Dear European Literature Night participants,
As mentioned during the cluster meeting, we are pleased to offer all institutes/embassies participating in this year's European Literature Night 2 tickets to attend the evening on June 2, at De Balie in Amsterdam. Below is the proposed agenda for the night, to have an impression of what to expect:
20:00 – 20:10 Introduction | The European tradition of utopia and dystopia
Meelis Friedenthal (Estonia) gives a lecture about the role of utopian and dystopian fiction, from the 17th century until today.
20:10 – 20:30 Part I | Historical and speculative fiction as mirrors for present-day society
Meelis Friedenthal (Estonia) and Franco Tirletti (Italy) exchange thoughts on mixing historical and prophetic elements in their novels ‘ ‘The Bees’ and ‘The Indonesian mirror’.
20:30 – 21:00 Part II | Against apocalypse: Finding hope in utopian poetry
Iuliana Alexa (Romania) and Indrė Valantinaitė (Lithuania) read one/two of their poems and, by analysing each other’s work, talk about the power of utopian writing.
21:00 – 21:15 BREAK
21:15 – 22:00 Part III | AI and Literature: Friends or enemies?
Berit Glanz (Germany), Klara Vlasakova (Czech Republic), Carmelo Rodrigues and Willy Lomana (Spain) discuss the relation between literature, creativity and technological innovations.
22:00 – 22:30 Part IV | Is the Western world view too utopian?
Starting from a passage from ‘My Longest Book Tour’, Oksana Zabuzhko (Ukraine) and Dallila Hermans (Belgium) discuss the blind spots for Western future thinkers and writers.
