Saturday Reading Group: Arendt/Benjamin 25 // Saturday Reading Group: Arendt/Benjamin // each Saturday at 11AM in June & July // Veranstaltung auf Englisch / event will be held in english  //  next meeting: Saturday July 30th   organised and led by Fred Dewey hosted by Michael Schultze     Fred Dewey's reading group on Hannah Arendt (& Walter Benjamin) is going into its final round. General Public is happy to invite you to the last session on Saturday July, 30th. Feel free to join in. It's at 11 AM, coffee and pastry will be served. Led by Fred Dewey, the final speaker in the Arendt series, the reading group will focus on the related practice of  Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin, using their texts to ground and illuminate concerns of contemporary art in the public realm. In later weeks, discussion will expand to include the work of contemporary figures like Hal Foster and peers of Arendt and Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht in particular. "This summer gathering around the table will examine the practice of two writers who were friends and whose works bear on pressing issues of politics, art, and culture in the 21st century. The current 50th Anniversaries of Hannah Arendt’s “Crisis in Culture” essay – examined at General Public in May – and the Eichmann trial, the subject of Arendt’s most controversial book, suggest dialogue between art and politics, event and thinking, culture and action, judgment and responsibility, is more necessary than ever. Hannah Arendt laid out a radical form of political and thinking practice; Berliner Walter Benjamin, a close friend of Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blucher, laid out a radical form of critique, of literature and art, urbanism and consumerism, philosophy, politics, and material culture. Reading Arendt and Benjamin together helps us imagine the cultural and the political as connected and integral to each other." - Fred Dewey At this moment of reflection on the status of cultural production and the public realm in Berlin, General Public is pleased to offer this series not only to reflect upon theoretical discussions, but as part of fostering a practice of engagement with civil society and public life.   No preparation is required; copies of the texts will be provided to be read out-loud by the group.   Week 1 will begin with "Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940" by Arendt, followed in subsequent sessions by Benjamin's "The Author as Producer." Coffee and pastry will be served. Fred Dewey was Director of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles, from 1996 to 2010. His writings have appeared in The New Statesman, Coagula, and collections such as"Cork Caucus: on art, possibility & democracy" and Princeton Architectural Press’ "Architecture of Fear." Dewey has edited and published books by K. Curtis Lyle, Simone Forti, Ammiel Alcalay, and forthcoming works by Jean-Luc Godard and Charles Olson, first under Beyond Baroque Books and now his own imprint. He organized the Los Angeles-wide World Beyond and Beyond Text festivals and helped place neighborhood councils in the L.A. city code. His newest publication, the pamphlet "A Polis for New Conditions" reflects upon the work of Hannah Arendt and its concrete implications for cultural and political reconstruction.   > July 30, 2011   <- Back to: Discourse/Presentations
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