An evening of memorials and book launch for ‘The Graveside Orations of Carl Einstein’ – featuring Dr Sharon Kivland
THE GRAVESIDE ORATIONS OF CARL EINSTEIN – An evening of memorials & a book launch
MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE at HOPSCOTCH, Kurfurstenstr. 14 10785 Berlin
Thursday 13 June 2019, 7PM
There will be beer and wine. If it is fine weather, the event will be in the courtyard, but you are advised to bring a sweater
At the memorial for Rosa Luxemburg on 13 June 1919, the political radical, art historian, critic, and writer Carl Einstein gave an oration. There is no record of what Einstein said, how he said it, or what it addressed. The Graveside Orations of Carl Einstein assembles texts from artists, film-makers, writers, poets, critics, philosophers, and art historians. Each contribution is a speculation on what Einstein might have delivered, each as likely and as unlikely to be Einstein’s as any other. Through the multiple substitutions of Carl Einstein—a practice that Einstein pursued throughout his life—themes of masquerade, mistaken identities, of persons substituted after the event, of orations, speeches, and texts rewritten, speculated upon and redelivered, celebrating, mapping, and fictionalising a past life, are explored. Some of the contributors to this book will read this evening. There will be four sets of readings, with breaks between each. The programme may change at the last minute but this is more or less as it will unfold:
I. Introduction by Dale Holmes; Geoffrey Wildanger, Sonja Burbidge (read by Irina Gheorghe), Hannes Bajohr (read by Donal Fitzpatrick), Betsy Porritt
II. Sean Bonney & Sacha Kahir, Kirsten Cooke, Declan Clarke, John Z. Komurki (read by Sean Smuda)
III. Christian A. Wollin, Ed Luker, Matthew Burbidge, Katharina Ludwig, Donal Fitzpatrick, Zoë Skoulding
IV. Sacha Kahir, Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (extract, read by Sharon Kivland), Sharon Kivland, Spartakus
John Cunningham will read four extracts from his essay in each of the sets above
Sometimes, however, it seems to me that I am not really a human being at all, but like a bird or a beast in human form.
I feel so much more at home even in a scrap of garden like the one here, and till more in the meadows
when the grass is humming with bees than at one of the our party congresses.
Prison Letter, 12 May 1917, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks
MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE was established by the artist, writer, and editor Sharon Kivland in 2015. The editor invites authors she considers to be good readers. She agrees with Nabokov that a good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader, is a re-reader. She knows her writers and they know her, even when they have not yet met. They have read each other, or believe themselves to have done so. They are flirtatious, ruffling pages. She likes those who do not hesitate to buy the books she publishes, but under certain circumstances will make excuses for those who do not. She promises to do her best. The best is reading.
HOPSCOTCH is a non-profit bookstore located in the Potsdamer Strasse gallery district, in Berlin. It specialises in books about and from the non-western world, focussing on the disciplines of art, literature, and theory. It is also especially enthusiastic about artist’s books, books about books, chap books, small-run offset and risograph printed publications, and other ephemera.
Dr Sharon Kivland is a Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University. Find out more about Sharon Kivland’s books and other works here.
MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE FROM https://mabibliotheque.cargo.site/
FROM ANAGRAM http://www.anagrambooks.com/
And from some excellent bookshops, including HOPSCOTCH