Utopia has been, and continues to be, an often violent gesture that chooses the future of select groups and certain forms of life at the expense of others. Is utopia, then, still worth keeping in a world that has been so damaged through its violent deployments? Is it possible not to treat utopia merely as a model of abstract futurity based on escapist projections of a harmonious ideal? What happens when utopia is conceived not only as a way of imagining a better future but also as a way of intervening in the present by addressing the past? Can utopia welcome ambivalence, disquietude, paradox, opacity, and uncertainty? This roundtable brings together scholars, artists, and clinicians in order to develop critical approaches to the concept and practice of utopia.
In English
With
Leonardo Caffo
Hilda Fernandez
Patricia Reed
Fátima Vieira
Organized by
Marta Aleksandrowicz (ICI Berlin), Michela Coletta (ICI Berlin / FU Berlin / University of Warwick), Sarath Jakka (ICI Berlin / ISRF), Ben Woodard (ICI Berlin)
An ICI Berlin event organized in collaboration with the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut at Freie Universität Berlin and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions.
Image Credit © Claudia Peppel