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Feminist MagiX. Decolonial Inlets

A trans-discursive event series
31.10.2020 – 09.05.2021

Online und im Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst, Spandauer Zitadelle Berlin

in frame of the exhibition
"disturbance: witch", curated by Alba D'Urbano and Olga Vostretsova

The "Feminist MagiX. Decolonial Inlets"-Series is curated by Katrin Köppert with Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Juana Awad, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt and MELT (Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr

with Nivald Acosta, Jamika Ajalon, Edna Bonhomme, Mario Guzman, Jota Mombaça, Maque Pereyra, Femke Snelting, Pinar Tuzcu

In cooperation with
Academy for Transcultural Exchange, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, District Berlin, Gunda Werner Institute for Feminism and Gender Democracy in the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Research Training Group „Knowledge in the Arts”, Berlin University of the Arts

The trans-discursive event-series Feminist MagiX. Decolonial Inlets accompanies the exhibition disturbance: witch curated by Alba D’Urbano and Olga Vostretsova at the Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst (ZAK) in the Zitadelle Spandau Berlin. Starting out from the motif of the witch, which is the subject of artistic negotiation in the exhibition, the series of events explores queer-feminist politics and practices of enchantment, which are currently virulent in the context of popular cultural and and feuilletonist discourses. In the context of these discourses, references to syncretistic forms of religiosity and spirituality that are connected to decolonial epistemologies of healing are condensed. In addition, references to mythologies and poetologies of the supernatural can be recognized in the context of indigenous struggles against extractivist colonial capitalist regimes. Ritual practices and magic are important points of reference for decolonial approaches to critically question Western knowledge regimes and exercise epistemic disobedience. The speculative and fabulative is also central within Afrofuturism. New concepts and forms of the political come to the fore: Music, dance and performance form decisive bridges to shape the world and determine politics. It is about nothing less than the reestablishment of the world with the means of art and culture.

Contact: E-Mail

Anguezomo Mba Bikoro and Katrin Köppert were in conversation with Laura Seidel about feminism and decolonial exhibition practices as part of the Shell we talk? series at the ZAK Berlin, >>> watch here

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eXorcizing colonialism

Performance lecture workshop by Nivald Acosta and Edna Bonhomme
curated by Nathalie Mba Bikoro

This chapter eXorcizing colonialism. to imagine a sea not bleeding: spilling injury & coalitions of the erotic focuses on the issues of social reproduction, historical spillage & narration, reproductive justice, and dimensions of solidarity – in particular how traditional notions of intimacy can be reconfigured. In this current moment where there is so much uncertainty and anxiety around questions of infection and injury, how can we re-think practices of care, support, and nurture that do not reproduce the violence of existing inequities?

Taking from Hortense Spiller’s trajectory on the concept of “pornotroping,” we introduce rhetorical investments in deploying the figure of Black Feminist to institute an argument about gender, that in non-intersectional feminist discourses is erased from the political and affective registers. Black feminist fugitivity that itself is a response to Hortense Spillers’ work, these stories spill over in excess, refusing containment or fixity, carried by the tongue, breath, eyes, memory. She locates it as the site of a radical ungendering.

During this gathering, the workshop by Navild Acosta and work of edna bonhomme addresses restorative methods, reflect on the politics of collaboration, and experiment with intersectional feminist practices of healing transmission, resonances, and echoes to see what kind of modes of being together can be imagined beyond existing identities, frameworks and positions.

Most recently, the final chapter ‚To Imagine a Sea Not Bleeding; Spilling Injury & Coalitions Of The Erotic‘ curated by Anguezomo Mba Bikoro and Katrin Köppert. Watch here

‚To Imagine a Sea Not Bleeding; Spilling Injury & Coalitions Of The Erotic‘ curated by Anguezomo Mba Bikoro and Katrin Köppert. Watch here

bug report: tuning to trans*feminist Xystem.crash
31.10.2020

A series of bug reports by Edna Bonhomme, Mario Guzman, Femke Snelting, and Pinar Tuzcu
Curated by MELT (Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr)

“We engage the bug report as a trans*feminist practice of affirmative critique that tunes to conceptual, political or material problems within existing systems.“ Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr, curators of the chapter.

In the format of a bug report, invited writers will describe and problematize bugs at the intersection of computation, magic and decolonial theory. A bug report within computational practice is a document detailing what is observable about a piece of software that is not performing a dedicated task. In 1946, programmer Grace Hopper invented the term when operators found a moth in the Mark II computer. We engage the bug report as an anti-racist and trans*feminist practice of affirmative critique that tunes to conceptual, political or material problems within existing systems. Borrowing from Mozilla's bug report writing guidelines, we have distilled key trans*feminist debugging techniques towards naming problems within the processes that produce glitches, crashes and violences. Join us for an evening of reading bug reports, discussing further implications and giving time and attention to collective bug finding.

shaman poetiX. spiritual activism, pleasure activism, perreo and decolonial strategies
12.12.20

Yoggaton Workshop with Macque Pereyra
curated by Verena Melgarejo Weinandt

Yoggaton is yoga&raeggaeton. Spiritual and pleasure activism and intense perreo. To decolonize bodies and to challenge binaries. These opposing assumptions are more connected than what they seem.

Yoggaton is a movement practice that works at physical, emotional, mental, spiritual & decolonial levels.
In the workshop we will go through the practice of Yoggaton and it's multilayered aspects and inputs. Practical and theoretical materials on decolonial strategies, intersectional feminism, spirituality and perreo as empowerment tools will be shared.
The aim of this workshop is to deepen the understanding of embodied knowledge and the empowerment it brings with. The importance of the body as a container of wisdom has been systematically relegated by Western standards of knowledge. We are going to link theoretical knowledge that precisely comes from authors who work with and from the body to awaken the wisdom of our own bodies by emphasizing the intersectionalities that compose those theories in regards to the particularities of the group and the individuals.
Meditation and perreo for empowerment!

afrofuture musiX
19.12.20

Anti-Lecture with Jamika Ajalon

“For me, Afrofuturism - and here I follow Kara Keeling - means to relate to the emancipatory potential in the present that was not realized in the past - even though this present hangs on the long arm of slavery.”, Katrin Köppert, curator of the series

“Ain’t no body caught me,”  pays tribute to god mothers of “black” music and her daughters, through an afro-futuristic narrative. This audio-visual anti-lecture, focusing mostly on Black American music made by women, from blues to hip-hop and a bit of the in between, reimagines her afro-futuristic presence from time into the continuum.
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