Gefühle am Ende der Welt | Folge 15: VERHEISSUNG

PROMISE, in the religious sense, is a vow with a fateful character. As a strange amalgam of prophecy and mission, promise spans a bridge from an almost unbearable present to a heavenly—or at least better—future. Technology and progress have sought to take over the promises of religion, announcing a world without work, without distance, without death—and all this within the limits of natural resources. But even as these concrete promises lose their power to convince, something promising remains indispensable if one is to keep going in the mundane and often discouraging everyday. An evening can be full of promise, a place, or even a glance. Increasingly, it is not the specific promises themselves that matter, but openness as such—not so much a better order, but the promise that, despite all necessities, something unexpected can still happen. Thus, promise perhaps becomes most tangible as closeness to another person or to a very good idea. To be seduced, or to discover something together—these are two modes of promise that share the ability to move us somewhere we have not yet been.

The event will be in English. 

Alex Cocotas is a visual artist, writer, and translator living in Berlin for 10 years, originally from California. His journalism, criticism and essays have been published in The Guardian, The Baffler, and The Paris Review, among others, his first play, “Die Hölle ist Leer” (Hell is Empty), co-written with Fabio Thieme, premiered in Berlin this past spring, and he recently finished his second novel. He is currently at work putting together a non-fiction book.

Melanie Jame Wolf makes artworks, performances, & texts about power, persona, & the phenomenon of ’show business‘: the liminal, the persuasive, the deceptive, the staged, & the performed in the political, theatrical, and everyday, Her work explores vulnerabilities of the live moment and the body as an unruly political riddle. Spaces that have presented her work include Kunstmuseum Basel, KW Institute of Contemporary Art, The National: New Australian Art Biennial, Sophiensaele, and KINDL Berlin.