Alexander Carnera

VENICE: At its best, this year's Art Biennale in Venice shows us something about what the world is, where we stand, how we think and perhaps where we are going. This process of searching which is the dance of life. Curator Adriano Pedrosa found the occasion to speak for the indigenous peoples, the marginalized homosexuals, outsiders, the many displaced refugees and migrants worldwide. And furthermore: What does it mean to create and work in the void between the old religious narratives that no longer speak to us – and an uncertain future?

PHILOSOPHY: the problem with a hopeful optimism is that it does not take the current climate crisis seriously enough and ends up accepting the state of affairs. But is there a hope and a utopia that hides a creative and critical force? MODERN TIMES takes a closer look at German Ernst Bloch's philosophy of hope. For the German Ernst Bloch, one must rediscover the fire in our concrete experience that anticipates possible futures in the real here and now.

ESSAY: The Golden Age of French philosophy (1945–1989) created something great. An atmosphere, a new way of thinking, a new way of being. A freedom-hungry life experiment. So what then went wrong?

ESSAY: Simone Weil explores rootlessness and its impact on modern society, arguing for the importance of grounding and rootedness – cultivating some form of meaning and purpose in life. For Weil, it also becomes a matter of going into the heart of this world's nihilism (worthlessness, lust for money, way of life) to discover God, the light, to make herself infinitely small – hence her urge to destroy herself. You can also read Rooting as a contribution to a contemporary ecological way of life and climate thinking.

NIETZSCHE: Once it was faith in a God or a political party, today it is faith in work, consumption and the economy – that is, myself. According to Gilles Deleuze, what can one learn from Nietzsche?

MUSICAL LIFE: With The Use of the Bodies and What is Philosophy?, Giorgio Agamben returns to his early main interest before the first homo sacer book – namely to being, to language, to thought and the blissful life. It is also about where you are – where you simultaneously discover life (ontology) and how life could be (politics, the happy life).

ESSAY: Does writing have a healing power – by mentioning the transience, loneliness and beauty of life? And is it only possible for us to live together by ostracizing the others? If the personal is the real thing, then that is not the goal – but rather to be able to come to light of the impersonal.

SUBJECTS: How should art stand out in a time when artistic work has come to resemble modern working life with its constant demands for communication, networking and visibility? Appearance and staging have become more important than content. Can we today actually rediscover our relationship with time, the experience of duration, practice doing less? Not being a means to an end?

FUTURE: Environmental disasters, global warming, crisis of civilization and planetary apocalypse have given rise to ideas about the doom of the earth and the end of time. Through a radical anthropology, a couple of authors make an attempt to restore our faith in the world.