Heinz Bude talks to Robert Misik about left-wing art

As part of the event series Vergiftete Verhältnisse

Western modernity began with a promise of progress through reason. Driven by the feeling of the dawning of a new era, technological achievements, economic calculations and political upheavals set new directions that would vaporize the stagnant and the corporative and at the end of which a just society would emerge. In the process, art provided constantly renewing signs and imaginary worlds, which aimed at a freer, better and fairer future both im- and explicitly through the description of conditions, criticism and utopia. However, in the face of war, the pandemic and the climate crisis, nobody wants to believe in such progress anymore. What then is the task of art in our present day, in which the modern spirit of progress has long since given way to late-modern self-doubt?

Robert Misik, born in Vienna in 1966, is an Austrian journalist and non-fiction author. He writes regularly for “Standard”, “Falter”, “profil”, the Berlin “tageszeitung” and “Die Zeit”. Robert Misik was awarded the 2019 Bruno Kreisky Prize for Political Books for his essay “Die falschen Freunde der einfachen Leute” (The false friends of ordinary people) and received the State Prize for Cultural Journalism of the Republic of Austria in 2009. His most recent publication is “Putin. Ein Verhängnis” by Picus Verlag and ”Das große Beginnergefühl. Moderne, Zeitgeist, Revolution” published by Suhrkamp Verlag.

The event is part of the event series Vergiftete Verhältnisse.

Location: Lutherplatz research station, 34117 Kassel