Uta Staiger
@ukstaiger
Europeanist [literature, thought, politics] | Directing @uclei.bsky.social | Working with @ucl-global.bsky.social | Curating @europeanlitlondon.bsky.social
Following a session on Catalan classic "La Plaça del Diamant" by Mercè Rodoreda, we traced pigeons in Gràcia & took analogue photographs in the very same square, courtesy of Miguel Navarro, who runs the Studio Lab Revelaciones Analógicas, www.tim-and-tim.com.
One huge highlight was a visit to the legendary literary agency established Carmen Balcells - the driving force behind the Latin American Boom - shown around by the founder's granddaughter, the fabulous Laura Palomares.
We walked in the footsteps of George Orwell, who vividly (if not always correctly) chronicled the conflicts in the city during the early civil war. We visited the Biblioteca El Carmel - Juan Marsé, to discuss Marsé's work and discuss the socio-demographic divisions emerging in the 1950s-60s.
We discussed fiction & non-fiction texts in English, Catalan and Spanish; documentary film-making & urban theory; history, politics & mapping practices. One day, we quizzed literary translators Mara Faye Lethem & @etallada.bsky.social, hosted by the wonderful team at the Institut Ramon Llull.
Just finished teaching an experiential, site-specific & practice-informed module on & in Barcelona, for a cohort of fab UCL @artshumsucl.bsky.social students. Part of a Turing-funded suite of European city modules, it's a truly special study format. @uclnews.bsky.social
Beautiful start to our Hannah Arendt Days in the @ateneubcn.cat yesterday. #HannahArendt
With Caroline Basset (Digital Humanities, Cambridge) and Ruth Hagengruber (Philosophy, Paderborn) on Progress and the Machine - how to think with Arendt about the future of work. www.goethe.de/ins/es/de/st...
With the extraordinary @lyndseystonebri.bsky.social and Thomas Meyer, authors of two most compelling recent biographies. www.goethe.de/ins/es/de/st...
Couldn't be more excited for next week's Hannah Arendt Days at the @ateneubcn.cat - curated with the Goethe Institute Barcelona. www.goethe.de/ins/es/de/st...
Beautifully branded European wine to ease us into an evening of conversation on European and EU law at @laws.ucl.ac.uk.
The ELML exhibition will be at the Galerie am Schwarzen Meer until the end of the week. With thanks to @britishcouncil.bsky.social & British Embassy Berlin for making it possible. globale-literaturfestival.de www.europeanliterarylondon.org
How fitting to stumble across this on my way to the Globale Literaturfestival in Bremen / meeting UNESCO #CityofLiterature reps on @europeanlitlondon.bsky.social business.
Heute in der Post! Mein Gespräch mit der beeindruckenden Sigrid Weigel @zfl-berlin.bsky.social über Walter Benjamin und Hannah Arendt. Gedruckt in Politik & Kultur, der Zeitschrift des Deutschen Kulturrates. Mit Dank an das Goethe Institut in Barcelona.
Looking forward to chairing the 2025 UCL Europe Lecture on #AcademicFreedom. Michael Ignatieff, with @efieldingd.bsky.social & @ucl.ac.uk's Provost Michael Spence. Convened by @uclei.bsky.social with @laws.ucl.ac.uk & Disagreeing Well. 30 Oct. Free tickets: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/academic-f...
What happens when we see ourselves as others see us? This weekend I'll be @hayfestival.bsky.social in Segovia to talk writing, place & language with @martarebon.bsky.social, William Chislett & Deborah Christopher. Includes most picturesque setting yet for our @europeanlitlondon.bsky.social pop-up.
"It is fearful! It is mad! I am quite giddy and confused. London is the grandest and most complicated monster on the face of the earth." If writing-walking-musing-blasting-singing-craving-lyricising London is your thing, @europeanlitlondon.bsky.social might be too. www.europeanliterarylondon.org
And they had some items of WB's original book collection on display - his essay about collecting practically opens the show. The books go rather well with the Liceu's building itself, with a ceiling that now (redone after a 1994 fire) feature paintings by one of my all-time favourites, Perejaume.
Sported a very clever scenographic juxtaposition of the 'bucklicht Männlein" & the Angelus Novus - the visualisation of the latter being propelled into the future, to which his back is turned, closes the show. (The kinetic light installation by local av studio Playmode made all the difference.)
Quite the spectacular event @liceubarcelona.cat this weekend. An opera commissioned from Antoni Ros-Marbà, about - wait for it - the life, death and thought of Walter Benjamin. With (presumably) the world's first-ever baritone intonation of the words "epistemological basis".
Such a rich conversation with @philippesands.bsky.social & Kimberley Trapp y'day, on immunity & impunity, moral responsibility & historical amnesia, the reach, teaching, limits of international law, Bolaño, activists, witness. A privilege. #UCLEuropeLecture @ucllaws.bsky.social @uclei.bsky.social
The event was associated to our European Literary Map of London's Grand European Tour. The UK Mission to the EU lent Passa Porta the displays - now superbly exhibited at Muntpunt, the public library just next to La Monnaie Opera House. Go see it! muntpunt.be www.europeanliterarylondon.org
Loved being at the Passa Porta Literature Festival, talking to authors David Nicholls & Peter Terrin about space, place & their writing. Wonderfully rich: Island fiction. Heterotopias. Beckett, Stevenson, Melville. Yorkshire, Monte Carlo & abandoned basements. And lots of maps. www.passaporta.be
Enjoyed contributing to this report on lessons from the German elections, pulled together by @uclpolicylab.bsky.social & @fesonline.bsky.social. I focused on the European dimension, Merz’ turn from Atanticism towards strategic autonomy & implications for the UK. www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/s...
Just been to Abney Park cemetery, which Irene Solà described as “filled with crooked narrow grey tombstones piled over each other and covered in moss, [...] with rain and lichens, with anise flowers, trees, stinging nettles and mud.” And spring, today. www.europeanliterarylondon.org/feature/0064...