23.4. – 29.4.2023
The programme makers the Tage der Utopie – the “Festival for a Good Future” – are not discouraged even by a sad present. On the contrary.
For 20 years, ideas for a better world have been explored and discussed at the Tage der Utopie (Days of Utopia) in Vorarlberg.
Hans-Joachim Gögl and Josef Kittinger, the two “spiritual fathers” of the Days of Utopia, have always been concerned with strengthening “our sense of possibility”. To use images of the future to direct our gaze away from deficits towards resources and an encouraging interplay of approaches to solutions.
If politicians had listened more often since then to the suggestions, recommendations and also warnings that were discussed at the Days of Utopia in those years, we would perhaps no longer have to deal with many crisis-related problems in their current dramatic form.
For the 20th anniversary of the Days of Utopia, contributors and lecturers from the past 20 years were invited to choose a “counterpart” this year with whom to delve into a topic in dialogue.
Writer Ilja Trojanow meets political scientist Ulrich Brand to reflect on universal cosmopolitanism and global solidarity in practice.
Social entrepreneur Lisa Jaspers explores “why we need to unlearn patriarchy” with “activist for a transformative school” Margret Rasfeld and Jamila Tressel.
And Kora Kristof from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology discusses possibilities of “successful paths of digital, ecological and social transformation” together with Tilman Santarius, head of the research group “Digitalisation and Social-Ecological Transformation” at the Technical University Berlin.
Even if the path descriptions are already available, for interest group-led politicians these concepts and visions for the repair of the future are postponed to an indefinite future.
If it’s up to our “visionary chancellor”, we’d rather postpone what we could do today to alleviate tomorrow’s problems – at least (!) – to an indefinite future. After all, there is “no proof of an apocalypse”. So why introduce a speed limit that can be implemented quickly and easily can reduce greenhouse gas emissions or accelerate the phasing out of combustion engines when vehicles powered by synthetic fuels could possibly take a certain market share of the total mobility fleet … sometimes.
Hans-Joachim Gögl analyses human behaviour on a principled level: “People tend in times of need to try to make the existing better instead of asking what the better could be, that could replace it.”
Perhaps the chancellor should be advised to attend the days of utopia himself: It is never too late for lifelong learning.
Tage der Utopie – Days of Utopia
23.4. – 29.4.2023
various locations
Götzis, Vorarlberg
www.tagederutopie.org
