In the summer of 2018, the writers’ collective Nazis & Goldmund organised a conference in Berlin entitled Ängst is now a Weltanschauung, that focused on the erosion of democracy. Colleagues from literature and other fields of art came together to create a space for reflection. Their aim was to phrase a straightforward plea against the normalisation of nationalist, illiberal, neo-Nazist tendencies, but also to find positive visions for society and the future of the entire planet.

Nazis & Goldmund now goes on to continue this engagement in Vienna: While anti-humanitarian opinions become more and more normal and the extreme right stages itself as model democrats, increasing demands are voiced not to exclude the right-wing from public discourse. But how can we talk to those who are not interested in the discourse as much as its elimination? It might turn out to be more useful to talk to everybody else.

On four occasions, Nazis & Goldmund will call for an open plenary sitting at studio brut in order to devise potential narratives of a pluralistic society based on artistic and academic inputs, to debate and to elaborate strategies.For aren’t we cuter, fresher and more diverse than anything the New/Old/Eternal Right will ever have to offer?

For the second instalment of their conference, Nazis & Goldmund have invited architect Gabu Heindl and writer/film-maker Manuel Gogos to talk about strategies of occupying and reclaiming public spaces under the title Between Spaces and Dreams. In preparation, audiences are invited to watch a screening of Gogos’s documentary Unter Fremden about the Identitarian movement.

Nazis & Goldmund describe themselves as a many-headed poetological monster that critically monitors the developments and actions among the European Right and their international alliances, analysing and attacking their narrative strategies and staged interventions.

Gabu Heindl is an architect and urbanist in Vienna, Visiting Professor at Sheffield University, UK, and teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her architectural firm, GABU Heindl Architektur, works on public, cultural and social buildings, alternative housing projects, exhibition architectures and urban or public space planning projects. Her lectures and publications focus on the relationship between planning, politics and popular agency with regard to public spaces, counterhegemonial planning strategies as well as justice and solidarity as parameters for planning.

Manuel Gogos is a writer, critic, exhibition- and film-maker, his most recent works including the documentary Unter Fremden. Eine Reise zu Europas Neuen Rechten (“Among Strangers. A Journey to Europe’s New Right”) (2017), broadcast on the network Arte. His work migrates between academic essays, audiovisuals and visual languages. His doctoral thesis discussed the literature of the Jewish diaspora. From 2002 to 2005, Gogos contributed to the research and exhibition project Projekt Migration of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Since 2005, he has been active in Agentur für geistige Gastarbeit (“Agency for Creative Guest Work”) as an independent curator and curatorial consultant.