The Great Sloterdijk Project

Peter Sloterdijk is one of the best known contemporary German philosophers. He is professor of philosophy and aesthetics at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, and author of many books.

I am finally launching the great project that I have been preparing for many years around the works of Peter Sloterdijk: reading, staging, choreography, production, mediation, performance, conference, seminar, meeting... will mark out this project.

In all the projects I have proposed, I have never ceased to want to cross views and confront points of view. But also to open myself up to the thoughts of a man who, for me, is the most interesting author of today - Peter Sloterdijk.

As far as the Grand Chantier Sloterdijk is concerned, there will be confrontation: rereadings of the great works of the past in the light of the present world, and texts of today that attempt to grasp the great problems of our time or simply to resonate with the changing structures of our contemporary psyches. Texts and "stage writing" naturally, since they are at the heart of current theatrical practices.

In line with my previous projects, I also wish to pursue the ambitious programme of cultural mediation, by setting up partnerships and developing cycles of workshops, conferences, readings, as well as debates where the topicality of questions that go beyond our borders resonates. Sharing the highest philosophical and artistic standards and a taste for daring with an ever more diverse and vast public is the meaning of our project, which we want to be open.

I hope that the Grand Chantier Sloterdijk will contribute to changing things and, without freezing art in impossible accessibilities, will give a real impetus towards a better representation of diversity in this project. In the same spirit, what I have initiated for several years with my company in terms of artistic education and social action with the Lab Media Project (Atelier en création, D'un regard à l'autre, etc.) must be continued and developed to make the Grand Chantier Sloterdijk an inventive project of this "integration through culture" that we know is essential today.

It is a great honour for me today to launch this Grand Chantier Sloterdijk around a great contemporary writer-philosopher whose thought has accompanied me for many years.In the times that lie ahead, the mission is both beautiful and difficult: that the Grand Chantier Sloterdijk be a project where the most vivid questions of the world we live in resonate and are reflected upon - a project where great artists, through the singular acuity of their vision and their imagination, give us the strength and the joy of seeing things more clearly.The Grand Chantier Sloterdijk has all the assets to place itself at the crossroads of the reflections and currents that make art and culture today a "traversed" project, and hope to advance, if only by a few steps, the dream of a different world "The world after!