In ihrem Vortrag wird sie, nach einer Übersicht über die Ausstellung und die grundlegenden Ideen, die zum Konzept geführt haben, über die Subräume Gender und Glaube sprechen und darstellen, wie das Projekt Humboldt Forum in der Stadt wahrgenommen wird und welche Konfliktfelder damit angesprochen sind. Im  anschließenden Austausch sind Studierende und Gäste herzlich eingeladen, ihre Fragen an die gebürtige Berlinerin zu richten, die Berlin noch aus Zeiten als die Mauer stand und West-Berlin nicht Hauptstadt war kennt und aus ihrer Sicht erzählen kann, wie West-Berlin im vereinten Deutschland von einer Insel wieder zu einer spannenden Metropole wurde, mit samt seinen "Verwerfungen".

 

 

The sound of the sea and the cries of the seagulls, Jacques Derrida says: “Everything I say is shaped by my silence, by what I do not say, by what I say”.It was the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) who called the “l’avenir”, the unpredictable future moved into the center of his theory and thus denied any future magic of a predictable future.

This unpredictability is what characterizes Friederike Mayröcker’s writing, as if the author were permanently on the high seas, without a map, but with an inner compass leading her to undiscovered shores. And these are footnotes that the Austrian writer Friederike Mayröcker (born 1924) discovers as a new literary genre. Derrida inspired Mayröcker, for example through his books such as »The Post Card « (1980), »Glas« (1974) or »Jacques Derrida. A portrait« (1991). In the last mentioned book, the US-American philosopher and literary critic Geoffrey Bennington (born 1956) attempts to introduce Jacques Derrida's work, while Derrida comments on and develops this essay in footnotes. Mayröcker notes: “And then, for the umpteenth time, I’ve read this book: Bennington/Derrida, where Jacques Derrida just below, in the lower third, writes the footnotes and Bennington writes the main text. And I never read Bennington. I always read only the footnotes and was delighted. I think I've read the book five times now“.

Unlike in this book, Friederike Mayröcker simply omits the main text. She uses the fragmentary and truncated footnotes, what Derrida himself describes as a dream of a “wholly raw, unprocessed language”, as if it came from an “invisible interior”. No narrative bow, no dramaturgy, instead leaves the author spaces that make room for a poetic intensification and attention enhancement.