WHAT IF YOUR MEMORY WAS PUT ON HOLD?
Editorial of the extrablatt of our upcoming issue, produced together with the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN) a fellowship for at-risk cultural workers, the DAAD and Re:Writing the Future Festival.
ONE MORNING YOU MIGHT LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND NOT RECOGNIZE THE PERSON STARING BACK AT YOU.
The feeling of time is missing, and so is the feeling of space. You’re here and at the same time you’re there. Poor you, you’ve lost your sense of identity! But the good news is: your imagination still works fine. Who you are is imaginary anyway. And with your identity in transit you can still imagine new selves, new paths and futures. But how do you envision the future? Is the future unknown, because you have lost parts of your past? Or do you own many futures as you’ve been freed from the past? Nothing is certain. The paper you have in hand is proof of that. Within its pages we want to explore the terrains of uncertainty from a multitude of perspectives.
This publication was made possible by the DAAD ARTISTS-IN-BERLIN PROGRAM, who invited us to explore these ideas as part of its engagement in ICORN, the International Cities of Refuge Network.
Imagining our lives from the most diverse perspectives was the idea behind the festival Re:Writing the Future that is taking place in Berlin this February. This paper is an extension of the festival.
ASLI ERDOĞAN suggests that you’re a creature of an unknown kind. We suspect you might hate the idea. But is it any better to belong to Homo sapiens? Who the hell is Homo sapiens? As you try to get familiar with the term, you discover with AHMED NAJI AND GANZEER that this species has a history in black and white! Preserved in the Museum of White History, with a potentiality to develop a more colourful version!
The pallete is full of colours. Why don’t you try red? ZAMIRA ABBASOVA offers a spoonful of pomegranate. Taste it.
Try to recognize how many shades of red there are. Between the redness of the blood that colors the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict, and the redness of Zamira’s homesick heart.
Alienated? What about founding a new state together with VIVIEN TAUCHMANN? You might be invited to write its constitution yourself... New beginnings are risky? Failure is likely to happen?
SOMAYA EL SOUSI recommends to write and rewrite, to fail and fail better, each time that you try.
A new state is a big decision? You don’t have to decide right now. Actually, MOHAMED ASHRAF suggests that your indecisiveness could even be more democratic – just if you give agency equally to all of your contradictions.
We assume that you can lose your memory, but you don’t have to lose your language. Though, we perfectly know how uncanny it is; speaking a language that is not rooted in your emotional history, in your joys and torments, wins and defeats. So, take a deep breath and read poems by PEGAH AHMADI, NADA AL-KHAWWAM and AMANI ABOSHABANA. Explore with them the feeling of being lost in translation. We meet you there, lost as much as you. Together we navigate, until we’re found again.
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