For this podcast series, we invite personalities from the arts and culture to reflect on the future of Europe and the role that the initiative for The European Pavilion can play in stimulating imaginaries beyond the national.
With this series, we wish to open up urgent questions that hover in any conversation about the future of Europe. Public space and ecology, post-national imaginaries and representation are some of the subjects that we discuss.
Credit
Conceived by Lore Gablier in collaboration with Alejandro Ramírez
Sound design: Alejandro Ramírez
Original music: Gagi Petrovic
European Pavilion Podcast teaser
Episode 1: Post-national imaginaries - at the airport
The nation-state is a very powerful narrative that has managed, in a very short time, to assert itself as the only imaginable model. And yet, it is a model that seems to be running out of steam, and may no longer be able to cope with the challenges facing our contemporary societies. How to transfer the sense of belonging that the nation-state instils to another scale, both local and global: one that reflects our situated experience and at the same time our global interconnectedness and interdependence?
For this two-part episode, we invited essayist and novelist Rana Dasgupta, activist and scholar Lara Garcia Diaz, and historian Timothy Snyder. In Part 1, we discuss what the model of the nation-state entails. Part 2 focuses on addressing issues of citizenship.
In the bonus track, the reading by Rana Dasgupta of his prologue to his book ‘Tokyo Cancelled’ is followed by a piece of music composed by Lara Garcia Diaz in collaboration with musicians Francesc Fornos and Jose Galbis.
Read the article Beyond the nation-state, towards a reformed EU? by VoxEurop on episode 1 of the pavilion podcast.
Post-national imaginaries (Part 1)
Post-national imaginaries (Part 2)
Tokyo Cancelled (Bonus track)
Rana Dasgupta
Novelist and essayist. Through his varied body of work he has consistently explored themes of globalization, migration and the twenty-first-century city. He is currently working on a book about post-national futures.
Read more about Rana DasguptaLara Garcia Diaz
A cultural activist and a social theorist. Since 2016, she is investigating politics of precarity and cultural practices with commons-based approaches through the lens of feminist theories.
Read more about Lara Garcia DiazTimothy Snyder
A Housum professor of history at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. Timothy Snyder is an expert on Eastern and Central Europe and the second world war, he has written several books.
Read more about Timothy SnyderEpisode 2: Presence and representation – in the park
The modern idea of the nation-state has involved the construction of a ‘united people’ defined more in terms of adherence to commonalities and norms than by recognition of its intrinsic diversity. How to bring about a sense of belonging that overcomes the deadlock posed by homogenization and mimicry? How to open up the notion of representation (including the model of representative democracy) in order to give more emphasis on lived experience.
For this two-part episode, we invited activists and organizers Zamzam Ibrahim and Joci Marton, as well as philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia. In Part 1, we address the tension between being present and being represented. In Part 2, we look into strategies of emancipation. In this second, Hungarian poet Zsófi Kemény reads a selection of poems written as part of Joci Marton’s project ‘Owning the Game’, which deals with the representation of Roma LGBTQI communities.
Read the article Minorities, discrimination and self-representation in the EU: looking for a new paradigm by VoxEurop on episode 2 of the pavilion podcast.
Presence and representation (Part 1)
Presence and representation (Part 2)
Joci Marton
Joci Marton is a Roma LGBTQI+ activist from Hungary, whose works mainly focuses on intersectionality and identity politics. In 2019, he organized « Owning the Game », a photo exhibition developed with the Roma LGBTQ+ community. Joci is a founding member of Ame Panzh, an informal Roma group, which broadcast contents on social media to change the public discourse. He graduated as a teacher with a Romology specialization, and took part in the CEU Roma Program.
Read full bio.Zamzam Ibrahim
Zamzam Ibrahim is a climate activist and organizer from the UK. She is also the President and a founding trustee of Students Organising for Sustainability. In the past two years, she notably campaigned for the launch of the National Education Service (which focussed on building and lobbying for a funded, accessible and life-long education service in the UK), and for the recognition that climate change is a race issue.
Read full bioTristan Garcia
Tristan Garcia is a French philosopher and novelist. His first novel, ‘La meilleure part des hommes’ (2008), won France’s Prix de Flore. In December 2020, his book ‘We Ourselves: The Politics of Us’ was published by the Edinburgh University Press. This work is a rigorous engagement with the history of humanity's attempts at being collectively.
