Concretia at The Horse Hospital
Thursday, 1 February 2024; 7:30 pm
David Ellis’s School of Thought presents Concretia, an evening of spoken reportage, illustrated essays & psycho-acoustics on doubt and troublesome rhythms in the former Soviet bloc 1970-80’s. With Philip Oltermann, Annegret Gollin, Stephen Coates, Simon Tyszko, David Ellis. Quinton Scott of Strut Records will be DJ’ing a playlist specially compiled by Leipzig-based Alexander Pehlemann of Zonic and Scott himself.
Inspired by Philip Oltermann‘s gripping book The STASI Poetry Circle (Faber, 2022) this unique live-lit event angles in on every totalitarian’s nightmare of ideology-busting ambiguity and troublesome rhythm. Joining Phillip Oltermann will be countercultural historian Stephen Coates, Simon Tyszko conceptualist, sonic broadcaster and wit and David Ellis curator/writer. Between them presenting an audio-visual , pyscho-accoustic essaying on the lesser-known history of forbidden/restricted practices within the former Soviet Bloc. The evening features special guest Annegret Gollin who will be reading Concretia, a 15-line poem which led to Gollin being overtly surveilled, frequently interrogated and to her eventual incarceration in the notorious Berlin-Schonhausen. Through Olterman’s meticulous rifling through STASI files and interviews with former STASI officers, a bizarre knit-one-purled-two strategy to win the cultural Cold War through poetry by an in-house group of ‘writing Chekists’ emerges from within a military compound in East Berlin.
An outlandish, non-fictional account of folded history at The Horse Hospital, the HQ of out-of-this-worldism.
Leave a Reply