ich mache das Bett, ich salze mein Fleisch
An evening with Rim Battal & Odile Kennel

Institut français
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Rim Battal © Anne Sophie Guillet

Odile Kennel © Jan Beumelburg

Please note that the event is designed for a German- or French-speaking audience and will not be interpreted into English.

Registration via Institut français

In a German-French reading, two poets come together whose work explores corporeality, desire, and writing from a female perspective. The evening takes place as part of the finissage of the exhibition Breaking this Silence, which deconstructs myths and patriarchal structures surrounding endometriosis through artistic and activist contributions.

Rim Battal (born 1987 in Casablanca, Morocco) lives in Paris as a poet and artist. Her latest poetry collection, x et excès (Le Castor Astral 2024), reflects on the body, desire, and the sex industry. In the first part of the book, the lyrical self examines the excessive consumption of online pornography, describing exactly what it sees and the impact on the body and personal desire. In the second part, titled De rien bébé, the lyrical self speaks „mit wirklich viel Liebe, mit einem mindestens zwei Nummern zu großen Verlangen“. The poems celebrate and demand female desire while simultaneously portraying the exhaustion that comes from one’s own longings:„Ich warte auf den Nächsten, ich warte auf die Nächste / wie man fieberhaft auf einen Bus wartet, der nie wieder fahren wird“.

Odile Kennel (born 1967 in Bühl, Germany) writes poetry and prose in German and French and primarily translates contemporary poetry. In her third poetry collection, Irgendetwas dazwischen (Verlagshaus Berlin 2023), the poems resist categorization, explore the in-between, and evade definition. They play with sounds, homophones, rhythms, and meanings, incorporating French, Spanish, English, and Portuguese words into their linguistic exuberance. The body, in its identity and desires, is central. The poem, loud and handwritten, sometimes becomes a body itself, carrying erotic letters like Ü, „will / gehört werden, bewundert, will / Trost, Zuspruch, Freispruch“ und „lässt sich einladen auf Schnaps, auf Saures, auf Speck“.

The event will be interpreted in French and German. With the kind support of ECHOO Conference Interpreting. In collaboration with the Institut français.

Reading & Conversation Rim Battal, Odile Kennel
Moderation Anna Julian Mendlik