EXC 2020 Temporal Communities

Founded in 2001, the internationales literaturfestival berlin (ilb) is one of the most extensive literary events in Berlin and therefore a central element of Berlin’s literary scene, bringing together authors from all over the world for readings, discussions and workshops as part of a wide-ranging festival programme. Directed by Ulrich Schreiber until 2022, the ilb welcomed Lavinia Frey as the new festival director in 2023, who has been developing the festival’s profile in close cooperation with the festival team, deepening their engagement with the broad spectrum of contemporary literature, including prose, poetry, non-fiction, graphic novels and children’s and young adult literature.

The cooperation with the ilb has been a central element of the Cluster’s collaborative network from the very beginning. After several joint formats, the Cluster and the festival have institutionalised the collaborative annual programme series Echo Echo, focusing on transtemporal und transcultural relations in literary texts and its media – understanding literature and its histories as an echo chamber of text traditions, political and social contexts and as a complex field of relations in which literary forms, agents and traditions form varying constellations.