Pedro Kadivar: Unendlich ist die Nacht – Eine musikalische Lesung

In the organizer's words:

Pedro Kadivar (IR/DE): voice, text, concept
Katia Guedes (BR/DE): voice
Susanne Stelzenbach (DE): piano
Sigrid Brinkmann (DE): Moderation

The author and theater director Pedro Kadivar was born in Shiraz (Iran) and fled to France in 1983 during the Iran-Iraq war. He has lived in Berlin since 1996. His novel Unendlich ist die Nacht was published in April 2023 by Bremen-based Sujet Verlag, which is particularly dedicated to the topics of freedom and migration.

The narrators and main characters are two men: a German who fled from the GDR to West Germany a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall and an Iranian who came to France from Iran in the same year. They have long been a couple and live together. The novel is about their relationship, their encounter in Berlin, their different escape stories in connection with the current reality and the refugee issue in general. It is a Berlin novel in which the German capital and its places play a central role.

For his musical reading of Unendlich ist die Nacht , Pedro Kadivar has invited vocalist Katia Guedes and pianist Susanne Stelzenbach. The interdisciplinary and improvisational performance is characterized by a very free approach to the text, with the aim of enabling deeper access to the novel and revealing it in its diversity and with regard to its various motifs and themes. The musical level functions as a kind of dialogical translation without duplicating the text.

This will be followed by a discussion with literary critic Sigrid Brinkmann(Deutschlandradio Kultur) and the author about the novel and the musical reading.

After fleeing Iran, Pedro Kadivar studied literature and theater studies at the University of Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle after graduating from high school in Paris. Impressed by Berlin and his meeting with Heiner Müller during an organized trip for young French theater directors, he decided to settle in Berlin. In 2002, he completed his doctorate on Marcel Proust at the Institute for Romance Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin before returning to his work in the theater. His plays have been performed in France (Odéon - Théâtre de l'Europe, Festival d'Avignon etc.), in Germany and in England, for which he has received several awards. His Little Book of Migrations (translated from French by Gernot Krämer) was published in 2018 and his novel Unendlich ist die Nacht in 2023. His play Kunst der Flucht (premiere at the Maxim Gorki Theater) was shown at Theater Erfurt in 2021 and his one-person play Ich höre Euren Atem - Monolog der geflüchteten Schauspielerin premiered in his production in 2024. In 2024 he was a Berlin Senate scholarship holder in the field of literature.

Brazilian-born singer and composer Katia Guedes studied oboe, singing and composition at the USP São Paulo and the HfM Hanns Eisler Berlin. She also completed master's degrees in musicology and theater studies at the TU and FU Berlin. As a soprano, she has performed internationally at festivals such as the Biennale Salzburg, MaerzMusik, Ultraschall and the Teatro Real Madrid, including with Ensemble Mosaik, Klangforum Wien, Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam, the Maulwerkern and the Neue Vokalsolisten Stuttgart.

Born in Reudnitz (Thuringia), Susanne Stelzenbach lives as a freelance composer and pianist in Berlin. She studied at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, where she taught piano from 1976 to 1983. As an interpreter of contemporary music, she was active as a soloist and chamber musician until around 2000 - experiences that had a lasting influence on her composing. Since 1987, she has created a diverse body of work for chamber ensemble, orchestra, music theater, audio formats and text. Her pieces have been performed internationally and broadcast on the radio. From 2002 to 2021 she directed the Kunstfest pyramidale in Berlin-Marzahn. Stelzenbach is a member of the composers' group Atonale. She has received numerous prizes, scholarships and commissions.

Sigrid Brinkmann studied Romance and German studies in Montpellier, Paris and Berlin. Her focus as a reviewer and feature author (for ARD broadcasters, among others) is on Francophone and Israeli literature. From 2004 to 2024 she hosted the cultural magazine Fazit on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, since 2023 she has been part of the team of presenters of the book market on DLF. In 2013, she researched in Morocco as a Robert Bosch Foundation Border Crosser Fellow. She was a member of the Prix Premiere jury from 2021 to 2024. In 2021, she founded the bilingual podcast Littéramours.com with Clarisse Cossais, which she has been producing alone since 2022 - including her own translations of all the conversations held.

19:00: soundwalk with Thomas Gerwin

The event is part of the Month of Contemporary Music Berlin.
https://www.field-notes.berlin/

Entrance

Entrance G (through the restaurant Mokja)

Livestream

The event will be broadcast as a livestream on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/exploratoriumberlin