WIR SIND MÖGLICHKEITEN

A series of readings and conversations for Weimar by and with authors from various literary genres.

"We are Possibilities" is a reading and conversation series for Weimar that will take place over 13 days at 6 p.m. each evening at the Kunstfest Pavilion on Weimar's Agora, Theaterplatz, and just as often at "everyday places" such as the Hotel Elephant Weimar, schools, businesses, or even storefronts in Weimar. Each evening reading will be broadcast directly by Weimar's Radio Lotte and picked up by some cooperating local radio stations in the region. After each half-hour reading, there will be an opportunity for an exchange with the moderator Christina Bacher, author and specialist journalist from Cologne, and the reader.

The title is a quote from U.S. writer Toni Morrison's book "Self-Respect" and points the way in terms of content: the project brings together literary positions of very different provenance on the subject of otherness. This simply means people who - in whatever way - deviate from what is commonly understood as the majority society: This can concern ethnic or religious affiliation, sexual orientation, but also social status. The Kunstfest Weimar has been able to win over distinguished authors of various genres who live in German-speaking countries and who have already dealt with forms of exclusion in one way or another in their work - whether in dramatic or lyrical, fiction or journalistic, documentary or scientific texts. The respective authors will read their texts themselves.

A writing workshop for all citizens aged 18-99 will be held on 18.8.2023 from 17.30-21 clock at the Adult Education Center Weimar. On September 9, 2023, at 6 p.m., everyone will have the opportunity to present their own and other people's texts on the topic of "Trust your words" on a large stage in Theaterplatz. Interested parties should contact vhs@vhs-weimar.de

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SIGRID ZEEVAERT

Greta

An enchanted house by the lake. Here Greta and her mother spend the last days of the summer vacations with Jella and her two children, who has lived here since her return from Kenya. But her son Jonah is behaving strangely. Little by little, Greta understands what is behind this behavior and that she is not the only one struggling with exclusion. 

Sigrid Zeevaert was born in Aachen in 1960, studied to be a primary school teacher, and soon devoted herself entirely to writing. She has written more than 30 books for children and young people, which have won numerous awards, as well as numerous radio contributions and children's plays. One of her books was filmed for ZDF.

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ULRIKE DOTZER

Golden Ground. 1945 - Survival with scissors and comb

The novel "Goldener Boden" tells the story of three generations of hairdressers from Pomerania. The reading focuses on Clara, who flees from the Red Army in 1945 with her four daughters and ends up in a village in Saxony-Anhalt - as a "resettler," not a refugee. At the end of the novel, there is another escape: to the Federal Republic.

Ulrike Dotzer was born in Kiel and studied Eastern European history and philosophy after a stay in Montreal. She worked as a journalist for daily newspapers in East and West Germany, and was a senior editor for the European culture channel ARTE for twenty years. "Golden Ground" is her first novel.

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DIRK OSCHMANN

How the Construction of the East Divides Our Society

What does it mean to have an Eastern identity imposed on us? An identity that is held responsible for the rapidly growing social division? To which attributes such as populism, a lack of understanding of democracy, racism, conspiracy myths and poverty are attributed? In his eye-opening book, Leipzig Germanist Dirk Oschmann shows that more than thirty years after the fall of the Wall, the West defines itself as the norm and the East as a deviation. Our media, politics, economics and science are dominated by West German perspectives. Dirk Oschmann pointedly illuminates how this othering harms our society and thus initiates a long overdue debate.

Dirk Oschmann, born in Gotha in 1967, is a professor of modern German literature at the University of Leipzig. His FAZ article on the topic has been widely shared and commented on.

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ANTJE HORN

Looking beyond the horizon

Antje Horn grew up in the GDR. The apartment of her family of five was small. There was no television, but plenty of books. Her parents let her grow up with countless stories from all over the world. The country's borders were closed. Nevertheless, even as a child she traveled from her loft bed through distant lands and inner worlds. Today she lives with her own family in a small farm community on the outskirts of Jena. For the Kunst- fest Weimar, she will invent a new story about how we humans feel at home where we know our way around. But if you dare to look beyond the tel- ler edge, you can discover a lot, and not just a cup or cutlery, but the whole world.

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JOSEPHINE APRAKU

Gap and love

Whether in songs, films or books: love is transfigured into something intangible, coincidental, fateful. It overcomes all boundaries. But is that really the case? What happens when, in a love relationship, one person is discriminated against by our society because of their appearance or demeanor and the other is not?

Josephine Apraku - African scientist, author and trainer for intersectional racism-critical educational work became known with the book "Rassismus geht uns alle an" (Racism concerns us all). Josephine Apraku is currently setting up a new company.

