Room: Make or take? On the politics and poetry of space
Billy-Ray Belcourt, Intan Paramaditha und Adania Shibli
Moderation: Priya Basil
The German word Freiraum, literally translated, means free room. Freiraum is more than just physical space though, it is also a mental state of creativity and freedom. In 1929 Virginia Woolf argued for the necessity of a „room of one’s own“ for women writers: Freiraum, both literal and figurative, to think and to create. Almost a century later, having a private room is still a privilege, not only but especially for women. A virus knowing no boundaries or borders emphasized this inequality, making obvious the fierce competition for whose space is whose. Which public does this public space belong to, what are its rules, and how are they policed? Unspoken questions that are revitalizing gated communities and exclusionary zoning around the world. Who gets to claim and define public spaces? Whose rules determine how space is used and shared? How does identity shape our experience of space? Three international authors taking part in the LCB’s digital residency programme will discuss and explore different notions of space in conversation and in writing. The digital residency is curated by Priya Basil and funded by the Federal Foreign Office.