David Wengrow, co-author of the international bestseller The Dawn of Everything, will appear at this year’s Inspiration Forum. He will be joined in Ji.hlava by Samaneh Moafi of Forensic Architecture, climate researcher and comedian Matt Winning, political theorist Camila Vergara and many other guests from the Czech Republic and abroad.
“The Inspiration Forum is taking place this year at an extraordinarily tense moment. In the course of a single summer, we have experienced extreme heat, serious warnings concerning the future development of artificial intelligence, Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine and the associated security tensions in Europe, as well as a flood of testimony about violence and destruction in Gaza. We do not want to look at the world as if it were a film playing out before us while we simply wait to see how it ends. We want to ask what kind of world we humans are creating, what image of it we produce, where power truly resides within it, how we can bear living through this moment – perhaps even with the help of humour – and whether we are still capable of steering the world in a different direction from the one in which it currently appears to be heading,” says Tereza Swadoschová, Head of the Inspiration Forum.
The programme will begin with the theme of the “map” and the question of who decides what is visible, what remains outside the frame and where borders are drawn – from the Mercator projection and Africa to digital maps and algorithms.
Samaneh Moafi of Forensic Architecture will demonstrate how a map can also serve as a means of reconstructing reality where it has been contested. Using video footage, satellite imagery, spatial data and 3D models, she reconstructs disputed or obscured events. In Ji.hlava, she will present, among other cases, a reconstruction of an attack on a school in Minab, Iran, and the case of six-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza.
One day later, the forum will turn to “humour” and its capacity to capture the world more precisely than lengthy explanations sometimes can. Matt Winning has worked on climate policy for eighteen years while also performing stand-up comedy about the climate crisis. In his show Solastalgia, which he will bring to Ji.hlava, he connects fatherhood and fears about his children’s future with fossil-fuel wealth, the oil industry and financial power. Previously announced Romanian guest Dan Perjovschi, meanwhile, often manages in just a few lines to capture a political situation that might otherwise require a lengthy debate.
Another part of the programme will focus on “power”, which is often least visible when it has become embedded in everyday life: in where and how we are able to live, who owns the city and public space, who has access to institutions and who can genuinely influence their rules. Camila Vergara will examine what happens to democracy when political and economic power becomes increasingly concentrated within the system itself.
The final day will begin with a simple premise: the world is not finished. What other forms of living together are we capable of creating? David Wengrow, co-author of the bestseller The Dawn of Everything, turns to history to challenge the idea that today’s arrangements are inevitable. His work shows that people throughout history experimented with radically different forms of government, ownership and collective life.
