Workshop, reading and conversation with
Lee Langvad | Anja Sunhyun Michaelsen
How to convey ordinary diasporic experience, its multiple and interwoven layers of time and space, as it reaches the limits of language? In the novel TOLK (My Interpreter, Gyldendal 2024) by Korean-Danish writer Lee Langvad, silences and ellipses spell out an aesthetics of displacement. Adopted from South Korea as a child, the narrator in this hybrid text travels from Copenhagen to Seoul for family meals, with an interpreter who also happens to be her girlfriend. In short scenes of intimate encounters and conversations, the narrator, members of her Korean family, and the interpreter all appear as familiar strangers to each other in different ways. Strangeness and queerness infuse the text in more than one way – the narration is punctured with elisions which indicate the passage of time during translation. In TOLK, the diasporic condition is written about as much in the blank spaces as it is in words. Queer diasporic everydayness makes itself felt as a temporal exercise in patience and endurance, existential drama and mundane logistics always in close proximity. Langvad’s minimalist style holds stark emotions, history, and politics, while also being surprisingly comical and absurd.
Lee Langvad will host a workshop based on his/her unique poetic and conceptual approach to language, diaspora, adoption, and queerness. Participants will have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with elements of Langvad’s writing through formal experiments such as questionnaires, lists and repetitions. They will be able to share their work with each other and receive feedback.
In the evening, Langvad will read from TOLK, in Danish and English, and afterwards discuss with cultural researcher Anja Sunhyun Michaelsen the uses of experimental forms against the demands for autobiographical literature, writing polyvocally, the many languages of secrecy, and the various forms of coming out they require.
To register for the workshop, please write to
bWFpbCB8IGRpZmZyYWt0ICEgc3BhY2U=. In principle, everyone is welcome; however, as the number of participants is limited, we will prioritise registrations from people with diasporic and/or queer perspectives. If this applies to you, please indicate this briefly in your email.
There is no need to register for the evening conversation.
If you have any questions regarding accessibility, please feel free to get in touch — we will do our best to support or accommodate. The venue is accessible by elevator, but unfortunately there is no barrier-free restroom. We can apply for a sign language interpreter, but cannot guarantee availability.
Programme
4–5.30 pm
Workshop
break
7.30–9 pm
Reading and conversation
In collaboration with the ERC Consolidator Grant Project Tales of the Diasporic Ordinary.
Also check out other Arts events in Berlin, Workshops in Berlin, Literary Art events in Berlin.
