Quotidian’s AMBIGUITIES curation of Poetry Jukebox comes to Stuttgart.
One hundred years after Irish partition, 20 contemporary poets were commissioned to write poems projecting 100 years into the future. As a cross-cultural exchange, these poems from Ireland and Northern Ireland have been translated into and recorded in German, enhancing a sense of linguistic hospitality and ‘Ambiguitäten.’
Visitors to the Poetry Jukebox, located on the downtown campus at the University of Stuttgart between the two main buildings, College Building I and II, can bypass barriers where art is inaccessible to the general public. Instead, this poetic curation open 24/7 invites listeners to become co-creators in recomposing the urban soundscape by selecting a poem, rotating the crank, and generating a lyrical sound to emerge. Visitors can also scan the QR code on the jukebox to hear the entire Ambiguities curation in English, Irish, German and Ukrainian on SoundCloud.
The project takes place within the context of the Sensing Sound in Literature School for Talents faculty project of the English Literatures and Cultures Department at the University of Stuttgart.
More informationQuotidian – Word on the Street Limited is an arts production company dedicated to putting literature, especially poetry, into public spaces, in innovative ways intended to engage the general public and not just a literary audience. This Belfast-based company has a passion for bringing literature into the cityscape, so that we can encounter the beauty and imagery of words (sometimes unexpectedly) as we go about our everyday lives, ‘putting literature where it belongs, everywhere, for everybody.’
Maria McManus set up Quotidian – Word on the Street with poet Deirdre Cartmill in 2017 as a vehicle to breathe life into that ambition.
The Poetry Jukebox is an international project founded by Ondřej Kobza, a Prague-based cultural activist focused on the animation of public spaces and ways of making cities more livable.