Read full bioEpisode 3: Public space and Ecology – in the forest
How can we understand public space in relation to nature? How can we envisage a sustainable future for Europe, based on a cultural understanding of our place in the world and our responsibility as part of a global ecosystem?
In the third episode of the European Pavilion Podcast, we invite Australian scientist Tim Flannery to discuss what natural history can teach us about Europe, and what prospects it opens up, including from the perspective of politics
Read the article The European environment: how it was, how it is, and how it could be by VoxEurop on episode 3 of the pavilion podcast.
Tim Flannery
Tim Flannery is an Australian scientist, explorer, and conservationist who was served as Australia’s Climate Commissioner from 2001 to 2013. He has published numerous books, including, Europe: A Natural History, in which he tells a remarkable story of Europe, which began as a tropical archipelago 100 million years ago and continued to evolve as a dynamic, ever-changing continent at the crossroads of the world.Flannery was named Australian Humanist of the Year in 2005, and Australian of the Year in 2007 in recognition of his role as an effective communicator in explaining environmental issues and in bringing them to the attention of the Australian public.
Read full bioEpisode 4: Building Europe – in the world of infrastructure
Addressing the issue of Europe’s image is not only about what is visible, but also about what escapes our gaze: the ideologies that underpin the European project; the fears, dreams and hopes that shape it; and the infrastructures that support our daily lives and which, paradoxically, often go unnoticed.
In this new episode of the European Pavilion Podcast, we discuss the elusive images of Europe and how they might challenge us to imagine our common future. And we ask ourselves: How do we understand the relationship between building a sense of belonging and building an image?
Building Europe – in the world of infrastructure
Rodrigo Bueno Lacy
Rodrigo Bueno Lacy is a researcher in political geography at the Centre for Border Research, Radboud University Nijmegen. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the imagined location of the borders of the European Union.
Full bioLena Dobrowolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping
Lena Dobrowolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping are an artist collaboration working with photography, documentary film, installation, interactive documentary and research in order to produce multifaceted projects that are intended to reflect the complexities of today’s world. Since 2012 they have been working on projects relating to Climate Change and the Anthropocene.
Full bioEglė Rindzevičiūtė
Eglė Rindzevičiūtė is an associate Professor of Criminology & Sociology at the Kingston University in London. She is currently working on two monographs, titled 'The Politics and Epistemology of Prediction' and 'Beyond Containment: The Making of Nuclear Cultural Heritage'.
Full bioBenedikt Stoll
Benedikt Stoll is a trained architect, urban designer, and a co-founder and partner of the artists collective Guerilla Architects. He teaches urban design at the Leibniz University of Hannover. He hast been interested in the building of a new narrative for Europe since 2015 when he finished his architectural diploma project called {THE EUROPEAN DREAM}.
Full bioEpisode 5: From coal and steel to a just transition
To mark the occasion of Europe Day 2021, the European Pavilion Podcast is broadcasting its final episode. Celebrated on 9 May, Europe Day marks the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, which proposed that common trade in coal and steel would ensure lasting peace and unity in Europe. Today’s challenges show us that this ideal from seventy-one years ago no longer endures.
For this concluding episode, we have invited three guests from three generations of Europeans to look back at the European project and look ahead to the future.
What could be, in the years and decades to come, the cement that holds us together: the emotional and material bond – – or ‘cementiment’ – that would weave a sense of Europeanness?
Silvia Bencivelli
Silvia Bencivelli is an Italian science writer, and a radio and TV host. She works for the national Italian broadcaster Radio3 Rai and Rai Scuola. She writes for newspapers and magazines and teaches science journalism and communications at the Sapienza – Università di Roma. Her last book is Sospettosi (Einaudi, 2019). She lives in Rome with her daughter.
Full bioCarolyn Christov-Bakargiev
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is an Italian-American writer, art historian and exhibition maker. She is currently the Director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea and Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti in Turin. She was Artistic Director of dOCUMENTA (13) which opened in Kassel on June 9, 2012, holding workshops, seminars and exhibitions in Alexandria, Kabul, and Banff.
Full bioTobias Holle
Tobias Holle is activist with Fridays for Future Germany since the beginning of 2019. As part of the climate movement, he engages for European campaigns, advocates for climate issues and is part of the German press speaker team. He is based in Aachen (Germany) and studies environmental engineering
Full bioInterested in learning more about the project? Contact Lore Gablier.
