POETIC LANGUAGE IS A PLACE. AN AFTERNOON WITH HANNAH ARENDT

Musician Ben Osborn and poet and performer Giuliana Kiersz weave a poetic essay and a musical composition into a poetry installation. Taking Hannah Arendt’s poems as their starting point, they explore questions of exile, memory and language from a contemporary, transnational Jewish perspective. Arendt’s poetry, discovered only relatively recently, becomes the point of departure for an afternoon poised between voice, text, sound and imagination. The poems are translated from German into English and Spanish and enter into dialogue with new texts and musical compositions by the two artists, who live in Germany with Jewish heritages and migrant biographies.

Arendt’s line “Poetic language / is a place, not a refuge” gives rise to the central question: What kind of place does poetic language open up? A space of memory? A space for political thought? Or a place of encounter where different worlds touch, shape and transform one another? The live performance understands language not as an escape from the world, but as a contact zone – open, vulnerable and present.

Text, performance: Giuliana Kiersz

Music, sound design: Ben Osborn