The day after the largest demonstration on the topic of climate change Belgium ever had seen, Kaai Theatre invited to the second conversation with experts on the 2018/19 season’s leitmotif Authenticity and Beyond: Conversation #2 Phillipp Blom From the Age of Enlightenment to climate change: a history of the self.
After Didier Eribon for the first talk in September, they now invited German historian Phillipp Blom and introduced him as the chronicler of the self. Guy Gypens, artistic director of Kaai Theater, welcomed with words on how similar we people are becoming, forcing a same lifestyle, buying and consuming the same products etc. … as a result of the longing for authenticity? What is the self meant to be in a time of hyper consumerism, globalization and neoliberalism?
Phillipp Blom is one of the scholars you listen to and find each sentence striking (at least I am) … it was a pleasure to follow his remarks and diving into the topic of the self, which he underlined to be a product of enlightenment. Blom stated that modernity has created a new kind of person, who could read, write, and earn money - a middle class, which also claimed political rights for the first time in history. The self in western oriented society has become a contradiction. Especially for artists the self seems to be so important on the one hand, but art is so much produced in a hardly reflected canon of neoliberal structures. People thriving for identity in a digital world - doesn’t that feel paradox?!
Well, I love the in-depth framework program on the season’s topic of Kaai consisting of performances, conversations, debates and a symposium. They even invited scholar Rudi Learmans to write an essay on the issue, which is freely availably for all people interested. Looking forward to the next one.
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