„A new iron curtain?” – a debate 

Saturday, the 27th of May, 2:30 – 4.00 p.m., the Small Stage of Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw; meeting in English with translation to Polish. 

➤ moderator: dr Paweł Sztarbowski 

➤ participants: 
– Maria Hlavajova – researcher, educator, curator, founder, and director of the Dutch art platform BAK
– dr hab. Dorota Sajewska – researcher, theater scholar, writer, playwright
– prof. Madina Tlostanova – feminist thinker and writer.

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the continent”. Do those famous words of Winston Churchill from 1946, which for years confirmed the simple dichotomy of Europe, still hold true? Did the breakthrough of 1989 really change the semantics of the concepts of East and West? In recent years, the metaphor of the “new iron curtain” has been recurring more and more often. The still present inferiority complex of the periphery, populist governments based on nationalist and anti-European slogans, and finally the war in Ukraine and mass migrations strongly influence the creation of new divisions, but also provide an opportunity to create a new balance of power and community that would be far from right-wing populism, and at the same time devoid of Western-centric hegemony. Today, the question of new European solidarity also becomes a question about the possibility of a new world and about the values on which it is to be based.