Labyrinth/Archive: Material/Source

28.10.2023 / 16:00 – 22:00
With Don Mee Choi, Jay Bernard, Kinga Tóth, Nhã Thuyên, Volha Hapeyeva

In 2023, the literary magazine Edit is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary. It is an occasion to look back and reflect on what the magazine has archived but also an opportunity to look ahead and ask what archives might look like in the future. In cooperation with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, which celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this year, Edit invites current and former artist program fellows to the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst. Together with Edit authors and former editors, they will explore the question of whether shelves of documents and writings form an archive, or a labyrinth, and how they can become material or source.

5pm
Translating the Archive
Workshop discussion with Jay Bernard, Don Mee Choi, and Uljana Wolf

In Surge, poet and artist Jay Bernard correlates the New Cross fire of 1981 and the Grenfell Tower fire. In the work, Bernard allows the documents speak in order to shed light on parallels between both incidents and expose archives as a mirror of the present. Torn between places and languages, between memories and pasts, South Korean-born poet and translator Don Mee Choi develops a form of writing in DMZ KOLONIE that brings together memories of her own childhood and family, South Korea’s political history, and migration experiences. Both writers’ texts reorganize the archive so that personal experiences converge with documents, thus making new narratives possible. Poet and translator Ulyana Wolf will moderate the event.

7pm
Exploring Sources
Workshop discussion with hn lyonga, Nhã Thuyên, and Jonë Zhitia

Writers hn lyonga and Nhã Thuyên search for sources outside the archive in their texts. They question the archive from the outside and engage with different communities. As Neighbor in Residence at the Gropius Bau, hn lyonga explores how networks emerge and what structures they adopt. In her book un\\martyred, poet Nhã Thuyên attempts to historicize Vietnamese underground poetry and establishes connections between center and periphery. Author and journalist Jonë Zhitia will moderate the event.

8:30pm
Labyrinth
Reading/performance with Jay Bernard and Kinga Tóth

If the body as archive generates its own material, the archive is constantly in flux. Corridors change direction, documents become material, and the archive turns into a labyrinth in which one can only wonder who the self is in the archive. Poets and artists Jay Bernard and Kinga Tóth uncover the secrets of the archive in a reading/performance that considers the body as an archive.

Followed by music at Café Kapital
(Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst)

Readings and conversations in English

Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig
Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 9-11
04107 Leipzig

Ticket reservation: hi@editonline.de