Category: News

Coloniality/Decoloniality

WS 25/26 / Reading Circle

Starting in December 2025, our reading circle will introduce the concepts of coloniality and decoloniality, reflecting on their implications for artistic practice. We will seek to understand the conditions that made the racist epistemological underpinnings alluded to in previous readings possible. It is impossible to think of the figures of the ‘stranger’ (Baldwin) or the ‘master’ (Lorde) without considering colonialism and coloniality. By doing so, we will begin to question our own assumptions and develop a nuanced critique that considers historical developments.

Istanbul Exkursion

WS 25/26 / Visiting exhibition and Manifesta together with Sevim Sancaktar!

Sevim Sancaktar is a Turkish artist, curator, and exhibition designer whose practice lies at the intersection of archival research and contemporary art. She completed his undergraduate studies at Uludağ University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, and received his MA in Visual Arts from Sabancı University. Over the years, she has been one of the co-founders of several collectives and Karşılaşmalar (Encounters), a long-term project questioning exhibition aesthetics and narrative forms. Sancaktar has collaborated with numerous artists and institutions in the fields of artistic production and exhibition-making.

Love in Translation

SS 25 / Feminisms Reading Circle

With guest speaker Ewa Majewska on feminist writer Bell Hooks. Ewa Majewska is a Polish philosopher, political activist and an author. In the 1990s and early 2000s, she was involved in anarchist, anti-border, ecological and women’s movements. She is a contributor to prominent international conferences, projects, and published articles and essays, in journals, magazines, and collected volumes, including: e-flux, Signs, Third Text, Journal of Utopian Studies, and Jacobin. Her current research is in Hegel’s philosophy, focusing on the dialectics and the weak, feminist critical theory and antifascist cultures. Her book, Feminist Antifascism: Counterpublics of the Common, was published by Verso in 2021.She volunteered for the Polish IndyMedia and worked in the women’s section of the Committee for Assistance and Defense of Repressed Workers. She is also the author of a report on violence against women in the family and intimate relations for the Polish branch of Amnesty International (2005). In 2004, together with Aleksandra Polisiewicz, she formed the duo Syreny TV. It produced documentaries from a series of Warsaw demonstrations and the project All Forward to the Extreme Right (2005). This film is a record of conversations revolving around the analogy between Poland of 2005 and the Weimar Republic.

Jaunt and Hinterland

WS 24/25 / Artist Talk Lotte Reimann

Lotte Reimann (*she/none) lebt, forscht und lehrt als queere Künstlerin* derzeit in Berlin. Sie* studierte an der Fachhochschule Bielefeld, der Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam und war Stipendiatin* der Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Lotte arbeitet an konzeptuellen fotografischen Erzählungen über Körperlichkeit, die das kolonialhistorische Konzept des Fetischs – der Blick auf die ‚Anderen‘ – unterlaufen. In ihrer* Arbeit verbinden sich gefundene und eigene Bilder, Texte und Töne zu offenen Erzählsträngen, die zwischen soziologischer Forschung und künstlerischer Spekulation oszillieren. Die Beziehungen von Menschen zu Nicht-Menschlichem, wie Wasser, Steinen, Pflanzen, Tieren und anderen Dingen, stehen dabei im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen. Lotte Reimanns Arbeiten wurden in internationalen Institutionen wie der MoMA-Bibliothek New York, dem Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, De Appel, dem Fotomuseum Winterthur, den Rencontres d’Arles, dem Museum Arnhem, Chelsea UAL, dem Museum Marta Herford, FOAM Amsterdam und dem Fotomuseum Rotterdam ausgestellt bzw. von diesen erworben. Sie* wurde 2022 mit dem Krupp-Stipendium ‚Zeitgenössische deutsche Fotografie‘ und 2016 mit dem niederländischen ‚C.o.C.A. Foundation Art Prize“ ausgezeichnet.

Sabina, Rekonstruktion einer Recherche

WS 24/25 / Artist Talk by Wiebke Elzel

Wiebke Elzel’s artistic work is characterized by a conceptual approach and by narrative, documentary and research elements. She mainly works with the media of photography and text, which she combines to create unique forms of storytelling. Based on strategies of artistic research, she has developed own methods of gaining and communicating knowledge. Research in archives and libraries is an important part of the work process. Using individual phenomena, historical puzzles or events, she deals with contemporary issues. A central role plays the examination of constructions of historiography and their influence on individual and collective identity formation. Varying methods of explorative research, her projects always begin with a non-hierarchical collection and generation of documents, photographs, notes, etc. In doing so, she adopts a subjective point of view that integrates the reflection of her own experiences into the work. She always works over longer periods of time on her projects, that are condensed into complex and narrative installations. Alongside the exhibition space, the book is the most important form of presentation, also as an independent format.

INTERDEPENDENT TRIANGULAR CREATIVE PRACTICE & SCENE

SS 2024 / artist talk and bodywork workshop by transmedia artist, choreographer, dancer, and educator Anani Dodji Sanouvi

Sanouvi will introduce INTERDEPENDENT TRIANGULAR CREATIVE PRACTICE & SCENE. The workshop, rooted in both Ewe animist ontology and queer strategies, encourages participants to shift away from logo-centricity and linear thinking, towards a more experience-oriented relationship to the environment that is inspired by ancestral knowledge systems.

