The event will take place as a live stream on Youtube: https://youtu.be/4IwaUZiP0G0
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The London-based Nigerian-German writer Olumide Popoola will present her short story "Sit down", which revolves around a traumatic event that threw Rahul, Crystal and the narrator together ten years ago and which the three of them deal with in different ways. The conversation with Natasha A. Kelly will also focus on her work and its content, as well as on her work.
Olumide Popoola is a writer, speaker and performer. Her publications include essays, poetry, the novella "this is not about sadness" (2010), the play "Also by Mail" (2013), the short story collection Breach (2016) and the novel "When We Speak of Nothing" (2017). She holds a PhD in creative writing, teaches at various universities and runs the writing and mentoring programme "The Future is Back" for young LGBTQ + writers. In 2018, she curated Berlin's first international African literature festival "Writing in Migration".
Natasha A. Kelly is a PhD communication sociologist, writer, artist. She made her film debut at the Berlin Biennale 2018 with her award-winning documentary "Milli's Awakening"; directorial debut in 2019 with the international performance of her dissertation writing "Afrokultur". With the publication "The Comet - Afrofuturism 2.0" (2020) and the symposium of the same name she curated (2018 at HAU Theater), she moved away from historical representations towards visions of the future for the first time. In April 2021, her seventh publication "Racism, Structural Problems Need Structural Solutions" was published.
The reading will take place as part of the project "Blick in die Zukunft - Gegen das Vergessen" (Looking into the Future - Against Forgetting) of the Cologne literature series "stimmen afrikas" (Voices of Africa), which focuses on literary memories and stories from six African countries and invites the guest authors to write a short story with their visions of the future. The stories will be translated into German by students of the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.
The actress Azizè Flittner will read from the German translation.
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In cooperation with the project "stimmen afrikas" (Cologne) // The project "Blick in die Zukunft - gegengendas Vergessen" is supported by: Federal Foreign Office, Kunststiftung NRW, Ministry of Culture and Science NRW, City of Cologne, Sparkasse Köln Bonn, Brot für die Welt, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
The event is supported by the City of Bochum and the federal programme "Neustart Kultur".