As German writer Mithu Sanyal confirms, it's a preconceived idea that love and politics don't go together. They are in fact polar opposites. Moreover, love has become a dirty word in politics. We can talk on social media about sex till the cows come home, but love, it's too cute, too lovey-dovey, and too unpolitical.

In light of recent events, a discussion about the role of love in our world seems more relevant than ever before. But this isn’t the romantic notion of love we are more commonly familiar with, it’s the love that cultural scientist and journalist Mithu Sanyal claims is sorely lacking in our world. A political love. It's the absence of this love that she believes is responsible for so much social injustice and inequality.

What exactly is a quantum computer? Have you ever wondered what all the media hype is about or how quantum computing may impact our everyday lives? In this episode, we talk to quantum expert Emily Haworth, curator Lucy Rose Sollitt and Professor Eduardo Miranda to learn about quantum technologies and the arts.

Over the coming weeks, the Goethe-Institut will explore these questions and more under the umbrella of a new project and international events series called ‘Living in a Quantum State’. Events in London, Dublin, Beijing and San Francisco will explore the role of civil society in regulating emerging technologies and examine how the arts may help us to communicate and understand these major scientific advances. In this podcast, we are diving right into the core of this complex theme to explore the possibilities and challenges that quantum computing will bring.

For more information and all event listings, see Goethe.de/quantum or follow @livinginaquantumstate on Instagram.

Imagine life beyond crises. A world beyond catastrophe, wars and climate crisis. How would you like to live? And now think ahead to 2050. Looking back on your present self, how would you have wanted to have lived? In this episode we talk to curator and project developer Isabel Raabe of Talking Objects Lab and curator and dance dramaturg Thomas Schaupp, one half of the curatorial team behind Goethe Morph* Iceland: How we always wanted to have lived. Leading up to and during September 2022, the project invites the public to envision alternative ways of living together through exhibitions, workshops, performances and conversations.

And with Isabel and Thomas’ involvement at the heart of the programme, we thought it would be a good idea to talk to them about things like food, decolonisation and creating a common positive future.

If you’re interested to find out more about the project, visit www.goethe.de/morphiceland.

Author and curator Dan Hicks, best known for his book The Brutish Museums (2020), takes stock of the debate around the enduring legacies of empire in our museums, universities and society at large. In this episode, he talks about recent events in Europe and North America, from removing statues and un-naming buildings to returning artefacts from colonial museums. As a society how can we make amends for the past? And what are the next steps for upholding antiracism in the future?

In 2013, the German Museums Association (Deutscher Museumsbund) issued guidance on the treatment of human remains in museum collections, in which they introduced a novel concept. The idea of 'Unrechtskontext' (context of injustice) should, they suggested, guide curatorial ethics when assessing the circumstances in which museum collections were acquired. Among considerations here was not just the contexts of the past, but also whether any particular injustice 'continued to have an effect in the present'.

For the Goethe Annual Lecture 2021, Dan Hicks posed the following questions: How should we understand the 'Unrechtskontexte' of colonial legacies today? By the standards of the time - or by the values that we hold today? And how can these legacies be meaningfully dismantled?

The Goethe-Institut London and the Somerset House Studios are collaborating to establish a new international artist residency programme to support a Germany-based artist working at the intersection of music, art and technology.

For the inaugural edition from October 2021 we invited Berlin-based and Texas-born DJane, writer and performer Juliana Huxtable for the residency. Time to discuss her influences, visions, opinions, but also the current situation of clubbing in a global pandemic for a brief moment on a cloudy Thursday afternoon in South Kensington, London.

“Going Green and the SouthKenGreenTrail - a greener infrastructure for a sustainable metropolis”. A podcast with artist Natalie Taylor, the architecture and design collective Urban Radicals and landscape architect Adam Harris.

In the summer of 2020, British author and broadcaster John Kampfner released a new book with a provocative title... . In this episode, we share his 2019 Brady Lecture with the same title: . And yes, the title made us a bit uncomfortable too. But don’t worry; this isn’t an episode about one nation being superior to any others; it’s about what democratic countries in the West can learn from a unified Germany that they helped to create.

With Brexit in the rear view, the decades-long discussion and debate about the role and purpose of the European Union has taken on a new urgency. In this episode, we ask two young intellectuals–one from the UK and one from Germany–to reflect on what Europe means to them. Alice Boyd is a composer, theater maker and environmental campaigner from the UK. Simon Strauß is a German historian, writer and journalist. Both were born into the European Union and have used their work to think critically about what it means now and what it can mean.

Art has the power to change the world by highlighting critical issues, but what responsibility does the art world have to make their own changes and take inventory of internal practices that are unsustainable or inequitable, to address the environmental cost of putting on exhibitions? In this episode, Iwona Blazwick, Director of the renowned Whitechapel Gallery in East London, grapples with these questions on the future of museums and galleries. Transcript available at goethe.de/uk/podcast

The creative writing of Black feminist authors has revolutionary potential. It challenges dominant assumptions and expands the horizons of the current literary audience. In this episode, activist and author Sharon Dodua Otoo honours her literary ancestors and mentors, condemns the racist structures that deprived them of deserved praise during their lifetimes, and explores how Black feminist creative writing can move our society forward. Transcript available at goethe.de/uk/podcast