The Europe Quartet - conferencies in Kiev and other European cities

This project was implemented by the British Council Ukraine. It aims to answer the following question: What was, what is, and what will be the concept of Europe?

The originality of the project concept is this. It discards the outmoded categories of 'centre' and 'periphery' which still attempt to understand Europe by contrasts between its 'advanced' and 'emergent' regions. Such a notion risks merely slipping over the surface of things. The Europe Quartet instead proposes a new outlook. Europe is a circumference without a centre, so to speak, a nomadic horizon.

The Europe Quartet envisages: four intensive conferences on the new emerging Europe to be held in four cities - Kiev, Warsaw, Budapest and Berlin; and to result in four books of the published conference papers. Each conference will last four days - three days of proceedings, and the fourth day set aside for performances and creative activities.

Eurocentricity is avoided by ensuring that the conferences are well represented by the so-called peripheries. For instance, in symbolic and practical terms, we include Kyiv as one of the host cities, invite Turkish and other 'ethnic minority' delegates, those normally said to be 'outsiders' to Europe.

The Europe Quartet conferences will concern themselves with the bedevilling problems of 'modernization' and 'postmodernity'. The conferences would also address an imagined 'post-historical' Europe in which war is an evil of the past.

Thus, the first event to take place in Kyiv on 29 June - 2 July 2005, will include four main components:

• Competition for high school students and higher educational establishments' students. The competition will be announced in the end of March. The competition invites different genres (essays, short stories, or poetry) under a common My Europe slogan. Winners will be selected by a jury and then will be invited to participate in the workshops on the 4^th day of the conference. The best works will be published in the conference anthology and on the British Council's web site entitled Creative Writing.
• The 3-day conference itself.
• 1-day workshops.

Target audience in Ukraine

Contemporary writers, researchers of creative writing, critics, translators, professional associations' leaders, high school students, and university students. They will be united by being interested in multiculturalism, new Europe and communication or perception of 'new Europe' concepts in literary works.

Writing Europe conference, Kyiv, 29 June - 2 July 2005

• DAY 1: Writing the map of new Europe
  

  Session 1: where is Europe?

  This first session will set the tone for the positioning of contemporary writing. How does it address the emergence of a new Europe 'without a centre' in which the former peripheries are being redrawn by plural identities.
  
  

  • Participant writers, cultural theorists and literary critics will consider the problems of adaptation to the present nomadic concept of Europe.

  Session 2: when was Europe?

  Another timely question today is when did Europe really begin? In the mythic past? In its present multi-cultural present? And what is its future expression likely to be?
  
  

  • Participants invited to probe this question include university instructors in creative writing studies who are shaping the apprentice writers of the future.
  • Participants in the contemporary practice of translation will also explore this terrain of displaced Europe.

  Session 3: what is Europe?

  • Writers of poetry and fiction recruited from other ethnic origins in Europe are reshaping the so-called conventional genres of writing from a variety of angles. Many of them have adopted English to express culturally diverse non-European realities. Participants drawn from these areas will address the sea changes that are occurring in contemporary writing.
• DAY 2: Words, pictures and online experimental writing
  
  These sessions explore the experimental areas often overlooked in favour of the more conventional genres of writing.
  

  Session 4: Words and pictures

  • Participants here will represent the picture-based genres that have mass popular appeal, beginning with the writers and critics of graphic novels.
  • Session 4 will include views of writing on art.

  Session 5: Digital culture

  Video games now represent a phenomenal sub-culture across the world. Participants will present demonstrations of video-game scripting, its effects on the present and future Europe emerging from the 'margins'.
  

  Session 6: Hypertext experimentation

  This session is dedicated to visual demonstrations of contemporary experiments in hypertext poetry and online e-writing.
  
• DAY 3: Mapping the issues of de-centred Europe
  
  Another crucial question to bear in mind is the issue of world English-language dominance in an age of digital culture. Can we see English as the imperial Latin of today? Or is it in fact a lingua franca that is evolving into plural sets of languages as the Latin of the Roman Empire once did in its development of multiple European tongues.
  

  Session 7: The fracture-lines of language

  • This session is concerned with the present and future challenge faced by European languages at risk of, or perhaps liable to benefit from, hybridizations.

  Session 8: Representing ethnicities

  • Participants from various spheres of writing will consider the representation of ethnicities that can either inhibit or contribute to a new Europe secure in its cultural diversity.
  • Participants will also include feminist and cyberfeminist outlooks on representing women's writing, sexuality and identity.

  Session 9: Concluding session

  A concluding session is left open to an ensemble of participant and respondent discussions.
  
• DAY 4: Workshops
  
  A parallel series of workshops on creative writing studies, online and other areas of writing will open to students and the general public on the 4th day by prior organized admission.
  

Conference materials

As a result of the conference, first volume of the Europe Quartet anthology will be published. It will feature about 10 the best and the most interesting presentations made at the conference. The publication will be released in English, and one of the leading British publishers have expressed their interest in releasing this book. It can also be published in Ukrainian, and opportunity for which are being explored.

Should you be interested in this project, please contact Vasyl Hubarets, PR Co-ordinator British Council Ukraine:

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