Lettrétage

This week we continue our series in which we present videos from the online platform MIXTAPE. This project is a collaboration of the “SARDAM interdisciplinary literature festival” and the Cultural Section of the Cyprus High Commission in the UK and is aiming at showcasing the work of Cypriot and international writers-performers. MIXTAPE offers a taste of several trends related to literature and literary performance, including videos of spoken word (slamming), sound poetry, visual poetry, literature in relation to video art, literature about sound/music, as well as conversations about writing and literary performance and an online creative writing workshop.

Pavlina Marvins contribution with the title “Turn off the lighthouses for Ivan Ismailovic”, which we want to present to you this week, demonstrates an exciting link of poetry, music, and acting/mime. Her text, which is read by the author herself in greek and displayed on the screen with english subtitles, tells the story of Ivan Ismailovic and his cat’s journey to the country of the narrator. Tense music and the mime and gestures of three performers accompany the presentation.

Pavlina Marvin, who initially studied history in Athens, was invited to several interdisciplinary art projects and festivals as an author and performer in the past. Her first book “Histories from all around my world” was published in 2017 and was awarded by the Hellenic Authors Association with the prize «Yannis Varveris». You can watch her contribution to MIXTAPE here.

This week we continue our series in which we present videos from the online platform MIXTAPE. This project is a collaboration of the “SARDAM interdisciplinary literature festival” and the Cultural Section of the Cyprus High Commission in the UK and is aiming at showcasing the work of Cypriot and international writers-performers. MIXTAPE offers a taste of several trends related to literature and literary performance, including videos of spoken word (slamming), sound poetry, visual poetry, literature in relation to video art, literature about sound/music, as well as conversations about writing and literary performance and an online creative writing workshop.

In her contribution, the Greek-Cypriot poet Avgi Lilli connects Poetry and Video. The footage for “An evening in June” allows a view of what could be a river or lake at first, before we find out that it´s a (run down) outdoor pool which was actually being filmed. The scene is accompanied by a poem, which is read by the author in Greek, with English subtitles on the screen.

Avgi Lilli publishes poems in greek and writes scripts for short films. MIXTAPE describes her work as follows: “As a poet she focuses on the deconstruction (“distillation”) of language and meaning, while also exploring the multidisciplinary aspects of poetry and its interaction with visual and performance art.” You can find the video for “An evening in June” here.

We continue our series in which we present videos from the online platform MIXTAPE. This project is a collaboration of the “SARDAM interdisciplinary literature festival” and the Cultural Section of the Cyprus High Commission in the UK and is aiming at showcasing the work of Cypriot and international writers-performers. MIXTAPE offers a taste of several trends related to literature and literary performance, including videos of spoken word (slamming), sound poetry, visual poetry, literature in relation to video art, literature in relation to sound/music, as well as conversations about writing and literary performance and an online creative writing workshop.

This time we present “Chan – The Way” by Michael-Angelos Englezo – a combination of poetry and video. Footage of a city tour at night is accompanied by a Buddhist poem from the 6th century, which was translated into English. The text is recited by a computer-generated voice. As the artist himself puts it:

“This is not an endorsement of any religious tenet, principle, doctrine or dogma. This is a construed projection of the philosophical idea of Nondualism, in other words, the overcoming of the sensory percept of apparent universal multiplicity and its reduction to one essential and undivided reality. As above so below.”

You can find the video via this link.

During the next weeks, we would like to introduce a few videos from the online platform MIXTAPE. This project is a collaboration of the “SARDAM interdisciplinary literature festival” and the Cultural Section of the Cyprus High Commission in the UK and is aiming at showcasing the work of Cypriot and international writers-performers. MIXTAPE offers a taste of several trends related to literature and literary performance, including videos of spoken word (slamming), sound poetry, visual poetry, literature in relation to video art, literature in relation to sound/music, as well as conversations about writing and literary performance and an online creative writing workshop.

The text of the first performance that we want to introduce to you was written by Maria A. Ioannou. She is an artist – some of you may already know her from our reading series “con_text” – and also the curator of the online platform. Her performance “Minimarket” presents the stream of consciousness of a 50-year-old woman who works at a kiosk, through the combination of live reading and live sound/music. The text is also part of a series of monologues written in the Cypriot dialect, which investigate the position of women in the Cypriot society. You can take a look at the video of her performance via this link.

Attention, non-german writers! We are offering free, multilingual advisement sessions for the Work Stipends for Non-German Literature, granted by the Berlin Senate. The Advisement Days are part of our project “schreiben & leben” and take place on the 3rd and 12th of June.

What: Multilingual Advisement Days
When: 03.06.2020 and 12.06.2020
How: Individual advisement sessions via Telefon or Video-Conference
Available Languages: Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Turkish
Free of charge upon registration

Continue reading “Multilingual Advisement Days: Work Stipends for Non-German Literature”

Indie lit might be little, but in Berlin it’s literally everywhere:
lighting up writers’ balconies and translators’ kitchen tables, readings in bars and event spaces, hand-bound magazines and limited edition poetry collections. Being everywhere at once is our superpower. But just for tonight, let’s put down our pens and microphones and converge in one place. Toast each other’s hard work. Shake it all off on the dance floor. We’ve earned it. Wherever we are, we’re lit.

Continue reading “It’s lit – Summer party for Berlin’s indie literary Scene”