Events

“Cultures of Critique” is coming to an end. The winter semester 2024/25 marks the beginning of the last year of funding, but before we say goodbye to the doctoral students for the summer writing term, there are exciting projects and events on the program. The highlight will be a study tour to Cape Town and Johannesburg in February and March 2025. The winter semester program is largely dedicated to preparing for this trip. In the Basiskolleg, we will familiarize ourselves with the basics of South African historiographical and aesthetic debates, supported by our Mercator Fellow Maurits van Bever Donker. We also welcome artists Samantha McCulloch and Io Makandal from Johannesburg and social scientist Alex Demirović as guests at the Basiskolleg. We are delighted that our three guests have also agreed to participate in public events. At the event Ophidian's Promise, Samantha McCulloch and Io Makandal will talk about Makandal’s sculpture of the same name, an eco-duct for urban wildlife in Johannesburg. At the end of October, Alex Demirović will discuss the relationship between Michel Foucault and Karl Marx in a lecture entitled "Coercion or Discourses. On Foucault's Extension of Marx's Theory". In November, we will welcome international guests to the "Media in Crisis" conference, which David Cabrera Rueda and Dyoniz Kindata are organising together with former LIAS fellow Lydia Ouma Radoli.

RECALLING AVANT-GARDE MOMENTS, RECONNECTING AVANT-GARDE SCENES

Dedicated to the Centenary of the Georgian Futurist Group H2SO4

9-11 October 2024, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia

Historical avant-garde contains forgotten moments and scenes that still need to be rediscovered or reconnected with other, central or peripheral scenes of the European avant-garde. Avant-garde moments would not occur in different national cultures without the strong desire to connected with the wider web of aesthetic searches and experimentation, happening in various European cultural loci. However, due to historical changes, some moments/scenes were disconnected from the web, staying unrecalled for decades. 

One such forgotten moment was that of the Tbilisi modernism/avant-garde (1917-1918) and the Futurist group H2SO4 (1920s), which has been erased from the Georgian cultural memory by the Soviet power while the country was disconnected from European cultural context. In the post-Soviet decades, Georgia had to reclaim this legacy. The present centenary of the Futurist group and journal H2SO4 (1924) is a good reason for discussing different, though often comparable avant-garde cultural experiences.

Understanding Avant-Garde as a constellation of different moments we will examine the specificity of each locality in their transcultural entanglement. To reconstruct these scenes, the conference will elaborate on networks, relationships, groups, and collaborations, on their coming together, forming, evaporating, and diverging again. What is the transformational power of Avant-Garde alliances, past and present, within the artistic and the societal field? How have ways and forms of life been shaped throughout the Avant-Gardes? What are the gendered social and spatial structures, in which groups test and create forms of community through their artistic practices? The aim here will be to render visible realities of those groups and alliances that have not yet been acknowledged, due to geographical, institutional and/or political conditions.

The conference is organised by the Institute of Comparative Literature and the Centre for Advanced Studies, Ilia State University, in cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy and Art History, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.

The Plenary Lectures/Talks:

Günter Berghaus, University of Bristol
International Futurism and Its Cross-Fertilizations in the Historical Avant-garde

Artist Talk: Beate Söntgen, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, with Anuk Beluga & Mari Kalabegashvili

Gia Jokhadze, Ilia State University 
Mandelstamiana: The Fragments from the Cultural History of Russia and Georgia
Lecture / Book Presentation

See the Programme for the detailed information.

Lecture: Samantha McCulloch and Io Makandal. Ophidian’s Promise. A Conversation | Poster

Tuesday, 22.10.2024, 6 pm, Central Building C40.601

In preparation for the upcoming study trip to Cape Town and Johannesburg in early 2025, DFG RTG Cultures of Critique invites South African artists Samantha McCulloch and Io Makandal for a public talk.

Io Makandal’s piece Ophidian’s Promise (2024) comprises an urban wildlife eco-duct to create a safe passage for urban wildlife over the Jukskei river culvert in Johannesburg. The sculpture references the form of a snake as the symbolic more-than-human guardian of rivers. This artistic gesture invites the human back into relationship with the waterbody and its surrounding life forms to encourage civic care over this precarious water source in a time of anthropocentric climate change. 

Samantha McCulloch was commissioned to write an accompanying piece of prose entitled ‘River Poem’, deploying ‘floating’ pronouns to explore the mattering and making of writer, reader and river. 

During the event, they will discuss the artwork and text, along with the watery history of Johannesburg. 

Io Makandal is an interdisciplinary artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Working with drawing, photography, organic matter and installation, her practice is concerned with feminist and environmental embodiments of process, entropy, urban ecology, and hybrid environments during a time of environmental shift. She has exhibited both locally and internationally and her work is a part of several private, public and institutional collections.

