Zombieland Europe

What if the zombie apocalypse really happened? What if Europe was suddenly completely destroyed,
because the population is haunted by a lethal virus that causes most of the people to walk the earth as the living dead. While we-- the last survivors – struggle desperately for some cultural and social order.
Encircled by the beings which have only one thing in mind-- to eat our brains and bodies.
In a Europe that must invent itself anew, we come together with young European participants searching for ways and possibilities to restore and innovate our lives. For one week we will dedicate ourselves to finding a cure that will allow us to face and overcome the Zombiesque excesses of a globalized world, whch is dominated by phenomenon like climate change, terrorism, capitalism, neoliberalism, misleading media discourses, racism, escapism, lack of freedom, nihilism and revolution. In short: We are looking for new ways to free the world and ourselves from malfunctioning social and political systems.
The idea for this “Open-Court-Philosophy-Project” lies within the nature of humanity itself. Over the last decade the Zombie-Narrative has become a viral metaphor for the state of the world as is. Series and movies deal with stories of societies that are violently thrown into apocalyptic futures… futures inside which humans become objects and victims of their own desires and wrongdoings. The genre is highly successful for its mirroring, political quality and young people are very familiar with it.
In this project we are using the Zombie-Myth to approach the most pressing individual, political and social topics of our time in an innovative, immersive learning space.
An exciting question will be whether and how deep in the zombie metamorphosis we already are.
What about our consciousness? Are we still active and creative members of European society or are we also at risk to be infected by a numbing virus leaving us with no agency for the futures to come? We will use the Zombie-Apocalypse metaphor to explore alternative ways to live and design a world inside which we can live life to the fullest – on all levels.

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