Poetry Exercises: an archive of (un)familiar things

Many of our experiences of life in the city are so commonplace that they are not consciously perceived. Yet it is precisely these “minor” experiences that define our inhabiting the city. The archive of (un)familiar things collects such stories of inhabiting and passes them on to visitors. Three performers exercise themselves in a self-invented practice of storytelling, going beyond a merely functional way of speaking. In their Poetry Exercises, which take place in the space between the storytellers and the listeners, the nomadic archive enters into a dialogue with the official collection of the Frankfurt Institute for City History. Visitors are invited to take their time to move through the archive of (un)familiar things and expand it by offering their own experiences.