Samantha McCulloch is an artist and writer based in Johannesburg. Her practice incorporates both word and image. Her work engages an erotics of place and more-than-human sensorium in order to think and write toward an understanding of person and place as imbricated and co-constituted. The first draft of her novella Lagoon was the winner of the inaugural First Drafts series and was published by Kunstverein in 2022. Her writing has appeared in Third Text, Portside Review and in the artist’s book Amanda, published by Maria Editions. 

Hosted by the DFG Research Training Group “Cultures of Critique”. Organization by Raphael Daibert.

Lecture: Alex Demirović. Coercion or Discourses. On Foucault’s Extension of Marx’s Theory

Tuesday, 29.10.2024, 6 pm, Lecture Hall 5

Alex Demirović will shed light on Michel Foucault's ambivalent relationship to the work of Karl Marx. Foucault was often very critical, if not explicitly dismissive, of Marx and Marxism, but there are also positive references. Not only according to Etienne Balibar, one key to Foucault's work is his lifelong engagement and struggle with Marx. Jacques Bidet has also attempted to prove that Foucault's analyses can be read as complementary to Marx's analyses.

According to this thesis, Foucault's studies on technologies of power can be seen supplemented the aspect of organization. Demirović goes one step further and puts forward the thesis that Foucault – similar to the feminist discussion – takes up questions from Marx where the latter breaks off his argumentation. Demirović illustrates this at two central points, namely the concepts of discipline and security. Understanding Marx's ideas in the light of Foucault's development can help to resolve the aporias of critical social theory, such as base and superstructure, structure and action, anonymity of domination or intentionality.

This event is a cooperation between Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) and the Research Training Group Cultures of Critique.
 

Artist Talk with Gertraude Pohl about art in the public space in the GDR.

Tuesday, November 19, 2024, 2 pm, Kunstraum

Organized by Beate Söntgen and Julian Volz

The artistic practice of Gertraude Pohl, born in Zittau in 1940, is closely linked to (semi-)public space. After graduating from the Berlin Weissensee School of Art, the designer began realizing artistic projects in the context of architectural work in interior and exterior spaces. These include the floor inlay she created in the main foyer of the Palast der Republik in Berlin in the mid-1970s. In the 1980s, she expanded her artistic practice to include large-scale gable paintings, enamel wall paintings, and mosaics made of concrete formstones on the exterior walls of buildings. Particularly noteworthy are the enamel wall paintings that Pohl was able to create for VEB Radio-Stern in the mid-1980s. With these, she made a decisive break with socialist realism and instead turned to an abstract formal language. The pictures were created as part of a comprehensive “work environment design” for the newly built Radio-Stern plant in collaboration with architects, urban planners and other artist colleagues. Already in the GDR, but especially after its end, she had to experience numerous “attacks and interventions in my work on and with architecture and in public space in many variants” (Pohl). She countered these interventions with several public installations and interventions.

In the conversation, Gertraude Pohl will discuss the development of her own formal language, art production in public space in the GDR, and her engagement against the devaluation of her art and that of numerous East German colleagues after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The event is part of the seminar „Gemalte Manifeste. Wandbilder vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute“ and is taking place in cooperation with the Research Training Group.
 

Workshop: Media in Crisis – Reconfiguring Possible World Imaginaries? | Poster | Booklet

Thursday, 21.11.2024, 9:30 am - 7:00 pm, C40.704

Friday, 22.11.2024, 10:00 am - 1:15 pm, C40.704

Organized by Dyoniz Kindata, David Cabrera Rueda, Lydia Ouma Radoli

This workshop emphasizes the use of an interdisciplinary approach to address media crises and world imaginaries practically. When considering world imaginaries, it is important to view them not only as a means of escaping the present or/and the past as mere aspirations for collective perceptions, beliefs, values, and ideas. Instead, we propose to approach world imaginaries as a strategic tool for conceptualizing and transforming attitudes, behaviors, and actions critically in shaping the future of human experiences and societies in the media world.

Can interdisciplinary approaches provide effective strategies for addressing fractures in media narratives? How might these approaches contribute to a more nuanced understanding of historical and contemporary media challenges? To what extent does the changing global space of media practice influence the conceptualization and representation of possible world imaginaries? How can these be reconfigured to address emerging challenges?

The workshop is hosted by the DFG Research Training Group “Cultures of Critique“ (Leuphana University Lüneburg) in collaboration with Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and Society (LIAS), Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 and Daystar University.

Please register by sending an email to kdk@leuphana.de by Nov 08, 2024.

