De livestream begint op vrijdag 17 september om 20:00. Click op de onderstaande livestream knop om te kijken.

We’ve been looking forward to connecting with our public again after these past challenging months. To celebrate this reunion with you all, and the start of our new season, we invite you to join us for an evening reconnecting the past and present of Perdu, and presenting you with the themes we are developing for our programming in the new season.

Literary programmers are much more than event managers; often, they are themselves artists, writers, poets with a vision they want to translate for the stage, and to connect with the public outside of the book. What are the dreams of our programmers? What would they like to show you on stage? Why is it important to them and how does it link to their own literary and artistic practice? How do the current contexts we live in (political and socio-economical) influence their thinking?

Making programmes is creating a space for discourses to be born, challenged, explored and further developed. And the audience is an important part of this process. At Perdu, we focus on experimentation, and have been doing so since our inception. This is why we have invited Chris Keulemans, one of the founders of Perdu, to host tonight’s conversation with our programmers, and with you.  

Perdu was founded in 1984 as a small bookstore in the Gerard Doustraat in Amsterdam. It was called De Verloren Tijd [Lost Time], after Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu). Chris and Agnes van Bruggen collected and sold 'damaged world literature and marginalia’, damaged because that was cheaper, world literature because of their personal interests, and marginalia because that included everything they considered to be worth the effort. More than a bookstore, De Verloren Tijd functioned as a meeting point for those interested in literature. Soon De Avonden [The Evenings] were organized, enabling the visitors to discuss and listen to literature.

Tonight, we invite you to meet our team of programmers of the Avonden: Ranwa Alamsi, Asha Karami, Alec Mateo and Maxime Garcia Diaz. The programme will be in English, and will be hosted by Chris Keulemans.

To celebrate the start of the new season, we will use the pay-as-you-wish principal. You can choose which amount to donate when reserving your ticket. In line with the current Corona regulations, we will have 70 spots available for our opening night. In order to visit the performance, we ask our audience to show a proof of vaccination, a negative test result, or a proof of recovery at the entrance. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

About the speakers

Maxime Garcia Diaz (1993) studied Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. In 2019 she won the NK Poetry Slam. Her work has been published by De Internet Gids, Samplekanon, Yes The Void, Deus Ex Machina and De Optimist. In 2020 her chapbook Artificielle was published by Marktcorruptie, and she created the performance Poetic Resistance together with several other writers. In 2021, her debut collection Het is warm in de hivemind was published by De Bezige Bij.

Alec Mateo is a Dominican artist and writer from New York working with ideas around blackness and anarchism through language and sound. At Perdu, Alec seeks to create programming that encourages us to look at the literary arts as tools towards togetherness, and weapons against domination.

Asha Karami made her debut with the poetry collection Godface (De Bezige Bij, 2019). Godface was nominated for the Herman de Coninckprijs, Grote Poëzieprijs and E. du Perronprijs. Asha has published poetry, prose and essays in various literary magazines and has performed on a variety of stages. She makes poetry films in collaboration with Johan van Dijke. Asha also writes theatre texts and works as an editor for DIG (De Internet Gids). Besides writing, she also works as pediatrician.

Ranwa Alamsi is a Bahraini poet, novelist and cultural media professional. She published three books of poetry and fiction and many articles in Arab newspapers and electronic periodicals. Currently, she is studying Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University.