Reading featuring LIAS Public Fellow Katja Petrowskaja

The guests in the foyer of the museum, who had been invited by the Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society, sensed how existential writing about contemporary and historical photographs has become for the German writer since the war has been raging in Ukraine. In her conversation with LIAS Fellow Verena Adamik, a literary scholar at the University of Potsdam, Petrovskaya reflected on the impact of photographs, which prompt her to write, narrate and remember. Encounters with images are no different from encounters with people - "humanising images" is what Petrovskaya calls her intuitive method. She discovers photographs by chance in archives, on the internet, at flea markets and in exhibitions. She reflected, for instance, on the power of photographs to initiate processes of thought and dialogue in the face of experiences of vulnerability and powerlessness.

Her insights are particularly central to the researchers at LIAS, as some LIAS Fellows are both artists and researchers and have explored different ways of combining the two. Therefore, the artist's innovative approaches to understanding historical and contemporary contexts are an essential impulse. On the one hand, the discussions between the LIAS Fellows and Katja Petrowskaja have proven to be inspiring for the expansion of scientific perspectives at LIAS.

At the same time, they also provided a fruitful space for an exchange on new methods of mediation between science and the public. After the reading, some enthusiastic guests entered into dialogue with the author. No wonder, as she is approachable and makes no secret of her personal involvement. Petrovskaya interrupts herself several times, is "moved" and "nervous".

But she also shows another side to her personality: her disarming self-irony. In a story entitled "Childhood upside down", the author reflects on her left-handedness. In a forgotten photograph that suddenly appeared, she is clearly holding a coloured pencil in her left hand as a child, while her father leans slightly over her shoulder. A shock: she is a converted left-hander! "It was one of the first things that amazed me in Germany," Petrovskaya writes in her book. "In addition to the astonishing number of pharmacies and hairdressing salons, there were an incomprehensible number of left-handers in my generation [...] one more interesting than the other, more beautiful, more attractive, somehow sexy ..." Couldn't she herself be one of these "chosen ones"? Didn't her forced conversion in childhood explain her psychological idiosyncrasies? And today, as she gets older, doesn't she pick things up from the floor with her left hand, catch objects that are thrown at her with her left - and she had only suppressed it? However, the way she disenchants her identity as a left-hander at the end of the story and once again emphasises the effectiveness of chance, leaving a trace of what she could have been, is great satire in itself. Because, too bad: the photo negative was inverted. 

Petrovskaya, who began writing in German at the age of 27, also shared this experience with the audience in the museum: "When you learn a language late, it's an immunisation against automatism. When it comes to writing, there is no greater gift than this." The giftee says thank you, smiles and doesn't know what else to say. What remains is the impression that she has long since transformed her powerlessness into great literature.