Silvio Talamo is a poet, performance artist and founder of the Berlin literary magazine EXIT. He deals with contemporary poetry, art, philosophy and voice research, in particular with symbolic thinking, language and the transformation of perception. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany. In this conversation with Milena Rampoldi, founder of ProMosaik Poetry, Talamo talks about the open project of spreading poetry, understood as an anti-elitist force for social change.
ST- Where does the need to write a ProMosaik Poetry manifesto come from today? What need do you think this text should express?
MR – After drafting the “Manifesto” of ProMosaik in several languages, I realized how important the Manifesto is for my everyday intellectual work and also for the further development of the core ideas of ProMosaik. For this reason, I decided to write another, more concise Manifesto for ProMosaik Poetry, which should represent a dynamic and ideological compass for our poetic projects. As authors, translators and editors of lyrical works, I think that we as a team of ProMosaik need guidelines and principles to find our way through the labyrinth of the international poetic world.
Terms such as dialogue, diversity, relationship and change often appear in the Manifesto. What does the symbol of the mosaic mean to you and why did you choose this image?
For ProMosaik, the terms dialogue, diversity, relationship and change apply to the main axes of socio-political and poetic work. Poetry and politics are not contradictory. The world of ProMosaik is a world of dialogue in the sense of Martin Buber, since the “I” without the “You” would have no existential meaning, the diversity that we emphasize to prevent any pseudo-tolerance, the relationship without which culture, poetry, politics and social commitment could not exist, and the change in the sense of the maxim of the Cultural Revolution, the aesthetic revolution and poetry as a force for social change of a world that does not appeal to us as it currently looks. The “Manifesto” states the following:
“For us, action and life, knowledge and action are very strongly intertwined. Because for us, the dynamics in social and political processes is a revolutionary shaping of the life of the individual, society and the world community and the innovative change in the current state of the world, which, as we often emphasize, we do not like.”
“In this sense, ProMosaik is the name for an active and dynamic attitude towards life, people, society and politics. The name ProMosaik is made up of two positive words: on the one hand the affirmative “pro” and on the other hand the artistic symbol of diversity, the mosaic that was similarly created and maintained in so many cultures, religions and civilizations.
The Latin preposition ‘pro’ has various meanings, including ‘forward, before, out of, instead of’ and ‘for’. For us at ProMosaik it is ostensibly in the Socratic sense about the “emergence” of the work of the midwife as a female force of change, about the result of a search as a person and as part of a culture, society and politically thinking community and about the “for” that means the commitment to positive and open values. However, the “for” is only the last moment of this demonic implementation of this ideal into reality, which we do not like as it actually is.
I would like to describe this last step as “tipping utopia into reality”. We live happily and dynamically in a world which, however, does not correspond to us and which we therefore want to revolutionize and change. But that doesn’t mean that we do not love life, because this limited time in this world we don’t like is all we have. So, it is time to powerfully “tip” our ideals into this world in order to take away the smell of the garbage dump and make it more human.
This is the reason why ProMosaik is also the name of a contradiction, a radical and clear denial of the conditions of this world, which is characterized by militarism, hostility, lack of beauty, a radical, socially and politically founded and justified injustice, a profound and un-empathic inequality – characterized by racism, discrimination, misogyny, anti-Semitism, glorification of violence and islamophobia.
We also love gastronomy and its diversity, art, and its versatility, the special and at the same time the universal beauty existing in all cultures and civilizations.
We love the unique and the universality and their symbols that are hidden behind them. We want to eat well and therefore avoid any “Nazi soup” in the spirit of Thomas Bernhard, who missed the noodles in his plate full of Nazis that I miss today as much as the author did after the annexation of Austria. The brown soup is not for us, and we say that quite openly. We do not like it, and it does not look good either.
Instead, what we love is a colourful world of mosaics, in which every little stone retains its colour and cannot be chromatically assimilated. Between each stone and its neighbour there is a thin dividing line, a strip that draws the border between the two stones. The colour of this line is mostly white. White stands for purity, ideal, light and truth. This line also stands for the distance between the stones. And that’s a good thing
because every stone has its own world and colour and gets in touch with the other stones of this world. The person living in a certain stone crosses this white line by a bridge that he/she builds and gets to know the other world, the world of the neighbouring stone.