Transmedia artist, choreographer, dancer and educator Anani Dodji Sanouvi was born in Togo, grew up in Gabon, lived in Senegal, Belgium and Holland, and currently divides their time between Portugal and Brazil. Known for their synthesis of diverse traditions into a unique artistic language, Sanouvi has performed in theaters, festivals, museums, and cultural centers worldwide since 2001. Since 2016, they have co-directed the transmedia art collective Kawin with Brazilian artist Christiane da Cunha, exploring the transtemporal, transcultural and INdisciplinary dimensions of their animist heritage in the present. Accolades include fellowships from UNESCO, the Africa Center, the Sacatar Foundation, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Award, and the Niterói Arts Foundation, as well as collaborations with luminaries such as Peter Sellars, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and Hiroaki Umeda. Anani has brought AGAMA FO, their innovative approach to contemporary dance rooted in ancient principles, to major conferences and taught courses and workshops worldwide.

(dis)appear

WS 23/24 / Excursion nach Gutshof Sauen mit Workshop by Patricia Woltmann, Präsentation in TIER, Berlin

In every beginning and end there is a touch. When we breathe, we touch the air. When we stand or walk, we touch the ground. When we enter the room with our presence, the room is “touched” by us. How do we negotiate space in our togetherness, how do we organise our corporeality? When is a body absent, when is it present? In this laboratory we examine the nature of beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures. Using improvisation and compositional tools, we build from various physical techniques – drawing on touch, distance and proximity, interconnectivity of bodies – investigating forms of togetherness. 

Performance’s being.. becomes itself through disappearance. (Peggy Phelan) 

Patricia Woltmann is a choreographer, dancer and performance artist. At the intersection of dance and visual art, Patricia’s performances create a space for collective, embodied experiences. She explores concepts related to the transformative potential of the body – presence in relation to absence and memory. Patricia’s artistic works have been presented at Museo del Chopo, Mexico City, Goethe Institute Athens, AADK/Spain, KW Institute of Contemporary Art Berlin, Bode-Museum Berlin, among others. She taught at London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University London, Duncan Centre Prague, Erika Klütz Schule Hamburg, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance London. https://pattywoltman.com/

Using Creative Research Methods and Tools for Artistic Production

SS 23 / screenings, Workshop, discussions with Leil Zahra Mortada

In this hands-on production class we will approach research from a creative, playful and at times unorthodox angles; while we explore tools, best-practices, production processes and project development. We will engage with the works of artists and artist collectives who have used performance and time-based media as a tool for socio-political critique, and whose work is rooted in open-source research and disruptive interventions.

Leil Zahra Mortada is a transfeminist queer activist, researcher and artist/filmmaker, born in Beirut. Their film work includes the archival project “Words of Women from the Egyptian Revolution”; and the awarded experimental short “Breakup in 9 Scenes”. Leil is behind the research project Sound Liberation Front, a music research project focusing on marginalized music and sound art from a decolonial and queer feminist perspectives. As a filmmaker, they recently produced “There is a Baba in Our House” a critical coming-of-age video on the performativity of nationalism and the blurred lines between the father/leader. Leil is a researcher and content developer on digital security, online privacy and open-source investigations. Their work has a major focus on queer and feminist politics, archiving, migration, nationalism,

Coming close(r): copying, imitating, appropriating movement

SS 23 / Workshop and presentation by Magdalena Kallenberger

This workshop combines physical exploration, discussion and writing exercises. We will examine the possibilities and impossibilities of adopting and “owning” movement and will take a closer look at notions of copying, imitation, appropriation, passing and other modes of “coming close(r)” to a specific physicality. As part of this workshop I will give insight into my artistic work with physical appropriation and body archives, mainly the projects “9½ minutes dancing dying” (2016) and “Try Leather” (2021).

Magdalena Kallenberger is an artist, writer, educator and researcher. She works with video, photography, performance, installation and text, combining research into feminist histories and writing with autobiography, theory and performative elements. Kallenberger’s research-based and often collaborative practice investigates themes around radical care and feminist practices tackling the in/visibility of care/work and motherhood(s) not just in the Arts. Kallenberger’s most recent articles and essays will appear in publications with MIT Press (2023), k-Verlag (2023), demeter press (2023) and gender(ed) thoughts (2023). She has co-edited “Re-Assembling Motherhood(s): On Radical Care and Collective Art as Feminist Practices” by MATERNAL FANTASIES, published with onomatopee in 2021, second edition in 2022. Available via onomatopee https://www.onomatopee.net/exhibition/re-assembling-motherhoods/. Magdalena Kallenberger is initiator, co-founder and active member of MATERNAL FANTASIES collective and was member of CAIRO BATS

 

Performative Memory Culture

WS 22/23 / workshop with Laia Rica

Who are “we?” What role do objects, materials and everyday products play? What can we tell through them? What do they say about us? How do they shape us? With which other people and contexts do they connect us? What (de)colonial heritage is hidden in objects, materials and everyday products?In the lab, we will work performatively with different materials and examine them in different different states performatively. We will tell autobiographical stories and find stories in the materials. In the relationship with and materials, we will explore the practice of collecting and exhibiting objects. of objects. The concept of colonial continuities will be used as a perspective on historical events in relation with personal, structural privileges will be examined.