9. 9 December 22 
10. 8 pm
11. In English and German

Location: Café Bravo, Auguststraße 69 10117 Berlin

Registration: pogobar@kw-berlin.de

what cannot be said will be wept is an evening of storytelling by Dina El Kaisy Friemuth and her mother Maha El Kaisy in collaboration with creative platform Alvozay and writer Duygu Ağal.Together they will expand on the meaning of storytelling, the collective revision of history through our told stories, and the importance of collectivity from a historical perspective. According to El Kaisy Friemuth, the power of narratives lies in its deeply feminist framing: that the personal is also always political, and that stories can show us this.

“what cannot be said will be wept” is a sentence by the lesbian poet Sappho who, thousands of years ago, held feminist gatherings on Lesbos with music and poetry readings.

At KW’s Pogo Bar, El Kaisy Friemuth and Alvozay will combine sound pieces with readings, storytelling, poetry, and art to discuss strategies of feminist solidarity, to challenge the narrative of Western history and its patriarchal notion of the individual genius, and to ask: How we can organize and support each other to create spaces for us by us? How can we care for our stories and histories?

In her work, El Kaisy Friemuth critically examines historiography and the archive from a feminist and decolonizing perspective. This Pogo Bar event accompanies the artist’s work, presented as part of the concurrent BPA// Berlin program for artists group exhibition at KW, which deals with repatriation of art and religious objects. In her artistic practice, El Kaisy Friemuth focuses on collaborations with other cultural workers and in recent years, she has worked as part of various artist collectives, including FCNN (Feminist Collective With No Name), DNA, Speculative Bitches, and The Union – Cultural Workers Union for Black and People of Colour. 

Alvozay is a creative platform centering BIPoC art and music, founded by rapper Ebru “Ebow” Düzgün and cultural creator Tmnit Ghide. Their work involves structure-building within the music industry and knowledge-transfer for upcoming, local BIPoC artists.

Since 2020, they have hosted several events, such as the Alvozay Festival, and recently collaborated with the Meydan Festival for documenta fifteen. They were nominated for Best New Music Business 2022 by VUT.  

Duygu Ağal (she/he) is an author and presenter. Born in Hamburg, she:he lives and works in Berlin. His debut novel “Yeni Yeşerenler” was published by Berlin Korbinian Verlag in 2022 and deals with friendship, new forms of family and lesbian love.

Maha El Kaisy-Friemuth (born in Cairo, lives in Berlin) is a professor for Islamic-Religious Studies with Practical Focus at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany. She is specialized in early islamic thought with an interest in feminist and gender studies in Islam.