We are pleased to announce our next Fisch out of Water which will take place on Friday, November 1st at 5pm at the Scented Leaf Tea House on University Blvd. To celebrate the days surrounding the event (Halloween, Day of the Dead), you are invited to share a scary story, poem, song, etc. over delicious cake and tea.
Please see the flyer attached, and spread the word around to the students in your classrooms. If anyone is interested in performing, please email Carolin (carrad@email.arizona.edu) or me (erogers@email.arizona.edu) to sign up.
If you’re feeling a bit out of your element, you’re in the right place. The event “Fisch Out of Water” celebrates the aesthetic uniqueness that your native tongue brings to the foreign languages you speak—quirks, trips of the tongue, and all. Germans reciting in Spanish, US Americans singing in Russian, Turks reading in French, all conspiring to enjoy and embrace the aesthetic experience of blended languages.
This concept, being a "fisch out of water," has been traveling with Professor David Gramling of the German Studies Department at the University of Arizona—from Berlin, Germany to Ankara, Turkey and now to Tucson. While working in Berlin, itself a hub of translation and translingual exchange, one of Professor Gramling's colleagues came to the realization that translators and other “language workers,” who often tend to work all day long with written texts in silence, seldom had the opportunity to get together with their peers—to revel aloud in the aesthetics of their own non-native, accented voices. Based in this realization, they formed a space for people of all backgrounds to gather and share their languages—in the broadest sense of the word. Soon, language lovers ranging from 18-70 years old gathered in the back of cafes and other local spots to create a warm and spontaneous atmosphere, sharing anything under the sky in their non-native language(s): epic poems, parables, cabaret tunes, original translations, short stories, spoken-word pieces….
