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Berlin and Barcelona connected through poetry

The main aim of Berlin-Barcelona: a poetic transfer is to present the most innovative side of Berlin's poetry scene in Barcelona: poets who live or work in Berlin and all aspects of contemporary poetry, to the beat of a lively and multifaceted city.   

The event is part of an ongoing collaboration between Literaturwerkstatt (Literature Workshop, Berlin) and projectes poètics sense títol - propost.org (Barcelona). These two literary organisations have worked together on various projects over the years and, in 2006, set up a direct Berlin-Barcelona link through this event that alternates the two cities and their scenes. In 2006 it took place in Berlin with poets from Barcelona, and this year it will be held in Barcelona with poets from Berlin. This event is made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Institut Ramon Llull, the Instituto Cervantes, the Goethe Institut Barcelona and the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes.

The first Berlin-Barcelona event was organised at the Instituto Cervantes in Berlin in February 2006, and allowed the work of seven poets closely connected to Barcelona to be presented in the German capital: Enric Casasses, Accidents Polipoètics, Ester Xargay and Carles Hac Mor, Josep Ramon Roig, Gerard Altaió and Eduard Escoffet. All the authors were translated into German and went on to become part of lyrikline.org, the international poetry portal that is one of Berlin Literaturwerkstatt’s major projects.

 

Berlin’s most cutting-edge poetry scene comes to Barcelona

Now Barcelona is set to host the second stop on this exchange between the two cities, which will take place between December 12 and 15 at the Goethe Institute premises in Barcelona and other venues around the city. Four poets from Berlin will take part in this event (Nora Gomringer, Ricardo Domeneck, Monika Rinck and Ann Cotten), together with the two directors of Berlin Literaturwerkstatt (Thomas Wohlfahrt and Christiane Lange), who will present their platform and the biennial poetry film festival Zebra. The event will be rounded off with various collaborations between Berlin poets and Catalan poets and artists.

In its attempt to present the different sides of poetry today, the program offers different kinds of events and formats at each of the Berlin-Barcelona venues. In some sense, it can be said that the cartography of Berlin's poetry scene will be scattered throughout the cartography of Barcelona, focussed on several venues around the city's emblematic Paral·lel.

The event’s opening ceremony will be held at the Goethe Institut’s Barcelona headquarters, with a short session of readings by participating poets, with translations. On Thursday the 13th, the Zebra Festival of poetry films will be presented, also at the Goethe Institute. This will be followed by the poetry cabaret Un/a cop/a a la poesia directed by Christian Atanasiu at the Horiginal bar, which will bring together Berlin poets with their Barcelona colleagues to pay tribute to avant-garde poets who experiment with language. The main performances will take place on Friday and Saturday: Ricardo Domeneck and Nora Gomringer (Friday) and Ann Cotten and Monika Rinck (Saturday) will present their work in collaboration with local musicians and video artists (Dionís Escorsa, Bradien, Woh_ and Ester Xargay, respectively). Accidents Polipoètics and Bartolomé Ferrando will also participate as representatives of the local scene and because of their links with the project and with German avant-garde poetry.

Berlin-Barcelona will present four poets who share an approach to poetic work that goes beyond poetry books, and who work on poetry recitals in a singular way, often mixing them with other disciplines and in collaboration with other artists. In addition, they've all received awards and critical acclaim for their work. Another notable characteristic they share is the youth of these poets: Monika Rinck (1969), Ricardo Domeneck (1977), Nora Gomringer (1980) and Ann Cotten (1982), the youngest, who has just had her first book published by the renowned publishing house Suhrkamp. These authors also combine their poetry work with other creative facets, such as Cotten’s sound experimentation and Domeneck's DJ work as Kate Boss, or other interests like linguistic in Rinck's case.

In order to strengthen the relationship between the guest poets and Barcelona, we've suggested that they work with local artists, and present their collaborations at the Friday and Saturday sessions. Specifically, Ricardo Domeneck, who has made several videos based on his texts, will collaborate with the video artist Dionís Escorsa, who has previously worked with other poets. Nora Gomringer will perform with Bradien, a young group that shares the poet’s taste for highly varied rhythms and registers. Ann Cotten will recite her work side by side with the duo Woh_, who work with experimental video and electronica. Finally, Monika Rinck will create a piece with the poet and video artist Ester Xargay, who was present at the Barcelona-Berlin event in 2006.

In addition, Accidents Polipoètics, who performed last year in Berlin, will give a recital on Friday at the Apolo’s Sala [2], accompanying the Berlin poets. Bartolomé Ferrando, an internationally acclaimed poet and performer and avant-garde German poetry enthusiast, will perform on Saturday at the MACBA Auditorium with an improvisation piece and poems by Ernt Jandl.

Finally, the restaurant Carmelitas (www.carmelitasgallery.com) will screen several videos by the guest artists throughout the Berlin-Barcelona event (www.carmelitasgallery.com), while Ricardo Domeneck, as DJ Kate Boss, will DJ on Thursday 20 at the Apolo's Sala [2], in a session for Club Tropicana, which is organised by Silvia Prada (www.myspace.com/elclubtropicana).

 


BERLIN-BARCELONA
A POETIC TRANSFER		   An initiative of:
 

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