Katrin Trüstedt lives in New Haven and Berlin and teaches German Literature at Yale University. She writes on questions of law and literature, comedy and tragedy, migration and externalization, theater and politics, from Shakespeare to Arendt, and beyond. Her next book addresses figures of legal and literary representation and the fact that none of us can do without proxies. Katrin has taught at various European and American universities and has travelled many places in Europe, the US, Mexico, India, North Africa and the Middle East. Email: [email protected]
by Katrin Trüstedt The sleet falls so incessantly this Sunday that the sky turned a dull gray and we don’t want to go anywhere, my child, his friend and me. We didn’t go to the theater or to the Brazilian Roda de Feijoada and we didn’t even bake cookies at the neighbors’ place, but instead…
by Katrin Trüstedt While Trump’s immigration politics makes international headlines almost every day, the disaster of the European immigration policies rarely becomes international news. A recent exception is the case of Captain Carola Rackete, and it is a telling one. With all the potential for a good story, Rackete’s journey is both standing for and…
by Katrin Trüstedt In a Palazzo in Palermo, a video installation of a moving digital map of the sea traces the disappearance of a migrant ship. With this installation, the project Forensic Oceanography makes visible what is – even from this Palazzo, facing the Mediterranean Sea – usually removed from sight. The figure of the…
by Katrin Trüstedt The major “National-Socialist Underground” trial ended this summer in Munich, under the applause of neo-Nazis and with little international attention. A recent US research study found that while white and rightwing terrorists carried out nearly twice as many terrorist attacks as Muslim extremists between 2008 and 2016, terrorist attacks committed by Muslim…
by Katrin Trüstedt Political debates in Europe these days seem to have only one subject. At one point or another they all turn to the issue of migration, Islam, and a danger to “the West”, which are presented as essentially synonymous. Germany’s political future seems currently to hang in the balance over the so-called “migration master…
by Katrin Trüstedt On Friday, February 16, 2018, the screening of a documentary film titled The Rest I Make Up at MoMA's Doc Fortnight festival created something like a theatrical event. Moving images of the largely unknown avant-garde playwright Maria Irene Fornes (she goes by Irene) cast a spell on the audience that reacted with…
by Katrin Trüstedt "Next time Feminism will not be a tragedy, but a comedy" —Carla Lonzi Kottbusser Tor, Berlin. On the second floor of one of the large buildings surrounding this place you can currently find yourself in an exhibition by Ariane Müller and Verena Kathrein on comedy and feminism, entitled "Then I would like…
by Katrin Trüstedt Something like a culture war is raging around the "People's Theater" (Volksbühne) in Berlin. In the last act for now, new director Chris Dercon had the police remove a collective of activists from "his" theater who occupied the place during the last week. In the acts leading up to this occupation and…
by Katrin Trüstedt Our way of life is based on externalizing its costs and living at the expense of others. Hard and cheap labor, the consequences of climate change, the diverse forms of trash our lives produce – we cannot just not know that we put all these burdens on those in the global south…
by Katrin Trüstedt While the murder series of the right-wing terror trio National Socialist Underground (NSU) has generally escaped major international attention (especially in comparison with Islamist terror attacks), one of the assassinations continues to come up. The murder of Halit Yozgat, the 9th assassination of the NSU, resists the fate of the others, because…
by Katrin Trüstedt Fundamental questions of migration and asylum that determine contemporary political debates also take center stage in some contemporary theaters. On the German speaking stage, Asylum seekers have made a lasting impact that gave rise to recent controversial discussions. Announcing his latest book, professor at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch Bernd Stegemann…
by Katrin Trüstedt With very little international attention, a major terrorism trial is entering its final stage in Munich, Germany. Beate Zschäpe, the only survivor of a right-wing terrorism trio, is facing charges of complicity in ten homicides, two bomb attacks, and 15 armed robberies, as well as membership in a terrorist organization, attempted murder,…
by Katrin Trüstedt A dominating figure in the contemporary imagination is the strong, authentic man breaking the rules of some institution in which he is playing a key role. Many acclaimed TV series of the last decade feature not only “difficult men,” but also those men – such as Jack Bauer, Don Draper, or Dr.…
by Katrin Trüstedt The assumed Islamist terror attack in Munich two weeks ago that was part of a series leading to claims that “terrorism has now reached Germany” turned out to be something else: the shooter actually targeted ‘immigrants', and carried out his attack on the fifth anniversary of the 2011 Norway attacks conducted by…
by Katrin Trüstedt As people are moving, spaces are transforming. In the context of the European refugee crisis, schools, former airports, and hotels are turned into camps; south European islands that have developed an infrastructure for northern European tourists have now become border regions and immigration areas for non-European refugees. Artistic acts of transforming spaces…
by Katrin Trüstedt Faced with a looming terrorist threat from the self-proclaimed Islamic State, attempts throughout Europe are being made to reclaim one's 'own identity.' While the conception of war between equal nation states is questioned by the structure of international terrorism, the dynamic of national identity experiences a comeback. A desire for given group…