He/she approaches the Other, yes, but at the same time he/she also gains the access to a world which is not his/her own world because it is simply a different one.”
For you, is poetry primarily an art form or a force that can influence social and political reality? How do these two dimensions go together?
I am an activist and see poetry as an instrument for bringing about socio-political change and also an aesthetic revolution in our societies, which lack commitment to change in the sense of diversity, justice and peace. Poetry and action do not contradict each other. Poetry is not a passive world of aesthetic enjoyment, but a means of implementing socio-political forces of change through poetic verses that are always political, whether they turn away from politics or not. After all, all actions, including non-political ones, are fundamentally political. Especially for women and other disadvantaged groups in society, poetry is not a “luxury” in the sense of Audre Lorde, but a necessity for a dynamic and meaningful life.
In the Manifesto, philosophy, religion, human rights and poetry are in dialogue. To what extent do you think poetry can build a bridge between different cultures and traditions?
ProMosaik stands for a holistic view of life, which is lived in all its fullness and also put into words to change the world. In addition to the committed and politically coloured literature, there is no passive Biedermeier poetry, but a lyrical voice that strives for socio-political change. The aesthetic dimension of poetry points to the dynamic direction of politics and unites with it. Philosophy and religion are very important elements of human life, feeling and thinking for ProMosaik. Another focus of ProMosaik’s work concerns human rights. In the field of human rights, we have also shown in various publications how the aesthetic dimension of poetry and political efforts and socio-political struggles for justice, tolerance and acceptance of diversity do not contradict each other.
ProMosaik combines poetry, translation, art and intercultural dialogue. What is the common thread that connects these different areas?
ProMosaik supports intercultural and interreligious dialogue through its translations. Translation is the effort to get the message out of one language into another to make it accessible to the target audience. Translations of poetic, literary, philosophical and theological texts are very complex. The translations support intercultural and interreligious dialogue and communication between different cultures and religions.
Indeed, knowledge promotes exchange. The Abbasids already proved this when they set up translation centres such as “Bayt al Hikma” (House of Wisdom) in Iraq in the early Middle Ages, where texts were mainly translated from Greek into Arabic and then sent to Europe via al-Andalus. These mosaic societies, in which the translation of texts from other cultures was so cultivated, should serve us today as an example.
We live today in a time when, thanks to the support of the artificial intelligence, we have great potential to bring cultures and religions into contact through translation. We should take advantage of these opportunities.
And through poetry and its translation, it is possible to promote dialogue between cultures and religions in an aesthetic dimension. Art and revolution, beauty and justice, dialogue and diversity are reflected in a colourful mosaic that we would like to affirm in this Manifesto of ProMosaik Poetry.
Who is this Manifesto primarily aimed at? Who do you envision as its ideal reader?
In this Manifesto of ProMosaik Poetry, we assume that we are all poets. The readers are thus actively involved in the process of poetry and the change of the world through poetry. We also emphasize the importance of poetry therapy for building peaceful and just societies that emphasize diversity and value dialogue without falling into the trap of pseudo-tolerance. For us, every single reader is the embodiment of the ideal reader.
Looking ahead to the coming years, what contribution do you think ProMosaik Poetry should make to the international cultural scene?
Since the time we can devote to the project and also the resources available for the ProMosaik Poetry project are limited, we have chosen three geographical areas: the Muslim world, Africa and Latin America. We try to make dedicated lyrical voices heard and strive to combat any elitist viewpoints when it comes to the poetry that should be made accessible to all. Women play a major role for us in poetry. In addition, poetry and poetry therapy are closely linked to result in socio-political change in the sense of justice, diversity, tolerance, dialogue and human rights. The project is a drop in the ocean, but we love this sweet drop of our aesthetic revolution in this world where, in the spirit of Martin Luther King, we have a “dream” that we want to put into reality.
