What exactly is Swiss director Milo Rau’s General Assembly? The ambitious gathering at the Schaubühne takes place November 3-5, gathering together 60 representatives from all over the world to discuss hefty topics under titles like “Diplomatic Relations, Sanctions, and Wars” (Sat, Nov 4, 10:00), “Migration and Border Regimes” (17:00), and the “Natural Global Commons” (Sun, Nov 5, 13:30), to name a few. Each “plenary session” of the General Assembly lasts three hours and each assembly representative is allowed to speak for five minutes about a particular topic, after which he or she is questioned or challenged by another representative with expertise in the same area for four minutes. Representatives include British-Pakistani intellectual Tariq Ali, Turkish journalist Can Dündar, Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe, and the Filipina journalist and climate activist Renee Karunungan. At the end of the meetings, the General Assembly is supposed to be able to formulate a “Charta for the Twenty-first Century,” a statement of principles and goals for the continued development of global governance. The Charta will then be read in front of Germany’s Reichstag on November 7 at 15:00 as part of a “re-enactment” commemorating the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.
