E.A.T. – Engadin Art Talks – is an annual forum of art, architecture, design, literature, and innovation that takes place in Zuoz, a village in the Swiss Engadin valley. For centuries the region has been a muse for creative thinkers and artists such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Nietzsche or Not Vital, to name only a few.
E.A.T brings together thinkers from the creative and scientific fields to share their ideas and expertise within the main topic of each edition of the talks. This year’s theme – HOFFNUNG? HOFFNUNG! (HOPE? HOPE!) – addressed the current social and environmental issues through an interdisciplinary dialogue around the meaning of hope – from the idea that hope is a driving force inherent to human nature, to questioning its matter whatsoever.
The speakers included artists, architects and landscape architects, authors, scientists, sustainability and humanitarian experts such as Ai Weiwei, Aïsha Devi, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Ernesto Neto, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Camille Henrot, and Natsuko Uchino; visionary art collector Uli Sigg; Palestinian architect Sandi Hilal; Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets; innovation researcher Catherine De Wolf; French retro-explorers Loïc Rogardand Cédric Carles; the member of the Roundtable for the New European Bauhaus Francesca Bria; author and scholar Mohomodou Houssouba; former CEO of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth; and former President of Germany Joachim Gauck. The programme of the talks has been curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London), Daniel Baumann (Director, Kunsthalle Zürich), Bice Curiger (Artistic Director, Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles), and Prof. Philip Ursprung (Prof. for the History of Art and Architecture and Dean of the Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich) together with Cristina Bechtler.
The mission of E.A.T. is to connect the arts with other disciplines through presentations, discussions, performances, museum and gallery visits. This year’s edition has started with the guided tour of the Hannah Villiger: Amaze Me exhibition at Muzeum Susch, held by the two curators – Madeleine Schuppli and Yasmin Afschar. The visit was accompanied with a performance by Swiss artist Lara Dâmaso – who interpreted Hanna Villiger’s oeuvre shown at the museum. In the following days, the conversation about hope has been approached from all angles. From the poignant speech of the former president of Germany – Joachin Gauck – who shared his story, on how hope has been the driving force in his life as a theologian, politician, and then eventually as the head of the country. Through the lecture Art and the Quest for Freedom, Kenneth Roth, the former executive Director of Human Rights Watch, presented the cases of civil protests manifested through the use of social performances. He discussed how art used to and still continues to portray political repression. The socio-political discussion over the spirit of hope opposed to the society of fear, has been also tackled by Ai Weiwei in his conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Uli Sigg. The discussion orbited around the Chinese contemporary art scene, and its introduction to the Swiss art circle, which has been mostly initiated by Uli Sigg. Hans Ulrich Obrist quoted Ai Weiwei’s latest interview in Monopol Magazine, where the artist stated that:
Hope is essentially the imagination or hypothesis of the possible that is impossible to achieve. If it was possible to achieve something, then it would no longer be a hope. In fact, hope is something that is considered impossible to attain when viewed from the logic or experience of reality.
Eventually, Ai Weiwei concluded that to him hope is an empty word.
French artist Camille Henrot discussed the meaning of hope in literature (in Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of Hope) and in accordance with her film Saturday (2017) – a work that presents impressions of a parallel world of hope and belief. The discussions were concluded with a sound performance Aethernal Score (Omnicomputer) by Swiss artist Aïsha Devi, and with a vernissage Ghosts Out of the Cave: Retrotech & LowTech Voices of Atelier21, a design studio working with ecological interventions within public spaces. Cédric Carles, the director of Atelier21, artist and designer, and Loïc Rogard, an interdisciplinary artist and environmental researcher, initiated a conversation about the ecological transitions in architecture and landscape. Hope executed through architecture and landscape initiatives has been also presented by Bas Smets, landscape architect who is currently working on establishing green spaces around Notre Dame in Paris, and Catherine De Wolf, Prof. of Circular Engineering for Architecture, who uses digital technologies, and researches natural, reusable materials in her architectural projects.
Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto with his talk Eating Hope discussed consumerism, and how we should control the unnecessary consumerism that destroys our planet. He concluded with a touching metaphor about uniting elements in music, to express his concern on how people should create togetherness in order to tackle the environmental issues. The finale of the two day sessions of talks was the speech When others think your language is a thing of the past by Mohomodou Houssouba, a writer and literary scholar specialized in African-American literature. Houssouba discussed the issues of hope from the perspective of linguistic heritage, and presented his initiatives of modernizing the use of African languages and applying them in digital platforms.
Within the two days of sharing ideas and experience, experts from a variety of disciplines shared what hope means to them either individually or as a part of a collective. There hasn’t been a conclusion, the ideas were left to drift into everyone’s interpretation and analysis. Perhaps what defines hope are all those intangible concepts. The matter certainly poses unique challenges for theories of the mind and theories of value.
