Following her studies of German Philology, Musicology and English Philology at the University of Cologne, Lena Hintze did her PhD in the field of contemporary German literature, receiving a doctoral scholarship by the Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft. During her studies and her PhD project she has continuously worked for various cultural institutions, including the WDR Big Band Cologne, Goethe-Institut Wellington, Schauspiel Köln, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and, most recently, the Literaturhaus Lettrétage. From 2020 to 2022 she had a postdoc project on trans-disciplinary literary events at EXC 2020 "Temporal Communities".

Former Research Projects at EXC Temporal Communities:
Beyond the book – Concepts and practices of public readings (2020–2022)

Literary installations, visual presentations of texts, literary exhibitions, performances, and happenings in public spaces, the use of new media and technologies – the spectrum of literary presentations that seek to go beyond the traditional "glass of water" reading is vast. In these literary events, the clear distinctions to other genres of art blur and processes of production, presentation, and reflection of the artwork often merge; the audience is not presented with a final, definitive product, but confronted rather with a fragile, changing performance. Challenging the idea of an original artwork and individual authorship, collaborative works and digital language techniques are gaining relevance, setting into motion a fundamental reflection on the triad of author/originatorship, work, and recipient, with meaningful consequences for publication and dissemination practices. In complementary formats of literary research and cultural practice the project seeks to investigate the relation between process and product, author and interpreter, event and text.

PhD project Werk ist Weltform. Rainald Goetz' Buchkomplex "Heute Morgen".

Lena Hintze's doctoral thesis examines one of Rainald Goetz's complex book projects, entitled "Heute Morgen". Goetz is known for the uniform design of his books that corresponds to the grouping of individual publications into series of works. The question of how this design affects the texts themselves has so far remained open. The starting point of this study thus is materiality as a quality of a book. The surface is folded into the interior of the texts, proposing an interpretation of the whole book project "Heute Morgen", which results from the interface of visual art and literature. On the basis of the formal principle of Goetz's texts, parallels can be drawn to the practice of the artist Jeff Koons on the one hand and to the universal theory of Niklas Luhmann on the other.

Research interests

• Theory and poetics of form
• German Pop Literature
• Aesthetic theory

Monographs

Werk ist Weltform. Rainald Goetz’ Buchkomplex "Heute Morgen". Bielefeld: transcript 2020.

Edited volumes

schliff. Literaturzeitschrift, No. 6. Alltag (2017). (Co-editor)

Articles and chapters

"Auftritte statt Bücher? Die Wiener Gruppe als Liveact." In: Alina Boy, Vanessa Höving, Katja Holweck (Eds.): Vexierbilder. Autor:inneninszenierung vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Paderborn: Brill/Fink 2021, pp. 125-145.

"Ein bisschen plötzlich, bitte." In: die horen. Zeitschrift für Literatur, Kunst und Kritik, 281 (2021), pp. 115-117. 

"Der schönste Platz. Kneipenlandschaft bei Wolfgang Welt." In: schliff. Literaturzeitschrift, No. 8. Landschaft (2018), pp. 147-154.

"Kummer, Bad Boy, Skapoda. Fakten, Mögliches und Wahrscheinliches im Skandal um die Interview-Fälschungen von Tom Kummer." In: Stephanie Willeke, Ludmila Peters, Carsten Roth (Eds.): Das Radikale. Gesellschafts-politische und formalästhetische Aspekte der Gegenwartsliteratur. Münster: Lit Verlag 2017, pp. 65-84.