#Vorzeichen

The first Hamburg Performative Book Fair at Kampnagel took place in 2023 with the aim of turning the literary industry upside down. The annual black literature festival Resonanzen resolutely turns away from awarding a literary prize and instead seeks literary discussions and the simultaneous appreciation of various texts beyond a competition structure. q[lit]*clgn was curated several years ago as the first intersectional feminist literature festival in Germany to focus on genderqueer authors and their perspectives.

In addition to criticising the existing, predominantly homogeneous composition of white juries, editorial offices, literary institutions, etc., artists and cultural professionals are resolutely turning to the curation of new formats beyond the established literary scene. Not least as a protest against the implicit exclusion of marginalised people. On this evening, we will discuss their experiences to date with four curators. What does a resistant curatorial practice look like that distances itself from canonical conventions, strictly ritualised processes and static forms? What strategies of intervention do the curators follow when they open up new (meeting) spaces for knowledge and art?

Participants

Alina Buchberger is a curator at Kampnagel - International Centre for Fine Arts in Hamburg. She studied literature, language and cultural studies in Romance and German studies as well as theatre studies. After working in publishing in Paris for two years, she joined the artistic team at Kampnagel in 2016. She curated the conference on the destruction of the canon (2021), the ongoing literary criticism series Das kritikable Queertett and the Performative Book Fair (2023), among others.

Maha El Hissy is a freelance literary scholar, curator and moderator. She has taught modern German literature in Cairo, Munich and London. As a critic, she writes for the Berliner Zeitung, taz and Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She will soon be publishing an anthology on the art and literature of immigration to post-war Germany with Verbrecher Verlag. In 2024, she has been commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Northwest Europe to curate the series ‘Vorzeichen. Who, what and how we read’.

Fatima Khan was born in Bhola/Bangladesh in 1987 and grew up in Cologne. She is a freelance author, artist, curator and moderator. She studied Ancient Languages and Cultures - Classical Literature and German Studies at the University of Cologne. In 2018, she was the initiator and co-founder of q[lit]*clgn, Germany's first feminist literature festival. She has been studying Media Arts/Literary Writing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) since 2022. She writes poetry, prose and essays and is currently working on her debut novel. She was a participant in the Textwerkstatt Kölner Schmiede and is currently a mentee of the 1:1 mentoring programme of the Literaturbüro NRW with Mithu Sanyal.

Pajam Masoumi lives and works in Hamburg. In addition to the regular literary talk format Das kritikable Queertett, Pajam curated the Hamburg Performative Book Fair in May 2023. Pajam is also a social media editor at the left-wing monthly analyse & kritik, where she regularly writes articles on current and theoretical topics relating to left-wing movements.

Sharon Dodua Otoo is a writer and political activist. She writes prose and essays, is the editor of the English-language book series Witnessed and curates the black literature festival Resonanzen. Her novel Adas Raum was published by S. Fischer Verlag in 2021 and has been translated into several languages. Otoo won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2016. Gesammeltes Schweigen (Edition Zweifel), a joint publication with Heinrich Böll, appeared in 2022.

#Vorzeichen

The event is one of a total of six online lectures in the series #Vorzeichen. Who, what and how we read. In cooperation with an academic or cultural institution, speakers from various fields, such as academia, publishing or translation, will have their say and discuss the exclusion of texts and authors through canonisation processes and market pressure. The online events are open to everyone and are particularly recommended for literary scholars, students, publishers and translators.

In addition to the online lectures, the series includes talks with authors and book reviews that will be published on Instagram over the course of the year. Detailed information about the series as well as event announcements and recordings of events that have already taken place can be found here.