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Portbou rethinks Walter Benjamin in the face of new forms of fascism
The Walter Benjamin Summer School reflects on the contradictions of progress and the emergence of neo-fascisms.
Portbou is hosting the 11th Walter Benjamin Summer School from September 4 to 6, a meeting dedicated this year to analyzing one of the most disturbing issues of the present: the relationship between the idea of 'progress' and the emergence of 'neofascisms'. Over three days, thinkers, researchers and creators will take Walter Benjamin's intellectual legacy as a starting point to address the political, social and cultural tensions that run through the contemporary world.
Under the title The relationship of 'progress' with the emergence of 'neofascisms' , this year's edition proposes a critical look at an idea of progress that, far from necessarily guaranteeing a better future, can also generate new forms of inequality, exclusion and authoritarianism. The program will bring together the interventions of Pau Pedragosa, Demetrio Fernández, Claudia Kálasz, Sam Abrams, Agnès Sinaï, Santiago Gerchunoff and Diana Padrón.
The activity will combine conferences and debate spaces with a cultural program that extends reflection beyond the academic sphere. Among the proposals stands out the exhibition Day for Night. Landscapes of Walter Benjamin , a project by Diego Ferrari and Jean McNeil that will be inaugurated on September 4 at 7 pm and that establishes a dialogue between landscape, memory and the figure of Benjamin.
Literature and thought will also play a prominent role in this edition. On September 5, at 6:30 p.m., Claudia Kálász and Genara Sert will participate in the presentation of the book Walter Benjamin's Theory of Art. Critique of a Reception , a work that reviews the reception of the German philosopher's aesthetic thought.
The program will continue with the screening of Na, Asja? ( What's up, Asja? / Què pasa, Asja? ), by Konstanze Schmitt and Mimmi Woisnitza, scheduled for September 5 at 7:15 p.m. The piece incorporates a new audiovisual look at one of the figures linked to Benjamin's personal and intellectual universe.
The last day of the Summer School will be especially linked to the memory of Ibiza and Benjamin's relationship with the spaces that were part of his career. At 10:30 am , Walter Benjamin will be presented. Tales of Ibiza , with a prologue by Bruno Ferrer and an epilogue built on the testimony of Jean Selz.
The meeting will close with the screening, at 11:30 am, of the dialogue between Wim Wenders and Dani Karavan recorded in Portbou in 2015. A conversation that recovers, from the perspective of two creators with very different trajectories, the presence of Benjamin in a municipality that has become one of the main European spaces of memory around the philosopher.
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