Das Erdbeben in Chili, Heinrich v. Kleist

In the organizer's words:

A union of love in a monastery garden, a birth on Corpus Christi, an earthquake that makes the humiliated of society powerful - Kleist's text is full of ambivalences, contrasts, paradoxes and the seemingly irresolvable. For him, the natural catastrophe of the earthquake is a catalyst for happiness and knowledge. Kleist archaically tells us that the truly threatening quake takes place within us humans. This gives rise to irreversible spirals of violence, love and submission to authority.

Past meets future - seemingly without the possibility of a present that takes its time - love meets rage, seemingly without revelation in the mind - again and again in the ritual exchange of seduction that becomes social control.

Ruben Sabel and Christian Freund bring Kleist's novella to playful life in the Rabbit Hole, freely following Kleist's basic understanding:

"Why, I thought, does the vault not sink, since it has no support? It stands, I answered, because all the stones want to collapse at once - and I drew from this thought an indescribably refreshing consolation, which always stood by my side until the decisive moment with the hope that I, too, would hold myself up when everything let me sink.