Thursday, 10 December 2015, 7 pm
Refugees Welcome in Art and Culture?
Keynote by Kilian Kleinschmidt (Chairman Innovation & Planning Agency Association (IPA), Global Networking and Humanitarian Expertise, Vienna; author Weil es um die Menschen geht, Berlin 2015).
Discussion with Nadine Jessen (dramaturg Kampnagel, Hamburg), LaToya Mainly-Spain (activist, artist, Hamburg), Christoph Schäfer (artist, Planbude, Hamburg), Christoph Twickel (journalist Die Zeit, performer Schwabinggrad Ballett, Hamburg), moderated by Salah Zater (journalist, lecturer Silent University Hamburg, Hamburg).
In English language, consecutively interpreted into Arabic and German.
More than 20,000 people will seek refuge and protection in Hamburg by the end of the year. In October 2015, more than 10,000 people arrived in Hamburg, of which over 3,000 have been placed in makeshift accommodation up till now. Without the involvement of volunteers the state system of “refugee aid” would have fallen to pieces. But what could happen next? There where to date a welcoming culture with its paradigm of integration into hegemonic structures has dominated, “urban panic” could soon break out: anti-Muslim racism, post-secular conflicts, determining refugees as the lower class on the labor market, selective inclusion. Instead of looking at the chances, which are regulated and controlled by the state, this event Refugees Welcome in Art and Culture? focuses on the potential for conflicts of the welcoming society.
Kilian Kleinschmidt is a long-serving employee of the UNHCR and former head of the largest refugee camp Zaatari in Jordan with ca. 80,000 residents. In his lecture he will talk about the limits of humanitarian aid, and which perspectives for a global refugee policy reveal themselves as a result. Conflicts can become a means to self-determination here. In the following discussion with Hamburg cultural actors the question will be posed, which spaces for argument can artistic and cultural projects open. As spaces of the impossible these change what is seen to be possible in the real existing post-political constellation, i.e. what can happen outside the rules and laws of urban space.
The last event in the series Stadtgespräch. Metropolitan Perspectives, curated by Sophie Goltz and Vassilis Tsianos, will be carried out in cooperation with Silent University Hamburg. In the summer of 2014, Stadtkuratorin Hamburg in collaboration with the Kurdish artist Ahmet Ögüt, as well as W3 – Werkstatt für Kultur und Politik and the associations Curating the City and Zusammen Leben und Arbeiten e.V. called Silent University Hamburg into being, a university by and for people with a background of flight and migration. Since then, its participants have been presenting their academic and professional expertise and issues in public events and discussions.