Reading List # 94
An entirely subjective list of things happening in Berlin
June 24
Erschöpfung! Ein Casino-Abend
An evening about getting tired - and about how not to give up in spite of it all.
Exhaustion has long been more than an individual state - it is a collective experience in the face of authoritarian shifts and the multiple crises of capitalism.
In literary and performative contributions, Duygu Ağal, Laurin Buser, Max Czollek, Theresia Enzensberger, Fatima Moumouni and Karosh Taha trace the lines between excessive demands, withdrawal and resistance on several stages in our house. Curated by Freda von dem Bussche.
(DE)
7 pm | LCB, Am Sandwerder 5
June 26
Perfection. Vincenzo Latronico in conversation with Lauren Oyler
A summer rooftop party in honor of the International Booker Prize-nominated bestseller Perfection on the HKW rooftop terrace.
Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, affordable, plant-filled apartment. Their life as young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual experimentation and the city’s twenty-four-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared by an entire generation and tantalizingly lived out on social media. But beyond the images, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon. Work becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. Frustrated that their progressive politics amount to little more in practice than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash, or never eating tuna, Anna and Tom make a fruitless attempt at political activism. Feeling increasingly trapped in their picture-perfect life, the couple takes ever more radical steps in the pursuit of an authenticity and a sense of purpose perennially beyond their grasp. Superbly translated by Sophie Hughes, Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection is a taut, spare sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence, scathing and brilliantly affecting.
Doors 6 pm, Conversation 7 pm with ticket only.
Summer Party until late for everyone!
(EN)
7 pm | HKW Rooftop, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
June 26
Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç »Prinzenbad«
Poetry and music by Fabian Saul and a conversation between the author and Miriam Zeh.
Prinzenbad is a debut that explores the relationships between memory and language, space, body and faith: how can the past and present be narrated in the face of migration and political geography, of love, desire and God? In what form do memories emerge, how do they merge with the experience of being named in one place and at the same time following the fragments in other places? These poems in their entirety are under the sign of a spiritual navigation of the self, as a rebellious practice of crossing borders in order to exist.
(DE)
7.30 pm | Prinzenbad, Prinzenstraße 113-119
June 29
OPEN SPÄTI [how \ long is the letter i]
Curated by the collective OPEN Späti, What Is It Too Late For? is a summer reading series that transforms Berlin Spätis into spaces for poetic exchange and collective reflection. Over four months, writers whose work is shaped by migration gather with audiences, passersby, and late-shop regulars to explore questions that may have no clear answers. The series offers a multifaceted inquiry into how migration leaves its traces on language, writing, and belonging—approaching language not simply as a means of expression, but as a material to be moved, questioned, and rewritten.
In the second gathering of the series, we meet at Späti's Backshop to explore transformations in language and form, the political stakes of linguistic experimentation, and how subversive practices challenge both literary conventions and broader systems of power. With Yessica Klein, Inna Krasnoper, Dinara Rasuleva
Moderated by Katarina Gotic Damiani
Entry is free, drinks and snacks späti-priced!
(EN/DE)
5 pm | Späti's Backshop, Amrumer Str. 36