Utopia 500

Five hundred years since the first publication of Thomas More’s “Utopia” (1516), the rubric of utopia remains at the forefront of debate and activity aiming at a critical and visionary negotiation of the human predicament and the antinomies marking it throughout: despair and hope, injustice and justice, lack and excess, present and future, disorder and order, finitude and infinity, etc. And yet, our epoch is deeply conscious of both the “dystopian” features of the present economic and social order –exhibited in a series of ‘crises’ affecting our environment, our political institutions and the social bond itself– as well as of the limitations of traditional utopian imaginaries to articulate credible, viable and, above all else, inspiring alternatives. Is it possible, against this pessimistic background, to formulate an alternative, reflexive structuration of desire? To enact social practices and political institutions putting forward ‘critical’, ‘iconoclastic’ constructions marking a move beyond both the unreflexive affirmation and the unreflexive rejection of utopia?

Focusing on such questions, “Utopia 500” will begin as a two-day interdisciplinary workshop with international participants from the fields of political theory and philosophy, political economy, psychoanalysis, the theory and practice of art, etc. This workshop is scheduled to take place in Delphi in May 2016. Its aim is to function as an intensive laboratory examining the theme of utopia from a variety of perspectives and exploring its contemporary relevance.

The debate will culminate in a symposium open to the public and its participation, at the Onassis Stegi’s Upper Stage, on Tuesday 17 May. Following the symposium, there will be an art exhibition related to the workshop at Diplareios School from 6 to 10 June .

The event, in its second part, includes the Greek premiere of Luigi Nono’s “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” with Tania Sikelianou (violin) and Thomas Pouliasis (electronic sound).