«Methoden der Verunsicherung» – Artist Conversation with Moshtari Hilal and Fabian Saul

Venue: in the exhibition

On the occasion of the exhibition ‘This is How the Light Remembers,’ Moshtari Hilal and Fabian Saul engage in a conversation about their different yet closely intertwined approaches to research and interdisciplinary work. Roland Barthes describes this place at the intersection of established sciences, forms and materials as a process that produces a new object, one that belongs to no one and, in its lack of ownership, becomes an object of public interest.

At the core of their approach lies uncertainty as a method – the deliberate disruption of dominant orders. The aim is to make breaks visible, to make the omitted audible again and to undermine linear narratives. This uncertainty is political: it reveals suppressed perspectives, disrupts bourgeois habits of seeing and creates space for other ways of reading.

Drawing on this understanding of their work and methodology, Hilal and Saul engage in a dialogue that questions their materials and processes, which oscillate between books, images and exhibitions – and how spaces, objects and institutions regulate these movements.

Moshtari Hilal is an artist, author, and co-founder of the AVAH (Afghan Visual Arts and History) collective. Her debut novel Hässlichkeit (Hanser, 2023) was awarded the Hamburg Literature Prize and recognized by the Stiftung Buchkunst as one of the most beautiful German books. In 2023, she was a Villa Serpentara fellow at the Junge Akademie der Künste (Young Academy of Arts) in Berlin. Together with Sinthujan Varatharajah, Hilal published the conversation “Hierarchies of Solidarity” with Wirklichkeit Books in 2024, as well as “English in Berlin—Exclusion in a Cosmopolitan Society” in 2022. In her interdisciplinary practice, Hilal combines drawing, writing, and research. She works with (self-)portraits and informal archives to develop a visual language from cultural fragments and margins. Recurring motifs in her artistic work are the nose, black hair, the mother figure, and unreliable childhood memories.

Fabian Saul (1986) is a Berlin-based author, composer, and musician whose work explores memory, place, and the poetics of loss across literature, music, and art. He is the editor-in-chief of Flaneur magazine and has created audio projects such as Schlechte Wörter, Stoff aus Luft, and Die Ästhetik des Widerstands – Variationen zu Peter Weiss (2025). Saul has directed theatre pieces including Zärtlichkeit (2022) and Die Schwerkraft der Gnade (2024). His books include Die Trauer der Tangente (2024) and Boulevard Ring (2018), and his first exhibition, This Is How The Light Remembers, is presented at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst (2025).

• In German
• No registration required
• Free Admission