When does it become violence?

Countering day-to-day violence through queer cultures of conflict

a series of events starting in November 2017 at aquarium (Südblock), Berlin-Kreuzberg

Concept: Antke Engel und Ferdiansyah Thajib

Is it possible to counter day-to-day violence through queer cultures of conflict? This series of events looks at the multiple shapes that violence takes and calls for a queer answer of how to affectively and effectively counter widespread normative, symbolic and epistemic violence.

  • How to engage with the different forms of violence, which can range from humiliation, sexual assault, day-to-day racism, emotional blackmail, dispossession, impoverishment, the asylum system, terror, discrimination by state institutions, war, to the war on terror? Does the term gain from or lose precision due to these different meanings?
  • How to disrupt hate and symbolic violence, which is by now widespread in social media and public encounters? Notably, in right wing polemics against feminism, gender studies and queer politics, which translate gender politics into a means of fostering racism.
  • Finally, what would “queer cultures of conflict” look like amidst the ongoing shadows of structural inequality and a historical legacy of violence? How may queer ways of dealing with conflict effectively counter normative, symbolic and epistemic violence?

Let us turn the aquarium into a space, where people feel welcome in bringing their particular social and geopolitical backgrounds, their diverse bodies and capabilities, their various wishes, values, interests, and aims. Let us invent ways of finding pleasure in talking with each other in respect, friendship, humor, sincerity, and conflict. Queer sociality as queer vision.

Thu 16 November 2017, 6-10pm (aquarium/Südblock, Berlin Kreuzberg)
Epistemic Violence – queer, feminist, and antimilitaristic perspectives
Talk and Workshop with Claudia Brunner and Thomas Mickan (in German!)
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Tue 05 December 2017, 7pm (aquarium/Südblock, Berlin Kreuzberg)
Butler Trouble: Queerness and Violence
Talk and discussion with Terrell Carver (University of Bristol, UK), in English
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Fri 1 December 2017,
Don’t Panic! Moralizing and polarizing are not the only options
Panel discussion with María do Mar Castro Varela, Antke Engel, Kübra Gümüşay and Chris Tedjasukmana  and the audience. Moderator: Edwin Greve
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Thu 25 January 2018, 7pm (aquarium/Südblock, Berlin Kreuzberg)
The Right to Provoke: Free Speech, Hate Speech, and the Politics of Censorship
talk (in German) and discussion (Engl./German) with Nikita Dhawan
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Fr 11 May 2018, 7pm (aquarium/Südblock, Berlin Kreuzberg)
Solidarity in Conflicts
Urmila Goel, Najwa Ouguerram and Sabine Mohamed in discussion with each other and the audience, in German, partly in English, translated into DGS (German Sign Language)
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Sat 27 October, 2018, 6pm (aquarium/Südblock, Berlin Kreuzberg)
Deaf Stress Factor: Hearing Ignorance
an evening on audism and deaf culture
with Xenia Dürr, Silvia Gegenfurtner, Simone Lönne, Melanie Loy
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01 February, 2019, 7 pm (aquarium/Südblock, Berlin Kreuzberg)
Is there an ‚I‘ in your LGBT*QI?
with Joris Gregor, moderated by Francis Seeck
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Thu 04. July, 2019, 7 pm (aquarium/Südblock, Berlin Kreuzberg)
Queer Modes of Endurance
with Ferdiansyah Thajib, moderated by Mike Laufenberg
> more