Schreibstatt Collective at the "EXPANDED FIELD II THE TREE" Exhibition in MITTE37

[Lars Schumacher]

A literary evening unfolds within the international exhibition EXPANDED FIELD II – THE TREE as the Schreibstatt Collective gathers in Kunstraum MITTE37 on 1 October 2026. Invited by artist and host Susanne Schumacher, the group presents a constellation of voices shaped by the tree as motif, memory, and metaphor. What emerges is a curated yet porous evening—an encounter between literature and contemporary art, between rootedness and imagination.

At the centre of this reading stands Tarja Sohmer, founder of the Schreibstatt and a writer whose work is marked by rare clarity and sensorial precision. Born in Finland and living in Hannover, she composes in German with a finely tuned attention to inner and outer landscapes. Her novels Das Verbleichen der weißen Stadt and Nächte mit Tom reveal her ability to let places breathe, shimmer, and transform. For this evening she brings new, previously unpublished texts—written only days earlier during the workshop held in the gallery.

She is joined by Dirk Strauch, Burgdorf’s long‑established poet and translator. Known for his dedication to the sonnet and his editorial work with Edition Elf, Strauch approaches the tree with sculptural clarity: resonant, distilled, attentive to the subtle acoustics between nature and language. His poems open spaces where botanical presence and human recollection intertwine.

Completing the trio is Dr. Frank Romanowski, neurologist, novelist, and co‑publisher of the Klassenbuch‑Verlag. Living in Hannover, Romanowski moves fluidly between scientific insight and literary imagination. His oeuvre—spanning fiction, essays, and medical guides—adds an additional register to the evening, one in which cognition, narrative, and the organic world meet.

The reading also introduces brand‑new texts created during the Schreibwerkstatt: experiments with voice, fragment, rhythm, and memory. These works extend the exhibition’s conceptual field, adding a living, processual dimension to the visual contributions from over thirty nations. In the spirit of openness, further writers are invited to contribute spontaneously, allowing the evening to evolve in real time—dialogic, alert, and generous.

Kunstraum MITTE37, curated by Lars Schumacher within the framework of the Plant and Seed project, becomes a laboratory where art, ecology, and language intersect. The exhibition’s 2:3 vertical format frames the tree as a figure of myth, remembrance, and futurity. Into this expanded field, the reading inserts a literary voice—situated between image and text, archive and gesture, nature and culture.

The evening invites its audience to wander through verbal forests, to listen to rings of time, and to follow the branching paths of imagination. It is a gathering of voices, images, and resonances—a shared moment of attention to what trees, and those who write about them, might yet reveal.