reform pedagogy movements. To article in German...

Humankind proves to be both a shaper of Earth and the animal world. These formations and the wide-scale use – if not exploitation – of (other) animals by man causes great suffering to animals, which is generally hidden from the public and repressed by it. The legal scholar Anne Peters looks at the history of the relationship between “animals” and “man,” and calls for global standards of animal rights against the background of the dissolution of dichotomies. Article in German...

Normative binary concepts such as justice ad injustice are in a state of crisis. There are currently no alternatives in sight. The political scientist Nikita Dhawan analyzes the still pending decolonization of the Global North and South and calls for a transnational concept of justice. To article...

They were difficult times when Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein met in 1981. Shortly after the Front National won their first important election, the themes of “race”, “nation”, and “class” assumed a new urgency throughout France. The sociologist and the philosopher seized the opportunity to discuss all three social constructs and their interdependencies with their students in a long since legendary series of lectures. The later book Race, Nation, Class: Ambivalent Identities (1988, published in English in 1991) summarizes Balibar and Wallerstein’s research and reflects on the connection between racist structures and now newly established global class systems, both past and present. The Cultural studies scholar Manuela Bojadžijev spoke with both authors about the book and why it continues to be relevant. To article...

When Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities from Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein was published in German in 1990, the reviews were effusive. At the time, the book’s interdisciplinary engagement with society was perceived as ”without competition” and “forward-looking”, however this was largely restricted to a left-wing, academic public. Decades later the migration researcher and journalist Mark Terkessidis has taken a new look at the publication, concluding that the history of its reception proves particularly fascinating, especially against the background of the debates on the concept of racism in today’s Germany. To article...

Certain words have recently come to determine our everyday lives, one of these is fear. In combination with flight, migration, and a supposed flood of foreigners, it has been employed frequently of late. Reflections on a discussion at the HKW between the poet and author Sinan Antoon, the cultural scientist Joseph Vogl, and the anthropologist Allen Feldman on an emotion which is also instrumentalized by politics. To article...

Sometimes words do what they want, and no one knows this better than Herta Müller. For decades the Nobel Laureate for Literature has explored the recalcitrance and permeability of language. In the coming edition of the talk series Dictionary of Now, together with the writer Marcel Beyer, she discusses when language becomes an expression of resistance and when an instrument of the exercise of power. On this occasion, we reproduce here a text from an anthology of the literary magazine Akzente. To article...

What connections are there between art forms and political systems? Rabih Mroué’s works revolve around the social situation in Lebanon and the Eastern Mediterranean. For “Why Are We Here Now?” he examines, together with representatives from the post-civil war art scene, Lebanese concepts of identity and the special role of the lecture performance. To article...

What form of theater can reflect changed realities? The journalist Katja Petrowskaja and the artist and playwright Mohammad Al Attar discuss Noam Chomsky and the international left, migration and military conflicts as lived experience, and theater as a political tool. To article...

More than virtually any other place, the Syrian city of Aleppo is associated with war and destruction. The artist Mohammad Al Attar resists such media codifications. A talk on intimate narratives, cherished places, and resilient memory. To article...

Where does tolerance and Laissez-faire end? When do silence and omissions become violence? The writer Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor summarizes positions by writer Taiye Selasi, cultural theorist Theo Goldberg and historian Achille Mbembe and sketches a range of social phenomena against the background of an increased potential for violence. To article...

How can we transform schools? One hundred years ago the future of education mobilized the imagination of artists and scientists, yet today there is often a lack of ideas when it comes to alternative visions for the future. How should schools deal with the changing times, digitalization, and other challenges? How can students and teachers develop a new capacity for action? A report on the conference Schools of Tomorrow. To article in German...

Multilingualism and diversity are now a matter of course in many schools. However, a relaxed approach to these issues is still far from normal. Between December 2016 and May 2017, young people from ten bilingual European schools in Berlin explored alternative images and narratives which do justice to their complex daily lives in the project New Experts! To article in German...

According to Maik Novotny the large construction site is obsolete. Taking a look at Rimini Protokoll’s Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle (Staat 2) the critic of architecture analyzes the struggle over the control levers of construction between top down and bottom up, problematic or merely simulated public participation, and the latest spectacular failures. A plea for the small building site. To article in German...

In contemporary societies the production of fear often serves as a political strategy designed to legitimize and ultimately normalize states of emergency. The writer Sinan Antoon on the phenomenon “Flying while Muslim”, structural Islamophobia in the USA, and the global interconnections of fear, terror, and trauma. To article...

The nation state has largely established itself as the international organizing principle of modernity. However, what do forms of resistance and alternative models to its conflict-laden demarcations and capitalist motivations look like? The political scientist James C. Scott examines “Zomia”, an upland region extending across South East Asia and the Tibetan Plateau whose indigenous population has resisted incorporation into empires and nation states since time immemorial. An excerpt from his groundbreaking book “The Art of Not Being Governed” (2009). To article...

Men are power, children mean power. Taiye Selasi, celebrated author of Ghana Must Go, opens up glimpses into inescapable gender hierarchies. Through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl The Sex Lives of African Girls tells the story of a fateful day in a village in Accra, on which male dominance unfolds in all its harshness, the more so as it is supported by women. The girl Edem has no mother, her auntie Khadijeh can’t have children of her own, both don’t stand a chance: “In the peculiar hierarchy of African households the only rung lower than a motherless child is a childless mother.” An excerpt from this story accompanying the Violence edition of the Dictionary of Now. To article...

In an interview with Max Dax, the curators of the HKW’s Free! Music Program, Detlef Diederichsen and Björn Gottstein, discuss their selection of music and its capacity to express liberational impulses – both musical and political. From the music of Conlon Nancarrow and Harry Partch – pioneers who freed compositional music from the restrictions of traditional instruments and tonality – to the musical freedom fighters under South Africa’s Apartheid regime, by way of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison concert, Free! Music explores the diverse experiences of “freedom, emancipation, delimitation, resistance, and protest” in music. To article in German...