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John Berger (1926–2016) was a painter, novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, film director, art critic, cultural critic, and chronologist of the political developments of his time. Born in England in 1926, he moved to a village in the French Alps in the late 1960s, where lived and worked until old age. Berger’s seemingly heterogeneous work gains coherence and unity of purpose through a radical political-ethical perspective. Berger always considers the artistic, literary, critical, and intellectual negotiations of themes. From Cubism to human-animal relations, from the disappearance of the peasant world in Europe to the atrocities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Berger's artistic, literary, critical, and intellectual negotiations are always considered in the light of their potential to contribute to a better and more just world.
Reading list:
- Ways of Seeing (BBC-Series, 1972, available on Youtube and as text)
- G. (novel, 1972)
- A Seventh Man (a text on migratory labour in Europe written in collaboration with the photographer Jean Mohr)
- “Why Look At Animals?” (essay)
- Into Their Labours (excerpts from the trilogy Pig Earth [1979], Once in Europa [1987], Lilac and Flag [1990])
- Selected essays and short prose
Participants will be expected to take part at a workshop organized by Prof. Dirk Wiemann (Potsdam) and myself in Potsdam (date?). I will apply for financial support for this excursion. Teaching will end in mid-June after the workshop. |
