ECHOLOT

ECHOLOT


Episode 3: 'Breaking the Waves'

April 03, 2020

This episode has Elisabeth Bronfen looking at Virginia Woolf’s ‘Breaking the Waves’ and comparing Woolf's feeling of ‘walking a tightrope over nothingness’ to Heidegger’s notion of individual existences as 'being thrown' into the world. Also the horizon (see episode two) is returning to the debate.


A series of chapters from Disputaziuns Susch, an annual conference scheme hosted by Art Stations Foundation CH and Grazyna Kulczyk.


In spring 1929, just a glimpse before the Great Depression and the Great Crash to come soon, the Cassirer-Heidegger debate takes place in Davos; Ernst Cassirer pulls his arguments for a broader conception of humanity, his counterpart is Martin Heidegger and his relativism. The quest of a universal truth drives a ‘continental divide’ (Peter E. Gordon) or ‘Weggabelung der Philosophie’ (Henning Ritter), anticipating major philosophical debates to come. 90 years ahead, in Susch, 40 minutes away from Davos, once again in times of disorientation, disillusion, with radical movements on the rise, we were repeating the question that led the historical debate: What is it to be human?