"Let's stay close" with La Nuit des idées, a world tour of thought
In Côte d'Ivoire, the Night of Ideas is relocated to the new Adama Toungara Museum of Contemporary Cultures in Abobo, which has just opened in March 2020 in this popular town of Abidjan.
© Issouf Sanogo / AFP
Text by: Muriel Maalouf |
Carmen lunsmann
5 mins
It is the annual meeting dedicated to the free circulation of ideas and knowledge.
Our correspondents will show you how the Night of Ideas will unfold from this Thursday evening, January 28 in Athens and Abidjan.
This event invites researchers and politicians, artists and activists to reflect on the major issues of our time.
Coordinated by the French Institute, this 6th edition under Covid is available all over the world under the theme “Close”.
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From the Fiji Islands to San Francisco via Beirut, Lomé, Hong Kong and even Tajikistan, the Night of Ideas brings together some 200 cities in more than a hundred countries around the same theme.
"
The theme of this year," Close ", in the plural,
explains Erol Ok, Director General of the French Institute,
is a resonance of the questions that the crisis poses, but also of questions that we were already asking ourselves before
: our relationship to the environment, coexistence.
We imagined to have the Greek and Turkish youths dialogue, the example of the Mexican and American border with sociologists from each country.
And then we also have very strong cultural dimensions
: an interview with one of the most widely read and translated Russian writers in the world, Ludmila Oulitskaïa, in Africa the Cameroonian Djaïli Amadou Amal who will talk about her commitment to the cause of women in his country.
So it starts in Oceania and ends in the United States with Thomas Pesquet, the astronaut who will be at the Space Center in Houston, Texas.
"
This 6th Night of Ideas - resolutely digital, Covid obliges - crosses all time zones for 24 hours.
A world tour of thought, in the company of physicists, feminists and philosophers, without forgetting artistic performances, to feel closer.
The Night of Ideas in Athens
Greece is one of 200 countries celebrating the Night of Ideas tonight.
Punctuated by moments of lightness and humor conceived by the press cartoonist Jul, the Night of Ideas opens in Athens by first giving the floor to young people from Greece and Turkey.
Two neighboring countries with a tumultuous history.
These 18-year-olds from Athens and Istanbul testify to their experiences in these times of confinement, but also to their commitments and expectations.
Then place the artists.
The actress Irène Jacob reads extracts from her novel
Big Bang
about birth and mourning.
Life and death is also what nourishes the work of visual artists Pierre and Gilles: “
At birth, we arrive alone, and we leave alone.
This is what we like to express in our work, the unique side and the fragility of the person.
The world is cruel.
And we can see it right now.
"
A special moment for this Night of Ideas under Covid.
"Let's stay close", the theme of the round table of the closing debate proposes to reflect on the effects of confinement: withdrawal into oneself or new forms of solidarity?
So many debates to follow live on the website of the French Institute in Athens.
In Abidjan, the French Institute relocates the Night of Ideas to the Adama Toungara museum in Abobo
In Côte d'Ivoire, this evening, broadcast on Facebook, will mark the start of a cycle of monthly debates until June around the decolonization of the arts, women in independence, restitutions, or even the future of the French language.
To animate the debates, the storyteller Binda Ngazolo will have around him the writer Yacouba Konaté and the president of the Amadou Hampâté Bâ foundation, Roukiatou Hampâté Bâ, the daughter of the great man.
Also present, but in duplex, the academic Maboula Soumahoro and the artist Blick Bassy.
"To approach the theme"
Close "is to ask the question
: what is the idea that would put us in a position to realize how close we would be,
explains Binda Ngazolo.
And there, I speak of Humanity.
This being the
word of a storyteller
- it is the story that makes and the story that undoes.
It turns out that each individual is a bearer of stories.
So the idea of the evening is to listen to the other side of the story
”.
Symbolically, the French Institute is relocating for this Night of Ideas to the Museum of Contemporary Cultures Adama Toungara in Abobo, popular commune of Abidjan.
“
Abobo suffers from prejudice, as is often the case.
So, bringing this Night of Ideas back to Abobo means recognizing - beyond social disparities and all the problems that this causes - that we are in a space for sharing ideas and humanity.
"
►Full program of the Night of ideas
here
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