„Queer Cultures of Conflict“ is iQt’s main topic since 2017.

It manifests as and transforms itself through workshops, talks, and publications, as well as a salon format called Saal Lun*. In addition there will be a collaborative project with Berlin-based DISTRICT Berlin under the title Caring for Conflict.

It’s not that there aren’t enough conflicts. But that we are lacking good ways of dealing with them – and this is true on a personal and social, as well as a global level. More often than not conflicts are either avoided or disavowed, or escalated into hatred and violence. Therefore we posit the questions: What is a queer culture of conflict? How can we take conflicts seriously? How do we turn them into tools of change?

„Queer Cultures of Conflict“ is a plea for taking pleasure in complexity and confusion, while fostering the transformative power of conflicts, seeing them as power struggles, and being attentive to structures of inequality and histories of violence inherent to the conflict’s dynamic. Is it possible to carve out utopian potentials in conflicts, and make them be driven by desires for justice?

Caring for Conflict

Caring for Conflict is contributing to the ,,Queer Cultures of Conflict” 2017-2018 programme as a cultural education project. The saal lun* is one of its public formats.

Saal lun*

A Saal lun* is an event lasting approximately four hours; it is a utopian or heterotopian space, where one can deal creatively with a social conflict and perhaps find unusual or surprising solutions.

Saal is the German word for “hall” and lun* stands for lunatic or luna (moon): asking for crazy ideas, seemingly coming from the moon.

A salon is (not) a saloon is a Saal lun*

The Saal lun* connects to while also distancing itself from the salon as well as the saloon. The name carries a critique of bourgeois, occidentalist cultural production and the US history of settler colonialism, without negating that this is part of its geneaology.