unruly places | EN

The opening of the second season of the unruly readings is dedicated to unruly places. Some places create space for unruliness; others seem unruly themselves because they are inaccessible and yet continue to haunt us. In the traditions of West African peoples such as the Yoruba, the forest is regarded as a powerful and enigmatic place. In a lecture performance, Logan February will speak about the spirits that inhabit these forests and explore the forest as a symbolic space of mythical encounter and self-transformation.

In his performance Rite of Passage, Abdalrahman Alqalaq returns to the place from which his family was displaced generations ago. His poems speak of the experiences of exile and flight, but also of a tender connection to people and things that remain distant and yet are always present.

What does a place actually taste like?

With her culinary performances, Paula Erstmann creates edible landscapes and designs a space of togetherness for both the audience and the authors.

The event will be held in both German and English spoken language.

Abdalrahman Alqalaq is a Palestinian poet, writer, and performance artist. He studies Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice in Hildesheim and Rabat. His first German-language texts were published in Weiter Schreiben Magazin. In 2024, his book Rite of Passage (Wallstein Verlag) was published, which was selected as a 2025 poetry recommendation by the German Academy for Language and Literature. The jury stated:
„Alqalaq’s poetic texts show, with sophisticated irony, a critical voice negotiating its position in relation to white Europe and deconstructing concepts of home.“
In 2025, Alqalaq developed Absentee Law in collaboration with Marion Avgeris (direction) and Milena Knop (music) in Hildesheim, which forms the basis of his performance as part of the unruly readings.

Milena Knop works at the intersection of music, dance, and improvisational practice. With the cello as her primary means of expression, she explores artistic spaces of movement between sound and body. She is currently studying Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice at the University of Hildesheim.

Logan February is a Nigeria-born multidisciplinary poet. February is the author of In The Nude (Oida Books 2019), Mental Voodoo (Engeler Verlag 2024, translated by Christian Filips), and the forthcoming Nude Imperative (Spector Books 2025). February’s multifaceted work engages with Afro-queer diasporic autoethnography, psycho-spiritual erotics, and Yoruba mythology, and has been translated into several languages. The German Academy for Language and Literature selected Mental Voodoo as a 2024 poetry recommendation, stating:
„In Mental Voodoo, precolonial, gender-fluid West African traditions encounter contemporary queer questions – a remarkable reading experience, multilingual, multilayered, and multifaceted.“
February has received fellowships from Literaturhaus Wien, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture. Currently, Logan February is Poet-in-Residence at the Humboldt Forum and lives in Berlin.

Paula Erstmann is an artist who primarily works with food as a medium. Her performances, menus, and food installations explore the social contexts of the ingredients used, navigating between art and everyday life as a form of artistic research. The culinary work of the Berlin-based artist opens both sensory and social spaces.