See also: Mathias Dells contribution about the workshop to Deutschland Funk Kultur

23.11.2020 – 5:30pm to 8pm

The workshop is free, but registration is necessary. Prior to the session all participants will receive a link to the online conference tool, as well as reading material for preparation. Limited capacity: first come first served!  Please register until Nov. 16 by writing an email to s.koethe_ @udk-berlin.de.

Live digital lecture by Mansoor Adayfi, moderated by Sebastian Köthe

In English

The detainees in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp produced art from the time they arrived.  With the modest means available for appropriation, they transformed their surroundings, using tea powder as makeshift paint or apple stems to draw on styrofoam cups. What started as microscopic interventions into a system striving for total control, evolved into a political culture of survival: the detainees shared stories and gave each other classes, wrote poetry and diaries, sang and danced together, or created sculptural works and paintings. While the exhibitions „Ode to the Sea“ (2017/18) and „Guantánamo [Un]Censored: Art from Inside the Prison“ (2020) have presented selected artworks from Guantánamo in New York, this workshop is a unique opportunity to learn more about art and aesthetic practices as a daily mode of surviving, resisting, spiritually fleeing or archiving Guantánamo Bay.

Mansoor Adayfi is a writer, artist, and former Guantánamo detainee who was held around 15 years without charges. Adayfi has written several pieces published in the New York Times, including the Modern Love column “Taking Marriage Classes at Guantánamo”; the introduction for the exhibit Art from Guantanamo, which ran at John Jay College in 2017-2018; and a series of graphic stories published in The Nib and the recent published  Guantanamo Voices. Adayfi participated in the creation of the award-winning radio documentary The Art of Now for BBC radio about art from Guantánamo and the CBC podcast Love Me, which aired on NPR’s Snap Judgment. He is a winner of the Margloise award 2019, for nonfiction writers. His forthcoming book DON’T FORGET US HERE, is to be published by Hachette in 2021.

https://www.mansooradayfi.com/

Organized by DFG-Graduiertenkolleg "Das Wissen der Künste"