Kettly Mars & Madafi Pierre: Haiti, Migration, and Storytelling

The Haitian writer Kettly Mars (L'heure hybride, Saisons sauvages, L’ange du patriarche, etc.), is a distinctive voice within francophone literature. Through poetry, short stories, and novels, she plunges deep into Haitian history as well as its contemporary society. Dark eroticism, crime-novel suspense plots, and the hauntings of dictatorships past (and possibly future), coexist and mingle in her work, and result in an unmistakable poetic voice. She is the current holder of the Chair for Francophone Literature and Culture at ETH Zurich.

In her documentary Diapositives, the artist and filmmaker Madafi Pierre portrays five people of Haitian origin living in Switzerland. Pierre, who lives in Lausanne, takes a global look at Haiti and Switzerland, and asks what the connections between these two countries are. Diapositives addresses questions of planned and unplanned mobility, migration, as well as of belonging and feelings of home, which cannot (necessarily) be tied to territories.

Journeys, then – their beginnings, their twists and turns, their endings – form a common thread running through both Mars' and Pierre's work.

On May 14th, we will show a screening of Diapositives followed by a conversation between Madafi Pierre and Kettly Mars on storytelling, personal and political aspects of migration, Haitian history, culture, and spirituality.

This event is organized in collaboration with ETH Zurich, the Romanisches Seminar of the UZH, Afrinova, and the Collegium Helveticum. It serves as the vernissage to the exhibition IMAMOU - Au commencement était l'eau, which examines and exhibits artistic and literary expressions of Haitian spiritualities linked to the sea, departure, and navigation.

This event is open to the public.

Veranstaltungssprache: English