18 August 2022

“Nicht besonders sein müssen” – School project on cultural diversity in Berlin with Dilek Güngör, Özlem Özgul Dündar, Ines Thomsen and encounters with the archive of Aras Ören

Final presentation with a film screening, audio play, reading and discussions
Thursday, 1 September 2022, start 7 pm, Pariser Platz

How do young people – grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the first generation or migrant workers – reflect their identity and belonging? Since the beginning of the year, pupils of Carl-von-Ossietzky-Schule, an interdenominational school in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, have been exploring the Archives of the Akademie der Künste and researching how people live together in their city in readings and workshops. The “Nicht besonders sein müssen” school project on cultural diversity in Berlin is a joint endeavour by KUNSTWELTEN, the education programme of the Akademie der Künste, and its Literature Archive.

The results of this intensive work will be presented at an event on 1 September. The students will speak about their experiences and encounters in the Literature Archive, for example using material from the pre-mortem bequest of Aras Ören who addresses questions of foreignness and self-positioning in many of his texts, or will report on readings with writer Dilek Güngör and writer and philosopher Senthuran Varatharajah. Other workshop results to be presented include a 30-minute film from a workshop on documentary films with Ines Thomsen and an audio play about the sounds of the city created with Özlem Özgül Dündar. Texts written during the writing workshop with Dilek Güngör will be presented by the authors.
Guests will include Bettina C. Huber, Presidential Secretary of the Akademie der Künste, Gabriele Radecke, Director of the Literature Archive, Gregor Darmer, Director of ProjektZentrum Berlin, Stiftung Mercator, and Nalan Kılıç, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Schule (interdenominational school).

“Nicht besonders sein müssen” is part of a project on Turkish-German literature generously funded by Stiftung Mercator.

It was launched in 2021 at an event for the writer and winner of this year’s Georg Büchner Prize, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, who handed the first part of her pre-mortem bequest over to the Akademie der Künste in 2017. Her latest novel, Ein von Schatten begrenzter Raum, was introduced in readings and discussions, and analogue and digital presentations provided insights into her archive. This was followed by several events and workshops with pupils from grades 8, 11 and 12. The whole project concluded with the digitalisation of manuscripts from the pre-mortem bequest of Emine Sevgi Özdamar and their permanent presentation on the Akademie website.

Event information
“Nicht besonders sein müssen”
Final presentation
Thursday, 1 September 2022, 7 pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Free admission: Tickets available by telephone at +49 (0)30 200 57-1000, ticket@adk.de or online at www.adk.de/tickets
With Dilek Güngör, Ines Thomsen and pupils of Carl-von-Ossietzky-Schule (interdenominational school)