Reading with Eckhard Rhode and Sarah Khan
6 April 2023, 7 pm
Free admission.
Ergül Cengiz and Burcu Dogramaci guide through the exhibition at 6 pm.
On this evening, Eckhard Rhode will read six texts by Hilka Nordhausen selected by him and a poem by contemporary witness Michael Kellner (Schneesturm mit Hilka, 1979). The texts by Nordhausen were published between 1974 and 1979. Rhode is particularly interested in Nordhausen’s early work and her analytical description of (inner) states and feelings in it. Part of the reading are also Rhode’s own texts, which complement Hilka’s works – intuitively chosen by him.
Eckhard Rhode (1959, Oldenburg i.O.) has lived and worked in Hamburg since 1980. He is
writer, actor (Klaus Wyborny, Heinz Emigholz and Harald Bergmann) and works in theater. He writes and publishes poetry, texts and essays on literature and psychoanalysis. In 2018 he received the N.C.Kaser poetry prize.
Sarah Khan reads from and about the Hamburg author Veranda Spuk. Under this pseudonym, she disappeared from the scene in the 1980s as quickly as she had appeared. Women hardly played a role in German-language literature in those years, apart from a few feminist program series. Spuk, however, was an exception. She gave herself a name that ignited the fantasies of male critics. Whether Spiegel or Diedrich Diedrichsen – her novel Mein Flirt mit einem ganz bestimmten Superstar or Der heilige Pappkarton im Bettlaken (1982, Suhrkamp) – published in a pop slipcase with a chocolate box cover – was written and raved about, while most of her contemporaries were ignored or attacked. She herself refused any public contact, never wanting to be contacted by either the press or her publisher – which may have contributed significantly to her fame. To this day, the publisher refuses to release her name. Author Sarah Khan had to go other ways to uncover the name of Veranda Spuk. What is interesting for Khan is what this book can still say today – about the difficult 80s – in which there was this mysterious pre-bloom of a pop literature, which almost 20 years after Veranda Spuk took a new, more commercial run.
Sarah Khan (1971, Hamburg) has published novels, stories, and reportage, including Wochenendhaus (Mikrotext Verlag, 2019), Das Stammeln der Wahrsagerin (Suhrkamp, 2017), Die Gespenster von Berlin (Suhrkamp, 2009), Dein Film (Rowohlt, 2001), Gogo-Girl (Rowohlt, 1999).
Exhibition and catalogue were supported by: Bayerischen Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst, das Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München, das Bundesprogramm “Neustart Kultur” der Stiftung Kunstfonds sowie die Spartenoffene Förderung und die bezirklichen Förderfonds der Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, die Erwin und Gisela von Steiner-Stiftung, die Kulturstiftung der Stadtsparkasse München, die Liebelt-Stiftung Hamburg, das Neustart Kultur-Stipendium der Stiftung Kunstfonds, die Prinzessin Therese von Bayern-Stiftung, die Stiftung IMAI – Inter Media Art Institute, Düsseldorf und den Mondriaan Fund. Mit freundlicher Unterstützung der Monacensia im Hildebrandhaus.