EXC 2020 Temporal Communities

Echo. Echo. Temporal Collectives

A collaborative series between the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” and the international literature festival berlin

The 2024 edition of Echo. Echo. spotlighted the interrelation between collective literary formations and time. What kinds of collectivity emerge through storytelling, that vital, omnipresent practice that also shapes the human sense of time? How do writers and poets reflect on the interplay between past, present and future as they envision communities in their work? Do traces of collective writing fade or become visible with time? Echo. Echo. Temporal Collectives acted as a forum for discussing the multiplicity of constellations that can be understood as forms of collectivity while also investigating the transtemporal dynamics at play in narrative and poetic texts.

In 2024, Echo. Echo. dived into queer and trans temporalities, literary environmental activism and forms of collectivity that transgress linear notions of time and interpersonal concepts of community. The authors Linnea Axelsson and Fiston Mwanza Mujilla came together to talk about the cohesive power of the past and the multifold ways in which the past inscribes itself into the present. The poets Zsuka Nagy and Łęko Zygmuntówne met with the author Sergei Davydov to speak about the precarity of temporal frames and the specific normative pressures that queer and trans authors tackle in their work within the Hungarian, Polish and Russian context, respectively. The collective Wu Ming presented their recent publication while engaging in conversation about collective forms of writing. Linnea Axelsson and Timimie Märak investigated the question of how deep time, precarious history and political resistance affect and dislocate the concept of literature. The literary events label Kasch brought the process of collective storytelling onto the stage by tracing how fiction emerges from life in real time.

Concept & curation: Sima Ehrentraut (EXC 2020 Constellations, Echo. Echo. project lead), Alexandra Ksenofontova (EXC 2020, Research Area 4) & Simone Schröder (ilb, Head of programme)

Echo. Echo. is an annual series of events and a cooperation between the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" and the international literature festival berlin (ilb), in which literature is understood as a multi-voiced, diverse field of resonance. What voices – other than that of the author – can be heard in a poem, novel or textual fragment? What echoes of voices, literary traditions and narrative forms can be discerned? Through readings and conversations, the series explores the resonance between past and contemporary literatures and hosts discussions with authors about the echoes in their texts.