February at Lettrétage

After a rather quiet start in January, our 2025 event program really picks up speed in February – with a colorful mix of interdisciplinary performances, lectures and discussion panels, as well as more experimental reading formats. We invite you to a program dedicated to exploring the connections and interfaces between literature, other art forms and socio-political and philosophical issues and questions.

On Saturday, February 1st at 9 pm, impro-composer Sasha Pushkin will kick off the month with the presentation of his multimedia solo project “Studiotronica”. In this project, the focus is on instrumental music, but does not limit the use of vocals, and work with texts and possible invitation of special guests. The project aims at a certain trance-like immersion of the public into the sound and visual space, for each individual to dissolve in their own or common space, while leaving freedom for both passively meditative-relaxing and actively ecstatic dance manifestations of each witness of this action. Video art created by Sasha Pushkin is also important supportive part of the concert.

On Friday, February 7th at 8 pm KROSS COLLECTIVE presents CONVERGENCE VI, an evening of immersive performances exploring dialogues between sound, text, and visuals, this time including a visceral AV performance by Julia Witas.

On Sunday, February 16th at 7 pm, the 38th edition of the DEAD LADIES SHOW will take place, a series of entertaining and inspiring talks about women who, despite all obstacles, have achieved impressive things. In three entertaining presentations, two in English and one in German, co-presenters Florian Duijsens and Katy Derbyshire will join author and blogger Miku Sophie Kühmel to celebrate the lives of past icons. We start around the year 60 AD with Boudica from the British Iceni tribe, who led an uprising against the Roman occupiers. Next up is Hannah Höch, a Dadaist artist who created collages from 1916 onwards and often dealt with gender roles and the associated expectations. Last but not least, Dorothy Thompson is introduced: She was a foreign correspondent and the first US journalist to be expelled from Germany after the Nazis seized power.

On Monday, February 17th at 7:30 pm, the monthly series kilmé talks will continue, offering Palestinian artists, intellectuals and academics a platform to present their work and talk about topics that are important to them. This time, Sherene Seikaly will be the guest.

The evening of Monday, February 24th will be dedicated to the commemoration of the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Ukraine. This multi-media art event (video art, zines, poetry, narration and music) brings together a variety of artists, both from Ukraine and Germany and mixed, from different backgrounds and styles as a performative reflection. How, challenging the idea that something that breaks down the social order can become normality, must artistic practice radically realign itself? How to work artistically at all, when work contains normality, in the shadow of a war? What about those who have to live in exile and/or suffer from the representational logics of the war? What do confessional symbolisms do to the question of representing the unrepresentable? Can the commemoration of this day be left to politics? Beyond the daily discursive orientations in the recollection and without any confinement of false completeness, the event will provide space for artistic works to stand side by side, as a moment of self assurance of complexity of resistance and grasp.

On Friday, February 28th at 8 pm, the artist duo Berlin Nocturnes, consisting of author Madhvi Ramani and sound artist and composer Lutz Gallmeister, and visual artist Monika Kozub invite you to an intimate and warmly sensual performance of “The Erotic Album: Sound Poems from the Body”. Each one of these tracks explores the erotic from a different body part; eyes, ears, breasts, vulva, belly, thighs. Listen to each part speak, accompanied by live piano and a soundscape made from sounds of the body, as sensual visual art unfolds. Come, and be titillated, amused, surprised, and led on an erotic journey from the tips of your hairs to the soles of your feet.