Film Series: Nightmares, Colonial, Neocolonial

Thursday, 28.11.2024, 6:30 pm, Kunstraum 

Thursday, 12.12.2024, 7 pm, Scala Kino

Nightmares, Colonial, Neocolonial re-visits filmic strategies that lay bare the longevity of the colonial condition through neocolonialism today.

The biggest lie we were ever told was not that god, but that colonialism, is dead. As the long centuries of European hegemony came to a close, its successor imposed new rules, which included the dramatic end to direct military occupation–though exceptions were permitted. The system that the US empire has imposed in its place is what Frantz Fanon astutely predicted in his 1961 manifesto “Les damnés de la terre,” as a system in which power is shared between local and outside forces. Fanon redefined the term neocolonialism to describe this condition; this understanding of the term is rarely used today.
 
In this program that takes place during the 140th anniversary of the landmark Berlin Conference that had highlighted German culpability in the colonial nightmare, organized by Philip Rizk and Raphael Daibert at the Kunstraum at Leuphana University Lüneburg, we grapple with a past that is maintained in the nightmare that is the neocolonial present.

Programme

November 28, 6:30 pm at Kunstraum (Campus Halle 25, Universitätsallee 1, Lüneburg)
- White Man's Country by David Koff, narrated by Msindo Mwinyipembe (1970, 51’)
- The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting by Assia Djebar (1982, 59’)

December 12, 7 pm at Scala Kino (Apothekenstraße 17, Lüneburg)
- Bon Voyage, Sim by Moustapha Alassane (1966, 5’)
- Lumumba, la mort du prophète by Raoul Peck (1991, 69’) 

This film series is hosted by the Kunstraum and the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique of the Leuphana University Lüneburg and is curated and organized by Philip Rizk and Raphael Daibert, with additional support of Jana Paim.

LIAS Workshop: Beyond Restitution: Indigenous Practices, Museums, and Heritage

Friday, February 7th 2025, 12pm - 7.30pm
Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg  | C40.704
Language: English, with simultaneous translation from and to Spanish and Portuguese
Please register at lias.event@leuphana.de by 29 January 2025.

This workshop connects Indigenous representatives, artists, and researchers with European collections. One of the most salient characteristics of European collecting and musealization was to separate so-called objects from Indigenous peoples and their practices. This workshop asks what is needed to undo this violent separation.

Regarding collections from South America, Germany has a special responsibility: Since the burning down of the Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in 2018, for example, Germany has been one of the biggest holders of objects from the Upper Rio Negro (Amazonia) Indigenous communities.

The main questions of the event are:
What does it take
… to collect without owning?
… to restitute meaning?
… to return practices?
… to respect Indigenous approaches to care?
… to facilitate ritual practices? 

Among the experts invited are: Glicéria Tupinambá, anthropologist and artist, Serra do Padeiro, Bahia, Brazil; Francy Baniwa, anthropologist, Içana River, Amazon, Brazil; Francisco Huichiaqueo, artist and filmmaker, Wallmapu, Chile accompanied by members of the Mapuche Community of Bollilco; Mama José Shibulata Zarabata and José Manuel Sauna Mamatacan (representing the Kággaba, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia); Christine Chávez, Curator of the Americas Collections, MARKK Hamburg; Romy Köhler, Department of Anthropology of the Americas, Bonn University; Stefanie Schien, Curator of the South America Collection, Ethnologisches Museum zu Berlin; Frank Usbeck, Curator for the Americas at the State Art Collections Dresden / Ethnographic Collections Saxony; Carla Jaimes Betancourt, Professor of Cultural Heritage, Department of Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn (moderator).

The workshop is made possible by collaboration with the research training group “Cultures of Critique”, the Leuphana University Kunstraum, and the São Paulo-based project “Decay Without Mourning: Future Thinking, Heritage Practices”, funded by Volkswagen Foundation, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Wallenberg Foundation, and the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

In the summer term 2024 we will focus on the topic of media critique. In the Basiskolleg, we will read classics of media theory and, at the request of the doctoral students, have in-depth discussions on topics such as the mediality of the radio. We will be supported by Birgit Kaiser, David Scott, Kathrin Thiele and McKenzie Wark, who will each visit us for one session.

Performance Series: Inside Wounds.

