What Cannot Be Summed Up With A Pen

What Cannot Be Summed Up With A Pen is a two-day programme of study, gatherings, (un)doing, workshops, and rehearsals that explores the world of quilombismo through the power of poetry. This programme embraces poetry, oral literature, and communal memory as guiding forces that shape our understanding of ourselves, considering their collective strategies and the interconnectedness between them.

Every language, in its origin, is a creole language
—Édouard Glissant

The symposium commences with a workshop that serves as a libation, marking the beginning of International Creole Lab, a two-day workshop created by Brazilian artist Diego Araúja. This experimental laboratory aims to forge a language that transcends the bounds of trauma and violence. A new creole language, created within a creole (creative) temporality, aims to mend trauma with poetics in its constitution of language.

if the pot isn't placed on the fire
the dish cannot be cooked
so how will it ever satisfy? 
Consider this in light of our goal:
where does deep hurt lie
but in our backbone—
time to treat that injury! 

—Hadrawi, ‘Settling the Somali Language'

As European imperialism and colonialism reshaped geographical and political borders, time, knowledge, and space, they imposed new forms of temporal and spatial displacement upon global majority communities. Amidst this dispossession, this series of gatherings seeks to navigate and harness concepts such as Oqaal, which represents inner knowledge beyond one’s own selfhood. How can we perceive entanglement? Can the rhythmic knotting and weaving in alignment with a poem’s cadence give rise to the social pulse of language? How does memory embody a form of historical seeing? In this gathering, improvisation serves as a means of looking back while moving forward, echoing the principles of Sankofa and Ilhan.

What Cannot Be Summed Up With A Pen continues with a Qaraami session by Numbi arts, in order to evoke metaphors, sounds, spirits, stories, embodied archives. Utilizing the symposium format, the aim is to delve into the notion of poetry as a navigation tool for (un)mapping the world of quilombismo and its intersections with urgent questions across diverse Black worlds and diasporic lives. Qaraami, an East African concept akin to the blues, is central to this exploration, uniting struggle and joyous strategies of being and becoming. 

These two days of study allow the facilitation of a pedagogical learning situation to amplify the simple conviction that liberatory ideas need time, space and care to unfold. This second iteration of the School of Quilombismo resonates poetry in its audio and musical forms. On HKW’s website, a special programme from Forest Radio is streamable, a local community radio from Amazonas which seeks to provide a speech device to local subjects, assign them protagonism in a situation that disregards their existence, and incites awareness of a possible autonomy through social articulation.

 

Approach

Each communal gathering is itinerant and informs the next, over time fostering spaces for (un)learning by appearing (and disappearing) in several non-institutional and public spaces throughout Berlin. The programme takes place in community spaces, public gardens, and social initiatives beyond the vicinity of HKW, using informal structures to centralize (un)learning, shape-shifting, and sharing pedagogical skills otherwise. In other words, the School of Quilombismo invites contributors to move away from hierarchical formats that populate many art symposia, academia, and cultural gatherings, instead making the audience a fellow conversationalist.

Sat., 29.07 10:00–13:00 & Sun., 30.07 10:00–13:00
Act 1:  International Creole Lab
Workshop with Diego Araúja

Sat., 29.07 14:00–18:00
Act 2:  Ilhan and Oqaal—Textile as Language
Workshop with Kinsi Abdulleh, Elmi Original (DJ Elmi)

Sun., 30.07 18:00
Act 3: Forest Radio
Online radio show with Rádio Floresta [Forest Radio]

Sun., 30.07 20:00–22:00
Act 4: Evening School
Listening Session with Julianknxx

These workshops primarily address the experiences of Black cultural workers, but are open to all. Limited capacity, please register via education@hkw.de

Kinsi Abdulleh, Diego Araúja, Each One Teach One, Rahma Hassan, Julianknxx, Numbi Arts, Jess Oliveira, Elmi Original, Rádio Floresta