In this inaugural public workshop, we posit the diasporic ordinary as a spatio-temporal formation in which the demands of displacement and migration require the simultaneous and constant navigation of multiple locations, times, affects, and lives. We are claiming a specific affinity between this understanding of the diasporic ordinary and queerness. In open-format presentations, project members and international guests will be in dialogue about the ordinary complexity that constitutes the lived reality of migrant and diasporic subjects.
The workshop will engage with quotidian challenges in responding to the trap of simultaneously striving for societal inclusion and the pressures that reinforce the fractures between and amongst migrant communities. How do people articulate affects of unbelonging, feeling overwhelmed by identitarian demands, experiences of everyday racism, and mundane conviviality? This constant negotiation also requires an understanding of race and migration beyond generic “problems” of diversity, multiculturalism, and translation.
Anyone Anywhere All the Time inquires into the effects of simultaneity. How do longings for queer resonances and patterns of disconnect manifest? What are the different modes of storytelling that emerge from all of this? How do literary and artistic strategies and audiovisual forms reconcile the anecdotal and the analytical? How do they create new epistemological pathways? How does the personal as a form of literacy complicate a “confessional mode” in which minoritised subjects are often expected to speak and write? What are the traces of queerness that pervade migrant and diasporic normality?
The workshop is free of charge.
Organisation
ERC Consolidator Grant Project “Tales of the Diasporic Ordinary: Aesthetics, Affects, Archives”
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | Department of English and American Studies
Pictures from the Workshop
Workshop Programme
DAY 1
Friday, October 6th, 2023
10am-11am
Welcome and Introduction
11.30am-1pm
“Diasporic Possessions”
Anja Sunhyun Michaelsen and Mojisola Adebayo
1pm-2pm
Lunch (not provided)
2pm-3.30pm
“Oceanic Tides, Machinic Flows”
Thao Ho and Charmaine Poh
4pm-5.30pm
“The Past Does Not Exist, the Present Too Much So”
Fenja Akinde-Hummel and Tasha Pick
6pm-7pm
“Plays from the Diasporic (extra)Ordinary”
Performance by Mojisola Adebayo
DAY 2
Saturday, October 7th, 2023
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Auditorium Grimm-Zentrum
9.30am-10am
Welcome and Introduction
10am-11.30am
“Politics of Image Making and the Power of Liberation in the Creative Process”
Anne Potjans and Rebecca Racine Ramershoven
12pm-2pm
“Queer Future Perfect: Invisible Desires, Archival Poetry and Utopian In-Betweenness”
Elahe Haschemi Yekani
2pm-3pm
Lunch (provided)
3pm-4.30pm
Roundtable Discussion with “Outside Eyes”
Chris Tedjasukmana, Omar Kasmani and M. Ty
4.30pm-5.30pm
Final Q&A and next steps
Accessibility
Aquarium am Südblock
Location: Skalitzer Str. 6 10999 Berlin, ground floor.
The rooms and gender-neutral toilets are accessible for wheelchairs. The rooms are close (approx. 150m) to the subway station Kottbusser Tor (U1, U3, U8, Bus 140).
Grimm-Zentrum, Auditorium
Location: Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 1 / 3, on the ground floor / souterrain on the east side of the building.
The building can be accessed from the side or through the rotating doors in the front. The conference room is acessible for wheelchairs via elevator.
A gender-neutral and wheelchair-accessible bathroom is available on the same floor. More gender-neutral bathrooms can be found on the 7th floor (accessible via elevator).
On the 7th floor you can find a playroom for children that can be used with parental supervision.
For more questions regarding accessibility, please contact: diasporicordinary@hu-berlin.de.
