Archive:
Courses Overview

22^nd June - 5^th July 2008

The Weimar Summer Courses intend to stimulate active exposure to cultural heritage: What can poets, philosophers and artists say to us today? Which directions can be derived for contemporary challenges? What thought-provoking impulses can it offer for the future? The Summer Courses also offer an intimate insight into the world of well-known heritage sites, from the National Goethe Museum and Nietzsche-Archives to the Bauhaus Workshops. They also give you the opportunity to experience the vibrant cultural life in Weimar.

“European cultural heritage – the basis and product of intercultural dialogue”

A common thread running through all the summer courses in 2008 is the intercultural dimension of European heritage. The diversity of regional cultures, the product of intensive communication among artists, intellectuals and decision makers from Antiquity to the present day, is one of the main characteristics of Europe. Phenomena such as the magnificence of Gothic architecture, of Renaissance art or Bauhaus-inspired modernism are a direct result of intercultural dialogue and “cultural migration”. Even the age of German Classicism in Weimar would not have arisen or had such influence without international networks of intellectuals.

The European year of intercultural dialogue provides an opportunity for us to investigate the interdependencies of European cultures. Above all, we want to find out what chances cultural heritage can offer for future intercultural communication. Furthermore, we also will focus on problematic aspects such as the abuse of “national” heritage, evident too in the history of Weimar and the misuse of Classicism by the Nazis. Even today the ideology of “national” cultures is still used to justify ethnic conflicts – the Balkan wars of the 1990s is a further more recent and unfortunately not entirely resolved chapter in the misuse of cultural tradition.

Whether it serves as a basis or is the product, as inspiration or is a hurdle, European cultural heritage is a key element of intercultural dialogue today and in the future. The three courses, aimed at young intellectuals from throughout Europe and beyond, offer different approaches to examining these fundamental issues: through art, through politics and media.

Course A: Art and Sustainability:
From Bauhaus to social sculpture. The shaping of humane societies as an aesthetic challenge

The Bauhaus, founded in Weimar in 1919, brought together a Europe-wide avant-garde to reform the modern industrial age through art. While it had a significant effect on the field of modern construction and design throughout the world, its larger holistic and cultural origins were more or less entirely lost. Why is this so? What can we learn from the knowledge and mistakes of the avant-garde of the past?

Now, at the outset of a new century, the notion of social sculpture (Joseph Beuys) offers a comprehensive aesthetic understanding and strategy for the shaping of sustainable societies. But what is social sculpture? And what is its relationship to the central ideas of the Bauhaus? To what extent does social sculpture represent a new connection between the ethical and aesthetic dimensions, relevant to a humane and ecologically viable future?

Exercises are an integral part of the course and enable participants to access their individual creativity and to explore creative action in the context of their own situations. Interdisciplinary artist and Beuys pupil, Shelley Sacks, will lead the exercises.

details and schedule ...

Course B: Politics: European Values – a potential for European identity or a problem for intercultural dialogue?

Referring to Christian-Roman-Jewish roots in the EU-constitution, leading EU-politicians lay claim to such values as freedom, equality, the rule of law and respect for diversity as if speaking of a ‘European territory’. However, are these really genuine European values? What political European goals they are meant to serve, and to what extent are they being implemented in European societies?

Participants will work on these issues in the context of both the ‘European social model’ and the Euro-Atlantic Alliance. The course will involve lectures and discussions on the content of a reader, a debating contest and scenario techniques as a means of exploring credible and future paths in Europe’s uncertain political development.

details and schedule ...