Trembling Worlds

With: Lev Avitan, Sophie Bourel, Radna Fabias, Sylvie Séma Glissant, Baruch Gottlieb, Shivani Gowda, Nikima Jagudajev, Hamedine Kane, Hans Ulrich Obrist (online) & Asad Raza.

Program 10:00-19:30: Talks, conversations, discussions and performances(incl. lunch)

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Trembling with the impact of unimaginable violence, what happened long ago merging with just a moment ago, Édouard Glissant engages deeply with the legacies and presences of colonialism. His work offers startling, decentering perspectives which open up our shared destinies in this world of words. Embracing difficulty and opacity, Glissant's work moves through poetry, theatre, and philosophy to evoke trembling worlds full of feeling and inescapable relations. Relation is an integral concept in Glissant’s thinking, a ‘trembling’ connection between beings which recognizes and explores unresolvable differences.

Trembling is both fragile and tremendous, it is the vibration inside the earth and in ourselves, the result of histories of monumental violence and love. We tremble together in the unacceptable circumstances of our encounter, in worlds of war and exile, as we tremble gently in the arms of another. Édouard Glissant’s work pulses with beauty, driven with otherworldly strength through legacies of devastation.

This is an invitation to our symposium Trembling Worlds, an event which accompanies our One-year-long exhibition of an illuminated archive of Glissantian materials, composed over decades by Hans Ulrich Obrist. In the spirit of Glissant’s work, which resonates the world in all its contradictions, we are bringing together exciting thinking and action from the arts and humanities. The symposium is organised not only to discuss but also to directly experience what Édouard Glissant called the poetics of relation. This practice resists the colonial compulsion towards unification, transparency, and systematization. Here, knowledge is never fixed and always in relation.

The symposium oscillates between, literary, poetic, performative, and philosophical expression, with readings of Glissant by actress Sophie Bourel, contemporary performance art and poetry, interspersed with conversations and discussions featuring Hans Ulrich Obrist (online), Asad Raza and invited scholars, artists and curators. During the breaks, presenters and public will be able to exchange informally, catching fragments, losing threads, and weaving poetics of Relation through an archipelago of thinking and feeling encounters. The symposium is convened and moderated by Baruch Gottlieb.

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Speakers:
Lev Avitan (NL), philosopher and performer
Sophie Bourel (FR), actress known for her interpretations of Glissant, especially ‘les Indes’
Radna Fabias (NL/Curaçao), poet
Sylvie Séma Glissant (FR), painter and widow of Édouard Glissant
Baruch Gottlieb (CA/DE), writer and curator
Shivani Gowda (IN/VAE), artist
Nikima Jagudajev (BE), performer
Hamedine Kane (SN), filmmaker
Hans Ulrich Obrist (CH), curator of the Glissant exhibition (online)
Asad Raza (US), artist and convenor of numerous Glissant symposia