Schwebende Gewässer. Objekte widersprechen. Mit Eliana Hernández-Pachón und Priya Basil

In the organizer's words:

Into the lake we throw the gold that we take from the stone, that we melt and work with our own hands. The gold for which others despair, for which they will bleed. We throw it so that the dreams speak to us, so that the day does not grow weary and the plants grow lush. So that they can continue to nourish us.

The Unleashing of the World is a poetic essay that combines different objects made from plant fibers: from the Muisca raft that evokes the legend of El Dorado. From Amazonian flutes made from palm trees that can only be seen by men. All the way to the one thin sheet of paper used for museum records. Colombian writer Eliana Hernandez Pachon explores how these objects from the Humboldt Forum's collections preserve different worlds. Through a text with changing voices and shifting forms, she shows how and what plants reveal - and what plants can conceal. Pachon follows the plants' clues. Imagines connections between different worlds. She poetically maps cycles of relationships and asks: What does it mean to preserve, to circle and to let go?

Participants

Eliana Hernández-Pachón was born in Bogotá, Colombia. Her first book, La Mata, is an exquisite, painful work of historical reappraisal. Using individual and collective stories, people, forces of nature and plants, she recalls the massacre in the village of El Salado in February 2000, thus pointing to the all-encompassing tragedy of mass murder in Colombia. La Mata was awarded the Colombian National Poetry Prize in 2020. Hernández-Pachón is the youngest poet ever to be so honored. She is part of Como un lugar, a poetry collective that runs an independent publishing house in Buenos Aires and organizes literary festivals in New York City and Latin American cities. She lives in Brooklyn.

Priya Basil is the author and curator of the Humboldt Forum series Objects Contradict. In her book Be My Guest/Hospitality (2019), she combines memoir, philosophy, food and politics to reflect on hospitality in the broadest sense. Her most recent book Im Wir und Jetzt: Feministin Werden (2021) combines politics with the personal, as does her film essay on memory culture and belonging, Eingeschlossen / Ausgeschlossen (2020), which can be viewed online.

She is a co-founder and board member of WIR MACHEN DAS, an NGO that works with refugees and migrants for a more inclusive society. Priya is also a member of the advisory board of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. She has conceived and curated projects for various institutions, including the Goethe Institute and the Berlin International Literature Festival. From 2021 to 2023, Priya was International Writer in Residence for Mindscapes, a Wellcome Trust UK project that aims to change the way we understand, talk about and treat psycho-social health. As part of this project, Priya undertook a multi-year research journey across six continents to learn about different understandings of wellbeing and healing practices. In 2024, Priya is Writer in Residence on Wellcome's next project, Climate and Health. She is currently working on a new book based on her research and travels.

- 12 EUR, reduced 6 EUR

- Please book your ticket in advance online or at the box office in the foyer

- Language: English

- Mechanical arena in the foyer

- Part of: Objects contradict