Literature
Curation as Intervention
Our guests for the upcoming #Vorzeichen online lecture will be Alina Buchberger, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Fatima Khan, and Pajam Masoumi. The subject of their lecture and discussion will be the curation of literary festivals and book fairs as queer feminist, antiracist, and anticapitalist practices.
The event will be moderated by Dr. Maha El Hissy, the series’ curator. The lecture will be held in German and participation is free of charge. Co-hosted by Kampnagel – Internationales Zentrum für Schönere Künste.
The first Performative Book Fair in Hamburg took place in 2023 with the explicit goal of upending the commercial literary scene. The annual Black literary festival Resonanzen decided against awarding a formal literary prize, instead choosing to facilitate literary discussions while simultaneously honoring divergent texts without the structures of a formal competition. The first intersectional feminist literary festival in Germany, q[lit]*clgn has for many years centered gender queer authors and their perspectives.
In addition to critiquing the homogeneity of many established prize juries, editorial boards, and publishing houses, artists and other contributors to the cultural scene have been curating new formats beyond the boundaries of the existing industry. Their work is a form of protest against the implicit exclusion of marginalized people. This evening’s lecture will bring together four such curators to discuss their experiences. What does a practice of resistant curation look like—a curation which distances itself from canonical conventions, highly ritualized procedures, and static forms? What interventional strategies do these curators follow when creating new (meeting) spaces for knowledge and art?
Alina Buchberger is a curator for Kampnagel in Hamburg, an international production house for (better) contemporary arts. She studied Literature, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies in the context of Romance and Germanic languages as well as Theatre. After two years working in publishing in Paris, Buchberger has worked at Kampnagel since 2016. She has curated events such as the Konferenz zur Kanonzerstörung [The Conference for Canon-Breaking] in 2021, the ongoing literary criticism series Das kritikable Queertett [The Critiquable Queertett], and the Performative Book Fair.
Fatima Khan was born in 1987 in Bhola, Bangladesh and grew up in Cologne. She is an independent author, artist, curator, and moderator. Khan studied Antique Languages and Cultures, as well as Classical Literature and German at the University of Cologne. In 2018, she was an initiator and cofounder of the first feminist literary festival in Germany, q[lit]*clgn. Since 2022, she has been studying Media Arts and Creative Writing at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln [Academy of Media Arts Cologne] (KHM). She writes poetry, prose, and essays, and is currently working on her debut novel. Khan was a participant in the text workshop Kölner Schmiede and is currently a mentee of Mithu Sanyal through the 1:1 mentoring program at the Literaturbüro NRW.
Pajam Masoumi lives and works in Hamburg. In addition to being a regular participant in Das kritikable Queertett [The Critiquable Queertett] Masoumi was also a curator of the 2023 Performative Book Fair. Masoumi also works as social media manager for the monthly leftwing publication analyse & kritik and writes regular contributions on contemporary theory and leftwing movements.
Sharon Dodua Otoo is an author and political activist. She writes prose and essays and is the editor of the English-language book series Witnessed, as well as curator for the Black literature festival Resonanzen. Her novel Adas Raum [Ada’s Realm] was published in 2021 by S. Fischer Verlag and has been translated into multiple languages. In 2016, Otoo won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Her 2022 Gesammeltes Schweigen [Collected Silences] (Edition Zweifel) is a co-publication with Heinrich Böll.
Dr Maha El Hissy is an independent literary scholar and critic. In 2024, El Hissy is curating the event series #Vorzeichen [Accidental Portents] for the Goethe-Institut in Northwestern Europe. She is editor of a forthcoming anthology on the art and literature of immigration to post-war Germany with Verbrecher Verlag.
The lecture is one of six talks in the series #Vorzeichen. Whom, What and How we read. In cooperation with an academic institution, the online lectures will feature speakers from various fields, such as academia, publishing and translation, to discuss the exclusion of texts and authors through canonization processes and market pressure.
