Tolia Curriculum
Julia Boog-Kaminski, Der Kronos-Komplex: Das Kind und die Zeit
Friday, June 5, 2026, 7 to 8.30 pm

Scholar Julia Boog-Kaminski will examine the child as a figure of cultural fantasy—a site where desire, anxiety, and projection converge. To demonstrate this, she draws on recurring narratives in Greek mythology. 

First, it is Uranus who imprisons his offspring in Gaia’s womb. Then, it is his son Cronus, who devours his own children. One can already identify a certain complex within this mythic genealogy, which continues to be reproduced over many centuries of Western culture. Philosopher Hans Blumenberg defines it as a “pathology of temporal relation.” In the shadow of two world wars, it reveals a resentment toward a world that will continue to exist after we are gone. Essentially, the human being must always come up short and begrudges the time that it lacks—especially when it is given to children, since the future belongs to them. 

The lecture sets out to explore what this complex means for our present moment: what happens when we entertain the possibility that the annihilation of one’s offspring does not run counter to human nature, but leads directly to its core? 

Dr. Julia Boog-Kaminski is Deputy Director of the IFK, the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna. After studying literary studies, art history, and Greek philology, she completed her doctorate in Hamburg with a dissertation on the wit of difference in intercultural literature. She is currently working on a habilitation project entitled Kinderfressen—Eine Urphantasie (Eating Kids—A Primal Fantasy), which traces the centuries-old history of the child-devouring motif in children’s and young adult literature as well as in myths, legends, fairy tales, and the visual arts, while also challenging established paradigms in psychoanalysis. 

The lecture will be conducted in German.

Tolia Curriculum is a project conceived by Georgian artist Tolia Astakhishvili, unfolding as a daily schedule of workshops, lectures, screenings, readings, and participatory formats for children and adults. In the lead-up to Figure of the Child, her largest exhibition to date, Astakhishvili opens her production and installation process to the public as she develops her work in situ.

Program Overview

Image
Tolia Astakhishvili, Tolia Curriculum, 2026, courtesy of the artist
Design: Syndicat