The conference is dedicated to the 120th anniversary of Hannah Arendt’s birth and the 90th anniversary of Václav Havel’s birth.
Organised by: KUD Apokalipsa and the Søren Kierkegaard Central European Research Institute Ljubljana
In cooperation with: Cankarjev dom and the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme at the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO
Partners, sponsors and supporters: Cankarjev dom Ljubljana, MOST


Friday, 25. 9. 2026. Alma Karlin Hall

13:00 Opening of the Conference, Ceremonial Addresses

13:20 Wolfgang Müller-Funk (AT): The Riddles of Power and Cruelty. In Dialogues with Hannah Arendt, Václav Havel, and Others

13:50 MUSICAL INTERLUDE
Three movements from Bach’s Cello Suites Performed by: Vladimir Kovačič (SLO)

15:15 BOOK PRESENTATION
Wolfgang Müller-Funk (AT): On Cruelty, Moderated by Iztok Osojnik (SLO)

16:00 Tomáš Hejduk (CZ): Dissent, Moral Grandstanding and Self-Righteousness not only in Václav Havel´s Power of Powerless

16:30 Peter Kondrla (SK): Active Resignation and Intellectual Humility: Subjectivity as Resistance in Post-Totalitarian Contexts

17:00  In vino veritas Moderated by Niko Goršič (SLO)

18:30 Primož Repar (SLO): Kierkegaard, Arendt, Havel and the New Oikonomy of Relations, Existential Turn: From Anxiety to Responsibility

Saturday, 26. 9. 2026, Alma Karlin Hall

10:00 Bojan Žalec (SLO): Flight into the Digital and Flight from the Digital: A Sartrean Interpretation of Contemporary Escapism

10:30 Peter Rusnák (SK): The Significance of the Rule of Law and Education in Post-Totalitarian Reality 

11:00 Marko Markič (SLO): The Totalising Present and Existential Stress. Ontological Aspects of Everyday Affectivity

11:30 Andrzej Slowikowski (PL): The Ideal of the Political Subject and the Attitude of the Anti-Political Subject on the Basis of the Works of Søren Kierkegaard, Max Scheler, and Hannah Arendt

12:00 Thomas Diesner (DE): Totalization and Identification

12:30 Thomas Menamparampil (IND): Apocalyptic Abuse of Power

15:00 Amanda Marie Platek (DK): Tell Me What To Do

15:30 Stanislava Repar (SK/SLO): Kje smo končali z Novembrom ´89 na (Češko)Slovaškem: Who is afraid of Václav Havel?

16:00 Igor Tavilla (IT): Kierkegaard and the "Class Struggle" between Genders in Post-Totalitarian Societies

16:30 Tara Peternell (SLO): The Relation of Metanoetics and Absolute Nothingness in the Philosophy of Tanabe

16:45 Gašper Pirc (SLO): Performative Authoritarianism, the Politics of Recognition, and the Transformation of Public Discourse in the Digital Age

17:15 Matej Kapus (SLO): The Problem of Inner and Outer Responsibility 

17:30 Milosz Wierzbinski (PL): Manifest of the Kierkegaardian Subject

18:00 Gorazd Kovačič (SLO): The Concept of Totalitarian Government, and Post-totalitarianism, according to Hannah Arendt

18:30 Torben Lautrup (DEN): Why Kierkegaard Personally would Look out for Alternatives to a Mass Society like the Danish of Today

19:00 WORD – IMAGE – VOICE
Slovak Literature: Reading and Discussion (led by Stanislava Repar)

Sunday, 27. 9. 2026, Alma Karlin Hall

10:00 James Griffith (USA): Arendt on Natality and Derrida on Autogenesis
(ZOOM Lecture)
 
10:30 Abrahim H. Khan (CAN): From the “Crowd” to the “Concrete Other”: Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer on Subjectivity, Truth, and Responsibility 
(ZOOM Lecture) 

11:00 Iztok Osojnik (SLO): Schizo-Subject and the Autonomy of Poetic Speech

11:30 Dagmar Kusa (SK): Truth and Politics: An Arendtian Exploration of Transformations in Slovak Political Identity

12:00 Ciril Klajnšček (SLO): Dare to Be Human: Being Responsible in the Age of Globalitarianism

