PEN Berlin’s First Congress: »The Trick is to Keep Talking«
2 December 2022, Festsaal Kreuzberg
Opening speech by Eva Menasse: Freedom of Speech – The Canary in the Democratic Coalmine
»Since February 24, since Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine, Europe has been at war again. Alongside all existential concerns caused by this war, including here in Germany, it once again presents a particular challenge for our discussion culture. I am convinced that an organization like PEN is assigned an important task: that of preventing dialog between these two countries from running dry. (…) But for this very reason, those conversations that can be held only outside the warzone are a precious asset in times of war. We must try to continue enabling them. And for that reason, we must continue making new starts, creating new possibilities, opportunities and formats for these dialogs. An unsuccessful discussion must never be an endpoint; it must always be an incitement to do better next time.« FULL SPEECH
Keynote by Ayad Akhtar: A Climate of Digital Intimidation
»Of course, from one perspective there’s never been more speech, more speech freely spoken with fewer barriers than ever to being heard. Twenty-first century technology has de-centralized the power of the media, the press, and even many governments from preventing voices from being heard that might otherwise not have been heard. This extraordinary freedom, it seems to me, is the central fact at the heart of a great paradox. For as speech has become clearly freer in one sense, we find ourselves in the midst of a cultural shift in the United States to a discursive environment rife with punitive interdiction, where today’s politics of identity imposes contradictory moral maps about what speech is acceptable to what group and what speech isn’t. A climate of digital intimidation is on the rise, and with it, a fear to speak and even to think freely.« FULL SPEECH
Video message by Serhij Zhadan (German): A Hard Winter Lies Ahead
Message about the Campaign »Fire Trucks for Kharkiv«: »These are very difficult times. But we must endure them. Endure them so that we can continue living in our country and rebuild our cities. I thank you for your solidarity.« VIDEO
Keynote by Herbert Wiesner on Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt: Of the Torments of Survival
»Goldschmidt’s highly complex book ›The Way Out‹ allows such interpretations, but what he had set out to tell was much more than yet another account of a life lived. He marked out the literary frame of reference for his writing, pointing to Sigmund Freud’s text ›A Child Is Being Beaten‹, to Handke’s ›Kaspar‹, Rousseau’s ›Confessions‹, and again and again to the novel ›Anton Reiser‹ by Karl Philipp Moritz. ›À rebours‹ by Joris-Karl Huysmans (…) also belongs to this system, in which masochism is understood as an act of »integration«: only when the beaten one experiences pleasure does he regain his self. At the very end of this moving book, even this way out into survival appears as a becoming-guilty in relation to a schoolmate of Arthur Kellerlicht who was executed by the SS.« FULL SPEECH
Impressions
1 TV report from RBB
RBB [TV], Abendschau, report by Antje Tiemeyer, 2 Dezember 2022: »[Karen Köhler:] ›I supported this because I no longer found myself or felt represented in PEN Germany, and I had the feeling that a lot of energy that could actually be directed outward, to engage politically on behalf of persecuted writers, was fizzling out internally.‹ Host Michel Friedman does not see the new association as a competitor to PEN Germany: ›This is a complement, it’s not either or. Rather, there are two, both/and. And I think an artificial rivalry isn’t necessary at all.‹« VIDEO
1 Interview with Ayad Akhtar
3Sat, Kulturzeit, interview by Cécile Schortmann with Ayad Akhtar, President of PEN America and keynote speaker at the congress, 2 Dezember 2022: »The companies that own social media have created an attention model where free speech worldwide is sorted into categories. The word that arouses emotions, that makes people angry, or where people suddenly feel agitated – those posts are pushed out on a large scale. And then that is monetized through the business model. That creates a toxic environment where many people hear only what they want to hear – or what they absolutely do not want to hear, where they think: That is wrong. And opinion suddenly provides the matrix by which people understand what is reality for them.« VIDEO
Extensive Media Coverage of the Congress
Programme
14.00 Opening by Eva Menasse
14.30 The poetry of failure – Fuck up hour
With: Adriana Altaras, Konstantin Küspert, Jo Lendle, Jackie Thomae. Host: Simone Buchholz
15.45 Violence, Memory, Literature
Keynote: Herbert Wiesner on Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt
Panel: Tomer Gardi, Ursula Krechel, Khuê Phạm, Meral Şimşek. Host: Michel Friedman
17.15 Who shoots first – What freedom of speech means (to us)
With: Jan Fleischhauer, Karen Köhler, Ijoma Mangold Manja Präkels. Host: Thea Dorn
20.00 Keynote: Ayad Akhtar, President PEN America
21.00 Concert: MUFF POTTER
22.30 Disco Inferno
With: Doris Akrap, Imran Ayata, Ulrich Gutmair, DJ Rolandsbogen
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