Von allgemeinem Interesse von Maaza Mengiste. Buchvorstellung und Film-Essay-Vorführung

In the organizer's words:

Objects contradict is a project about the potential of literature to awaken new stories and relationships in museum objects. International authors are invited to browse the collections at the Humboldt Forum, choose an object and write about it - however they want. Priya Basil, the curator of the project, has introduced the term "fabulography" for this approach: It's about working creatively with gaps, voids and (un)truths around the objects to open up narrative and imaginative landscapes that have been controlled and limited by the museum for too long.

Objects Contradict is aware that museum collections are inextricably linked to violent colonial histories and ongoing practices of domination.

The project strives for knowledge that resists, survives and transcends colonial ruptures; it is animated by living connections between people, places and things. How far can stories take us in understanding, experiencing and imagining other worlds? Let's find out when objects talk back.

1868, Ethiopia: the British Napier Expedition, the burning and looting of Magdala. A German collector. A young African boy. A stunning Ethiopian royal cloak. Maaza Mengiste imagines her travels. A path out of the turmoil of battle, a path through fire, a path over the mountains, over the water - all the way to Berlin. The story of a name remembered, a life revived, a secret revealed.

"Every object holds the story of a disappearance. Every disappearance carries the story of a person." From this realization, Maaza Mengiste's extraordinary new work for Objekte widersprechen (Objects contradict ) unfolds around a series of heartbreaking questions:

What is an object? What is a human being?

Who decides what is an object?

What is of general interest?

Who is the public?

Of General Interest is a multimedia work inspired by the history of the Napier Expedition and the archives of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. Like all of Mengiste's works, it unfolds at the interfaces between the dead and the living, between literature and photography, between official history, hidden records and silenced testimonies.

Maaza Mengiste, an Ethiopian writer and photographer currently living in New York, came to explore the African collections on display at the Humboldt Forum. And was ultimately fascinated by an object hidden in the depot. A name erased from the records. A possibility rejected by the museum. With "Of General Interest", now published as a book, Mengiste invites us into a space of astonishing encounters. Rich, shimmering and unforgettable like the golden and silver threads of the cloak.

The event includes a short film screening and reading by Maaza Mengiste. Followed by a talk with curator Priya Basil, questions from the audience and a book signing.

PARTICIPANTS

Maaza Mengiste

Maaza Mengiste is a novelist, essayist and photographer. She is the author of the novel The Shadow King, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize and was a finalist for the 2020 LA Times Book Prize Fiction. It was named best book of the year by the New York Times, NPR, Elle, Time and others. Her debut novel Beneath the Lion's Gaze was named one of the ten best contemporary African books by the Guardian and one of the best books of 2010 by the Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe and other publications. Her story "Dust, Ash, Flight", published in Addis Ababa Noir, edited by Maaza Mengiste herself, won the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Short Story.

She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence Program Fellowship, a Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, the Premio von Rezzori, the Premio il ponte, a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Award and a Creative Capital Award. Her work can be found in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Granta, The Guardian, The New York Times, Esquire, Rolling Stone and BBC, among others.

She has taught at New York University, Princeton University, Northwestern University, and Queens College/CUNY, and is a professor of English at Wesleyan University. She is currently working on her new novel as a fellow of the Amrican Academy in Berlin.

Priya Basil

Priya Basil is the author and curator of the Humboldt Forum project Objects Talk Back. In her book Be My Guest / Gastfreundschaft (2019), she combines memoir, philosophy, food and politics to reflect on hospitality in the broadest sense. Her most recent book Eingeschlossen / Ausgeschlossen (2025) deals with memory culture and belonging in Germany.

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.

www.priyabasil.com
www.authorsforpeace.com

- Price: 12 EUR/ 6 EUR reduced

- Tickets can be booked online or at the box office in the foyer

- Language: English

- Location: Mechanical Arena in the foyer of the Humboldt Forum

- Part of: Objects Contradict