Teju Cole: Blinder Fleck

book launch and conversation

with Teju Cole, Akinbode Akinbiyi und Anna Jäger.

The conversation will take place in English, readings from the book will be in English and German.

Teju Cole is one of the most respected writers and intellectuals of our now, but his practise equally encompasses photography. In his most recent intellectual and creative venture, Teju Cole explores what it means to get an idea of the world through image and word. In more than 150 photographs and texts, both expressions are combined to form a lyrical visual essay.

In 2011, Teju Cole experienced a period of temporary blindness. His understanding of seeing changed, and he began this photographic project. The pictures in his new book are documents of constantly being on the road: the shadow of a tree in Upstate New York. A Swiss hotel room. A boy in Congo. A strange constellation in a Berlin park. We see what he saw, what triggered his memory and thoughts, while short texts are superimposed over the pictures like a voice-over – an inner voice, concrete or abstract, prosaic or enigmatic. Along the boundaries of seeing, he surveys the space between the visible and the ‘sayable’. Above all, he demands to oppose the randomness and volatility of seeing through a closer, concentrated look. Teju Cole is interested in the continuity of places, the singing line that connects them – and the textures in which they differ. While his photographs document the concrete, something else becomes visible that is not captured by the eye.

TEJU COLE  born in 1975, grew up in Nigeria and moved to the US as a teenager. He is an art historian, writer and photographer and teaches at Bard College. He is the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine and author of its column "On Photography". In 2013 he was awarded the International Literature Prize for Open City. Most recently, he published the essay collection Known And Strange Things. Teju Cole lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Teju Cole will go through and talk about Blind Spot (Blinder Fleck) together with Akinbode Akinbiyi and Anna Jäger. AKINBODE AKINBIYI  is a photographer working internationally and living in Berlin. Most recently, his work was shown in La Vilette in Paris and at documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel. In 2016 he was awarded the Goethe Medal. ANNA JÄGER is a cultural programmer, translator and editor; she is a curator and the head of communications at SAVVY Contemporary.

Teju Coles Blinder Fleck will be published on June 4, 2018 by Hanser Berlin in translation by Uda Strätling and with a preface by Siri Hustvedt (38 € / ISBN 978-3-446-25850-1)

A joint event by Hanser Berlin, ilb––international literature festival berlin and SAVVY Contemporary.


tickets are available at box office (10€/8€)