Z-Files #8: Looking For Europe

On Thursday 29 January 2015, Z-Files # 8 goes looking for Europe. Has Europe become an old, aging world that can no longer follow the pace of globalization? Is Europe merely a Jewish-Christian stronghold that must guard itself against external influences? Or are we just not looking well? According to the French philosopher Edgar Morin, Europe exists by the grace of the conflict: between social classes, states, religions and ideas. 'Europe' as a dynamic complex, in which the center is constantly shifting: new conflicts arise every time Europe thinks it is realized. Or should we look for answers outside of Europe, as Frantz Fanon already noted in 1961. The Berlin exhibition and research project In Search of Europe? tends towards the last option: the most important thing about Europe was its imperial power over other parts of the world, which had to compete with Europe. Europe's exceptional position has now come to an end.

In WORM, Ernest van der Kwast talks to a number of guests about Europe. Artist Daniela Swarowsky presents her film Messages From Paradise #2 (2014), in which Dutch people of Moroccan descent and Moroccans in the Rif area talk about their perspectives. She created the exhibition together with Samuli Schielke In Search Of Europe? (ISOE) in Berlin. This event took place at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien and was funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The artist collective Bofa da Cara made the short film in the context of ISOE My European Mind / RE-branding Europe. And the Rotterdam historian Zihni Özdil gives his own vision of Europe in a guest column. How is Europe doing?