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In The Lucifer Effect, a fascinating and, at the same time, terrifying study of evil, Philip Zimbardo, a brilliant American social psychologist, asks a seemingly banal and yet important question – important, if we want to understand the nature of relations within society today – about what we need, in our hate of other human beings, to allow ourselves to separate, torment and finally kill them. According to Zimbardo, violence against the freedom and independence of a human being always looks the same. Force is spectacular. Force does not require thinking. Does this mean that violence makes the world go round?
This provocative thesis, which is the motto of this year’s Festival, is a result of a diagnosis given in their productions by the artists invited to take part in the Festival. In the world they describe, social, political, bodily or economic violence is a tool by means of which people try to put the world in order again. Violence understood as a transgression of the limits of human freedom is not only the domain of those in power or of political systems, but also a tool more and more willingly used by individuals. The artists you will get to know during the eight Festival days do not shy away from difficult issues, they are not afraid to show our world today in its darkest spheres. They do not glorify violence, they do not put tormentors and criminals on a pedestal. Their productions are a radical call on us to stand up for humanity in our everyday life, to defend human dignity and freedom. Resistance, courage, awareness of our boundaries, respect, equality – these are sources of human dignity and freedom, which, as the productions presented during the Festival show, allow us to hope that even if violence does make the world go round, we do not have to take part in this.
Wroclaw Rynek 7-9 [1 floor]
Poland
+48 71 777 87 43
Festival Director: Krystyna Meissner