12:30 Luka Trebežnik (SLO): Totality and the Trace of Otherness: Deconstruction of Totalitarianism and the Groundlessness of Ethics  

13:00 Janko Rožič (SLO): TOTALitarism – A Misunderstood Whole  

13:30 Violet Anderson (USA): Dire Straits of the Soul: Totalitarian Destruction of the Individual's Freedom 

14:00  CLOSING OF THE 14TH CONFERENCE AND WORKSHOP

14:30 PICNIC / LUNCH AT THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE ASSOCIATION AND INSTITUTE

Launched in 1996, the Prišleki series published by LUD Literatura celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2026. To date, 140 titles have appeared in the series. Previous editors include Matevž Kos, Urban Vovk, Goran Dekleva, Petra Koršič, and Andrej Hočevar, while Veronika Šoster – moderator of the event – has held the role since 2021.

The Prišleki series publishes new Slovenian novels, short story and poetry collections, often introducing entirely new literary voices to the Slovenian publishing landscape. Alongside award-winning titles, the series has also produced numerous longlisted and shortlisted works, including Veronika Dintinjana’s poetry collection V suhem doku (Jenko Award), the Novo Mesto Short Award-winning collections Obvoz by Franci Novak and Leteči ljudje by Ajda Bračič, as well as recipients of the Kritiško Sito Award, presented by the Association of Slovenian Literary Critics to emerging authors Jernej Županič, Muanis Sinanović, Ajda Bračič, and Ana Pepelnik. In recent years, novels from the series have regularly been shortlisted for the Kresnik Award, while the collection has twice received the Brumen Award for outstanding Slovenian design for its iconic covers by Zoran Pungerčar.

To mark this milestone anniversary, authors published in the Prišleki series will gather in Alma Karlin Hall to reflect on past achievements and read excerpts from their works – from Andrej Blatnik’s novel Tao ljubezni (1996) to Nika Nikolič’s novel Zataknjeni v vezju (2026).
 

The Lastovka Award will be presented to the author of the winning entry in the 35th short story competition organised by the Ars programme of Radio Slovenia.

This year, 274 stories were submitted to the competition. The winning story, selected by a three-member expert jury, will be read aloud at the award ceremony. In the days leading up to the event, shortlisted stories and their authors will be presented on the radio programme Literarni nokturno.

The competition was launched in 1992 by Andrej Arko and his colleagues. Initially, it featured separate categories for shorter and longer texts, before later focusing on a single category encompassing, on the one hand, the more narrative genre of flash fiction or microfiction, established in American literature, and, on the other, the more reflective and lyrical vignette familiar from Slovenian literary history.

This year’s award ceremony will be broadcast live on Radio Slovenia’s Ars Programme. The event will be directed by Klemen Markovčič, with Matej Juh as screenwriter.

Running time: 90 minutes, without an intermission

The world we live in teaches us to treat living nature and objects – and, ultimately, people as well – primarily in functional terms, focusing on the purpose they serve, what they enable us to do and their usefulness in everyday life. The idea that there is something inexpressible – something that eludes understanding – not only in living beings but also in ordinary, everyday objects is becoming increasingly alien to us. We rarely allow ourselves to recognise that there is a part of reality we can never fully capture in words, explanations or categories – a world that Federico Campagna refers to as the world of magic.

Stvari, ki jih ne morem povedati o stvareh (Things I Can't Say About Things) is a performance-lecture in which actor Jerko Marčić takes us on an emotional journey through the different layers of our relationship with specific things and objects. What might be hidden in an entirely ordinary object? Through a personal story, philosophical reflections and an unusual exploration of an old toy car he inherited from his father, new meanings begin to emerge in everyday things – their capacity to contain far more than meets the eye. Throughout the performance, Jerko gradually reveals how he ultimately found the meaning of the things that surround him – the world itself – not in their symbolic meaning, but precisely in their radical presence.
 

Acknowledgements: Nikolina Rafaj, Blaž Šef, Matej Recer, Mateja Dremelj, Miloš Janjić, Mladinsko Theatre

Slovenian premiere: WED, 16 September 2026, Alma Karlin Hall, Cankarjev dom
Croatian premiere: SAT, 10 October 2026, Kuća Klajn, Klanjec