»Exile is a hard job« – for a poster intervention in public space, Nil Yalter used this quote from the poet Nâzım Hikmet and thereby one of the most important protagonists in modern Turkish literature. Four artists, and Martin Roth Initiative fellowship recipients, from Belarus, Russia, Montenegro and Turkey present their artistic practice using this intervention as a starting point, and discuss the topic of exile together with Oliver Frljić (Artistic Co-Director of the Maxim Gorki Theatre) and Johannes Kirsten (Managing Dramaturg), as well as the processes of transformation it has yielded for artists. In the process they ask about the extent to which art can contribute to providing new perspectives on the topic of and life in exile.
The topic of exile has always shaped the artistic work of the Maxim Gorki Theatre, and the Martin Roth-Initiative has enabled persecuted artists to continue their work in safety since 2018.
With Dante Buu (Artist, Montenegro), Necati Sönmez (Film critic, documentary filmmaker and festival programmer), Natalia Zaitseva (Artist and Author, Russia), Dzina Zhuk (Multidisciplinary artist and tech-politics researcher, part of eeefff, Belarus)
