Since two years, we developed the conversation between Walbrodt and Zeev Engelmayer, known as Shoshke. Zeev lives in Israel, Walbrodt in Germany. 2023 they met, first in Israel, then in Germany. They were invited by the German-Israeli Future Network as cocreative artists to work on the program G17 FOR PLURALISM:
“Pluralism” and “diversity” are sometimes used as if they were synonymous, but they are not: Pluralism is the engagement that creates a common society from diversity. Pluralism is not a foregone conclusion, but an achievement.
What exactly is pluralism? (Extracted from https://pluralism.org/from-diversity-to-pluralism, Harvard University)
- An active engagement with diversity. One can be an observer of diversity. One can “celebrate diversity,” as the cliché goes. One can be critical of it or threatened by it. But real pluralism requires participation and engagement.
- Pluralism is more than the mere tolerance of differences; Tolerance does not require people to know anything about one another, and so can let us harbor all the stereotypes and half-truths we want to believe about our neighbors. Tolerance is certainly important, but it does little to remove our ignorance of one another.
- Pluralism is the process of creating a society through critical and self-critical encounter with one another, acknowledging, rather than hiding, our deepest differences.
- Pluralism requires the nurturing of constructive dialogue to reveal both common understandings and real differences.
Engelmayer and Walbrodt call their cocreation: The Artists Refugee Camp
What art can do? Being creative together! Art is diverse and every artist is unique by definition, because he/she searches for her/his very own creation. Over the history there were always artists, who worked together and cocreated artefacts. In contemporary art this cocreational capacity of artists (and unique positions) has become more explored and experienced. It is the ground for living diversity, together in pluralism. In our work within this program, we want to bring artists together to elaborate more of this ability to cocreate and share our findings to the public. Therefor we want to initiate the Artistic Refugee Camp (ARC) which gives the frame for the cocreational work. We plan to build up ARC in Israel and in Germany. The ARC stands on the one hand for bridging controverse positions and on the other hand for the urgency to create a living together in an artistic way – for the freedom of mankind and the beauty of this planet.
In July Walbrodt visited Israel, dived into demonstrations und set up the first Artists Refugee Camp together with Zeev. A short report you find here.
On the 2nd of September the second Artists Refugee Camp took place in Bonn. And Walbrodt and Engelmayer keep on working in the Artists Refugee Camp.
This project was funded by:
