Archive

The multi-award-winning writer Katja Petrowskaja ("Vielleicht Esther") reads from her latest book “Das Foto schaute mich an”. The short pictorial reflections are based on her long-standing weekly column for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. In it, Petrowskaja proves herself to be a master of the literary snapshot and presents us with her fleeting and at the same time haunting reading of images that are often discovered by chance.

Thursday, 08/02 | 6:00 pm
Museum Lüneburg, Willy-Brandt-Str. 1

Admission is free. Followed by a discussion.
R.S.V.P. at lias.event@leuphana.de

In the LIAS film series in cooperation with the SCALA programme cinema, international films on cultural and socially critical topics are accompanied by introductions and discussions every month.

"The Secret in their Eyes"

In 1999, retired Argentinian federal justice agent Benjamín Espósito is writing a novel, using an old closed case as the source material. That case is the brutal rape and murder of Liliana Coloto. In addition to seeing the extreme grief of the victim's husband Ricardo Morales, Benjamín, his assistant Pablo Sandoval, and newly hired department chief Irene Menéndez-Hastings were personally affected by the case as Benjamín and Pablo tracked the killer, hence the reason why the unsatisfactory ending to the case has always bothered him. Despite the department already having two other suspects, Benjamín and Pablo ultimately were certain that a man named Isidoro Gómez is the real killer. Although he is aware that historical accuracy is not paramount for the novel, the process of revisiting the case is more an issue of closure for him. He tries to speak to the key players in the case, most specifically Irene, who still works in the justice department and who he has always been attracted to but never pursued due to the differences in their ages and social classes. The other issue is that Gómez is still at large, no one aware if he is alive or dead. But as Pablo at the time mentioned that passion is one thing that cannot be changed in behavior, Benjamín learns now that that premise still holds true

Argentinia, Spain 2009 • Director: Juan José Campanella
129 Min. • Original with English Subtitles

Free Admission

Campus | Central Building | C40.704
24 January 2024, 4:00 - 6:00 pm

With an introduction by Paul Onanuga, LIAS Fellow.
An event in cooperation with the Centre for Critical Studies and the Leuphana Gender and Diversity Network.

B Camminga is a Fellow at Kulturlabor, Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin.

Campus | Lecture Hall 3
23 January 2024, 6:00–8:00 pm

Introduction: Rosalind Morris, LIAS Senior Fellow

Although Portugal and Britain signed an anti-slave trade treaty in 1817, the persistent demand for unfree labor continued well into the latter part of the Nineteenth Century in the Mozambique Channel. Both nations operated maritime patrols. Those liberated from slaving vessels were called Liberated Africans by the British, or Libertos by the Portuguese. Depositions and testimonies by those liberated and supposedly free often contain dual, if not competing, perceptions of evidence and value. On one hand, a colonial official is tasked with the bureaucratic function of gathering information about abductions and liberation. On the other hand, the newly liberated account for themselves in a context that does not give weight to ‘information’ extraneous to basic evidence: the when of captivity, the where, the when and how of liberation and, if possible, the who of the trader. The deposition of a woman named Maria, liberated from a slaving dhow in August 1873, embodies a complex deictic understanding of where she finds herself and the world she came from. She articulates geographical and environmental knowledge, as well as her understanding of delicate political relations of compromise in which slavery is ‘un’-ended and freedom is deferred through a requirement of apprenticeship after rescue.

Yvette Christiansë is Claire Tow Professor of Africana Studies and English Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York.

Campus | Central Building | C40.704
11 January 2024, 6:00 bis 7:30 pm

How can recollections and invocations of past struggles inform contemporary campaigns against injustice? Drawing on material from his book Premonitions and following the insights of Walter Benjamin, movement-based scholar AK Thompson highlights the promise of a political approach founded on images.

AK Thompson is a movement-based scholar and an award-winning educator. Currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Massachusetts), his research draws on critical theory to examine how social movements become sites of racial and cultural contestation. Thompson is the author and editor of numerous books, including, most recently, Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt. His work has appeared in journals including Social Movement Studies, Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association. Alongside these scholarly contributions, he has also been featured in popular venues like Boston Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Introduction by the writer Katja Petrowskaja (LIAS Public Fellow).

According to official figures, 10,000 children are currently living in the Donbass war zone, many of whom have suffered from the shelling and lost their parents and relatives. In his film Terykony (Ukrainian for "pile of bones"), Taras Tomenk (*1976) documents the landscape of Donetsk and its typical mountains of coal waste and embeds the story of the children of this region, for whom the war has become a part of their lives.
Nastya was six years old when three rockets fired by the Russian army hit her house on New Year's Eve. She survived, but lost her father, her childhood and her faith in life. For people like her, the war has become something commonplace, like the Donetsk landscape outside the window. But Nastja has dreams. Like every girl, she dreams of a new house and a dog and keeps writing letters to Father Christmas asking him to bring her father back. By means of documentary observation and preserving her personal space, Tomenko succeeds in bringing us closer to the drama of children's lives at the front.

Ukraine, 2022 - Director: Taras Tomenko
80 min - Ukrainian original with English subtitles

SCALA Programmkino Apothekenstr. 17, 21335 Lüneburg

Fish Eye

In his first documentary film, musician, photographer and filmmaker Amin Behroozzadeh explores industrial fishing. Skilfully interweaving images, sound and music, the award-winning director tells the story of his four-month journey on the largest Iranian fishing boat in the Indian Ocean, on which the crew goes about its work: catching 2000 tonnes of tuna. His work on this film took a total of eight years and, ccording to Behroozzadeh himself, put the sushi lover off eating fish. Between poetry and social criticism, FISH EYE is a visual essay that reflects on the mechanisms of capitalism through industrial fishing.

