We hardly need to introduce Lady Gaby. She is a major force on the Berlin spoken word scene and prolific international performance artist. So we are over the moon that she had time to join us on November 7th. But what we may ask is, what’s the latest with Lady Gaby?! So I did…

indieberlin: What is new with you?

Lady Gaby: New performances, more political, dealing with racism and refugees’ rights, as well as working with migrant kids on projects about home, family and identity.

Performance, literature, authorship: how do you see the interplay between all these?

The interplay between performance, literature and authorship works fine for me, most of my performance pieces are my poems and since they are written for the stage more than the page, magazines and publishing companies have a hard time understanding them. A lot of my work is confrontational, truthful, political and harsh towards the political climate we live in right now. Few people want to touch such subject, therefore I self-publish. I want to educate my audience, rather than only provide entertainment. Many anthologies and their publishers want to stay away from that, and don’t want to risk investing in poetry, full stop.

One of your shows there is with a self-made book: tell us more…?

My self-made book contains poems I have been writing since two or so years. I added images, or had the images first and then wrote poems to them. The images are photographs and collages I made myself, and in collaboration with other artists. It will be presented as a self made book/zine… I have many of the images layered by poems as art works, and as posters, so I will just gather them into a book!

Very cool. So, will you bring some of that along on November 7th?

Expect a spoken word performance from the book, poems about anti-capitalism, feminism, European racism and the refugee problem. When I came to Berlin, the wall was coming down. Borders were opening, dreams and ideals were being realised, expectations were being met, and anti-racism was the main motto. I fear that we have forgotten those values and become more self obsessed and have built egos that won’t let us realise what’s happening around us, outside what’s on our mobile phones. We feel free and satisfied only if we become and behave politically correct, become vegans and hipsters by wearing designer clothes. A lot of people have lost their individuality and I preach otherwise. Be yourself and go against the flow!

Awesome or what?! Come see her on November 7th at the indieberlin book fair!