Literature as a European mother tongue: In our series “One is a CROWD”, we introduce you to authors from all over Europe who will be involved in the CROWD omnibus reading tour, taking place from May to July 2016, featuring 100 authors who will be travelling through 15 European countries. We asked them questions about text production, reception and mediation. In case you were wondering what a literary activist from  Berlin looks like, meet Ricardo Domeneck!

A text unity lies not in its origins, but in its destination or audience. What does that mean to you? Can a text be original?

All words are second-hand words, and even neologisms draw from a trough of etymological collaboration through the centuries.  An “apple” is the last apple I ate and connects to the first individual of the Homo Sapiens who tasted an apple and discovered it was good, and not poisonous. And it gets plucked by Eve, and it falls on Newtons’ head, and it poisons Alan Turing. Collectively and individually, many generations agitate in one single word, “apple”. I, personally, prefer bananas.

Have you ever participated in collaborative author/reader projects? If so, what do you find interesting about it?

I have participated in collaborative projects that involve other art forms or languages. Lyrics for musicians, texts for visual pieces, and so on. We often speak only of literary influences when it comes to writers, but we are constantly being formed and informed by all types of language. Leaving one’s own prison-head is the best thing in collaboration.

Which literary event did fascinate you most and why? (Please give a link to the website of the event)

Literary events with a multiple view of what poetry can be always fascinate me for their love of text, no matter if such text appears on a page, in the voice of a singer or a video. These seem to me to be the future.