• Thu 12 05 2016 / 7 pm •
From Aylan Kurdi to Cologne: Where Is the EU Going?

with SREĆKO HORVAT

After the dead body of the three-year old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi was washed up on a Turkish beach in September 2015, the world seemed to be in shock. After the Cologne sex attacks on New Year’s Eve, the world was shocked again. The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo responded with a caricature showing Aylan Kurdi as a sexual molester. The cartoon’s text reads: “What would little Aylan have grown up to be?” Answer: “A groper in Germany.” It is our responsibility to give a better answer. If there is a specter that haunts Europe today, then it is precisely the specter of the “refugee”—visiting everyone from Angela Merkel to the extreme right, and back to the radical left. So if we can’t answer the difficult questions involved in the ongoing refugee crisis—from Cologne’s attacks to the rise of the extreme right—we will also not be able to ask the most pertinent question: where is the EU going? Cologne is the right place to start posing these most difficult of questions.

Venue: ACADEMYSPACE, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Cologne
Free admission
In English