Conceptual Activism: Engaging Queerly in Conflictual Times
Symposium
Conceptual Activism, 03-2026. Design: ICI Berlin. Photo: Boudry/Lorenz
> download program as pdf
11:00 – 11:30: Welcome by Antke Antek Engel & the organizing team
11:30 – 12:15: Collective Reading of Davina Cooper’s article on Conceptual Activism
In the first session, we gather for a collective reading of Davina Cooper’s article. Conceptual activism, as Davina Cooper suggests, is a way of imagining-otherwise, which goes along with materializing as well as embodying concepts. Turning marginal(ized) concepts into practice may become a pre-figuration of other futures.
Please bring your own copy (digitally or printed). We will suggest passages for reading out loud, but please feel free to point out your own favorite sentences and bring along your questions. People will be able to join in digitally. Please email us to receive a link: mail (at) queer-institut.de
12:30 – 14:00 : Workshop I: Navigating Conflictual Consensus: A playful approximation to a conceptually activist term, by Friederike (Fred) Landau-Donnelly, Alexandra Papademetriou, Sifen Wibell
How does conflict move through our bodies, minds, and politics? This workshop embodies a form of conceptual activism by inviting participants to take part in a critical reconfiguration of our relationship with conflict. Through trauma-informed somatic exercises, we will explore tools for navigating conflict and unpack the differences between resource-related conflicts and value-related conflicts using the conceptual tool of the Conflictual Consensus Matrix [CoCoMax], which can inspire activism. The workshop seeks to cultivate both embodied and analytical awareness of different facets of conflict, as well as provide tools for navigating it on multiple levels: personal, community, policy. By addressing systemic injustices through practical tools, we can carve paths forward with solidarity.
15:30 – 17:00: Workshop II: Becoming the Chimera: Trans*Ecology in practice. Rethinking nature, bodies, and metamorphosis, by Asmae Ourkiya
What if transition wasn’t just a human act, but a natural law? From fungi with thousands of sexes to clownfish that change gender for their community’s survival, nature refuses the binary. In TransEcology*, we step into that refusal, exploring how transness is not unnatural but ecological, enmeshed in the same adaptive, hybridized, and ever-transforming metamorphosis that species having been going through since the dawn of time. An embodied workshop, engaging with clay in a practice called The Chimera Exercise.
> For more details see Ourkiya_Becoming the Chimera (pdf).
17:15 – 18:15: Video tour through the exhibition “Desbatismos” (Debaptisms): Dissident Cartographies and Artistic Practices of Deprogramming”, Co-Curators Fer Nogueira and diasszz in conversation with Rafael Baioni
The exhibition challenges homogenous thoughts and experiences to establish connections between the past, present, and a dwelling, even if virtual, for a future. The exhibition creates a space where gender-sexual, neuroatypical/typical, and ethnic/racial multiplicities can continue to transform, and where people can care for their bodies, experiences, and critical pluriversal flows within bio-sociodiverse conceptualizations. Artistic productions open up universes—or rather, deviant pluriverses—and simultaneously transform artistic, academic, and quotidian environments and cohabitations. Conceptual discussions of multiple feminisms and queer theory explore countless possibilities through dissident cartographies and visual poetic experiences.
Evening Discussion
19:15 – 21:00: Open Fish Bowl: Conceptual Activism: decolonial – trans_ecological – queer, with Aylon Cohen, Gergana Mineva, Yv Nay, Asmae Ourkiya, Rubia Salgado, Alexandra Papademetriou, Ferdiansyah Thajib, Sifen Wibell and the audience
Conceptual activism is a way of imagining otherwise, involving the materialization as and the embodiment of concepts. Transforming marginalized concepts into practice can prefigure alternative futures. In this discussion the invited guests will present concepts – like confluence, queer gestures, transecology, or conflictual aesthetics – that inform their professional, activist, or artistic practices. These are intended to inspire reflection and exchange on conceptual activism. There will be a particular focus on queering and transing, and how these approaches support decolonial, ecological, and feminist perspectives, while being open to conflict.
