Moderation: Annika Haas
Organized by: Lena Loose, Jasmina Samssuli

4th November 2022

UDK designtransfer

10:00 - 11:30 Rima Najdi & Ismail Fayed: This House is Virtuous and will always remain Virtuous: Negotiating dynamics of the queer body of Arab women in Egyptian Cinema (cancelled)

A sex worker caught at a police station, when the police asks her what is your profession, she answers “haha... Dactora“ – a doctor. A trans woman who is a ‘Ma’alima’ or the mother of a house, gets interrupted from her rehearsals to open the door, to an old guy, “Istaghfarallah“ – God forbid he says, to which she responds “this house is virtuous  and will always remain virtuous” and continues to sing and dance repeating the word virtuous. Belly dancers in western words, A’awalem in Egyptian, are part of their society in celebratory moments, invited to perform with a glamourized fashion and under a sexualized gaze. Yet their societies shame, marginalize and cast them off society, even depict their art work as a non-art form.

11:30 - 13:00 Lilli Kuschel & Cord Riechelmann: Observing Observers Observing—Filming Birds

Lilli Kuschel presents her video installation CROWS – an experimental documentary that follows crows in Berlin exploring a city in transformation. Rapid urbanization is one of the most prevalent drivers for the loss of biodiversity, but crows are experts in adapting to city life. Intimate observations of key moments in the life of these highly intelligent birds and a visual research on how the animals rededicate Berlin’s changing cityscape and architecture open up new perspectives on a more-than-human-world. CROWS is a radical urban wildlife film without human dialogue and music, focusing on the observation itself to attract the viewer’s attention and curiosity for non- human narratives. Cord Riechelmann – author, biologist, philosopher and crow expert will join the talk as a guest.
 

5th November 2022
 

Berlin University of the Arts / Einsteinufer

10:00 - 11:30 Britta Wirthmüller: to imagine an archive where there is none – A lecture performance 

In this lecture Britta Wirthmüller shares her experiences in the attempt to re-live a fraction of the life of dancer, choreographer and pedagogue Ruth Abramowitsch Sorel. As a German Jewish dancer Sorel had to flee from the Nazi regime and was forced to live in exile in Poland, Brazil and Canada between 1933 and 1957. Britta Wirthmüller’s research about Sorel takes on the form of personal narrative, bodily exploration, re-enactment, archival investigations and visiting geographical sites. While at times there is little factual evidence to be found, imagining that traces exist and can be taken hold of becomes an essential aspect of the research.

11:30 - 13:00 Artistic Research at UdK? A discussion on the potentials and needs of artistic associates at the University of the Arts 
with Annika Haas (UdK), Prof. Nik Haffner (UdK), Be Körner (Bauhaus University Weimar) and Alex Toland (Bauhaus University Weimar)
 

The colloquium was part of the conference Strangeness in Paradise? The Attractions of Otherness – Collaborative Practices & Generativity in Research, for the full programme