The Sexual Politics of Utopia

workshop + film program, 17 May 2009, 2-8pm

We would like to invite you to a “creative tinkering” workshop in order to incite futures that are not in line with “the future.” Talking about “futurities” does not simply proliferate futures but introduces differing logics of temporality and differing ways of how time and space interact. Not all kinds of future necessarily subscribe to the norm of progress or to reproductive futurism. Thus, the question is: How can one invent politics that evade homonormative promises, heteronormative compromises and the desired/desiring consistency of socio-sexual life?

This 4-hour workshop depends on collaborative practices. We will provide toolboxes consisting of concepts and questions, props and accessories as well as spaces for thinking, talking and doing that can be continually redefined. We ask you to bring along anything that seems useful and desirable to you. If you are interested in experimenting in utopian thinking, undermining utopian idealism and normativity and in creating heterogeneous clusters of parallel, competitive futures, come and join in.

Please register: mail(at)queer-institut.de

> program

Time-Queering Against the Grain: Utopic Visions that Can’t be stopped

A fun-filled film program of shorts that is guaranteed to break your pocket watch!
curated by Jess Dorrance

The Island
Trevor Anderson, 2009, Canada, video, color, 5:22 min.

The Pool
Sara Jordenö, 2004, Sweden, 16mm, color with sound, 22 min.

My Name is Pochsy: An Industrial Film
Karen Hines, 2007, Canada, Super8mm, B&W, 7 min.

Family Outing
Mark Bradley, 2001, Canada, 16mm, color, 5:30 min.

La Bestia
Girlswholikeporno (Águeda Bañón and María Llopis), 2005, Spain, video, color, 2:16 min.

>Filmprogramm als pdf

location:
WirrWarr, Dieffenbachstr. 36 , 2. Hinterhof,
Berlin-Kreuzberg

Queer Futurities - Today.
Utopias and Beyond in Queer Theory

symposium, 18/19 May 2009

Wie würde eine queere Zukunftsutopie aussehen? Oder sollten Queers, wie Lee Edelman polemisch vorschlägt, sich stattdessen dem Motto “no future” verschreiben. "Queer Futurities, Today" ist ein internationales Symposium, das queere Zukunftsvorstellungen ins Spiel bringt, befragt, kritisiert und neu entwirft – mit Bezug auf utopisches Denken oder auch jenseits dessen. Zwei Tage lang wird das Thema in Diskussionen, Vorträgen und Workshops von verschiedenen Seiten beleuchtet: Sind Utopie, Dystopie, Heterotopie viel versprechende Konzepte, um normativen sowie normalisierenden Formen der sozialen Organisation von Geschlecht, Sexualität und Begehren entgegen zu treten? Wie kann queere Politik auf die Domestizierung nicht-normgerechter Geschlechter und Sexualitäten reagieren? Was bedeutet es, Zukunft zu vervielfältigen und teleologische Zukunftsvorstellung in Frage zu stellen, die sich dem Versprechen einer “besseren Welt” verschreiben – zumeist, indem sie auf Reproduktion, Familie und Kinder setzen? Sind Phantasie und Imagination bedeutsam, wenn es darum geht rigide binäre Geschlechter- und Begehrensordnungen zu dekonstruieren und queere Zukünfte entstehen zu lassen?

location:
Finland Institute in Germany, Berlin
Georgenstr. 24 (1. OG), S-Friedrichsstr.

In co-operation with SQS Queer Journal,
supported by Finland Institute and
Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI-Berlin).

> cfp (pdf) >>> Programm (pdf) >>> abstracts (link)

Against Survival: Queerness in a Time that's Out of Joint

talk by Lee Edelman (Tufts University, U.S.)

Negativity, like the queer, is intolerable, even to those who think themselves queer. Its insistence on non-identity spurs our continuous efforts to positivize what resists all normalization. Though Adorno observed that “society stays alive, not despite its antagonism, but because of it," the queerness of non-identity provokes repeated attempts to redeem it by turning it into something pragmatic and comprehensible, like political action or collective practice. “Against Survival” draws on work by Adorno, Derrida, and Lacan, along with texts by Shakespeare and photographic images by the Los Angeles artist, Larry Johnson, to think queer theory in relation to questions of negativity, futurity, and survival and to assert the radical refusal of queerness to settle for a multiplication of “futurities” or to cohere into any quotidian practices aimed at making its negativity the ground for new forms of communal life or new modes of viability. Queerness, instead, as this talk will suggest, works against survival, even against its own survival, except to the extent that antagonism is how “society stays alive.” In that sense queerness amounts to the rupture that turns hope against itself in order to maintain the radical negativity that no identity could hope to survive.

Monday 18 May 2009, 7pm
ICI/Kulturlabor, Christinenstr. 18/19 (Pfefferberg Haus 8).

in co-operation with Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI Berlin)
sponsored by Buchladen Prinz Eisenherz Berlin

Berlin Queer Salon

1st round, autumn/winter 2009

Queer-politisches Speed-Dating (July 2009, WIRR-WARR)

Antirassistisch Küssen? Wie lässt sich der Kampf gegen Homophobie und Rassismus gleichzeitig statt gegeneinander führen? (August, WIRR-WARR)

Luminous People: Queerness in den Filmen von Apichatpong Weerasethakul (September, Basso)

Queer Intersectional Role Play – Neue Lebensgeschichten erfinden und ausloten, wie sich Privilegien und Benachteiligungen, die sich aus unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlichen Zugehörigkeiten ergeben, abschaffen ließen. (October, Mittenmang)