The discussion is participatory. Audience members are invited to join the speaker’s circle. There will be continuous movement between the inner, in-between, and outer circles of chairs, as well as between languages (German, English).
Concepts offered by the guests
“I propose the concept of queer gestures as a way to think about how bodily practices, such as hugging, shaking hands or having sex, can generate meaning and produce seemingly abstract political ideas, a concept which promises to provide an embodied material resource to fuel conceptual activism.” (Aylon Cohen)
“Conflictual aestethics is the understanding of artistic practices as inherently political, while their radical potential is dependent on conflict and antagonism.” (Alexandra Papademetriou, Sifen Wibell)
“We flowed along a ‘riverbed thirsty for river,’ as das kollektiv, together with many others throughout the year 2025, on an imaginative quest for a poetic approach to critical adult education as and with migrants. We traversed territories of desire, intersectionality, political relations, Black and queer feminisms, and militant adult education. Finally, we reached a confluence—a merging of various currents of knowledge, thought, and feeling—to invent, shape, and claim new worlds, paths, and riverbeds.” (Gergana Mineva, Rubia Salgado)
“Queer mode of endurance is an approach to living that recognizes its entanglement with harm. It is not a position outside violence but a practice of inhabiting contradictions and ruptures as generative conditions. As for conceptual activism, a queer mode of endurance moves alongside contradictions and through them rather than rushing toward their resolution, while remaining committed to the question of what must be done differently to undo harm and violence.” (Ferdiansyah Thajib)
“With the term trans*ecology I reframe transnessas an ecological law rather than a human exception, exploring how the natural world refuses the binary through constant adaptation and metamorphosis. This might inspire forms of conceptual activism that deconstruct biological essentialism, while celebrating transness as a brilliant expression of natural resilience.“ (Asmae Ourkiya)
“I suggest the concept trans*formation to grasp changes in form, structure and appearance of multiple (unexpected) things while altering, changing, and forming them in a new way. It refers to trans as a way of sensing, doing and knowing of unsettling meanings of gender and sex while inhabiting them in (un)liveable worlds. The asterisk in ‘trans*’ alludes to a utopian turn in the term’s own colonial history and present.” (Yv Nay)
„I propose queerversity (instead of diversity) as an activist concept, which values non-classificatory modes of difference that usually escape attention or are even negated. Queerversity introduces the difference of the different into diversity.” (Antke A. Engel)
Bios
Aylon Cohen is a Lecturer in Feminist Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University. They are currently writing a queer-feminist history of manhood democracy in England through the dual lens of fraternity and sodomy as political symbols, practices and feelings of equality. Aylon has previously written on topics in Democratic Theory, Affect Studies, Early Modern Political History, Queer-Feminist Theory, and Non-Human Political Theory, which can be found in Political Science and Politics,Modern Intellectual History, Femina Politica: Zeitschrift für Feministische Politikwissenschaft, and Contemporary Political Theory, among others.
diasszz (b. 2003, São José dos Pinhais, Paraná; uses any pronoun) is a student in the ninth semester of Visual Arts program in the Department of Arts at UFPR. They seeks to explore the various possible gender performances. Their special interests include queer theory from an Afrocentric perspective, connections between Afro-diasporic and ancestral art, analyses of pop culture elements, theories on the visuality of post-pornography, and performances of gender and race. diasszz develops related artistic works using the languages of drawing, video, and video performance. In the course “Studies in Visual Poetics 1: Gender Theory and Queer/Cuir/Kuir/Bixa Cartographies,” diasszz felt the need to delve deeper into Black feminist and decolonial readings. They drew on the work of Lélia Gonzalez and Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí and applied it to the analysis of Black queer experiences. They intends to explore the power of the pornographic image over the viewer’s body, based on the work of Teresa de Lauretis and Paul Preciado. They will investigate post-pornography as the total liberation of the body. They intends to continue their studies focusing on the figure of the Black queer and develop their final thesis project, which will intersect gender, race, and sexuality with African art history and diasporic art. They also intends to continue studying the language of video to pursue further studies in film.