Location: Kunstraum (Campus Hall 25)
Organized by Raphael Daibert (Cultures of Critique) and Christopher Weickenmeier (Kunstraum)

Thursday, 30.05.2024, 6-8 pm, Júlia Ayerbe (w/ Dandara Catete)
Wednesday, 05.06.2024, 6-8 pm, Zuzana Žabková
Wednesday, 12.06.2024, 6-8 pm, Mavi Veloso
Wednesday, 19.06.2024, 6-8 pm, Carolina Mendonça & Lara Ferrari

Today, sexual and racial violence continues to be a constitutive element of this necropolitical age, and experiences of trauma and pain are ubiquitous. So ubiquitous, in fact, that Catharina Malabou declares “the natural catastrophe of contemporary politics” a “daily occurrence”. Since mass traumatization being an experience of “the absence of sense”, its formal indistinguishability makes it difficult to discern their “political sense” (Malabou 2012). This indicates also the problem with the idea of healing as it inevitably reinforces a normative horizon of health and sovereignty, skipping or eclipsing experiences of senselessness, unintelligibility and hopelessness that violence regularly entails. Inside Wounds brings together recent artistic and analytical propositions that register and evidence wounds and traumas as sites of deferral, resistance to and failure of healing. This includes a critique of the progressive order of healing, where the linear accumulation of time is assumed to have intrinsically restorative effects. The performance series emphasizes artistic forms that embrace the (de)constitutive effects of violence in ways that interrupts - on a formal level - their representation and - on a political level - their subsequent mobilization. Beyond a moralizing logic of the “penalty of pain”, what are the critical merits of wounds?

This event is a cooperation between the Kunstraum and the Research Training Group Cultures of Critique.

TRANS LIMINALITIES: HISTORIES FROM WEIMAR AND NAZI GERMANY – ZAVIER NUNN | POSTER

Tuesday, 25.06.2024, 4:15 pm, Kunstraum

Focusing on trans women’s subjectivities, this talk explores the micro and macro registers of how everyday trans life was experienced, policed, and cut short across the Weimar and Nazi regimes, sometimes in surprising – but always uneven – ways.

Zavier Nunn will be a Mellon Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. He was previously Postdoctoral Associated in “Histories of the Transgender Present” in the Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Department at Duke University. His first monography, Liminal Lives: Trans Feminine Histories from Weimar and Nazi Germany is under review at Duke University Press. He is currently working on a history of legal sex change and trans masculine lives under Nazism, as well as historicising ‘trans’ adjacent to fields of knowledge production in modern Europe. Across his research, Nunn uses micro-historical methods to unpick how macro systems are stitched together. He is published in Past & Present, Gender & History, and German History.

This event is hosted by the Center for Critical Studies (CCS), the Gender and Diversity Research Network, and the Cultures of Critique DFG research training group. | Flyer

Language: English

Organisation: Ben Trott (ben.trott@leuphana.de) 

ON THE MADNESS OF DR. HUBERT DANA GOODALE: ANIMAL AGRICULTURE, EXPERIMENTAL ENDOCRINOLOGY, AND THE INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY OF SEX IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY AMERICA – GABRIEL N. ROSENBERG | POSTER

Tuesday, 25.06.2024, 6:15 pm, C40.704

This talk explores the early career of the prolific poultry geneticist, Dr. Hubert Dana Goodale, and, in particular, experiments that he conducted in the 1910s in which he grafted hen ovaries into the bodies of castrated juvenile roosters to experimentally induce changes in the birds' secondary sex characteristics. Although these experiments were an important model for later human endocrinological inquiry, Goodale actually aimed to solve a notorious problem for commercial egg farmers: how to better detect and more quickly cull the half of all chicks that did not profitably contribute to egg production, the so-called “male chick problem.” Goodale’s experiments challenge how contemporary scholars narrate histories of sex, science, and agriculture, revealing an underlying transformation of an interspecies ecology of flesh that rippled through human and animal bodies alike across the 20th century.

Gabriel N. Rosenberg is an Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and History at Duke University and a Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. He is the author of The 4-H Harvest: Sexuality and the State in Rural American (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) and the co-author of Feed the People!: Democratizing Food Politics in a Warming World (Basic Books, Forthcoming). He is currently writing a history of livestock breeding’s entanglement with human race science, Purebred: Making Meat and Eugenics in Modern America, and, with his colleagues at the MPI-WG, editing a volume on animal mobilities in the history of science. His scholarship has appeared in journals such as the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, GLQ: The Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly and he writes frequently on food politics for popular publications such as The New Republic, Vox.com, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. He has held fellowships at Yale University, the American Philosophical Society, the National Humanities Center, and the University of Pittsburgh.

This event is hosted by the Center for Critical Studies (CCS), the Gender and Diversity Research Network, and the Cultures of Critique DFG research training group. | Flyer

Language: English

Organisation: Ben Trott (ben.trott@leuphana.de)

The Spacetime of Critical Matters | Poster

04.06. (Tuesday), 7 pm, C40.256, Public Lecture

05.06. (Wednesday) 12-2 pm, C40.255, Workshop

In resonance with Derrida’s doubling of “ends” in his 1968 essay “The Ends of Man”, this collaborative talk will think about the ends of critique. Building on our most recent Terra Critica publication The Ends of Critique (2022) – crossing the coming to an end of certain critical dispositions with the refusal to give up on critique as a key commitment for work in the Humanities – our talk will address ideas of temporality and time (Thiele) and spatial distance or proximity (Kaiser) which often uncritically underly and drive practices of critique. How do modes of critique transform, if (with Sylvia Wynter) the linearity and sequentiality of critical pursuits of change were challenged? And how do practices of critique morph, if (with Gayatri Spivak) critical intimacy were valued over distance? If one were to consider another spacetime, how does critique come to matter?

Birgit Mara Kaiser is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Transcultural Aesthetics at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. 

Kathrin Thiele is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. 

Together they are founding coordinators of Terra Critica: Interdisciplinary Network for the Critical Humanities (www.terracritica.net) and editors of New Critical Humanities, a book series with Rowman & Littlefield. In the context of Terra Critica, they co-edited Symptoms of the Planetary Condition (2017, with M. Bunz) and The Ends of Critique (2022, with T. O’Leary). More information: www.terracritica.net.

For the workshop please register by May 29, 2024: kdk@leuphana.de

Hosted by the DFG Research Training Group “Cultures of Critique” and the Center for Critical Studies (CCS), Leuphana University Lüneburg

Internal Workshop: German-language writing workshop

Tuesday, 28.05.2024, 9 am - 3 pm
Tuesday, 11.06.2024, 9 am - 3 pm

The workshop will focus particularly on non-academic, i.e. journalistic and essayistic writing techniques and writing styles, as well as specific questions about writing and how to write.

The workshop will be led by Sonja Eismann, who is a journalist and scholar of cultural studies. She is co-founder and co-editor of Missy Magazine, has published as freelance writer in magazines such Spex, taz, Jungle World, and konkret and has taught courses at various universities.

Internal Workshop: English-language writing workshop

Tuesday, 28.05.2024, 9 am - 3 pm
Tuesday, 11.06.2024, 9 am - 3 pm

The workshop will focus on developing a collective vocabulary to think and talk about writing in a new way. After discussing and analyzing a number of writing examples, participants will aim to translate these discussions into practice by producing new texts. The focus will lie on incorporating techniques of narrative nonfiction writing, including autotheory, into academic work.

The workshop will be led by Ben Miller, who is a writer and historian. He is the host of the podcast “Bad Gays”, and a board member at the Berlin Schwules Museum.

Workshop: Walter Rodney's "How Europe underdeveloped Africa" – today

With David Scott and Richard Drayton

Wednesday, 15.05.2024, 12-2 pm, Room C6.321

In his groundbreaking work "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" (1972), Walter Rodney examined in detail how European colonialism caused the "underdevelopment" of the African continent. Moreover, Rodney analyzed the part Africa played in the development of Europe. In the journal "Small Axe" (Vol. 27, Issue 3, November 2023), David Scott and Richard Drayton returned to this classic of anti- and postcolonial theory and discussed the relevance of Rodney's work for our present day in two essays. Expanding on these essays, they will revisit this question in the workshop and discuss it together with the participants.

Lecture: Stuart Hall and the Conjuncture of 1956 | Poster

by David Scott
with an introduction from Richard Drayton
Tuesday, 14.05.2024, 6:15-8 pm
Leuphana Campus, Lecture Hall 3

The lecture will aim to offer some orienting notes toward the biography of Stuart Hall David Scott is in the process of writing. Rather than a fully detailed account of the "conjuncture of 1956," he will urge that this conjuncture is crucial to the overall story of Stuart Hall's life and work because it forms a hinge that connects and separates his formative years as a colonial subject in Jamaica in the 1930s and 1940s and the first emergence of the political intellectual, Stuart Hall, in the middle 1950s.

David Scott, Ruth and William Lubic Professor, Columbia University, New York

Richard Drayton, LIAS Senior Fellow (introduction)

In cooperation with LIAS

Internal Workshop: Good practice for moderators

Tuesday, 07.05.2024, 9 am - 3 pm

The workshop Good practice for moderators in the Research Training Group for Cultures of Critique at the Leuphana University creates a professional basis for moderating conferences and panels in an academic context.

Starting with the right preparation to the organization of the room and following with the design of opportunities for audience participation, we will work on the principles of successful moderation.

In a number of practical exercises, we will also practice and reflect on the facilitation effect and how to deal with difficult participants. Important abilities for scientific networking and the development of presentation skills should be achieved.

The workshop will be led by Claudia Kühn (Wandelplan).

From Writing to Texting: a Work in Progress.

A public talk given by McKenzie Wark

April 23, 2024: 6-8 pm

Lecture Hall 3, Leuphana University

McKenzie Wark is an Australian-born writer, critical theorist, and Professor of Culture and Media at The New School. She is the author of numerous groundbreaking theoretical works, including A Hacker Manifesto (2004)—a foundational text of digital media studies—, Gamer Theory (2007), The Beach Beneath the Street (2011), Molecular Red (2015), and Capital is Dead (2019). In recent years, Wark’s writing has veered toward autofictional and autoethnographical with the release of Reverse Cowgirl (2019), Raving (2023), and Wark’s memoir Love and Money, Sex and Death (2024), which has been shortlisted for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction.

This event is a cooperation between the Centre for Digital Cultures and the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique

In the winter term 2023/24, we will focus on a central theme of the Research Training Group: the relationship between critique and representation. Critique does not simply discover its objects; rather, it (re)constructs them by employing representational procedures, styles, and media. In the Basiskolleg, we will discuss this (re)representational nature of critique, focusing on three thematic complexes: Materialist theories of representation, representation of the other, and alternative forms of writing and representation. As part of the theme of "Representing the Other," we will watch the film Stop Filming Us but Listen, which reflects on (post-)colonial regimes of gaze and conditions of production in contemporary documentary film. We are pleased to welcome filmmaker Bernadette Vivuya (Goma, Congo) and cultural manager Ganza Buroko (Gomas, Congo / Burkina Faso) as guests at the Basiskolleg. Ayo Osisanwo (Chrisland University, Abeokuta, Nigeria), who will present his research on the journalistic representation of terrorist violence, will support us in discussing forms of writing and representation.

The program will be complemented by another film screening, a book launch and two workshops: In mid-October, we will start our program with the launch of the book On Withdrawal, published by a group of second-generation fellows. In early November, we look forward to an intensive exchange on questions of bodily, social and ecological reproduction at the workshop Researching Care. At the end of November, we will host the short film screening Erinnern ("Remembering") which will focus on family histories that intertwine the private, the intimate, the political, and the historical. We will discuss three short films with the filmmakers Katja Lell (Hamburg/Cologne), Zi Li (Cologne) and Marian Mayland (Mannheim). In January, the workshop Alienating Presents, Recovering Futures will conclude our program. The workshop asks how the current situation of futurelessness can be countered without falling back on linear and progressive notions of time. The panelists are the artist Bahar Noorizadeh (London), the journalist Günseli Yalcinkaya (London), the media philosopher Katia Schwerzmann (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) and the author Richard Seymour (London).

24.01.2024 Workshop | Flyer

Alienating Presents. Recovering Futures: On ‚Futures Industries‘ and the Political Imagination.

24.01.2024, 6 pm – 8 pm, Panel discussion, Kunstraum (Campus Hall 25)
25.01.2024, 10 am – 6 pm, Workshop, Central building (C 40.153)

Organized by Liza Mattutat (Cultures of Critique) and Lukas Stolz (Cultures of Critique)

Panel discussion with Bahar Noorizadeh (London), Katia Schwerzmann (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Richard Seymour (London) and Günseli Yalcinkaya (London)

Workshop contributions by Jandra Böttger (FU Berlin), Volha Davydzik (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Alan Diaz (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Laura Hille (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Liza Mattutat (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Donovan Stewart (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Lukas Stolz (Leuphana University Lüneburg) and Julian Volz (Leuphana University Lüneburg)..

Talking about the future is not so easy today. It risks depoliticisation from two opposing sides. Our political imagination oscillates between feelings of hopelessness and fatalism on the one hand, and hollow stories of cruel optimism on the other. Both doom via irreversible climate catastrophe or AI and salvation via technology and green capitalism seem to be waiting just around the corner. All the while, the idea of progress lingers around like a ghost, clearly no longer alive, it refuses to disappear.

In order to avoid nostalgia and futile calls for utopias, the workshop "Alienating Presents, Recovering Futures" addresses questions of future(lessness) and the political imagination from a materialist perspective. We start from the assumption that power has always produced images of the future to program the present according to its interests. Today, this role has been taken over by "futures industries," a concept we borrow from cultural theorist Kodwo Eshun. It allows us to ask how the current imaginative impasse is produced: How can we analyse the workings of today‘s futures industries and what are the material forces that shape our imaginative worlds? Which hegemonic projects compete for our imaginaries of the future, who's part of them and who benefits from them? Beyond a paranoid reading of the present, where can we find latent traces of the not-yet in existing contradictions? What are the terms, concepts, and images that could help us alienate ourselves from the present in order to recover (past) futures? In short: how can we move from the return of history to the return of the end of capitalism?

