EXC 2020 Temporal Communities

"Raw Materials. What We Bring to the Table," continent.’s residency project at the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities," has explored the relationship between meals and writing, highlighting how these are both social and integrative as well as potentially critical and creative acts. The project now develops "Topical Topoi: A Raw Material Picnic," which involves collective encounters, reading and snacking groups, for a very special issue from continent. The project blurs the lines between raw and cooked, the published and unpublished, the messy and refined in a kind of 'metabolic publishing.'

For Literary Value in July 2024, we questioned who and what is served in the act of (globalised?) publishing. We did so through a set of topical picnic blankets, installed on the majestic lawn of the historic Literarisches Colloquium Berlin villa at the Grosser Wannsee. Each picnic blanket is a topical tapestry, a locus for critical thematics in publishing, value and circulation. Thematics were addressed by each topical picnic through objects, foods, textures, graphics and texts, arranged and open to participatory intervention by the public in attendance. Picnickers were also able to contribute their own comments, references and excerpts across the topology of the lawn, creating a collective, individualised publication/edition.