Teju Cole : On Known And Strange Things

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

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And catch the heart off guard and blow it open

.Seamus Heaney.

‘Known and Strange Things’ couldn’t be more timely – Teju Cole’s brandnew collection of essays are a generous invitation to follow him on his serpentine paths of curiosity, inspiration, wonder and wounds that ultimately offer the remedy of a clarifying “complication where the general desire is for a simplification” (Heaney again).

His essays, written between the eye and the heart, span the human project of narration – sung and unsung poetry, history, photography, politics and their resistance – while following Baldwin’s clef that the artist “must always know that visible reality hides a deeper one, and that all our action and achievement rest on things unseen.”

Petina Gappah praises Known and Strange Things not only for the “sure-footed negotiation Cole makes as he defies the conventions placed on writers of colour associated with the more temperate climes, swerving deftly away from the deadening expectations of “representation” and “authenticity” […] His world of the strange and the known is open to everyone: the only passport required is curiosity.”

Teju Cole will be in conversation with Anna Jäger.

There will be books. There will be food.

Teju Cole’s curiosity makes the unseen visible in a plethora of genres, platforms and poetries that can be read in Open City; Every Day Is For The Thief and in his considerations on photography in the New York Times as well as in his exhibitions of own photography in galleries around the world and on Instagram; in cherished playlists ranging from Rihanna and Radiohead over Mahler, Miles and Mos to Fela and Fitzgerald; in carefully refracted vignettes on Twitter and many other places for us to discover.

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October 6, 2016 | 8pm

SAVVY Contemporary | Plantagenstraße 31 | 13347 Berlin-Wedding

Recommended Donation for SAVVY: 5 EUR

The event will be held in English.

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www.savvy-contemporary.com