The workshop is a cooperation between the Cultures of Critique DFG Research Training Group and the Center for Critical Studies (CCS).

Please register by January 07, 2024 by sending an email to kdk@leuphana.de.

12.12.2023 Screening | Poster

“Stop Filming Us But Listen“ mit Bernadette Vivuya und Ganza Buroko

12.12.2023, 6 – 8 pm
Universität Hamburg (ESA O 221), Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Ost-Flügel, Lecture Hall 221
Free Admission

The DFG Research Training Group “Cultures of Critique” Leuphana Universität Lüneburg will be hosting a screening of the film "Stop Filming Us But Listen" together with the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Universität Hamburg.

The film reflects on (post-)colonial regimes of gaze and the conditions of production in contemporary documentary film. It was made in response to the documentary "Stop Filming Us", in which Dutch filmmaker Joris Postema portrays the Congolese city of Goma while questioning his own position: What power dynamics are at play when a Western filmmaker depicts a Congolese city? For "Stop Filming Us But Listen", Congolese filmmakers Bernadette Vivuya and Kagoma Ya Twahirwa appropriated Postema's footage, partially discarding or recontextualising it and adding their own footage. Their re-edited version takes a closer look at post-colonial power imbalances and their consequences for the cinematic representation of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which still persist in Postema’s (self-)critical gesture. Featuring conversations with filmmakers, artists, scholars and residents of Goma, “Stop Filming Us But Listen” seeks to question and undermine colonial gaze regimes and chart a new course for cinematic self-representation.

The filmmaker Bernadette Vivuya and the cultural manager Ganza Buroko will be present at the screening and will discuss with us.

29.11.2023 Screening | Flyer

Erinnern (Remembering)
Short film screening & Discussion

29.11.2023, 19:30 – 21:00 Uhr
SCALA Programmkino, Apothekenstr. 17, 21335 Lüneburg

Organized by Leon Follert (Kulturen der Kritik/ArchipelagoLab) and Marie Lynn Jessen (Kulturen der Kritik/ArchipelagoLab)

Recounted in the family, felt between generations, hidden and rediscovered in the material. In the essayistic, documentary, and poetic works of filmmakers Katja Lell, Marian Mayland and Zi Li, processes of remembering are being transformed. The three short films “Wie sich erinnern [...] Вспоминать” (10 min., Katja Lell), “Lamarck” (28 min., Marian Mayland) and “Der Fluss ins Vergessen” (18 min., Zi Li) open up private worlds to the viewers that simultaneously feel familiar. They tell family (hi)story(ies) that intertwine the intimate, with politics and history. 

The screening will be followed by a conversation that will shed light on the filmmakers' material and cinematic approaches and illuminate boundaries between the remembered, the recollected, and the imagined.

The event is a cooperation between ArchipelagoLab and the Cultures of Critique DFG research training group.

Discussions will be held in German.

02.11.2023 Workshop | Flyer

Researching Care. Biological, Social and Ecological Reproduction in Times of Crisis

02.11.2023, 10:30 – 17:30 Uhr, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Room C40.153

Organized by Julia Böcker (ISCO) and Liza Mattutat (Cultures of Critique)

The Researching Care workshop will bring together Leuphana scholars to discuss their ongoing research projects on questions of biological, social, and ecological reproduction. We will discuss the questions and motivations that guide our research on reproduction, and reflect on the different theoretical approaches and methods we employ. In addition to collegial feedback, our goal is to identify connections between our projects that may be followed up by collaborations. With contributions by Julia Böcker, Volha Davydzik, Anne Gräfe, Laura Hille, Liza Mattutat, Heiko Stubenrauch and Christina Wessely .

The workshop is a cooperation between the Cultures of Critique DFG research training group, the Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organisation (ISCO), the Gender and Diversity Research Network and the Center for Critical Studies (CCS).

Discussions will be held partly in English and partly in German.

Please register by Oktober 23, 2023 by sending an email to julia.boecker@leuphana.de.

15.10.2023 Book Launch | Flyer

On Withdrawal
with screening and readings

Sunday, October 15, 6 pm
Hopscotch Reading Room, Gerichtstraße 45, 13347 Berlin-Wedding.

Join us on Sunday, October 15, 6 pm at Hopscotch Reading Room Berlin for the book launch of On Withdrawal. Scenes of Refusal, Disappearance, and Resilience in Art and Cultural Practices.