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MATEJA MEDED

Mateja Meded is an actress, director, but also an author. In three acclaimed essays for the weekly magazine "Die Zeit," the "angry woman with a migration background" has coolly and cleverly dissected her flight biography and her socialization in German, Bavarian society. The concept of "home" has remained an illusion for her, but she has come to know many "places at home". And she provides food for thought, for example, on the question of why German women lecture on emancipation while migrant women go cleaning. Her last theater work - written and directed together with Thomas Köck - was "keeping up with the penthesileas" in spring this year - created for the Theater Neumarkt Zurich. She is currently working on her film trilogy.

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SIVAN BEN YISHAI

Your very own double crisis club - Ein übersetztes Klagelied mit furchtbarem Akzent

Two crises meet: a WE and a YOU. A WE with a history of flight and the established YOU of a democratic society. The author Sivan Ben Yishai uses the archaic basic agreement of the performance situation to make the identity conflict itself the subject: WE as performers:inside meet the YOU of the audience:inside. Sivan Ben Yishai, born 1978 in Palestine/Israel, works as a theater director and playwright. She has lived in Berlin since 2012. Her plays have been staged at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin and at the Münchner Kammerspiele.

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ALBRECHT KIESER

Deutschland ohne Dach

As diverse as society is, so diverse are the people who are homeless in Germany or even have to live on the streets. But their individuality, their respective histories, their particular hopes, their very private fears are not taken into account. The book "Germany without a Roof" by Richard Brox, Sylvia Ritzvi and Albrecht Kieser counters this. The texts tell of young and old "homeless" people, of people who have always lived here or who have only recently arrived in this country. Albrecht Kieser has worked as a teacher, worker, journalist and author. Currently, he mainly writes books. He lives in Cologne and has three grown-up children.

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NURAN DAVID CALIS

Solingen 1993

Nuran David Calis was born in Bielefeld in 1976 as the son of Armenian-Jewish immigrants from Turkey. He worked as a bouncer, studied directing at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich and produced music clips for hip-hop bands. Today he works as a director, theater and screenwriter. The center of his artistic work is always the question of the fate of the victims of right-wing extremist terror in the Federal Republic of Germany and how the so-called "majority society" deals with it. The 17-day reenactment of the Munich NSU trial at the 2021 Weimar Art Festival was an impressive and internationally acclaimed result of this work. In his text "Solingen 1993" he deals with the xenophobically motivated attack and its consequences in Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, in 1993, which this year marks the 30th anniversary.

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MAX ANNAS

Morduntersuchungskomission: Der Fall Nitschke

Berlin, capital of the GDR, 1987. The city is gripped by a unrest that can hardly be controlled. Two corpses are found in one day, and only the dead woman was a citizen of the Republic. The death of the visitor from the West points to political backgrounds. And to foreign secret services. The trail leads to South Africa. Max Annas' crime novel revolves around betrayal, the end of systems - the Eastern bloc, the West, apartheid - and freedom. Whereby freedom means something different for everyone. 

Max Annas, born in 1963, worked for a long time as a journalist, lived in South Africa, and was awarded the German Crime Prize five times for his novels "Die Farm" (2014), "Die Mauer" (2016), "Finsterwal de" (2018), and "Morduntersuchungskommission" (2019), and most recently "Morduntersuchungskommis- sion: Der Fall Melchior Nikoleit" (2020).

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NATAN SZNAIDER

Fluchtpunkte der Erinnerung

What distinguishes racism and anti-Semitism? Internationally, the relationship between colonial crimes and the Holocaust has long been debated. Are Jewish victims favored in memory over African victims? The debates surrounding the Humboldt Forum are now also forcing Germany to confront its colonial past. 

Will it ultimately be possible to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and colonialism without relativizing history?

Natan Sznaider, born in Mannheim in 1954, taught as a professor of sociology at the Tel Aviv Academic University from 1994 until his retirement.

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WIHAD SULEIMAN

Eis

Wihad Suleiman – 1988 geboren – arbeitet als Regisseurin und Autorin. Sie absolvierte ihr Studium 2012 am Höheren Institut für Dramatische Künste in Damaskus im Fach Theaterwissenschaften und kam – im Schatten des Kriegs in ihrer syrischen Heimat – 2015 zunächst als Hospitantin ans Theater an der Ruhr. Zwei Jahre später inszenierte sie am Theater Oberhausen ihre eigene Fassung von »Medea«. Sie ist Autorin des Antikriegs-Dramas »Existenz«, das im Rahmen des Kunstfest Weimar 2023 seine Deutsche Erstauf- führung erlebt. Im Rahmen des Leseprojektes stellt sie einen neu entstandenen Text vor, in dem sie einerseits ihr eigenes Verständnis vom Konzept des Rassismus beschreibt, andererseits ihre eigenen Erfahrungen mit Rassismus und Ausgrenzung thematisiert.