Landscapes of Exhaustion and Hope

Landscapes of Exhaustion and Hope

It is this callousness that we must combat. For humanity is threatened by wars compared to which those past are like poor attempts and they will come, without any doubt, if the hands of those who prepare them in all openness are not broken.
– Bertolt Brecht, 1952, in Straub and Huillet, The Antigone of Sophocles after Hölderin's translation adapted for the stage by Brecht 1948 

To think about distant places, to colonize them, to populate or depopulate them: all of this occurs on, about, or because of land. The actual geographical possession of land is what empire in the final analysis is all about. At the moment when a coincidence occurs between real control and power, the idea of what a given place was (could be, might become), and an actual place—at that moment the struggle for empire is launched. This coincidence is the logic both for Westerners taking possession of land and, during decolonisation, for resisting natives reclaiming it.— Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, 1993

From climate collapse to permanent wars, life under capitalism devastates the planet. This event invites the participants to use the notion of exhaustion to discuss this current condition and by engaging landscapes, bodies, and people as sites of struggle for new languages and narratives – historical, potential, and actual – consider how to go beyond apocalyptic defeatism. Discussing tools and practices from which we might begin to build anew and continue to live within the ruins of trauma and loss, we ask, is there hope? Each speaker will address these questions with their current research in architecture, history, and psychoanalysis.

Termin: Montag, 18. November 2024, 18 Uhr
Ort: <rotor> centre for contemporary art, Volksgartenstrasse 6a, 8020 Graz