The digital performative symposium UNEXPECTED LESSONS #3 took a critical, decolonizing look at the ambivalent world of ideas of German Romantik, which as an artistic and political movement still has a great influence on notions of national/European identity and belonging.

Through talks, lectures, artistic interventions, film and music, the program addressed the question of how colonial and Romantic ideas are interrelated. We penetrated to the roots of today's Europe as a cultural space, look at enlightenment and anti-enlightenment, the history of Sinti and Roma, between romanization and othering, ask in which relationship colonialism and romanticism stand and talk about romantic love and power.

In Lesson 3, actor and author Lamin Leroy Gibba reads from the book Kluft und Liebe - Warum soziale Ungleichheit uns in Liebesbeziehungen trennt, und wie wir zueinander finden (which unofficially translates to Chasms and Love - Why social inequality divides us in love relationships and how we find each other) by Josephine Apraku, a book that shows how discrimination separates us in love, how we can still find each other and grow together.