SEMINAR-CONVERSATIONS /

WORLDVIEWS FOR ONE PLANET

A 1 day event in Kassel, in the Survival Room, with Stefan Nadolny and Shelley Sacks.

This is a call to everyone who might be interested in contributing to this theme: live, if you can get to Kassel, online at a later date, if not.

The question motivating this exploration
The unprecedented challenges of today open up huge new perspectives for change, whilst making visible how difficult it is to make decisions when there are many competing worldviews. Religious. Secular. Scientific worldviews. Each worldview and value system, conscious or not, affects the choices we make. Determines the decisions we make, often without realizing it.

Is there a form of universality beyond totalizing, and of diversity beyond relativism? 
One way that people cope with different worldviews in liberal, secular democracies is to try and tolerate them all.

From a liberal-democratic perspective everyone has the right to a different point of view and every point of view is, in principle, equally valid. All views are just personal or group perspectives. There are no truths. Everything is relative.

The other way is the totalitarian position. Difference is not tolerated. A faith system, political ideology, the scientific approach or an intellectual discourse is seen as being the true, correct and only one.

Both these approaches have huge and often negative consequences.

In Joseph Beuys’ drawing “The Truth is a Sparkler” different worldviews and perspectives radiate from one center.

One of the things this seminar-conversation considers is whether Beuys’ emphasis on ‘phenomenological perception’ and a ‘permanent conference’ process for exploring questions, can help to overcome both the relativizing and totalizing of different perspectives and worldviews.

It asks whether local, regional and global assemblies that begin with a phenomenological exploration of a question, instead of arguing based on positions, could enable shared criteria for making decisions?

You are warmly invited to join Stefan Nadolny and Shelley Sacks to explore this theme.

Venue: In the Survival Room of the Kassel-21 / Social Sculpture Lab.
[If Covid numbers remain low, there should be place for up to 20 people in the Survival Room]

Date: 3 September, 2021.

Time: 10.30 – 17.00 on Friday 3 September

How to participate: Email info@socialsculpturelab.com to let us know you want to join us, and possibly to contribute a short input on the theme. Please put WORLDVIEWS in the subject line.

Language: Live in Kassel [in German].

We intend to organise online sessions with this focus in future to enable participation with those beyond the German-speaking world.

COVID Regulations Update: You need to be twice vaccinated, recovered, or have an current negative Covid test. [From Museums-Hessen-Kassel website “According to the prevention and escalation concept of the Hessian state government, which will be valid from 19 August 2021, we have to apply the 3G rule for admission to cultural institutions with an incidence of 35 or higher. This states that only vaccinated, recovered or currently tested persons will be admitted”]