Reading List # 125
An entirely subjective list of things happening in Berlin
May 12
Alice Hasters - “Anti Opfer”
Book launch, moderated by Miryam Schellbach.
Everyone is talking about victims. Yet increasingly, the term no longer refers to people who have genuinely suffered injustice, but rather to those perceived as disruptive to social harmony, overly sensitive, burdensome to others, or eager to claim moral superiority. If only they complained less, the argument goes, many of society’s problems would disappear. Cruelty and emotional hardness are becoming newly valorized, while victims themselves are held to impossibly inhumane standards. At the same time, powerful networks of patriarchal complicity continue to reshape the world for the worse.
Alice Hasters examines a cultural transformation that coincides strikingly with the resurgence of authoritarianism and fascism. What becomes of a society in which sensitivity is dismissed as elitist, and the idea that might makes right is celebrated as authenticity? With intellectual rigor and urgency, she opposes the spread of this new hardness by foregrounding the political force of solidarity, empathy, and human interconnectedness.
(DE)
7.30 pm | Colosseum, Gleimstr. 33
May 13
O Mother: Life writing and the search for the irretrievable
In the summer of 2024, Sandra Hetzl, a writer and prolific translator of contemporary Arabic literature, travelled to Turkey in search of the biological mother she had never met: Selma Yılma, a former so-called “gastarbeiter” who left Germany and returned home, where she later died. Hetzl was armed with the only one of her mother’s belongings in her possession: a copy of Shams al-Maarif al-Kubra, or The Sun of Great Knowledge, a 13th-century Arabic compendium of enchantments, talismans, instructions for summoning demons and spells to bring the dead back to life.
Artist emet ezell spent the following summer, 2025, in their ancestral home of Sabile, Latvia, the town from which their grandfather’s family was deported in May 1915. ezell had been commissioned to exhibit their art in the synagogue their great-grandparents once attended, which was looted and damaged during the campaign of ethnic cleansing and now converted into Sabile’s Arts and Culture Center.
In this evening of readings and conversation, ezell will read from their essay ‘The Artist Does Not Believe in Healing,’ which reflects on the process of putting together that exhibition, while Hetzl will read excerpts from Looking for Selma, the book manuscript that recounts her ongoing search for her mother, translated into English by Ayça Türkoǧlu. With Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus, Hetzl and ezell will discuss life writing and the (im)possibility of return, retrieval and healing. How past is the past, and what does the mother have to do with it?
An evening of readings and conversation addressing potential futures between the river and the sea, curated by Abdalrahman Alqalaq, Katharine Halls and Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus.
(EN)
8 pm | Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Linienstr. 227
May 16
Utopische Unterernährung
Mark Fisher observed that depression can be understood as receiving the world. Mass media, in turn, seeks to transform this reception into entertainment through its dystopian narratives. Today, film and video games seem almost obsessed with apocalyptic scenarios, with the post-apocalypse emerging as the dominant genre within the entertainment industry. Are we, through zombie stories or plague-ridden city ruins, anticipating the end of humanity itself, or is capitalism unconsciously fantasizing about destruction as a form of political catharsis? And what similarities or divergences exist between film and video games in this regard?
Moderated by Thomas Spies, screenwriter and director Ervehea Ziza joins game researcher and media activist Leonhard Müllner of Total Refusal to discuss the absence of utopia in contemporary storytelling media, particularly in film and video games.
(DE)
7.30 pm | diffrakt, Crellestr. 22
May 17
Literarische Führung: Vicki Baum, Irmgard Keun, Gabriele Tergit
Apparently, the property owner of Siegmunds Hof 21 opposed the installation of a commemorative plaque on the former residence of Gabriele Tergit. This is not an isolated case of attempts to obstruct public remembrance of writers on building façades. Another example is the memorial plaque honoring Armin T. Wegner at Kaiserdamm 16, which in 2002 was installed not on the building itself but on the sidewalk. One frequently cited justification is that such commemorations supposedly diminish the value of the property. The plaque honoring Gabriele Tergit, finally installed in October 2025, was therefore placed on a neighboring building.
The literary walking tour “Gabriele Tergit, Irmgard Keun, Vicki Baum” is dedicated to the three major prose writers of the Weimar Republic. It highlights significant biographical moments in their lives and presents examples of their work.
(DE)
11 am | Meeting point: in front of the Literaturhaus Berlin, Fasanenstraße 23
Both Patrik and Theresia are on (separate) writing residencies this month, which means that the next edition of Reading List Berlin is coming to you in June. Until then, stay soft!