Panel Talk: “What Do You Fear?” at the ifa Galerie Stuttgart
On Tuesday, 6 May 2025, a panel talk with Prof. Dr. Sibylle Baumbach, Ülkü Süngün, Martin Mutschler and Gitte Zschoch on the construction of otherness and foreignness in Verdi’s opera Otello will take place at the ifa Galerie Stuttgart. The event is part of the exhibition Shadowily in Different Tongues at the ifa Gallery.
Verdi’s opera Otello, like Shakespeare’s original, tells of the brutal consequences that the violent construction of otherness can have. The dialogue draws connections to a broader social context: Who defines whether someone is “foreign”?
The discussion will be moderated by Stuttgart cultural activist Mike Schattschneider (who is responsible for the Butterfly House and the Linden Museum, among others, and is associated with the State Opera through the JOiN House project). He talks to Gitte Zschoch (Secretary General of the ifa), Ülkü Süngün (artist), Sibylle Baumbach (Professor of English at the University of Stuttgart and President of the German Shakespeare Society) and Martin Mutschler (dramaturg) about the means by which “foreignness” is narrated in Otello, about contemporary receptions and the historical impossibility of the eponymous character.
The participants will discuss the subversive potential of art, but also ask themselves, in view of the new Stuttgart production, what a responsible approach to opera repertoire, literary texts and museum exhibits may look like today. How does the cultural reproduction of stereotypes and the reproduction of discriminatory language affect our society? What could a progressive approach to outdated material look like? And what responsibility do cultural institutions bear in times of a political shift to the right?