On 28 November, the CPPD festival Voices Rising will be coming to Vienna. The highlight of the event will be the opening of the new Dynamic Memory Lab »listening | re:member | re:act«.
PROGRAMM:
NETWORK MEETING »Zuhören nach innen«
for representatives from remembrance-political and cultural institutions
Moderation: Benjamin Fischer & Eșim Karakuyu
10:00 am –1:30 pm | FLUCC, Vienna
*
DML OPENING & GUIDED TOUR
»listening | re:member | re:act«
from 4 pm | FLUCC, Vienna
*
STAFFELGESPRÄCH WEITERHÖREN
4 – 6 pm | FLUCC Vienna, Wanne
*
The members of the CPPD are committed to a pluralistic culture of remembrance. Networks that address social conflicts, in particular, run the risk of locating these conflicts primarily outside their own circles. However, the fault lines in society do not end at the boundaries of one’s own network. They run through our life stories, political convictions, social positions and interpretations of history.
This applies to issues of migration, displacement and belonging, as well as social inequality and economic insecurity, climate protection and distributive justice, war, rearmament and conscription, Israel and Palestine, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism. Nor do issues such as how to deal with the AfD, gender and sexual diversity, freedom of expression and protest, religion and secularism, as well as East-West, urban-rural and generational conflicts stop at the CPPD’s doorstep.
Behind these debates lie recurring fundamental tensions: belonging and limitation, universal rights and particular solidarity, security and freedom, moral clarity and compromise, social transformation and social acceptability, representation and institutional authority, memory as responsibility and memory as a power structure. These tensions cannot simply be resolved. They must be endured, negotiated and translated into shared practice.
»Zuhören nach innen« therefore applies the Dynamic Memory Lab’s approach to our own circle – neither as a forum for accusations nor as a consensus-building machine. It is not about determining the correct shared position, resolving existing conflicts or achieving unanimity. It is about listening to one another precisely where beliefs diverge; giving voice to uncertainties, hurts and contradictions; and recognising which experiences and perspectives have so far been given little space within the network.
The aim is to reach a shared agreement on how the CPPD intends to deal with its internal differences: What is non-negotiable? Where can dissent be allowed to persist? How do we talk about hurt feelings and power imbalances? And how do we remain capable of acting together without glossing over differences or rendering them invisible through hasty consensus? Listening does not mean avoiding the conflict. It is an attempt to resolve it responsibly together.
What changes when we truly listen to those voices that have long been shaping the memory and future of European societies? The culture of remembrance is a contested field throughout Europe. The Dynamic Memory Lab ‘listening | re:member | re:act’ presents memory as a practice: vibrant, plural, malleable – and as something that is actively shaped. The focus is on people and initiatives that remain capable of taking action in the midst of social crises: they remember, organise, challenge, connect, repair and create spaces in which forms of coexistence based on solidarity become possible. Their work is both intervention and reflection – it shifts what is remembered in Europe and who has a voice in the process.
This transnational exhibition project brings together the work of the Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse (CPPD) in Berlin with the ‘Erinnern in Zukunft’ initiative at the Brunnenpassage in Vienna. The Dynamic Memory Lab is an innovative exhibition format that explores urban experiences of migration, participation and belonging. It is based on a political practice of listening that connects experiences, broadens the concept of belonging and makes social change imaginable: for the exhibition, audio and video interviews were conducted with around 20 civil society actors from migrant-diasporic, anti-racist and artistic contexts. The concerns of all those involved are also made visually and tactilely tangible through a symbolic object or material. The voices heard here, and the objects that accompany them, make visitors participants in social change – without co-opting them. Those who listen are not persuaded, but rather brought into a relationship with the subject matter. The Dynamic Memory Lab is thus also an artistic intervention at Vienna’s Praterstern: in a place where tens of thousands change trains, pass each other by and move on every day, a space for lingering emerges – the transit area becomes a space of resonance.
On 28 November 2026, the Dynamic Memory Lab will open at FLUCC in Vienna, to mark the “60th anniversary of the recruitment agreement with the former Yugoslavia”.
We would like to thank Flucc Wien and the festival “Die Verhältnisse zum Tanzen bringen” for their cooperation.
The heimaten network is an initiative of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt as part of the heimaten programme, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media pursuant to a resolution of the German Bundestag.
The Dynamic Memory Lab is a project of the Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse (CPPD) and is implemented by DialoguePerspectives. Discussing Religions and Worldviews e.V. The Dynamic Memory Lab “listening | re:member | re:act” is produced in collaboration with the “Erinnern in Zukunft” initiative at the Brunnenpassage in Vienna ©CPPD, Berlin/Vienna 2026
What changes when a conversation is based not on answering, but on listening on?
‘Weiterhören’ is a conversational experiment: activists from different movements, communities and areas of conflict take turns sitting at the discussion table – for 20 minutes at a time. Without traditional moderation, without a panel discussion, and without a closing statement, each person builds on what has been said before contributing their own perspective. This creates a conversation that continues to evolve. The audience also becomes part of the format. In the 1:10 conversation, one activist sits opposite ten listeners. Visitors take turns sitting in the empty chair, ask up to three questions and then make way for the next person. The principle is not debate, but encounter.
The conversations are recorded and subsequently published as a podcast.