Followed by a discussion with director Amin Behroozzadeh and an introduction by ethnologist Dr Katja Rieck (LIAS).

Iran, 2020, Director: Amin Behroozzadeh
70 min - Original with English Subtitles

Free admission

SCALA Arthouse Cinema | Apothekenstr. 17 | 21335 Lüneburg

30. November 2023, 5:30 – 7:00 pm
Campus | Central Building C40.501

Many democracies around the world are facing the challenge of confronting right-wing populist movements. Miguel Urbán Crespo has engaged for years both in national and European politics. On the basis of his newest book "Trumpismos. Neoliberales y Autoritarios",he will reflect on right-wing populism as a global political phenomenon and what can be done to mobilize against it.

Miguel Urbán is a member of the Left Group of the European Parliament representing Spain. Before joining the EU Parliament, he was a co-founder of the Spanish left-wing party Podemos. His three books also testify to his engagement with the new right and the mobilization of resistance against it: "El viejo fascismo y la nueva derecha radical" (2014), "La emergencia de Vox. Apuntes para combatir a la extrema derecha Española" (2020) and "Trumpismos. Neoliberales y Autoritarios" (2023).

The lecture deals with the role of law, jurisprudence and legal education in the socio-ecological transformation. Using two current debates - around deep sea mining and the valorisation of housing - the lecture explores ways to move beyond a critique of law that exposes its complicity in an extractive political economy, to a transformative law that interrupts and resists extraction to instead support the commons and commoning.

With an introduction by Erich Hörl, LIAS Co-Director.

Prof. Dr Isabel Feichtner, Professor of Public Law and International Economic Law University of Würzburg.

Wednesday, 29 November 2023, 6 pm
Central Campus Building // C40.704

LIAS Faculty Fellow Boukje Cnossen has been Professor of Business Administration, especially Entrepreneurship, Organisation and Culture at Leuphana University Lüneburg, since July 2021.

Her research focuses on 'organising practices' in the cultural and creative industries, particularly examining the influence of space on creative practices. In current and previous research projects, she has investigated coworking spaces, creative hubs and artist collectives. With an increased interest in the organisational processes of artistic and creative practices, Prof. Cnossen's research draws on the communication-constitutes-organization (CCO) approach as well as insights from actor-network theory. As an active member of the CCO community as well as the Entrepreneurship-as-Practice (EaP) community, her collaboration and research extend across national and academic boundaries.

Tuesday, 21 November 2023, 6pm
C40.704 // Campus Universitätsallee

21 November 2023, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Campus | Central Building C.40.601

With an introduction by Susanne Leeb, LIAS Academic Co-Director.

Isabel Feichtner and Radha D’Souza will introduce the subject of housing rights in two different urban contexts: Berlin in Germany, and Mumbai in Maharashtra, India, as the points of departure for their conversation. Drawing on their experiences of working with housing rights movements in the two cities, Feichtner and D’Souza will expand their discussion to wider questions about land ownership, commoning and community ownership, property rights, constitutional rights, and social justice.

Prof. Dr. Isabel Feichtner is Professor of Public Law and International Economic Law University of Würzburg and Fellow of the New Institute, Hamburg.

Dersu Uzala: The Hunter

A Russian army explorer who is rescued in Siberia by a rugged Asian hunter renews his friendship with the woodsman years later when he returns as the head of a larger expedition. The hunter finds that all of his nature lore is of no help when he accompanies the explorer back to civilization.

USSR, Japan, 1975 • Director: Akira Kurosawa
142 Min. • Original with English Subtitles

Free Admission

www.scala-kino.net/filme/dersu-uzala

Neighboring Sounds

Life in a middle-class neighborhood in present-day Recife, Brazil takes an unexpected turn after the arrival of an independent private security firm. The presence of these men brings a sense of safety and a good deal of anxiety to a culture which runs on fear. Meanwhile, Bia, married and mother of two, must find a way to deal with the constant barking and howling of her neighbor's dog. A slice of 'Braziliana', a reflection on history, violence, and noise.

Brazil 2013 • Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
131 Min. • Original with Englisch Subtitles

Free Admission

https://www.scala-kino.net/filme/neighbouring-sounds

As a response to the openly racist epic film 'Birth of a Nation,' which was accompanied by protests, Oscar Micheaux's 'Within Our Gates' is still considered a cinematic indictment of discrimination against African Americans in the USA.

The silent film drama by director Oscar Micheaux, which depicts the living conditions of African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century, is considered the oldest surviving film by an African American director.

America, 1919. Abandoned by her fiancé, Sylvia returns to her home in the southern USA and becomes involved with a school for poor African-American children that is threatened with closure. When her wallet is stolen, she meets Dr. Vivian, who falls in love with her. Coincidentally, she also meets the rich American Elena Warwick, who gives Sylvia the money she needs to go to school. Meanwhile, Dr. Vivian visits Sylvia's cousin Alma in the north and learns about the family's tragic fate, which includes a murder and a lynching...
Micheaux's sometimes violent drama reveals the complexities and everyday discrimination in the lives of African-Americans; it is an early, haunting document of systematic racism in America. Micheaux's work was long considered lost. Censored and abridged several times, the film has now become an important document of racism after the First World War. The Library of Congress put it on its list of US films in need of special protection. It had commissioned a restoration in 1993 after a copy entitled "La Negra" turned up in Madrid.

USA, 1920 - Director: Oscar Micheaux
79 min. - Silent film (with English intertitles).

Free admission - Introduction in English: Dr. Verena Adamik (LIAS Fellow).