GIRL, SHOW ME THAT BODY (OF WORK): FLINTA* LITERATURE NIGHT #7

This event explores metamorphosis and coming out across different areas of life: the expression of a queer identity; the process of gender transition or acquiring a new body through reconstructive surgery; and the journey from the first walls of the womb, to the bedroom walls of a young girl marked by the promises of the West, to the wall that fell in Germany in 1989. How does literature support writers and readers in imagining new narratives of self-realisation? What are the benefits, but also the risks, of coming out, and what old barriers and new challenges emerge in the process? What happens when people cross boundaries and claim the freedom to write a new future?

Featuring Joanna Kusiak, Masha Sapizhak, Asta Tall, and Vanessa Gunesch. Moderated by Cemre Nur Öztürk.

Languages: German and English.

GIRL, SHOW ME THAT BODY (OF WORK) is a project by FLINTA*Literatur, Berlin’s platform for migrant and exiled woman artists, in cooperation with Lettrétage, funded by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt, recommended by The Reader Berlin and presented by tipBerlin and taz.

Web: https://flintaliteratur.de/de

Contact: kontakt@flintaliteratur.de

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flintaliteratur/

Vanessa Badescu (Vanessa Gunesch) is a Romanian-German writer and filmmaker. Her films screen at national and international festivals and are distributed on streaming platforms. In her work she examines the interconnections between capitalism, migration, and the female body within sociopolitical spaces of control and desire.

Joanna Kusiak writes poetry and creative non-fiction while also working as a social scientist at the University of Cambridge. Her book Radically Legal: Berlin Constitutes the Future emerged from telling the story of her research - on Berlin’s housing struggles - through her poetic voice. It won the $100K Nine Dots Prize for thinking (and writing) ‘out of the box’ about contemporary social challenges. She’s currently putting together her first poetry collection.

Masha Sapizhak is a theater maker, performance artist, and theater pedagogue. In her artistic work, Masha explores practices of resistance, solidarity, and empowerment from a feminist perspective. She works in a multidisciplinary manner and uses drama- and documentary theater methods, contemporary dance, digital media, performative approaches, participatory practices, and gamification in her projects, also seeing humour as a powerful tool. In Germany, she has worked with the English Theater Berlin, Gorki Theater, Theater Strahl, Hellerau, Ballhaus Prinzenallee, and Theater an der Parkaue, among others.

Asta Tall is a Senegalese-American poet currently based in Berlin. She touches on the topics of patriarchy, womanhood, and heritage. She does this through a personal lens connecting subjective experiences or observations to wider issues. This allows for her work to carry a raw and intimate appeal which is showcased in her performances.