Michel Mettler and Joël László
Photo: Ayse Yavas
Michel Mettler, born in 1966, has worked as a musician and for the theatre. His novel ‘Die Spange’ was published in 2006 (Suhrkamp Verlag). Since then, he has published mainly cultural studies works as both author and editor. Most recently, the collection ‘Dunkelkammern’, which explores the development of literary material, was published in the spring of 2020 (Suhrkamp Verlag), co-edited with Reto Sorg. In narrative and essayistic form, Michel Mettler has explored the visual arts and music, the formation of myths, and the history of knowledge and the body. The mentoring programme opens up a space in which the content of reflection and research combine with literary forms of presentation, allowing writers to practise a demanding yet patient approach.
Photo: Annemone Taake
Joël László: Born in Zurich in 1982 and raised in Aargau, Joël László studied history and Islamic studies. He lives with his family in Basel, writes prose, radio plays and theatre texts and works as a translator from Arabic. His play ‘Wiegenlied für Baran’ won the Audience Award at the Heidelberg Stückemarkt in 2017. In the 2017/18 season, he was an in-house author at the Basel Theatre, where his play ‘Die Verschwörerin’ was performed. His latest play ‘Geld, Parzival’ premiered with Theater Marie in Bregenz in autumn 2020. Other recent works: ‘Ante oder der Thunfisch’, radio play for Bayrischer Rundfunk, ‘Am Rande des Untergangs vergnügt sich das Kapital’, radio play for Deutschlandfunk Kultur.
Project
A man and a woman, students at the film school, are travelling to southern Egypt. In their luggage, they have memories, hopes, wishes, their artistic plans and the concrete project that has become the starting point of their journey in Switzerland: a documentary film that will take a look at the country from the periphery on the second anniversary of the revolution. However, the closer they get to the centre of their plan, the blurrier they themselves and their intentions become. A hunger for knowledge and a love story engulf perception and delimit the narrative instances.
In this broad exposition between cultures, history, metafiction, travel experience and contemporary history, the text searches for narrative transitions between perspectives and for its possible vanishing point in the utopian.
