February 20 – March 4, 2024

Lesarten und Schreibweisen (Ways of Reading and Writing) was an experimental movement and text atelier initiated alongside Julia Höft and Emilia Sting as part of The Art of Emergency at Thealit (Bremen).

The ongoing state of emergency constantly inscribes itself onto our bodies.
These bodies—permeable compositions of materiality—are intricately entangled with their surroundings, inseparable from them.
Whenever an emergency arises, the human body reacts instantly—chemically, muscularly.
Bodies harden, fall silent, stiffen.
They release adrenaline, tense up. These reactions manifest in specific regions, among them:

In the psoas.
In the atlas.
On the vocal cords.

The body de/forms.

Our writing practice served as both a method of reading the body’s responses to the state of emergency and a way of translating these reactions into written language(s). Writing became a strategy—a way to create space, to empty oneself, allowing the body to resonate and remain responsive. Through writing, we carved a poetic path, imagining a state beyond emergency.

At dawn, on paper, lying down, on the wall—blind and ambidextrous—we wrote from and through the body, transcending into a collective language-body assemblage.

See also: https://www.literaturmagazin-bremen.de/beitraege/practicing-silent-writing