Sharp as a Story
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| English |
| Mechanical Arena in the Foyer |
| Part of: Objects talk back |
Inspired by a walrus-ivory Story Knife from the Arctic region, Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza creates a multi-faceted new work that asks: what is remembered? How? For whom? The ephemeral strokes of a Story Knife were traditionally drawn by young girls into soil or snow to repeat old tales that would then blow off in the wind or melt away in the sun. Rivera Garza connects this empowering ancient Indigenous practice to the violentometro, a contemporary tool designed in Mexico to measure instances of intimate partner violence. The story of violence against women constantly disappears even as it is continuously told, re-told. Might a Story Knife play a role in reversing such erasure?
Cristina Rivera Garza is an award-winning novelist and essayist whose works explore the lightest and darkest passages of human experience with courage, grace and love. In her new creation for Humboldt Forum she boldly extends the scope of literature. Through performance, gesture, art and text, Rivera Garza, accompanied by artist Saul Hernandez, opens a profound space, an invitation, for collective memory and story.
Participants
Priya Basil is an author, and curator of the Humboldt Forum project Objects Talk Back. In her book Be My Guest/Gastfreundschaft (2019), she combines memoir, philosophy, food and politics in a reflection on hospitality in the broadest sense. Her most recent book Im Wir und Jetzt: Feministin Werden (2021) combines politics with the personal, as does her film essay on memory-culture and belonging, Locked In and Out (2020), which can be seen online.
She is co-founder and board member of WIR MACHEN DAS, an NGO that works with refugees and migrants for a more inclusive society. Priya is also a member of the advisory board of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. She has conceptualized and curated projects for various institutions including the Goethe Institut and International Literature Festival Berlin. From 2021 to 2023 Priya was International Writer in Residence for Mindscapes, a project of the Wellcome Trust UK, devoted to transforming how we understand, talk about and treat mental health. As part of this Priya undertook a research journey which spanned six continents to learn about different understandings of well being and practices of healing. In 2024, Priya is Writer in Residence with Wellcome’s new Climate and Health project. She is working on a new book which draws on her research and travels.