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?

To open the series of events, Nazis & Goldmund organise a talk entitled Nation & Narration featuring writer and vice-president of Akademie der Künste in Berlin, Kathrin Röggla, and Andreas Peham of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance. The debate will be opened with a statement from Nobel Prize-winning writer Elfriede Jelinek and continue to delve into right-wing narratives and potential counternarratives. During an afternoon workshop, an Austrian version of the Declaration of the Many – a solidarity pact initiated by cultural institutions to defend the open society – will be drafted and provided for signature. Please register in advance.

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.

Kathrin Röggla, born in Salzburg in 1971, lives in Berlin. She writes prose, essays, audio plays and texts for theatre. She is a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt and the vice-president of Akademie der Künste in Berlin. www.kathrin-roeggla.de

Andreas Peham, born in Linz in 1967, is a political scientist. He has been in the employ of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW) since 1996, where he works at the department of right-wing extremism research and is one of the founding members of the research group on ideologies and policies of inequality (www.fipu.at).