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Peripheral Futures Dialogues Across Time and Space: Contemporary Resonances of Kunqu Opera. Performance and Discussion

  • Date in the past
  • Friday, 22 May 2026, 18:00 - 20:00
  • Völkerkundemuseum vPSt, Hauptstraße 235, 69117 Heidelberg

    How does a concept like Heimat translate into musical practice in China? Organized in cooperation with Heidelberg University's Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS), the Collaborative Research Centre Heimat(en)/Home(s): Phenomena, Practices, Representations, and the Confucius Institute at Heidelberg University, two events featuring the Peking University’s Kunqu Center ensemble offer possible answers to this question, exploring the art of Kunqu Opera as a holistic musical experience, illuminating and resonating with different dimensions of “home(s)” in both the historical and contemporary contexts of China. The performance features scenes from renowned Kunqu operas such as The Massacre of a Thousand Loyalists, The Palace of Eternal Life, and The Peony Pavilion. A dialogue between Chen Jun, Professor at Peking University, and Barbara Mittler, Professor at Heidelberg University, will illuminate various meanings of the search for “home” in these works.

    260522 Dialogues Across Time and Space: Contemporary Resonances of Kunqu Opera

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      Völkerkundemuseum vPSt
      Hauptstraße 235
      69117 Heidelberg

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    Dialogues Across Time and Space: Contemporary Resonances of Kunqu Opera

    All Dates of the Event 'Peripheral Futures – Reading History from the “Margins”'

    Where is future created? Based on some of the research done in the Thematic Research Network “Denk(t)räume–(Re)thinking and Building Futures” and at CAPAS, the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University, this event series takes the question of building futures from the margins as its starting point for a review of some of the seminal literature in global history. The aim is to foreground marginalized sources (material peripheries, e.g., the “un-disciplined" knowledge produced by the arts), positions (socio-political pheripheries, e.g., that of indigenous protesters), and regions of the world (spatial peripheries, e.g., parts of the world that do not make headline news) as well as specific times (chronological pheripheries: questioning why there may be a privileging of specific periods in time while neglecting others). 

    In taking what is read as “marginal”, its voices and sources seriously, and by including artistic and activist resources, this series offers an intervention to established academic reasoning: at a time when apocalyptic narratives and authoritarian visions of the future dominate public discourse, the events focus on different forms of “critical hope” that can emerge in times of crisis: analytically grounded, socially engaged, and convinced that a diverse, collectively shaped future arises from the productive tension between different worldviews, the event series sets out to test out transcultural perspectives on and alternative approaches to the writing of histories (of and for the future).

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