Literature festival 2022: That was the “Munich rail” – Munich

The moment when you find a rejection for a manuscript in the inbox is simply terrible, says Markus Ostermair. Last Tuesday he was sitting on a podium in the Literature House, which opened up for a scene meeting as part of the “Munich Rail” of the Literature Festival. The feeling of powerlessness is incomparable, says Ostermair, who wrote his first novel “Der Sandler” for eight years.

The Munich author talks to the writer Dagmar Leupold and the comic author Dominik Wendland about the sometimes difficult and always difficult to predict literary world. About feelings of powerlessness and the feeling of wanting to throw everything away. But also about the intermediate stages between the lonely work on the text and the publication as a major hurdle, about the often unused opportunities that arise between writing and the publication, which often only succeeds after a long time.

The stands set up in the Literaturhaus that evening shed some light on the wide range of offers in the Munich scene that can offer support to writers. Writing workshops such as the “Prosathek” or “Shut up and write”, literary magazines such as noise culture or Delicate horizontal and series of readings such as “My three lyrical I’s” or “Meeting in the Interspace” introduce themselves. It is certainly worthwhile for writers and those who want to become one complete list of stands research and familiarize yourself with suitable events.

Short workshops and readings of small text samples by Munich authors give an impression of the work of the associations. In a second panel discussion entitled “Bildet Banden”, cabaret artist Bumillo, lyricist Tristan Marquardt and author Sophia Klink exchange views on the value of loyal like-minded people. Many other participants also seem to live by this value: everyone seems to know each other and exchange news about writing projects and private lives. The downsides of the literary business are a long way off here. And you’d love to be a part of it all yourself, even if you don’t have a writing project in the drawer. Magdalena Zumbusch

“I step into art”

Art on demand – can that work? Author Benedikt Feiten is standing in the Zirka Space in the creative district on Thursday evening and is clearly looking forward to what is to come. The evening was like a “burning glass” for what he had imagined as the curator of the “Münchner Schiene”, he said in his welcome address – the encounter of different sectors in unusual places, the “creation of moments that you can only experience once can experience”.

What he came up with together with different artists under the title “Abfahr” is actually unique. As a kind of keynote, the author and filmmaker Jovana Reisinger will read a text about “The subversive power of chicks”. The musician Inga then provides the beats and atmosphere, the author and rapper Roger Rekless improvises, the comic artist Lisa Frühbeis sits next to her on her laptop and draws, and the dancer Alfonso Fernández Sánchez sets everything in motion.

Author Benedikt Feiten curated the “Münchner Schiene”.

(Photo: Pierre Jarawan)

This already works excellently with this first set – what is particularly impressive is how well Roger Rekless succeeds in taking Reisinger’s text about attributions and prejudices and transforming it into something of his own. “Someone like you will never study,” he says, or: “I haven’t belonged to it my whole life,” “it never bothered me.” Because: “I step into art – suddenly everything belongs to us.”

Rekless also proves to be a master of improvisation in three other sets: he reads changing terms on topics related to himself and the world on a screen, which the predominantly young audience gives him on slips of paper – and always makes a coherent and meaningful rhyme. He even easily accommodates terms such as “down jacket bazaar” or “Schmarrnkopf”. And as much as all artists really enrich this evening, as finely Inga sets the accents and Frühbeis the lines, as agile Sánchez swings his limbs through the hall: Eyes and ears are above all with Rekless. Not only Feiten finds the total work of art “crazy” as a sympathetic master of ceremonies and all slips of paper, who could perhaps only work on the art of stopping at the right moment. All in all, this evening is great fun. To say it with Rekless: “The future now!” Antje Weber

Poetic megalomania

The now is the future of the past. For this reason alone, one should never forget yesterday in the here and now. Four young Munich writers do exactly that when they go on a “ghost trip” in Hall X on the Gasteig HP8 site to respond to voices from beyond. It is the last evening of the “Münchner Schiene”. Another experiment that defies the seated frontal reading, a dialogue with faded voices that ultimately points to the future.

Audience and writers mingle in the subtly lit room, DJ Jay Scarlett and DJ Explicit fuel the anticipation of the surprising with easygoing hip-hop beats and snapping sound architectures. Suddenly a haunted noise, followed by the first voices from the off. A woman wakes up lines by Gisela Elsner, a man reads SAID. Then, in a lighted corner, the poet Daniel Bayerstorfer appears. He created four eloquent poems in response to Elsner and one in response to SAID (in a very short time, as he spontaneously stood in for the playwright Mehdi Moradpour, who was ill). His lecture is driven by lyrical force and sentences like these: “Schopenhauer’s will is also only a stagnant spirit.”

"Munich rail" at the Literature Festival: DJ Jay Scarlett and DJ Explicit (pictured) deliver casual hip-hop beats and snappy sound architectures.

DJ Jay Scarlett and DJ Explicit (pictured) deliver casual hip-hop beats and snappy sound architectures.

(Photo: Pierre Jarawan)

So it goes on, in the flow of a creative literature clubbing in the best crossover sense. The other invocations of the spirit follow beats to beer and wine talks. All the texts that the authors have chosen to respond to with their exclusive sentence miniatures come from writers who are already dead. Florian Weber builds on Oskar Maria Graf by adding a personal Ukraine story to his “Downfall of the World”, with a helpful first-person narrator, sensitive and yet powerless. Colleague Joana Osman reacts to Ernst Toller’s “Letters from Prison”, war and world pain formative here too.

“Poetic megalomania” finally unleashes the poetry slam champion and poetry teacher Meike Harms. Erich Kästner’s poem “Exemplary Autumn Night” inspired her to write an “exemplary coming of age” story that escalates into a fulminant rant. She sings, she rhymes, she plays on words. Harms succeeds most impressively in the direct dialogue to the voice from the off.

A good finale of the “Münchner Schiene” that leaves a happily exhausted Benedikt Feiten speechless. The past few days have been indescribable, he says at night in Room X. One can only agree with his wish that the “Munich rail” should continue in 2023. Tomorrow’s future lies in today’s poetic megalomania. Bernhard Bloechl

source site