Participating poets from Berlin: Monika Rinck, Ricardo Domeneck, Nora Gomringer and Ann Cotten.

Monika
Rinck

http://www.begriffsstudio.de

Zweibrücken, 1969. Currently lives and works in Berlin. Monika Rinck studied theology, history and comparative literature in Bochum, Berlin and Yale. She writes poems, prose and essays. She works as a literary critic and translator, and teached at the Theology Faculty of the Freie Universität in Berlin. She also organises various activities in the fields of literature, theatre, visual arts and cinema. Her literary work reveals an incisive observer of the present. She moves between traditional techniques and investigation into new narrative forms, and connects linguistic reflections to romantic and pop culture elements. Her poems present a stylistic irony, over and over again they explode into carefully constructed pathos. Her most recent publications are the essay Ah, das Love-Ding! and, in 2007, the book of poems Zum Fernbleiben der Umarmung. The project “Begriffstudio” first appeared in 2001, and continues on the Internet as an archive of outstanding concepts and linguistic blunders in the media.

Monika Rinck will perform on Saturday the 15th with Ester Xargay, a poet and video artist who participated in Barcelona-Berlin in 2006, to generate a piece with live voice and video.

c)  Roberto Borges

http://www.myspace.com/ricardodomeneck

Poet, DJ, video artist, translator and programmer. Ricardo Domeneck was born in Brazil in 1977 and settled in Berlin some years back, where he publishes the digital magazine Hilda (www.hildamagazine.net) gives recitals and DJs and programs the weekly Berlin Hilton parties. So far, he has published the books Carta aos anfibios (2005) and A cadela sem Logos (2007), as well as various collaborations in Portuguese and English. He has performed recitals in many parts of South America and in several European cities. He makes videos based on his texts, using them to explore the voice and the body’s ability to transform a text into a performance. These works have been exhibited in contexts as diverse as the walls of various night clubs and Brazilian public television. His work has been translated into Spanish and English, and it has been included in several contemporary poetry anthologies. He is more comfortable with the label “interventionist” than “artist”.

Ricardo Domeneck will perform on Friday the 14th with Dionís Escorsa, a video artist who has already worked with poets, especially with Albert Roig. They will offer a dialogue between the video and poetry work of each.

Nora Gomringer

http://www.noragomringer.de

Neunkirchen/Saar (Germany), 1980. Nora Gomringer lives in Bamberg, although she carries out much of her work in Berlin. She works giving recitals and, since 2001, she organises the Bamberg poetry slam. In spite of her youth, she already stands out as one of the best recitalists of her generation, in a style that mixes slam, traditional poetry and experimental forms. She works in English and German with her own texts and others by authors like Ernst Jandl, Heinrich Heine, Frida Kahlo, Walt Whitman and Eugen Gomringer (her father). In 2006 she published the book-CD Sag doch mal was zur Nacht. Apart from being constantly active in Germany, she has also recited in other countries all over the world. She often gives recitals-performances with DJ Roland Krefft. Together, they have presented sessions like “Brecht klingt fase wie Elvis” (“Brecht almost sounds like Elvis”) and “Fairy, the Tale” at the Goethe-Institut in San Francisco, Montreal, New York, Rome and Toronto. In 2006 she was awarded the Bavarian state’s Literature Prize, and this year the state has awarded her the Prize for Culture. Her fourth volume of poetry, called Klimaforschung (“Climatic investigation”), will be published in late 2007.

She will present her work on Friday the 14th, accompanied by the Barcelona band Bradien.

c)  Alexander Gumz

Iowa, 1982. Anne Cotten studied Germanic studies and graduated with a research project on concrete poetry. She is a translator of poetry, scientific articles and other material into German. She writes for newspapers and magazines in Vienna were she lived from 1987 until moving to Berlin in 2006. She was an editor of the former publication Element Tracking. In 2006, she worked with Liesl Ujvary and Hanno Millesi in their production of Ghost Engine (theremin and voice). She has participated in several poetry slams and festivals, often reciting under the name Persönlichkeitsberatungsinstitut Athene. Her first book in German, Fremdwörterbuchsonette, was published in 2007 by the prestigious publishing house Suhrkamp, and was recognised through the Priessnitz 2007 award.

She will present her work on Friday the 14th, accompanied by the Barcelona band Woh_, which mixes electronica and live visuals.