Friday, 16.4., 9-12 a.m.
9:00 Lectures Riccardo Schöfberger and David J. Wimmer
Riccardo Sch öfberger (Graz): Strange heroes, lonely secret agents: Male figures in selected works by Clemens J. Setz.
Strange male figures populate the nursing homes, suburban apartments and side streets in Clemens J. Setz's novels and stories. We encounter misogynistic stalkers, desolate sadists and tender, nauseating young men who want to be treated with care by their therapists and partners. As "sad secret agents whose client country no longer exists", they trigger a strange fascination, not unlike constructs left behind. This lecture will attempt to reconstruct their motives.
David J. Wimmer (Graz): "Claritas, Veritas, Weirdness. On the strange in Clemens J. Setz's short prose.
The lecture attempts to get to the bottom of the strangeness of Clemens J. Setz's literature using the example of his short prose, starting with potential influences from American science and weird fiction and its short prose: H. P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Edward Gorey or Stephen King. In an examination of various theories of the strange and contemporary (pop-)cultural phenomena of the weird, strangeness as a fundamental aesthetic category in Setz's work will be examined in more detail.
11:00 Lectures by Christian Dinger and Richard Kämmerlings
Christian Dinger (Frankfurt/Main): Poet - Archivist - Nerd. On authorship and autofiction in the work of Clemens J. Setz.
The solitary position that Clemens J. Setz occupies in the field of contemporary German-language literature has to do not least with the way in which literary authorship is negotiated in his texts. Using the key concepts of "poet", "archivist" and "nerd", this article examines the influence of various concepts of authorship on Setz's poetics and the role played by autofictional narrative styles in this context.
Richard Kämmerlings (Berlin): Inclusion and Narration. On the representation and function of mental and physical disability in the work of Clemens J. Setz.
People with disabilities play an exceptionally large role in Clemens J. Setz's books, for example in "Die Stunde zwischen Frau und Gitarre". This poses particular challenges for the depiction of cognitive processes. Consciousness and communication are problematized at the character level. The consequences of this for the concept of normality and for understanding in general will be examined by way of example.