Suza Husse (curator, researcher, writer) and Andrea Caroline Keppler (curator) / District * School Without Center  
Friederike Landau (urban sociologist, political theorist)

Ferdiansyah Thajib (researcher, community educator) / District * School Without Center + KUNCI
  

in English

The round table Instituting / Fleeing addresses collective practices as forms of resistance against power asymmetries, as activist strategies. It focuses on the entangled dynamics between fleeing and occupying the institution and the role institutional critique plays in these dynamics. Together with Suza Husse, Andrea Caroline Keppler, and Ferdi Thajib of District * School without Center and their sub-project Caring for Conflict, as well as political scientist Friederike Landau who as worked on the ‘creative’ city, we will map out our different collective practices by posing questions, such as: How can we understand the different ways the institution and the collectives are linked? How to create collectives within the institution? How can collectives flee or occupy the institution? Who can flee and where to? How do institutions appropriate and destroy collective structures? Where and how can we find space to include the body into the reflection of institutional critique? With a collective mapping we seek to understand and navigate analyses, experiences, knowledges, fears and needs of all participants. The visual cartography resulting from this mapping contains our diverse collective practices in the fields of arts, academia, and activism and will invite the audience to join the discussion. 


Suza Husse is a curator, researcher, and author with an interest in queer feminist and decolonial approaches to artistic research, collaborative practices, (public) space, critical education, and political imagination. Since 2012 she has been active in the artistic direction of District * School Without Center with a focus on those areas. Together with the artist Emma Haugh, she initiated the experimental publication and performance collective The Many Headed Hydrain 2016 on post-colonial myths, queer ecologies and transformative forms of action emanating from water and earth forces. 

Andrea Caroline Keppler is part of the artistic management team of District * School Without Center. She studied art and cultural sciences in Leipzig and Rome and worked at institutions such as the Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt and the Raussmüller Collection Basel / Hallen für Neue Kunst. Since 2014 she works at District * School Without Centerand (co-)curated amongst others Revolt She Said – dekoloniale und feministische Perspektiven auf 68 (2018/19) in cooperation with alpha nova & galerie futura. She is particularly interested in feminist and decolonial approaches to the curatorial, underpresented aspects of historiography, architecture and urban space, as well as processes of emancipation and self-determination.

Dr. Friederike Landau (*1989) is a political theorist and urban sociologist. In her dissertation (2015–2017), Friederike dealt with the political organisation and representation practices of freelance Berlin artists and their strategies for making an impact on Berlin’s cultural policy. Using the example of the coalition in the independent scene, Friederike explored how artists in the ’creative’ city develop collective structures to denounce power imbalances in cultural promotion and become self-empowered protagonists to bring about changes in cultural policy priorities. At the interface between cultural policy, urban development and cultural activist interventions in public space, Friederike explores new forms, protagonists and moments of the political in an allegedly post-political age. Friederike is currently a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt.

Ferdiansyah Thajib is a Phd Candidate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin. His life work is situated at the intersections of theory and praxis, with specific research interests on queer modes of endurance and forms of affective entanglement in everyday life. Ferdi is a member of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, a research collective which focuses on critical knowledge production and sharing through cross-disciplinary encounter, artistic practice, action-research and vernacular education within and across community spaces. Since 2019 Ferdi joins the artistic directorship collective of District * School Without Center.