New Jewish Voices from Germany

Sasha Salzmann is a playwright and author born in Wolgograd and based in Berlin, Talya Feldman is an artist bron in Denver and based in Hamburg. Together with this year’s guest-curator Max Czollek, they will talk about the state of Jewish Art in Germany and how it gives expression to a New Jewish self-understanding.  

The novelist, playwright, essayist and curator Sasha Salzmann was co-founder of the culture and society magazine “freitext” and director of STUDIO Я at the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin. Salzmann’s theatre works have been translated into more than 20 languages and have been awarded, among others, the Art Prize for Performing Arts of the Akademie der Künste 2020. In 2017, the debut novel “Außer sich” (Suhrkamp) was published, translated into 16 languages and shortlisted for the German Book Prize. Sasha Salzmann moderates the monthly discussion series “Apropos Gegenwart” at Vienna’s Burgtheater, alternating with the Viennese philosopher and publicist Isolde Charim.  http://sashamariannasalzmann.com/ 

Talya Feldman is a time-based media artist from Denver, Colorado currently working in Hamburg, Germany. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a graduate student at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. Her most recent exhibitions include In the Making with artist collective Odessa Nomadic and Elegy with the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. Feldman’s sound installation, The Violence We Have Witnessed Carries a Weight on Our Hearts, is currently on view at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. A survivor of the racist and anti-Semitic attack in Halle on 9 October 2019, Feldman has also received global recognition for her projects combatting right-wing terror in collaboration with the activist network NSU-Watch.  

Max Czollek lives in Berlin, where he was born in 1987. In 2012 he gained his diploma in political science at TU Berlin. 2016 he was awarded a doctorate at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at Technische Universität Berlin. Since 2009 he is member of the poetry collective G13. 2013-2018 he curated the international project Babelsprech.International for the connection of the young German speaking and European lyric scene. Together with Sasha Marianna Salzmann he was initiator of Desintegration. Ein Kongress zeitgenössischer jüdischer Positionen (2016), Radikale Jüdische Kulturtage (2017) at Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Studio Я. In 2020 he initiated and curated the international Tage der Jüdisch-Muslimischen Leitkultur. His lyric books „Druckkammern“ (2012), „Jubeljahre“ (2015) and „Grenzwerte (2019) were published at Verlagshaus Berlin. His essays „Desintegriert Euch!“ (2018) and “Gegenwartsbewältigung” (2020) are published at Carl Hanser Verlag. 

A series curated by Max Czollek 

Talya Feldman

Max Czollek

Sasha Salzmann