Invisible Symposium

      HUNGARIAN CULTURAL CENTER in collaboration with the EUROPEAN DREAM FESTIVAL and LIVE from the NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

present

INVISIBLE SYMPOSIUM: European Dream Festival

with CHARLES GRODIN, master of ceremonies

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

7:00 PM

Celeste Bartos Forum, New York Public Library

(Enter at 42nd Street near 5th Avenue)

$15 general admission and $10 library donors, seniors and students with valid identification

Click here to BUY TICKETS

OPENING GALA

To kick off the first ever European Dream Festival, a six-week celebration of the most vibrant and innovative artistic productions from a new Europe, The Invisible Symposium will transform the Celeste Bartos Forum into the scene of a classic symposium in antiquity. Charles Grodin will be the master of ceremonies. The idea of the Invisible Symposium originated with the Hungarian art movement, The European School. In 1948, their members circulated a questionnaire to artists, writers and philosophers asking them to define the relationship of art and politics to artists, writers and philosophers. 

To make the invisible visible in this new symposium, American actors will do a staged reading from the collected texts of over a dozen contemporary European intellectuals to render their intriguing and sometimes disturbing reflections on the present dilemmas facing the European Union. Here are some of the questions that were posed to these European intellectuals: 

---Do you have a European identity? What does it mean for you?

---Is it important to build a European mass culture or to combat American mass culture?

---Is the European Union a political necessity, or has it any political advantages for your country?

---What are the driving forces of European unity and what is its future?



Curated by:

Jakab Orsos, Director of the Hungarian Cultural Center in New York

and Paul Holdengräber, Director of Public Programs at NYPL.

Directed by Judith Barnes

Texts edited by Roger Conover, Executive Editor, The MIT Press.

Participants:

Metin Arditi (Switzerland)
Hélène Cixous (France)
Leonidas Donskis (Lithuania)
Agnes Heller (Hungary)
Jörg Lau (Germany)
Dusan Mitana (Slovakia)
Gerard Mortier (Belgium)
Peter Nadas (Hungary)
Dan Perjovschi (Romania)
Marieke Sanders-ten Holte (The Netherlands)
Marek Tamm (Estonia)
Mart Valjataga (Estonia)
Vittorio Zucconi (Italy)

With:

*Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Union Commissioner for External

Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy (TBC)

*Supermodel Helena Christensen

*Ambassador Fernando M. Valenzuela, Head of Delegation,

Delegation of the European Commission to the United Nations

*Consul Generals and Directors of cultural institutions from 23 European countries

*Wardrobe by Uncle Kimono, designed by John Malkovich

*Wine by the European Wine Council; food by Le Pain Quotidien

*With major support by Altria

European Dream Festival

For six weeks this fall, the first ever European Dream Festival will present the leading creative voices and cutting-edge artistic visions in performing arts, film, and literature from 23 countries of a newly extended Europe at 23 prime New York venues.

Hungarian Cultural Center

447 Broadway, New York, NY, 10012

212-750-4450 or info@culturehungary.org