Programming organized by the “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” Cluster of Excellence:

Friday, September 9, 6:00 p.m.
Post-Soviet Cosmopolis – Yevgenia Belorusets: Anfang des Krieges. Tagebücher aus Kiew

• The photographer and writer Yevgenia Belorusets witnessed the Russian attack on Ukraine from its beginning until she left for Germany in early April 2022. During the day she roamed the streets of Kyiv, documenting people’s daily lives in diary entries and photographs – deliberately refusing to use polarizing war language.
• The event will be held in German and moderated by Natascha Freundel.
• Venue: Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin

Friday, September 9, 8:00 p.m.
Post-Soviet Cosmopolis – Opening Panel with Yevgenia Belorusets, Susanne Frank, and Liubou Kaspiarovich

• What does it mean to speak of the “post-Soviet?” And how does a young generation escape the echoes of previous histories? The works of photographer and writer Yevgenia Belorusets engage with such questions. To kick off the “Post-Soviet Cosmopolis” series, Belorusets will speak on a panel with Susanne Frank, professor of East Slavic Literatures and Cultures at Humboldt University in Berlin, and journalist Liubou Kaspiarovich.
• The event will be held in German and moderated by Kateryna Mishchenko.
• Venue: Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin

Saturday, September 10, 4:00 p.m.
Post-Soviet Cosmopolis – Russia: Toxic Homeland

• Sergei Lebedev’s novel Untraceable tells of wasp stings that kill secret agents and the hunt for a deadly chemist. Moderated by literary scholar Zaal Andronikashvili, Lebedev will talk to writer Boris Akunin – who enjoys great popularity in Russia for his crime novels and who has lived in exile in London after his political activity in the 2010s – about narratives of toxic homeland and Akunin’s True Russia project, born out of solidarity with Ukraine.
• The event will be held in Russian and German and moderated by Zaal Andronikashvili.
• Venue: Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin

Saturday, September 10, 8:00 p.m.
Post-Soviet Cosmopolis – Poetry Night. With Semyon Khanin, Volha Hapeyeva, and Eugenijus Ališanka

• The poets will read from their current poetry collections with actors reading the German translations, followed by a short conversation with the curator and moderator of the evening, Karolina Golimovska, who teaches at Freie Universität Berlin.
• Venue: Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Schaperstraße 24, 10719 Berlin
• The event will also be live streamed.

Sunday, September 11, 4:00 p.m.
Post-Soviet Cosmopolis – Constructing Post-Soviet Childhood. With Volha Hapeyeva und Lea Ypi (via live video broadcast)

• Camel Travel, the first novel by the renowned Belarusian poet Volha Hapeyeva is about childhood and youth in the final stages of the Soviet Union. In Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, political scientist Lea Ypi recounts growing up in an isolated Albania, where the economy of scarcity, the secret police, and the proletariat shaped life.
• The event will be held in English and German and moderated by Tuesday Bhambry.
• Venue: Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin

Sunday, September 11, 6:00 p.m.
Post-Soviet Cosmopolis – Generation Independence. With Jānis Joņevs and Aram Pachyan

• Latvian writer Jānis Joņevs’ debut novel Doom 94, about a youth in 1990s Latvia, became a bestseller that has now been translated into nine languages. The semi-biographical coming-of-age novel tells the story of a boy growing up in the provincial town of Jelgava, who first discovers Nirvana, then the metal scene, and makes new friends at music swap meets and concerts in abandoned bunkers. The Armenian writer Aram Pachyan sets out in search of a new style of fragmentary narrative with the experimental novel P/F. The old and the new Yerevan, the Getar River, the defunct streetcar, and a lonely man trying to find himself in the city of his fading memories all meet within its pages. Jānis Joņevs and Aram Pachyan will read from their texts and exchange ideas about writing after independence. Both have received the European Union Prize for Literature for their works.
• The event will be held in Armenian and English and moderated by Sona Mnatsakanyan.
• Venue: Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin

Sunday, September 11, 8:00 p.m.
Post-Soviet Cosmopolis: Speaking in Many Tongues. Translingual Poetry

• Multimedia performance followed by discussion with Semyon Khanin, a Russian-speaking poet in Latvia who helped found the bilingual poetry-performance group Orbita, and Eugene Ostashevsky, an English-speaking poet in New York (and Berlin).
• The event will be held in English.
• Venue: Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Dorotheenstraße 12, 10117 Berlin

Post-Soviet literature and identities is a significant research topic within the “Temporal Communities” Cluster, which is the only consortium research project in the field of literary studies to be recognized and funded through the German government’s Excellence Strategy. The “(Post-)Soviet Literary Cosmopolis” project brings together researchers from a variety of humanities disciplines as they examine questions of global and (multi)national literature in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts. They also look at translingual poetic dynamics that emerge from the interplay between the hegemony of Russian and the partitioning of national literary traditions in the (post-)Soviet region – all aspects which have gained particular significance in light of recent developments.

The Special Series “Echo. Echo”

“Echo. Echo” is dedicated to multiplying voices and forms in international literary circles. The series of events has been planned over several years in cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” and the international literature festival berlin. What voices – other than that of the author – can be heard in a poem, a novel, or a text fragment? What echoes of voices, textual traditions, and narrative forms is it possible to discern in the works under consideration? In readings and conversations, the series explores the resonance between past and contemporary literatures and holds discussions with authors about the echoes in their texts.

The Cluster of Excellence: “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective”

The Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities” aims to rethink literature from a global perspective and has been funded by the German Research Foundation since 2019. It investigates how literature moves beyond the categories of geographical space and time (sometimes even millennia), establishing extensive temporalities and networks while constantly interacting with other forms of art, media, institutions, and social phenomena.