Part 1 takes place on 23.03.2021, 18:00–22:00. Part 2 takes place on 24.03.2021, 18:00–22:00.

Armen Avanessian will read his latest book, Geteilte Zeit – Briefe an meinen Sohn [Divided Time – Letters to My Son], on two evenings. Written in the first year of his son's life, the book may be published in 2035.

In it, the philosopher describes their everyday life together, their shared present, and addresses a reader in the future who will be once twenty, once forty, and at the end of the century eighty years old. From concrete experiences and descriptions of everyday life, reflections on general ethical, social and philosophical questions develop.

What is a start, birth, beginning, and why has male-dominated philosophy been able to grasp these only inadequately? What are the constrictions of classical conceptions of love, and to what extent does intimacy point us in a different direction? What does it mean today to be a father, to have a family, and to pass on or take on an inheritance (or, conversely, to renounce, strike back, and settle accounts with one's family)? And to what extent, if nothing else, do we need to rethink death and learning to die – as perhaps the classic topoi of philosophical self-reflection – not only with an eye to future generations, but from their future threat to the entire species? Even today, Divided Time is a message in a bottle from a present that has already passed.

«What I write to you, what I have written, wants to embrace you, wants to sum up your time and my time. For writing always comes too late, lags behind, but then, at the same time, I write it all for you, my future reader, far too soon. That's why I tried to write towards you.
I wrote to you to remind me of the future.
I wrote to you to prepare you for the past.
I wrote to you because you have already changed it for me.
I wrote to you so you could read all this again.
I wrote to you because I couldn't help it.
From our shared time I wrote to you.
And who would have thought that there are wishes and dreams that come true.»

Walk past Cabaret Voltaire between 18:00 and 22:00. The reading will be broadcast on Spiegelgasse and Münstergasse. In addition, you will receive a page of a book that may be published in the distant future – but like this exists distributed across Zurich.

No registration required.