Jul 5, 2022

Alphabet Readings on July 8, 9 and 19

Alphabet Readings
Readings, performances, live audio play, boat trip, screenings, workshops
July 8, 9 and 19, 2022
In German and English
Boat trip: 4/7€; all other events free admission
Program: hkw.de
Accreditation via

For three days in July, the Alphabet Readings will host a gathering around literary themes and works. In live radio plays, readings and performances on HKW’s roof terrace, a boat trip on the Spree as well as screenings and workshops, participants will test practices that translate the intimacy of reading and listening into the social space while creating new spaces of experience in a radically transforming world.

Program

Friday, July 8, 2022

6 pm
Interdependence Live: Air Age Blueprint
Live podcast with K Allado-McDowell and Mat Dryhurst

How can humans and non-humans come together to save the planet in an age of climate crisis?

In conversation with Mat Dryhurst for a live episode of the podcast Interdependence, writer and musician K Allado-McDowell discusses their new book Air Age Blueprint. Weaving fiction, theory and travelogue into an animist cybernetics, Allado-McDowell (and their writing partner GPT-3) offers a manifesto for interspecies collaboration, a vision that remakes our technologies, identities and deepest beliefs.

Interdependence is a series of conversations with people shaping 21st century culture from the studio of Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst in Berlin.

In cooperation with Ignota and Interdependence

8.30 pm
Death by Landscape
Readings, performances, boat trip with Timo Feldhaus, Elvia Wilk, Calla Henkel, K Allado McDowell, Bitsy Knox, Kirsty Bell and a performance by Nazanin Noori

Death by Landscape is an event that moves through the city at night. A boat on the Spree will be the vessel for readings by Timo Feldhaus, Elvia Wilk, Calla Henkel, K Allado-McDowell, Bitsy Knox, Kirsty Bell and a performance by Nazanin Noori.

The title is borrowed from Elvia Wilk's recent book of essays, which proposes new ways for living and working in an age of extinction. “Death” here is not about invoking catastrophe, but about the end of certain destructive perspectives – perspectives that see the human as supreme over the rest of the world. The landscape, formerly thought of as a passive resource for extraction, becomes an overwhelming life force. What if the landscape flipped from the background into the foreground? What if the river became the protagonist of the story? It might be spooky. Ghosts might come to life. The trip represents a transition, a crossing over.

Curated by Elvia Wilk and Mathias Zeiske

The boat will depart from the dock right at HKW at 8.30 pm. The trip will end at about 11 pm.
During the boat ride, no passengers can be let on or off the boat.
There is wheelchair access to the lower deck. For more accessibility information, contact: or call 030 – 397 87 175

Saturday, July 9, 2022

4 pm
You Are a Wave and I Am a Wave
Readings, screening, workshop – a Day with Ignota and Jesse Darling, Paige Emery, Hannah Gregory, Johanna Hedva, IONE, Nisha Ramayya, Tai Shani, Sarah Shin, Jenna Sutela, and others

As the new epoch unfolds, might we think of mutualisms as a form of love?
You Are a Wave and I Am a Wave explores varieties of consciousness and healing in order to reimagine the individual, intimacy and interconnectedness for the nascent age of air. Through an interdisciplinary series of conversations, practices, performances, poetry readings, workshops and live screenings, You Are a Wave and I Am a Wave experiments with ways of being and holding together what may be incommensurate, paradoxical or slipping away.
Artists, poets, writers and practitioners Jesse Darling, Paige Emery, Hannah Gregory, Johanna Hedva, IONE, Nisha Ramayya, Tai Shani, Sarah Shin, Jenna Sutela and others join a day with Ignota Books – an experiment in the techniques of awakening.

Curated by Sarah Shin and Mathias Zeiske

5 pm
Writing workshop with Nisha Ramayya

Spiritually and materially attuned on a bridge between performance-as-sacrifice, Nisha Ramayya leads a writing workshop exploring everyday poetics and listening-as-vibration: hearing, feeling and resonating with the world that exists on earth, under the sea and in outer space.

Please register by July 7 with:

7 pm
Quantum Listening
Reading with IONE and Sarah Shin

In her manifesto Quantum Listening, musician and composer Pauline Oliveros explores technology and spirituality to ask: What is the difference between hearing and listening? Does sound have consciousness? Can you imagine listening beyond the edge of your own imagination? IONE reads from the text, followed by an opportunity for questions from the audience.

8 pm
Altered States
Poetry reading with Jesse Darling, Hannah Gregory, Johanna Hedva and Jenna Sutela

Standing at the thresholds of alterity to propose a new psychedelic style for the twenty-first century, Ignota’s latest poetry collection Altered States includes encounters with dreams, panpsychism, artificial intelligence, grief, plant allies, mushrooms, ritual and journeys in sound and beyond. Berlin-based writers, poets and artists Jesse Darling, Hannah Gregory, Johanna Hedva and Jenna Sutela read from their contributions. The reading will close with a practice with Paige Emery, guiding participants through her “Instructions for Self-Hypnosis”.

10 pm
The Neon Hieroglyph
Screening of a film by Tai Shani, with Molly Moody and Maxwell Sterling

Closing with a special screening of Tai Shani’s The Neon Hieroglyph with a live score by composer Maxwell Sterling and narration by Molly Moody. The Neon Hieroglyph is a 57 minute hallucination around ergot and various historic feminized nodes and other orbital considerations in the form of a series of poetic considerations on the fungus that grows on rye and other common grains from which LSD is derived. Traveling from the cellular to the galactic, from Palaeolithic cave markings to the optic markings left by drone photography in our internal eye, dancing plagues, communist psychedelic witches, hyper-sexual fungi, descents and ascents.

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

BEAST!
Poetry Performance von Tarek Lakhrissi

More Information: hkw.de

Partners

Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and by the Federal Foreign Office.

Visitor Information

Current hours: Daily, except Tue, noon-8 pm

Before visiting, please review the Covid regulations currently in effect at hkw.de/besuch

Weltwirtschaft Restaurant opens daily at noon. weltwirtschaft.berlin

Press Contact

Jan Trautmann
Head of Press and PR

Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin
T + 49 (0) 30 39787-192
presse@hkw.de
hkw.de