Night of Ideas 2022

Schedule

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PM

6:00 Ends at: 9:00 pm

Performance

Washington, DC

Live Music

With Malcolm X Drummers & Dancers, The Experience Band & Show, Flamenco by Miguelito and Mariana Gatto.

Malcolm X Drummers & Dancers are a group of tremendously talented artists that grew out of the cultural experience demonstrated at Malcolm X Park and is founded by Doc Powell. Drummers from all walks of life, other musicians of all varieties, and spectators of all nationalities and ages, come together and create a wonderful expression of creative energies.

The Experience Band & Show was founded in the fall of 2017. The Trombone King created and led this feel-good funk, pop, r&b, jazz, go-go, and sometimes rock infused band. The band has become the group without a genre or traditional standards of music & is well known in DC as #thepeoplesband.

Guitarist Miguelito and flamenco dancer Mariana Gatto have been regularly performing together in the DC area since 2018. Known for their “tablao” style of improvised flamenco, every performance is created in the moment. They perform every week at Taberna del Alabardero and other venues.

Shanna Lim + (TBD). Shanna Lim is a veteran of the DC’s dance and performance art scene whose work is empowered by human interaction, tears, joy and the rawness of street art.

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PM

6:15 Ends at: 6:30 pm

Talk

Washington, DC

Register
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PM

6:30 Ends at: 7:15 pm

Talk

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, DC

Register

Panel # 1: How Democracies Can Come Out Stronger From the Challenges They Are Facing?

Caroline Fredrickson, Sophia Rosenfeld, Jeffrey Rosen

In our first panel, “How democracies can come out stronger from the current challenges they are facing”, Caroline Fredrickson and Sophia Rosenfeld will explore the many ways in which, in their recent history, France and the United States have reinvented their institutions and overcome challenges to liberal democracy. If the past is prologue, what do those transformative refounding tell us about the present, on the role of political parties, of participatory democracy, of community activism and of constitutionalism.

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PM

6:30 Ends at: 9:00 pm

Exhibition

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, DC

French VR Experiences

Villa Albertine presents a French VR Cinema Experience with a selection of 3 amazing VR experiences!

The Hourglass is a thrilling chase through night and time Vincent and Cathy steal a briefcase from a businessman – just for fun. But what this briefcase contains is far beyond what they could imagine: an hour-glass!

The Real Thing is a VR journey into a copy of our world, exploring real-life stories inside China’s replicas of Paris, Venice and London. Around China’s largest cities, entire neighbourhoods have been inspired by foreign models. The film explores the most stunning of these “fake cities”. It travels from Paris to London and Venice – without leaving China. The inhabitants guide us in the parallel world where they have chosen to live. As VR leads the way to virtual tourism, copycat cities compete to offer a real experience of static travel. Walking the thin line between reality and virtuality, this documentary combines both to enhance a whole new feeling of ubiquity.

In Planet ∞ world in ruins, only fungi and mold grow in the middle of gigantic dried insects bodies. When a weather change occurs, rain irrigates the arid planet and floods it gradually. In the water springs an ecosystem, populated by giant carnivorous tadpoles.

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PM

7:20 Ends at: 8:05 pm

Talk

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, DC

Register

Panel # 2: Our Global Institutions, Our Democratic Selves: Who Governs?

Rama Yade, Stavros Lambrinidis, Stuart Holliday, Jeffrey Rosen

In “Our Global Institutions, Our Democratic Selves: Who Governs?”, our second panel, Stavros Lambridinis, Stuart Holliday and Rama Yade will discuss the role of international organizations in the rebuilding of democratic institutions confronted to the rise of multiple forms of nationalism but also to a discredited model of globalization exclusively destined to promote free trade. Can organizations whose mission statements were crafted in the wake of World War II or at the apex of the Cold War inform and provide a frame for the crises of the Twenty-First Century? In 2022, how does one articulate a need for more direct citizen engagement and global governance?

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PM

8:10 Ends at: 9:00 pm

Talk

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, DC

Register

Panel # 3: Common Goods: the Three Pillars of Revitalization

Gaël Giraud, Amanda Frost, Laurent Dubois, Jeffrey Rosen

The law, norms, and citizen (re)appropriation of democratic processes are the grammar of the rebuilding of our liberal models and institutions. In our final panel, “Common Goods: the Three Pillars of Revitalization”, Laurent Dubois, Amanda Frost and Gaël Giraud will offer insights into a new grammar of democracy by exploring the themes of human rights, immigration and justice, but also of environmental rights and citizen empowerment. Democracy is indeed our most valuable common good and yet we struggle on a daily basis to avoid the fracturing of our bodies politic. Should the rule of law be our only guide?

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