Getting through, whatever it takes

In March 2016, the European Commission closed down the 'Balkan Route'. In Idomeni, there are thousands of people waiting to enter Greece. Retained in the camp, they decide to block the railway lines that cross the frontier.

This is the context in which Nikki Giannari wrote Spectres Are Haunting Europe, an epistolary poem to which the philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman responded with an essay inspired by her verse. Moving from Idomeni to the writing of Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt in relation to the condition of being stateless, this intellectual reflects on hospitality, citizenship, loss and survival.

The Biennial has brought together both of these authors to talk about the need to recognise, to welcome, all those people who pass through the gates of our cities.

This activity will be streamed live.