unruly places

The start of the second season of unruly readings is dedicated to unruly places. Some places create space for unruliness, others seem unruly themselves because they are inaccessible and yet haunt us. In the traditions of West African peoples such as the Yoruba, the forest is considered a powerful and enigmatic place. In a lecture performance, Logan February will talk about the spirits that live there and explore the forest as a symbolic space of mythical encounters and self-transformation.

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

What does a place actually taste like?

Paula Erstmann creates edible landscapes with her culinary performances and designs a place of togetherness for the audience and the authors.

Abdalrahman Alqalaq is a Palestinian poet, writer and performance artist. He studied cultural studies and aesthetic practice in Hildesheim and Rabat. His first German-language texts were published in Weiter Schreiben magazine. In 2024, this resulted in the book Übergangsritus (Wallstein Verlag), which was named a 2025 Poetry Recommendation by the German Academy for Language and Poetry. The citation states:
"Alqalaq's poetic texts use sophisticated irony to reveal a critical voice that negotiates its position vis-à-vis white Europe and deconstructs concepts of home."

In 2025, Alqalaq developed the work Absentee Law in collaboration with Marion Avgeris (director) and Milena Knop (music) in Hildesheim, which is the basis of his performance as part of the unruly readings.

Milena Knop works at the interface of music, dance and improvisational practice. With the cello as her central 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 Nigerian-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 multi-layered work explores Afro-queer diasporic autoethnography, psycho-spiritual eroticism and Yoruba mythology and has been translated into several languages. The German Academy for Language and Poetry honored Mental Voodoo as a 2024 Poetry Recommendation, stating:
"In Mental Voodoo, pre-colonial, gender-fluid West African traditions meet queer questions of the present - a great reading experience, multilingual, multisensory, multisensory."

February has received scholarships from the Literaturhaus Wien, the DAAD's Berlin Artists-in-Residence Program and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture. Logan February is currently poet-in-residence at the Humboldt Forum and lives in Berlin.

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

With: Abdalrahman Alqalaq & Milena Knop, Paula Erstmann, Logan February

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

Concept & curation unruly readings: Son Lewandowski and Michaela Predeick | Guest curation: Franziska Winkler | Production: Mona Sachße | Finances & Controlling: Neele Renzland | Technology: Viktor Kuhn | Photo:

Co-production August: Orangerie Theater, DFG Graduate School "Gegenwart/Literatur. History, theory and praxeology of a relationship"

Funded by: Kunststiftung NRW, Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, RheinEnergieStiftung Kultur, Cultural Office of the City of Cologne