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A salon in the web - simply an anachronism, an experimental event (one of many)
in a virtual world or six evenings spent together in the (future) biography of
a young institution?
The range of possible interpretations shows the openness of the situation, the risk to situate oneself in an exposed position and the difficulty to find (or invent) a form to express what is new about it. How does interdisciplinarity work, and what is it that literature and science can tell each other? What role does a technology play which seems to produce novelty all the time and yet is not able to act autonomously, in self-determination?
On six evenings during the coming months we who work at the Collegium Helveticum, will invite guests from literature who are willing to talk to each other and to us about topics which disturb, move, activate them and - maybe, it remains to be seen - us as well. The literary discourse thus will be transformed into text, but, being text it can be changed at any time in some kind of reversible hermeneutics. The text thus can be made to speak again, it becomes talkative. Surrounded by the abundance of new forms and practices resulting from the hybrid character of the mixed forms of writing, thinking or visualizing we set out to experiment with the end open. The new strives to be perceived, described and recognized. It tries to find forms that will last - but the criteria of selection and the forces which influence their stabilization themselves cannot be perceived as yet. These forms and criteria - like we ourselves - are part of this ongoing process. The experimental form should induce us to gain and create new knowledge at the same time.
