UCCA Beijing Open Today, 10:00-19:00 (Final entry: 18:30)
UCCA Dune Open Today, 9:30-19:30 (Final entry: 19:00)
UCCA Edge Closed Today,
UCCA Beijing2014.10.18
Mercator Salon XI：What Does “Heimat” Mean? Do People Need “Heimat”?
2014.10.18
15:00-17:30
“Heimat” plays a key role in both European and Chinese cultural tradition. In German intellectual and cultural history in particular, the concept of “Heimat” has an important and turbulent history. Heimat becomes a protective and idyllic place in which to escape a threatening outside world, a place to retreat after years spent in foreign parts. Despite the enormous internal migration that has taken place in China since the beginning of the “reformist policies”, and despite the frequently changing location of the country’s functional elites, a sense of local and regional belonging continues to play a very prominent role in Chinese society to this day. As a rule, the discovery of shared regional or local origins triggers greater emotion in Chinese people who encounter one another abroad than would be the case with Europeans.
In this salon, we discuss what people in Europe and China associate with the term “Heimat.” What does Heimat mean in terms of people’s personal development and social behaviour?
About Mercator Salons “ Heimat”
Between 18 October and 2 November, the Mercator Salon will explore the concept of “Heimat” in four discussion events. “Heimat” or “guxiang” are both words meaning homeland that have sentimental connotations, a concept not easily directly translated into English. The series of salons will particularly focus on differences and common ground in the understanding of the concept of “Heimat” in Europe and China. Four aspects will play a major role in the discussion.
On 18 October, the first salon titled “What does ‘Heimat’ mean? Do people need ‘Heimat’?” will raise the fundamental question of what Heimat means to people in different cultural contexts.
The salon “How to construct ‘Heimat’? The role of architecture and city planning” on 19 October will revolve around the role of architecture and urban planning when it comes to the way people identify with the place of their origin and with the place of their daily life.
The question of migration movements and the associated cultural and social integration processes and conflicts will be the central focus on 1 November in the salon “Moving away from ‘Heimat’, finding a new ‘Heimat’: integration and marginalization”.
The final salon of the autumn season on 2 November, “What does ‘Heimat’ look like? Images of ‘Heimat’ in artistic and literary imagination”, will analyse the topic of Heimat in artistic and literary production.
Ticketing & Participation: FREE. Reservations required.
From Tuesday to Friday 11:00-18:00 please call 57800200 to book. Please note that you can only book 1 seat at a time.
Members can also book by emailing: members@159.138.20.147
Note：
* The deadline for registration is 5 pm on 17 October. Please note that we can only guarantee your reservation until ten minutes before the event starts.
Speakers
Gregor Dotzauer （Literary critic, essayist, culture editor）
Gregor Dotzauer was born in Bayreuth, Germany, in 1962. He studied German philology, philosophy, and musicology in Würzburg and Frankfurt. In the middle of the 1980s he started writing about literature and film for national newspapers like “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and “Die Zeit”, later for “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. Since 1999 he has been the literary editor of Berlin‘s leading daily “Der Tagesspiegel”. He is also a regular contributor of essays to various magazines and working for the radio. In 2004, he was Critic-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. In 2009, he was awarded the Alfred-Kerr-Price for literary criticism. He is the Goethe Institute‘s current Writer-in-Residence in Beijing.
A Lai (Writer)
A Lai was born in 1959 in Sichuan Province. He started writing in the 1980s. His early writings were mostly poems; he then gradually turned to writing novels. His first book “The Somang River” (《梭磨河》) was named after the river that runs through his home town of Barkam county in the Rgyalrong region in Tibet. Later he published collections of short stories entitled “Bloodstains of the Past”（《旧年的血迹》）, “The Silversmith in the Moonlight”（《月光里的银匠》）, “Gela's Coming of Age”（《格拉长大》）and “The Remote Hot Spring”（《遥远的温泉》）; the novels “Red Poppies” (《尘埃落定》), “Hollow Mountain”（《空山》）and “King Gesar” （《格萨尔王》）; collections of essays entitled “Days of Abundance”（《就这样日益丰盈》）and “View”（《看见》）, and the non-fiction works “Upward Steps of the Earth” (《大地的阶梯》) and “Zhandui: The Iron Knot that Finally Melted” (《瞻对:终于融化的铁疙瘩》). A Lai has been awarded the Maodun Literature Prize, Chinese literature media awards and a number of other literary awards. Since he was born and raised in the Tibetan borderland, A Lai focuses on, conducts research into and gives a voice to the borderland.
Moderator
Michael Kahn-Ackermann (Stiftung Mercator China Special Representative)
About the Stiftung Mercator
Stiftung Mercator is one of the largest private foundations in Germany. It pursues clearly defined objectives in its thematic clusters of integration, climate change and arts education and achieves these objectives with a combination of socio-political advocacy and practical work. Stiftung Mercator implements its own projects and supports external projects in its centres for science and humanities, education and international affairs.
Currently, Stiftung Mercator is funding several projects in China: school and youth exchanges, multiplier encounters and fellowship programmes for young managers in the areas of civil society, politics, academia and business. We are working to create a better and more nuanced understanding of Chinese and European reality in the respective other region through long-term partnership and cooperation.
Please see www.stiftung-mercator.de/en for more information.
Partners
Stiftung Mercator is one of the largest private foundations in Germany. It pursues clearly defined objectives in its thematic clusters of integration, climate change and arts education and achieves these objectives with a combination of socio-political advocacy and practical work. Stiftung Mercator implements its own projects and supports external projects in its centres for science and humanities, education and international affairs.
Currently, Stiftung Mercator is funding several projects in China: school and youth exchanges, multiplier encounters and fellowship programmes for young managers in the areas of civil society, politics, academia and business. We are working to create a better and more nuanced understanding of Chinese and European reality in the respective other region through long-term partnership and cooperation.
Please see www.stiftung-mercator.de/en for more information.
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UCCA Beijing
Open Today, 10:00-19:00 (Final entry: 18:30)
798, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Beijing
Tel: +86 10 5780 0200
Fax: +86 10 5780 0200
UCCA Dune
Open Today, 9:30-19:30 (Final entry: 19:00)
Aranya Gold Coast, Beidaihe
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Closed Today, 10:00-19:00
2F, No. 88 Xizang Bei Lu, Jing'an District, Shanghai
Tel: +86 21 6628 6861
