Tag Archives: Crowd

Laura Serkosalo at the CROWD Conference (Videos)

Laura Serkosalo from the Finnish non-profit literary organization Nuoren Voiman Liitto (NVL), partner of the CROWD, presents their projects and explains their part of the literary journey that will be our bus tour across Europe in 2016.

 

SJ Fowler on the first CROWD conference in Berlin

CROWD – a conference of literary activists: January 2015

I was properly excited to attend this unique conference of literary organisers and activists, hosted and led by the extraordinary Lettretage – Tom Bresemann, Katharina Deloglu, Moritz Malsch & co, in Berlin, precisely because, absurdly, it seemed wholly focused on the extremely niche thing that I have found myself doing in poetry – that is organisation, curation, innovation, but also something more fundamental than this – the two extensive days of discussion in a room in Kreuzberg were about action. and the possibilities of doing that across Europe, with ambition and energy, while maintaining consideration and ephemeral sensitivity to what literature might be, rather than what it should be.

Lettretage itself is cutting a path for things like the Enemies project. It is doing what I’ve often inadvertently found myself trying to do. This conference was the best possible example of this, having been around near a decade, Lettretage is now innovating ways to grow and centralise a network of similarly minded people and organisations. They have secured fantastic funding support from creative europe and many others to create a tour of Europe, through their CROWD project and to develop things like an app which will allow visitors to new cities to get ‘local’ information on readings and performances. Always their emphasis is on the ground up outfits, the artists and curators who are building up from communities and live, contemporary cultures of poetry, literature and performance arts. Rather than shutting up shop after their successes, they are aggressively searching out those who share their mission and their general attitude of openness and innovation.

I have waffled about so many theoretical notions that gel perfectly with their approach, it was genuinely gratifying and made me feel wholly at home visiting them. So I trotted out these ideas again in Berlin – people before poetry, process over product, respect in the world, disrespect in the text… The guerrilla nature of Enemies was brought into sharp focus here, how reactive I am, and how grounded Lettretage and the many other organisers here are in their worlds and communities. I realised London is different place to organise, in a sense wonderful and anonymous and incremental because of its sprawl. The participants here are more rooted, they take responsibility with deeper ties, and all the while they maintain these positions of giving space to mostly avant garde, or contemporary, work and supporting artists while reaching actual people with that work.

SOURCE HERE

“Quo vadis, Welt aus Sprache?” Abendveranstaltungen am 23. und 24. Januar

Freitag,  23. Januar und Samstag, 24. Januar, 20:00 Uhr,  Eintritt frei
Lettrétage, Mehringdamm 61, 10961 Berlin

Was fasziniert uns an Texten? Wie bringen wir Literatur zum Leuchten? Wann springt der Funke über? Quo vadis, Welt aus Sprache?

Das Netzwerk der freien Literaturszenen Europas CROWD hat spannende, impulsgebende LiteraturaktivistInnen aus Großbritannien, Serbien, Italien, Lettland, Zypern, Finnland, Österreich, Tschechien und Island nach Berlin eingeladen, um sich an zwei Konferenztagen über ihre verschiedenen Ideen von Literatur zu verständigen.

Bei den Abendveranstaltungen werden dem Berliner Publikum Texte zeitgenössischer AutorInnen aus ganz Europa vorgestellt: Ästhetische Faszination und politisches Diskussionspotential machen ein vielgestaltiges Bild europäischer Gegenwartsliteratur greifbar. Texte, die hier und heute in der Echtzeit des Jetzt pulsieren. Texte, die uns zeigen, warum es sich lohnt, Literatur als Gesprächsangebot immer wieder neu zu formulieren.

Es lesen und diskutieren: Lily Michaelides (Zypern), Max Höfler (Österreich), Laura Serkosalo (Finnland), Ana Pejović (Serbien), Ondřej Buddeus (Tschechien), Andrea Inglese (Italien/Frankreich), Valgerdur Thoroddsdottir (Island), Inga Bodnarjuka (Lettland) und Steven Fowler (Großbritannien).

Lesung und Diskussion finden auf Englisch statt.