• Wed 28 11 2018 •
Köln kosmopolitisch – Wie wir unsere Kultur neu erfinden
Miltiadis Oulios
With MILTIADIS OULIOS and PRASANNA OOMMEN
19:00
Venue: Greven-Haus, Neue Weyerstraße 1–3, 50676 Cologne
In German
Free admission
In cooperation with the Greven Verlag Köln
Cologne is regarded as an open-minded city, one in which immigrants and their descendants produce a wide variety of art and culture. But how does local cultural policy do justice to all this potential? And what of its commitment to intercultural openness? What example does the city set when it comes to integration and immigrants? How is intercultural artistic creation put into practice in Cologne, and how is it lived out in a concrete way?
The book Köln kosmopolitisch by MILTIADIS OULIOS, commissioned and funded by the Academy of the Arts of the World/Cologne, takes stock of the cosmopolitan character of Cologne, naming the achievements and critiquing the discrepancies between the liberal-minded image of the city and the lived reality. Through multiple examples, the author discusses civic cultural politics from an immigrant perspective and proposes a cosmopolitan approach for the 21st century. In times when right-wing populists have gained election victories in many places, Oulios thus initiates an important debate, making the case for a “cosmopolitanism of everyday life” when we speak of our culture in Germany and Cologne. Miltiadis Oulios presents his book in an evening moderated by PRASANNA OOMMEN.
MILTIADIS OULIOS (* 1973 in Düsseldorf) is an author and a freelance journalist. He has examined the representation of media professionals with immigrant backgrounds in German journalism and, with his Blackbox Abschiebung [Black box deportation] (Suhrkamp 2013/2015), has published a book on German deportation politics. In 2017 he took part in the “Unraveling the NSU Complex” tribunal in Cologne with his piece Warum musste Theo sterben? Der NSU, die Einwanderer und der Staat [Why did Theo have to die? The NSU, immigrants and the state]. He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Cologne.
