NEWS

24/7/2025, 7PM

Free entry

No registration required

When home disappears, language is often the last thing that remains — and at the same time the first to risk breaking apart in exile. Bärenzwinger Berlin invites you to a reading with Iranian author Atefe Asadi and translator Sarah Rauchfuß on July 24 at 7 PM. The reading offers a glimpse into literary fragments from a life in between: caught between inner rebellion and outer silence, between remembering in one’s mother tongue and expressing oneself in a foreign language.

Asadi’s texts emerge from experiences of repression, migration, and alienation. They do not simply tell “of Iran,” but reveal a daily reality torn apart by political violence. Written in Farsi, these stories carry voices silenced in places of control. In the reading, they meet a new language – Rauchfuß’s German translation – which is not a mere reflection but a tentative chamber of resonance.

The evening is part of the exhibition “This, too, is a way of keeping each other close“, which explores queer, feminist, and anti-colonial perspectives on memory, care, and the narration of loss. It focuses on invisible stories, fragmented narratives, and forms of mourning that create closeness through shared vulnerability.

Atefe Asadi is an Iranian writer, poet, editor, and translator known for her role in Iran’s underground literary scene. Her three collections of short stories have been banned by the Iranian Ministry of Culture, and her literary activities and participation in protest movements have led to her persecution and arrest. She subsequently became a writer-in-residence with ICORN (International Cities of Refugees Network), received the Hannah Arendt Fellowship, and settled in Germany. There, she campaigns for literature in exile and for freedom in Iran through school visits, interviews, cultural programs, and residencies such as the Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen and the Kultur Ensemble Palerme. Her works, which explore women’s rights, migration, discrimination, and freedom, have been translated into English, German, and Italian. Her first collection of short stories is currently being translated into German.

Sarah Rauchfuß (born 1990 in Ottersberg near Bremen) has been translating contemporary Persian literature from Afghanistan and Iran since 2019. She works as a freelance translator for the Weiter Schreiben project, the DAAD and various literary institutions and festivals in German-speaking countries. Her second novel translation, Bahram Moradi’s “Das Gewicht der anderen” (Wallstein Verlag), will be published in August 2025.

Since September 2017 the former bear pit of the heraldic animals of the city of Berlin has re-opened as a cultural venue for site-specific contemporary art in Berlin-Mitte.

A refurbishment is soon to expand its potential uses.