The online events are open to anyone interested in literature and are particularly recommended for German scholars, German culture specialists, students, publishers, and translators. In addition to the six online lectures at the interface between literary studies and the publishing industry, the series includes eight conversations with authors plus book reviews that will be published on Instagram over the course of the year. Detailed information about the series as well as event announcements and recordings of events that have already taken place can be found here:
The event will be moderated by Dr. Maha El Hissy, the series’ curator. The lecture will be held in German and participation is free of charge. Co-hosted by Kampnagel – Internationales Zentrum für Schönere Künste.
Curation as Intervention
The first Performative Book Fair in Hamburg took place in 2023 with the explicit goal of upending the commercial literary scene. The annual Black literary festival Resonanzen decided against awarding a formal literary prize, instead choosing to facilitate literary discussions while simultaneously honoring divergent texts without the structures of a formal competition. The first intersectional feminist literary festival in Germany, q[lit]*clgn has for many years centered gender queer authors and their perspectives.
In addition to critiquing the homogeneity of many established prize juries, editorial boards, and publishing houses, artists and other contributors to the cultural scene have been curating new formats beyond the boundaries of the existing industry. Their work is a form of protest against the implicit exclusion of marginalized people. This evening’s lecture will bring together four such curators to discuss their experiences. What does a practice of resistant curation look like—a curation which distances itself from canonical conventions, highly ritualized procedures, and static forms? What interventional strategies do these curators follow when creating new (meeting) spaces for knowledge and art?
Participants
Alina Buchberger is a curator for Kampnagel in Hamburg, an international production house for (better) contemporary arts. She studied Literature, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies in the context of Romance and Germanic languages as well as Theatre. After two years working in publishing in Paris, Buchberger has worked at Kampnagel since 2016. She has curated events such as the Konferenz zur Kanonzerstörung [The Conference for Canon-Breaking] in 2021, the ongoing literary criticism series Das kritikable Queertett [The Critiquable Queertett], and the Performative Book Fair.
Fatima Khan was born in 1987 in Bhola, Bangladesh and grew up in Cologne. She is an independent author, artist, curator, and moderator. Khan studied Antique Languages and Cultures, as well as Classical Literature and German at the University of Cologne. In 2018, she was an initiator and cofounder of the first feminist literary festival in Germany, q[lit]*clgn. Since 2022, she has been studying Media Arts and Creative Writing at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln [Academy of Media Arts Cologne] (KHM). She writes poetry, prose, and essays, and is currently working on her debut novel. Khan was a participant in the text workshop Kölner Schmiede and is currently a mentee of Mithu Sanyal through the 1:1 mentoring program at the Literaturbüro NRW.
Pajam Masoumi lives and works in Hamburg. In addition to being a regular participant in Das kritikable Queertett [The Critiquable Queertett] Masoumi was also a curator of the 2023 Performative Book Fair. Masoumi also works as social media manager for the monthly leftwing publication analyse & kritik and writes regular contributions on contemporary theory and leftwing movements.
Sharon Dodua Otoo is an author and political activist. She writes prose and essays and is the editor of the English-language book series Witnessed, as well as curator for the Black literature festival Resonanzen. Her novel Adas Raum [Ada’s Realm] was published in 2021 by S. Fischer Verlag and has been translated into multiple languages. In 2016, Otoo won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Her 2022 Gesammeltes Schweigen [Collected Silences] (Edition Zweifel) is a co-publication with Heinrich Böll.
Moderation
Dr Maha El Hissy is an independent literary scholar and critic. In 2024, El Hissy is curating the event series #Vorzeichen [Accidental Portents] for the Goethe-Institut in Northwestern Europe. She is editor of a forthcoming anthology on the art and literature of immigration to post-war Germany with Verbrecher Verlag.
#Vorzeichen
The lecture is one of six talks in the series #Vorzeichen. Whom, What and How we read. In cooperation with an academic institution, the online lectures will feature speakers from various fields, such as academia, publishing and translation, to discuss the exclusion of texts and authors through canonization processes and market pressure.
The online events are open to anyone interested in literature and are particularly recommended for German scholars, German culture specialists, students, publishers, and translators. In addition to the six online lectures at the interface between literary studies and the publishing industry, the series includes eight conversations with authors plus book reviews that will be published on Instagram over the course of the year. Detailed information about the series as well as event announcements and recordings of events that have already taken place can be found here: