Magazine

Atlanta-based writer and artist Hannah S. Palmer came to Marseilles in April 2023 as part of Villa Albertine’s City/Cité program and Terres Communes, an event co-produced by the Guide Bureau of GR2013 and the Cité de l’Agriculture, with Friche la belle de Mai. A leading Atlanta voice in ecology and environmental justice, she has developed numerous projects on the issue of water and urban rivers. It was also on the subject of water that she wrote on her return from Marseille.

For the 2024 Night of Ideas, Na’Taki Osborne Jelks vividly portrays Atlanta’s contrasting nature. Despite its rich history of Civil Rights activism, Atlanta still grapples with severe racial and environmental inequalities. An environmental scientist, Jelks emphasizes the importance of community activism and organizations in dismantling systemic oppression and creating a more healthy and equitable environment for everyone.

This year’s Night of Ideas is an invitation to meditate on the twilight of cities. Sébastien Marot—who is participating in the Atlanta, Miami and Durham editions—takes this opportunity to lay the hypothesis of an urban exodus as a response to the environmental crisis. Yet this evolution seems both inevitable and impossible, it is caught in a form of cognitive dissonance. There are two ways out: be a magician or a prophet.

Is the notion of Cultural Rights, which appeared nearly 80 years ago, still relevant in the age of the Internet? In this article, based on their intervention at the Night of Ideas in Atlanta, Marie Picard and Emmanuel Vergès place themselves at the intersection of cultural rights and digital cultures to envision a new cultural framework that is inclusive, open and sustainable. The stakes are high; it is nothing less than the possibility of democracy.

Activist and researcher Terence Lester investigates the roots of hostile architecture and its impact on homelessness and discrimination. Drawing from personal experiences of racism in the Jim Crow south, Lester explores the intersection of race, class, and homelessness. As hostile architecture further marginalizes those without an address, this article illuminates the power of belonging, re-imaging homelessness through the Lens of Martin Luther Kings’s b “Beloved Community”, and urging readers to confront systemic barriers for a more inclusive and just society.

One can be a historian of the United States, a specialist in Black history and theories of Afrodiasporic descent, and yet be struck by the specificity of Atlanta. This was Maboula Soumahoro’s experience during her residency, and she concluded that theoretical knowledge—such as the conditions of emergence of a figure like Martin Luther King or of Hip Hop culture—does not replace physical experience in understanding how a Southern city became a major home for the Black-African diaspora.

At the age of 23, Franco-British conductor Stéphanie Childress has already made an important impact on the world of orchestras. Currently one of the very few women to conduct an orchestra in the U.S. as assistant conductor with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, she has managed to get away from it all as part of her residency with Villa Albertine, to discover other great American orchestras. Her objective is to determine if and how a city’s culture affects the way its orchestra sounds. And what part women now play in this story.

A philosopher, economist, writer and musician, the Senegalese Felwine Sarr is one of the most prominent intellectual figures of the moment. In recent years, his work has taken on a new form: that of plays. Two of them are currently on tour in the United States, and carry this singular voice that invites us to believe in the possibility of utopia.

Atlanta is often considered the “Black Mecca,” the real-life embodiment of the legendary Wakanda of superhero Black Panther. And yet, for historian Maurice J. Hobson, this vision inherited from the city’s past—as the cradle of the Civil Rights movement and land of Martin Luther King Jr—is more nuanced. Black people’s true experiences are more diverse than the clichéd image, and Atlanta needs a new impetus towards equality and inclusion.

While theater is often considered the “art of the human” par excellence, it has become one of the primary venues for questioning the non-human and the more-than-human. The plays “Moving Earth” and “Matters”, presented on December 2 and 3, 2021 in Atlanta by the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Alliance Française and the Goethe Zentrum, show the contribution that theater can make in the era of the Anthropocene, as well as question the link between the stage and the social sciences.

The Villa Albertine Magazine accompanies the launch of this new cultural institution from France in the United States. An online publication focused on the major issues of our time, and driven by the conviction that exchanges between creators, researchers and cultural professionals are the key to a possible common ground.

“Sometimes it does you good to feel you’re doing classical research and not have to justify yourself.” Maboula Soumahoro is an academic and one of the pioneers of Black Studies in France.

“I have become deeply concerned in recent years about the risk that a rising generation is losing faith in the principles of free speech.” Suzanne Nossel is the CEO of PEN America, which seeks to address equity and anti-racism issues while also protecting and promoting free speech.

“The academic field plays a critical role in the development of gaming and esports.” Vice President of Ecosystems for the Metro Atlanta Chamber, looks back at how the city has developed an ecosystem conducive to cultural and creative industries.