Conference: The Theater of Divided Worlds
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Peter Weiss’s The Aesthetics of Resistance and the Challenge of Critical Universality in the Twenty-First Century. An international conference organized by The Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University, and Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm.
Can The Aesthetics of Resistance help us imagine new aesthetics of resistance today? What would that mean? This conference is organized in the hope, in spite of all, that Weiss’s historical novel can still assist us in envisioning new futures, of unity and freedom. Such hopeful readings, however, cannot be abstract and utopian, but must be based in critical reassessments of the social reality of the book in relation to our own time.
The conference takes place at Bonniers Konsthall on October 29 and at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus on October 30.
Organizers: Stefan Jonsson, Kim West and Samuel Richter.
Bonniers Konsthall
Schedule → Thursday, October 29
1:00 pm Stefan Jonsson, Samuel Richter, and Kim West open the first day of the conference
1:15 pm Seth Howes (University of Missouri), “Über den Begriff der Zeit zu sprechen”: Historical and Anthropological Strata in Die Ästhetik des Widerstands
2:15 pm Louis Hartnoll (University of Amsterdam) & Andreas Selg (Zurich), The Gloomy Day: Traversing Weiss’s Antifascist World Landscape
3:15 pm Coffee
4:00 pm Klaus Müller-Wille (University of Zurich), Word-things, the collective unconscious and maps: Early and late collage practices in the work of Öyvind Fahlström and Peter Weiss
5:00 pm Julia Hell (University of Michigan), Brecht’s Workshop or Weiss’s Inter Textual Montage as Aesthetic Resistance
6:00 pm End
In English.
Participation is free of charge. As the number of seats at Bonniers Konsthall is limited, we kindly ask you to register if you would like to attend the first day of the conference.
Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus
Schedule → Friday, October 30
9:45 am Stefan Jonsson, Samuel Richter & Kim West open the second day of the conference
9:50 am Sebastian Dahlqvist and Elof Hellström introduce Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus
10:00 am Magnus Bergh (Sweden), Weissian Irony
10:40 am Coffee
11:15 am Robert Buch (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg), Socialist (Sur-)Realism. Peter Weiss’s The Aesthetics of Resistance and the Novelists’ International
12:15 pm Jenny Willner (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich), With Alien Tongues: Splitting and Identification with the Aggressor in The Aesthetics of Resistance
1:15 pm Lunch
2:15 pm Danny Hayward (London), Hanoi-Tripoli-Stockholm-Rome: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Peter Weiss and Anti-Colonial Transposition
3:15 pm Kai Evers (University of California), Resisting “the perfectly composed massacre”: Peter Weiss and the staging of mass murder from The Investigation to The Aesthetics of Resistance
4:15 pm Coffee
5:00 pm Esther Leslie (University of London), Un-grounded Figures: The Force of Negating Aesthetics in Yesterday’s and Today’s Glut of Sediment
6:00 pm Dinner, bar and music
During the evening, an exhibition will open in the gallery of Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus and a performance will start at 7:00 pm. After the performance the DJ-collective 1+1=3 will perform and the bar is be open until 10:00 pm.
In English.
Adress: Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, Riksdalervägen 2, 129 32 Hägersten
Image: Peter Weiss, Ateljéinteriör / The Studio of Dr. Faust, 1956. Courtesy Filmform.
Registration
Free entrance
Participation is free of charge. As the number of seats at Bonniers Konsthall is limited, we kindly ask you to register if you would like to attend the first day of the conference.
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The Defeated: The Aesthetics of Resistance 2026
26 Aug→
08 Nov 2026