Potsdam discovers Jutta Petzold: An embroidery workshop makes memory visible
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When memory penetrates the skin: Literary art with needle and thread
On November 17, 2026, the embroidery workshop "LYRIC-CARE: THE BACKSIDE OF MEMORY" in Potsdam invites you to an unusual encounter of literature, textile art, and memory culture. Marie Kublik and Frida Teller dedicate themselves to selected verses of the writer Jutta Petzold and translate their linguistic traces into textile practice.
The backside as hidden order
The focus of the workshop is on embroidery as a poetic and physical act. The needle penetrates historical fabrics, sets threads, knots, and seams, creating its own order on the backside. While readable text emerges on the front side, the backside is shaped by paths, breaks, and overlays. It is precisely this hidden aspect that opens up a resonance space to glitch art and the fractures in Petzold's language.
Jutta Petzold and Third Literature
Jutta Petzold (1933–2020) is among the long-overlooked voices of a non-canonical resistance culture of the GDR. After a failed escape attempt in 1961, she is associated with the so-called Third Literature. Her texts were created outside the official literary public sphere and were only discovered late. In the workshop, participants encounter an author whose fragmentary prose works at the boundaries of expression, meaning, and form.
Literature between care, injury, and memory
The reading atmosphere of this evening is created not only by the spoken word but by the connection of voice, material, and movement. The embroidery becomes an ambivalent practice between injury and care. It preserves traces without smoothing over or fully rendering historical experiences readable. This is where the literary quality of the project lies: Memory appears as a process that keeps cracks visible.
An evening in the sign of contemporary cultural mediation
The event is part of the project "Falling from the Shoulder of Giants: Cold Feet – Long Arms" and the project "NEW ARRIVAL:INNEN". The focus is on a cultural engagement with censorship regimes, transmission, and the question of how forgotten voices return to the present. Ian Keaveny's digital portrait of Jutta Petzold connects with her fragmented language and turns the rupture itself into an artistic subject.
Space is limited, admission is free. Visitors can expect a concentrated literary experience that makes writing tangible as a physical trace, not just as reading. Those who wish to reinterpret literature, memory culture, and textile art in an intimate author encounter will find a special evening in Potsdam.
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