EXC 2020 Temporal Communities

Ausgehend von der von Keith und Rosmarie Waldrop etablierten Burning Deck Press widmet sich der interdisziplinäre Workshop dem Verlegen als infrastruktureller Praxis des Öffentlichmachens. Im Fokus stehen dabei unter Anderem die soziale Rolle von Verleger:innen, und das Publizieren als kollektiver Handlungsraum.

The installation features works created within the Activation Lab, a space for collective research and experimentation on Latin American documentary poetry. The Lab is a transdisciplinary format developed as part of Ana Rocío Jouli's postdoctoral project, "Rewriting the Archive – Transdisciplinary Activations in Latin American Literature".

In "Handbook for Dismantling Memory", eleven voices from the Latin American diaspora in Berlin rewrite materials like election records, migration forms, and advertisements. By reframing the verbal and visual matters of these documents, their poetics explore the archive as a political territory of resistance, belonging, and imagination.

In 2025, for its third edition, Middle Ground joins forces with Festa Literária das Periferias (FLUP)—a festival born in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro—to ask: what does it mean to write from the experience of rupture?

The project brought together artists and scholars for a series of events and formats exploring the act of reading as both ordinary and elusive. The event examined what happens when reading meets its limits—when meaning slips, stumbles, or becomes unreadable.

Reading circles are making a comeback — in libraries, queer bookshops, prisons, online spaces, and labor movements. This workshop explores how collective reading creates unique aesthetic, social, and political dynamics that differ from reading alone.

Organised by HKW Berlin in collaboration with EXC 2020, this two-day festival programme marks the centenary of the surrealist movement by critically revisiting its legacy.

Für einen Workshop im Jungen Programm des ilb tauchten die Schüler*innen einer Berliner Schulklasse in die klanglichen Welten von Chantal-Fleur Sandjons Roman „City of Trees“ ein und gingen mit eigenen Kompositionen, Audioaufnahmen und Lektüren der Frage nach: Wie klingt ein Buch?

As part of the Young Program of the international literature festival berlin (ilb), a class of Berlin elementary school students embarked on a creative journey through the imagery and storytelling of Dayeon Auh’s picture book "Ein Berg, ein Sturz ein langes Leben".

An exhibition on Argentinian artist Mirtha Dermisache and her 'asemic writing' in cooperation with A—Z, oxfordberlin and the Legado Mirtha Dermisache.

Die Veranstaltung thematisierte die kaum erforschte filmische Praxis der Autorin Erika Runge (1939-2023) und die ihr Lebenswerk durchziehende Reflexion auf das Konzept 'Glück'.

While manifestos and declarations have long shaped our understanding of political, intellectual, and aesthetic beginnings, their endings remain far less visible and harder to grasp. This workshop shifted the focus from origins to closures, exploring how collectives, avant-gardes, and movements narrate, perform, and make sense of their own dissolutions.

In 2025, the annual cooperative series Echo. Echo with the ilb explores the hauntological presence of literature – the liminal spaces where ghosts disturb linear time, where forgotten histories resurface and ancient stories take on new meaning.

Organised in cooperation with Sinema Transtopia, the film series aims to rethink the history of German cinema by examining the role of transnational filmmaking practices in Germany since the 1960s.

Reviving the historical tradition of the Waygooze – a communal gathering of printers held on St. Bartholomew’s Day to exchange knowledge and foster solidarity – the workshop reimagines editorial work as a collaborative process of transformation.

A transdisciplinary dance performance by former artists in residence Hiromi Ito, Yuko Kaseki and musician Kanako Nishi

On November 10 and 11, a workshop in collaboration with the Schwules Museum Berlin and the art space Neun Kleche will be held. This workshop is dedicated to the exploration of tactility and materiality within movement archives and artistic approaches to archiving.

In November 2023 the working group After Accumulation collaborated with Sinema Transtopia to engage in the politics of film archiving. With Can Sungu and Lisabona Rahman as featured speakers, the event discussed the material dimensions of archival practices and the specific institutional frameworks that transnational archives are faced with.