Gergana Mineva and Rubia Salgado are teachers and coordinators of das kollektiv: a space of critical adult education, of exchange, dissent, and common practice as migrant and refugee women*. Together we develop processes, concepts, actions, discussions, interventions, e.g. Confluence, the concept we will share at the symposium, as well the poetic attitude which is its foundation.
Yv Nay (they/them; er/ihn) is Professor of European Ethnology and Gender Studies at Humboldt University Berlin. Their research focuses on queer kinship formations, on the affective structure of trans activism, and on transformative imaginations of education. Yv Nay is the author of Feeling Family (2017), co-editor of The Europa Issue of TSQ (2021, 8.2.) and author of “The Atmosphere of Global Trans* Activism” published in TSQ (2019, 6.1.) and “The Affective Life of Trans Studies as a Political Field in Academia and Activism” published in SQS (2023, 1-2).
Fer Nogueira (b. 1982, São Paulo, they/she) is an adjunct professor in the Department of Arts at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) and holds a PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Their research and curatorial practice operates at the intersection of art, politics, and critical theory, with emphasis on dissident bodies, desire, and resilience. Since 2008, they have been a member of Red Conceptualismos del Sur, contributing to collaborative projects such as Perder la forma humana (Reina Sofía Museum, 2012–2014), and the Getty Foundation-supported Redes Intelectuales (2011–2013). Their individual curatorial work has focused on Brazilian underground movements, trans-feminist video activism, and conceptual art, presented internationally in Buenos Aires, Cali, Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona, and Vienna. For the exhibition Desbatismos (Debaptisms): Dissident Cartographies and Artistic Practices of Deprogramming at the DeArtes UFPR Gallery, their collective curatorial approach investigates how artistic practices can act as sites of performative rupture and re-existence, drawing from collaborative methodologies and the intersection of queer, feminist, and decolonial thought.
Asmae Ourkiya (they/them) is the Founder and Director of The Ecofeminist Institute,
an organisation dedicated to advancing education, training, consultancy, and research that
integrate holistic approaches to address climate change and environmental challenges.
Dr. Ourkiya earned their Ph.D. from Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick,
where they defended their thesis “Queer Ecofeminism: From Binary Environmental
Endeavours to Postgender Pursuits”, later published by Rowman & Littlefield. They are
currently authoring their second book, Queer Intersectional Ecofeminism: Theories,
Practices, and Future Directions, forthcoming with Springer Nature in late 2026.
Alexandra Papademetriou is an artist, researcher, and designer. Originally from Athens and currently based in Göteborg, her work explores how artistic practices can provide the testing ground for social change. Using shared learning as her method, she aims to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogues and collaborations.
Ferdiansyah Thajib is a social cultural anthropologist at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, with research interests in queer worldmaking affects and practices. He is also member of KUNCI Study Forum & Collective in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Thajib recently published: Enduring Otherwise: Muslim Queer and Trans Worldmaking in Indonesia, NYU Press 2026.
Sifen Wibell is an artist and educator from Sweden working with dialogue-based projects intended for collective production of counter-knowledge, acting as containers for practicing the future. Their practice is grounded in queer, decolonial perspectives, with a particular focus on embodied and somatic experiences.
Conceptual Activism is part of a series of events on Queer Cohabitations celebrating the iQt’s 20th anniversary, this symposium explores the possibilities and limitations of conceptual activism.
Organized by: Sagniquee Banerjee, AntkeAntek Engel, Karolina (kasu keys) Heck, Friederike (Fred) Landau-Donnelly, Rafael Baioni, Samu/elle Striewski
An Institute for Queer Theory (iQt) event in cooperation with ICI Berlin.