Reading and Talk with Felwine Sarr

In his wise and impressive manifest »Afrotopia«, which is an analysis of the present and at the same time shows possible paths for the future, the Senegalese writer and economist Felwine Sarr demands a decolonization of Africa by recollecting its social and intellectual resources without denying its contact with modern age. A different, more balanced relation among people and between humans and nature becomes conceivable, not only for Africa. Being one of Africa’s internationally renowned future thinkers, he was appointed into president Macron’s brain trust. Together with Bénédicte Savoy he is developing restitution strategies for looted art in France. In Germany, the handling with the colonial heritage is also being discussed at the political level based on Sarr’s and Savoy’s recommendations. 
We pick up on these impulses and intensify them in an international literature festival titled »Membrane. Permeable Thinking. Literatures from Africa«, which will be curated by Felwine Sarr. The festival is organized by Literaturhaus in cooperation with Institut français and Akademie Schloss Solitude from May 23-26, 2019.

The festival aims at making our thinking about Africa more permeable, to encourage confrontation with mutual colonial history and shared challenges of the 21st century and to take literature serious as a central space of reflection for new visions of coexistence.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, writer and cultural mediator from Kenya and currently fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin and Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard, journalist and co-chair of »Each One Teach One«, Berlin, develop the program together with Sarr. 

The talk is hosted by writer and columnist Deniz Utlu (Fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude 2018/2019) and subsequently, the curators will present the planned festival.

Entrance: Euro 10,-/ 8,-/ 5,-
When: January 15, 2019, 7:30 pm
Where: Literaturhaus Stuttgart, Breitscheidstraße 4, 70174 Stuttgart