Für den Workshop am 25. November 2023 brachte After Accumulation Archiv-Initiativen und künstlerische und theoretische Positionen zusammen, die das Archiv als geschlossene materielle Sammlung herausfordern und Strategien entfalten, die Verwobenheit von Archiven mit lebensweltlichen Infrastrukturen sichtbar und erfahrbar zu machen.

Vom 10. bis zum 17.10.2024 fand in Kooperation mit dem IAI Berlin und der lettrétage das Festival Barrio | Bairro Berlin statt, das aus transtemporaler, dekolonialer und interdisziplinärer Perspektive zeigenössische Literatur aus Lateinamerika und der lateinamerikanischen Diaspora vorstellte.

Das Projekt, das sich der Sichtbarmachung gesprochener Literatur widmet, hat drei Grafikdesigner*innen zu dem Experiment eingeladen, gesprochene und gebärdensprachliche Texte in Plakatgestaltungen zu übersetzen.

Eine gemeinsame Reihe der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz), der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, der Universität Kopenhagen und des EXC 2020.

Ein kooperatives Projekt zur digitalen Erschließung der Einreisekartei des Schriftstellerverbandes der DDR, das in Form einer App den literarischen Austausch zwischen Ost-Berlin und internationalen literarischen Akteur*innen nach dem Bau der Mauer nachvollziehbar macht.

The festival Assemblage Berlin, a collaborative project between the Excellence Cluster Temporal Communities and the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB), focused on intermediality. It explored the diverse manifestations of literature and its interconnections with other arts in the context of digitalization and global circulation.

Der digitale Video-Essay "The Game(s) of Translation" erkundet in drei Formaten – MATERIALS, CONCEPTS und EXPLORATIONS – das Feld der experimentellen Lyrikübersetzung. Mit Beiträgen von Lyrikübersetzer·innen, Literaturwissenschaftler·innen und Künstler·innen.

The second edition of Echo. Echo focused on the theme of "Post-Soviet Cosmopolis" within Eastern European, Baltic, and Eurasian literary voices. It aimed to investigate the distinct temporalities embedded within the communities sometimes framed as Post-Soviet.

A Project on Avant-Garde Poetics, Popular Culture and Futurist Resonance in cooperation with the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz)

The Cluster's annual conference on practices, contexts and agents of li­terary evaluation in cooperation with Literarisches Colloquium Berlin

Over three years, the project group After Accumulation engaged in numerous explorations of the archive, examining its theories and practical demands. Through collaborative workshops, reading sessions, and training sessions, the group investigated how archiving might be reimagined and practiced beyond the paradigm of accumulation.

The collaboration between the Cluster and the international literature festival berlin engages this year in the reverberations of Magical Realisms and discusses the complex implication of the literary category of the 'magical'.

Emerging from the Cluster project MOTDYNAMO, the artistic workshop Translation Games explored the field of experimental translation. Nine artists/translators used the multilingual collective poem RENGA as the starting point for their individual experiments.

The transdisciplinary project, in collaboration with the Georgian photographers' collective 90'x, delved into the concept of echo as an intermedial representation of alteration and repetition. Through workshops and an online exhibition, the initiative explored the intricate layering of media and historical threads inherent in the transtemporal dynamics.

The 4th edition of the series Echo Echo – a cooperation between the Cluster and the internationales literaturfestival berlin – explores the interrelation between temporality and collectivity in writing literature.

The transdisciplinary workshop convened artists, researchers, and activists to deliberate on methods and practices for mapping within the realm of climate resilience.

The video series brings together 12 short presentations by internationally active artists, scholars, and curators. It is part of the project "Circulating Narratives – Entangling Communities: Case Studies in Global Performance Art."

The audio exhibition of the Cluster at the Humboldt Labor in explores in interactions with selected objects of the exhibition "Nach der Natur" the potential of story stelling for transdisciplinary knowledge production.