Contradiction Studies

Exhibition Opening „Wir wollen Demokratie, Marktwirtschaft und Pluralität“

Klaas Anders (GRK Contradiction Studies)

11/15/2024 6:00 pm

Galerie am schwarzen meer

On November 17th 1989, students protested peacefully in Prague. On the National Street, in the middle of the city, the demonstration was brutally beaten up by the police. This was the beginning of a social upheaval that reached its climax on Human Rights Day on December 10th 1989. On this day, the dissident Vaclav Havel spoke to 300,000 people who had gathered on Wenceslas Square. Less than three weeks later, he was elected president. Today, these events are known as the “Velvet Revolution”. This year, Czech society is commemorating important milestones in modern history: 35 years since the Velvet Revolution, 20 years since joining the European Union.

We are also commemorating this period with an exhibition of images and audio documents, talks and readings.

Welcoming Adress: Dr. Hermann Kuhn, Forum Eastern Europe, Europa-Union Bremen e.V.

Introduction: Libuše Černá and Klaas Anders

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diversity and plurality

“Join us to create more diversity and plurality in knowledge production.”

Gisela Febel
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart
idea of democratic critique

“If you think that acts of contradicting someone always need to point to better solutions, you haven’t really understood the idea of democratic critique.”

Martin Nonhoff
limits

“Resistance is a democratic right, sometimes a duty. With literature we can find models for this right and think about its limits.”

Gisela Febel
city

“The city is a laboratory not only of modernity, but also of contradiction.”

Julia Lossau