BERLIN GEIST LITERATUR
ISSUE 1 | JAN. 2020
TRAVEL, MOVEMENT, & MIGRATION
The first sounds of the morning are of tuk-tuk and taxi engines as they come to life, their honking horns alongside the footsteps of the city’s informal working class taking to the streets. And, even earlier than that, the song and chant of Hindu morning prayer…
For the inaugural issue of Berlin Geist Literatur, we focus on human movement. This takes many forms, of course – we focus not the type of travel that funnels wealth into global resorts and conglomerates then, but rather the idea of migratory nature of humans, the transience of our settlements, and the feeling of being away from home. There is a German word – fernweh – that describes the physical need, a longing, almost a pain, to be somewhere else, elsewhere.
move·ment
noun
- an act of changing physical location or position or of having this changed
a slight movement of the upper body - change or development.
movements in the underlying financial markets
Humans have always moved, migrated, and settled It is one of the core features of the human trajectory leading to where we are today. We look at it two ways:
Travel as escape, i.e., vacation
Travel as escape, i.e., necessity.
As humans, especially given the endless destruction of war, and the growing dangers of climate change, do not always move by choice.
We acknowledge as well that not everyone – in fact the majority of the global population – has the opportunity to travel by choice, i.e., to take trips or vacations, and, or even move well within their own cities; many cities, especially in the United States, are hostile to movement. We do not want to inadvertently support ableism or use ableist language.
What we hope to do is address, and shine a light on the way we move, the way we connect, and how we view places that are not our own.
The very first issue of Berlin Geist Literatur: TRAVEL, MOVEMENT, & MIGRATION
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