European Pavilion Podcast

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 a common trade in coal and steel would ensure lasting peace and unity in Europe. Today's challenges show us that this ideal from 71 years ago no longer endures. For this concluding episode, we invite 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? With: Silvia Bencivelli is an Italian science writer, 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 La Sapienza – Università di Roma. Her last book is Sospettosi (Einaudi, 2019). 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) in 2012. Tobias Holle has been an activist with Fridays for Future Germany since 2019. As part of the climate movement, heis involved with European campaigns, advocates for climate issues and is part of the German press speaker team. He is currently studying environmental engineering.

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?       With: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.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.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'. 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}.

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. 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? With: Tim Flannery is a scientist, explorer, and conservationist who served as Australia’s Climate Commissioner from 2001 to 2013. He has published numerous books, including, Europe: A Natural History.

In the second episode of the European Pavilion Podcast we ask ourselves: in the light of a post-national and inclusive Europe, how should we address issues of representation? Together with our guests, activists and organizers Zamzam Ibrahim and Jóci Marton, as well as philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia, we propose to open up the notion of representation and how it resonates politically, aesthetically but also intimately. Following the first part of this episode, in which we discuss the relation between being present and being represented, our guests look here at strategies (including self-representation and the role of education) to address representation or the lack of it. With: Tristan Garcia is a French philosopher and novelist, widely published in prose and non-fiction. In December 2020, his book ‘We Ourselves: The Politics of Us’ was published by the Edinburgh University Press. Zamzam Ibrahim is a climate activist and organizer. She is the president and a founding trustee of Students Organising for Sustainability. She was nominated for the Young European of the Year 2020 award. Jóci Marton is a Roma LGBTQI+ activist from Hungary. His work mainly focuses on intersectionality and identity politics. In 2019, he organized “Owning the Game”, a photo exhibition developed with the Roma LGBTQ+ community.

In the second episode of the European Pavilion Podcast we ask ourselves: in the light of a post-national and inclusive Europe, how should we address issues of representation? Together with our guests, activists and organizers Zamzam Ibrahim and Jóci Marton, as well as philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia, we propose to open up the notion of representation and how it resonates politically, aesthetically but also intimately.  In this first part, we discuss the relation and tension between being present and being represented. With: Tristan Garcia is a French philosopher and novelist, widely published in prose and non-fiction. In December 2020, his book ‘We Ourselves: The Politics of Us’ was published by the Edinburgh University Press. Zamzam Ibrahim is a climate activist and organizer. She is the president and a founding trustee of Students Organising for Sustainability. She was nominated for the Young European of the Year 2020 award. Jóci Marton is a Roma LGBTQI+ activist from Hungary. His work mainly focuses on intersectionality and identity politics. In 2019, he organized «Owning the Game», a photo exhibition developed with the Roma LGBTQ+ community.

In the bonus track, novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta reads the prologue to his book ‘Tokyo Cancelled’. His reading is followed by a piece of music composed by cultural activist Lara García Díaz in collaboration with musicians Francesco Fornos and Jose Galbis.

The nation-state is a very powerful narrative that has managed, in a very short time, to assert itself as the only imaginable model of political units. 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 faced by our contemporary societies. How can the sense of belonging that the nation-state instils be transferred 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 invite Rana Dasgupta, Lara Garcia Diaz, and Timothy Snyder to reflect on the model of the nation-state and what it means for Europe. With: Rana Dasgupta is 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. Lara García Díaz is 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. Timothy Snyder is Housum professor of history at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. An expert on Eastern and Central Europe and the second world war, he has written several books.