European Centre for Art, Culture and Science

Sunday May 18 2008 / Europe

20 Years Gulliver: Konrád in Amsterdam

14 December 2007 was the 20th anniversary of Günter Grass' invitation to prominent writers and intellectuals from 20 countries from former Eastern and Western Europe to meet for a week in the Hilton Hotel Amsterdam. They talked about the role that artists and intellectuals could play in the dialogue between citizens from the former East bloc states and Western Europe. After this meeting the foundation of the informal working group Gulliver was a fact. Since 1988 Gulliver has had its office in Felix Meritis.

Despite the Cold War, the organizers were able to bring people like Tadeusz Konwicki from Poland, Andrei Voznesensky and Andrei Bitov from the former Soviet Union, Danilo Kis from former Yugoslavia and Augustin Buzura from Romania to Amsterdam. Unfortunately Václav Havel and György Konrád were not able to come. Havel was afraid that he would not be able to return to Czechoslovakia, and Konrád was not issued with a visa for this particular meeting. That is why Konrád was invited later to give a lecture about the Central European self-image in the Hilton Hotel Amsterdam.

After that memorable week many smaller and bigger meetings took place in such locations as former Leningrad, Bucharest, Istanbul and Amsterdam.

Now that it is hard to imagine that a Cold War actually took place in Europe, it is worthwhile to consider the future expectations concerning today's Europe. The programme celebrates the influence of the Gulliver meetings and in particular the city of Amsterdam on the participants in those meetings. Our special guest is György Konrád. Because of his frequent visits to Amsterdam we can virtually consider him as a citizen of Amsterdam. He will read from his novella Amsterdam, which he wrote in 1999 commissioned by Felix Meritis. Michaël Zeeman, Nelleke Noordervliet, Dragan Klaic and others will reflect on peculiar meetings in bizarre circumstances and we will stimulate a careful look into the future.

This afternoon is held in the framework of the lustrum of Felix Meritis and is made possible by Hilton Hotel Amsterdam, Amsterdam Wereldboekenstad, Athenaeum Bookshop and Felix Meritis.

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