The significance of imagination for political and cultural action

In her keynote speech, Helen Hester, Professor of Media and Communication at the London School of Film, Media and Design, discussed the importance of one's own social position and how it affects the perception of other worlds of experience. Drawing on feminist theories, she analyzed the interaction between solidarity and alienation. While own personal perspectives also limit the perceptions of other groups, the moment of alienation invites people to recognize the limits of their own perception. In line with these theses, the presentations on the first day of the conference dealt with the social and cultural influences on perceptions – for example in Indian literature, in connection with the abolition of prisons or within colonial knowledge production.

The second and third days of the conference focused on future scenarios and prognoses. A team from product developer Frog Design presented a dating app that the team is designing for the year 2075. The group showed how current events influence future prognoses and how digital product development could respond to them. In another keynote speech, sociologist Prof. Dr. Hannes Krämer from the University of Duisburg-Essen spoke about the future scenarios of the Frontex agency, which monitors Europe's external borders. Krämer described the argumentation strategies of this European agency and its positioning within European domestic policy. Other presentations focused on the perceptions and ideas of dream houses, the imagination of past and present in Iranian literature and the functioning of thought experiments.

Over the course of the four-day conference, the speakers emphasized that ideas of what could be reality have a direct impact on the actual actions of nations, social groups or individual players. These ideas can serve as a motivation for political action and reinforce the significance of various forms of expression for social coexistence.

On the evening before the start of the conference, the participants, including 21 international guests, watched the movie "Breaking Point” by internationally renowned documentary filmmaker Eva Stotz. The film director was also a guest at the conference and gave a presentation the following day on the significance of biographical backgrounds for the creation of her movies. In "Breaking Point", she portrayed her father, who was made redundant by his employer after 40 years. At the same time, the movie sheds light on the experiences of other protagonists with working life and its challenges.

The DFG-funded research training group "Practicing Place: Sociocultural Practices and Epistemic Configurations" at the KU exists since spring 2021 and deals with the reflection of place and space in the face of global movements, national demarcation and communication without borders. The range of subject areas involved reaches from literary and cultural studies over sociology, philosophy and geography to art history. The research training group currently comprises ten doctoral candidates, one post-doctoral candidate, seven university lecturers and 13 associates. In addition, it maintains a broad network of renowned international researchers. This is the first research training group at the KU to be funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), which is supporting the concept with around three million euros over four and a half years.