In the organizer's words:

How can we take away the gravity of the times we live in without denying it or trying to escape it? The literary scholar Joseph Vogl reflects on this in his essay "Meteor. Versuch über das Schwebende": "Not every opinion evokes a counter-opinion. Instead, with a little levitation, a space can be opened up for an eventfulness that endures what has no outcome." Under the title "Floating. A program of contrasts in difficult times", the Literaturhaus Stuttgart is celebrating its 25th birthday with a year-round "hovering program". We start with Joseph Vogl and his eponymous essay. Throughout the year, we want to use literature and language in various formats and thematic settings to move "from the gravity of facts and petrified world situations to the breath of possibilities". "The path of history is not like the course of a billiard ball that has been bounced, but rather the changeability of clouds and their paths," says Joseph Vogl. And literature in particular has the power to absorb the unfinished, the ambiguous or the alienating. Let's float along!

In cooperation with the IZKT and the Hospitalhof/Evangelisches Bildungszentrum