Ranging from philosophy and art history to literary and artistic contributions, the authors explore various modalities of withdrawal—from a silencing of critical voices to a political and aesthetic strategy of refusal. The volume asks what movement(s) withdrawal creates or follows in specific contexts, and with what theoretical, material, and political consequences.  

The book launch combines two readings and a screening. We will show Helen Cammock’s film They Call it Idlewild (2019), on which her contribution in the book is based. Cammock's essayistic film reflects on the politics of idleness, dealing with the qualities and effects of work refusal including silence, mourning, waiting, and impotentiality.

After the presentations, we would be pleased if you like to join us for a drink and informal conversations.

On Withdrawal. Scenes of Refusal, Disappearance, and Resilience in Art and Cultural Practices is published with Diaphanes in the context of the DFG Research Training Group “Cultures of Critique” at Leuphana University in Lüneburg. 
Edited by Sebastiián Eduardo Dávila, Rebecca Hanna John, Ulrike Jordan, Thorsten Schneider, Judith Sieber, Nele Wulff.
With contributions by Arnika Ahldag, Sofia Bempeza, Lauren Berlant, Kathrin Busch, Helen Cammock, Knut Ebeling, Sebastián Eduardo Dávila, Mutlu Ergün-Hamaz, Stefanie Graefe, Rebecca Hanna John, Ulrike Jordan, Pınar Öǧrenci, Pallavi Paul, Thorsten Schneider, Judith Sieber, Diana Taylor, Deniz Ultu, Marivi Véliz, Nele Wulff, Akram Zaatari.
Including translations by Angela Anderson, Valentine A. Pakis, Matthew James Scown, Katherine Vanovitch.
Cover image by Pallavi Paul.

In the summer term 2023, the Research Training Group will focus on post- and decolonial positions. In preparation for a three-week study trip to Brazil for the São Paulo Biennial, we will read classical and contemporary texts on post- and decolonial theory. We are very fortunate to have the support of some top-notch scholars in this field, who will visit the research training group’s Basiskolleg: We will discuss with philosopher Susan Buck-Morss about her book Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). With historian Todd Shepard we will explore how to analyze and describe the entanglements between (formerly) colonized and colonizing countries.

We have also been able to engage these two scholars for public workshops. Todd Sheppard will participate in the Radical Desires and Decolonial Critique workshop in June. In cooperation with the Center for Critical Studies, we have invited Susan Buck-Morss to give an evening lecture in July. In addition to these two events, we look forward to a workshop with art historian Amelia Jones and an online lecture by political theorist Rodrigo Nunes, who will share his analysis of recent political developments in Brazil.

05.07.2023 Internal Workshop

Doing what you are Examining: Performativity in Research and Writing
Guest: Amelia Jones (USC Roski School of Art and Design)
Organized by Stasya Korotkova, Melcher Ruhkopf, Ben Trott and Mimmi Woisnitza

In her latest book In between subjects, Amelia Jones develops a critical genealogy of the intertwined concepts of queer and performance, taking into account both theoretical positions from various fields and subjective descriptions of art performances and other situations that inform her writing. The workshop takes this as a point of departure to explore the complex relation between embodied experiences and academic modes of writing. In conversation with Amelia Jones, we share accounts from our own research process and collectively reflect on how our physical situatedness shape our writing and thinking. How do we interact with bodies and spaces in fieldwork? How does the physical experience of the archive influence what we find in it? Do our writings bear traces of where and with whom we write, read and think? Through questions like these, we try to explore how thinking through and about performativity can be made productive beyond the immediate context of Queer and Performance Studies.

The workshop is a cooperation of the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique, the Center for Critical Studies (CCS) and the Collaborative Research Centre Intervening Arts (FU Berlin).

04.07.2023 Public Lecture | Flyer

In Between Subjects
Guest: Amelia Jones (USC Roski School of Art and Design)
6-8 pm, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Kunstraum

This presentation gives an overview of Jones’s book In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Subjects, with attention to deeper motivations behind its development, and tracks her thinking about the intersection of “queer” and “performance” or “performativity” since the book was published. Given the rise of anti-trans culture wars and legislation in the United States, for example, what does it mean to historicize this intersection? What aspects of the intersection can be revitalized to empower the struggles for trans existence and political rights today?

This lecture is organized by the Research Training Group Cultures of Critique, the Center for Critical Studies and the Gender and Diversity Research Network. It is organised in cooperation with the Collaborative Research Center Intervening Arts (FU Berlin).

22.06.2023 Internal Workshop | Flyer

Hegel and Haiti: Critique of Enlightenment Philosophy beyond Apologia and Condemnation (tbc)
Guest: Susan Buck-Morss (City University of New York)
Organized by Susanne Leeb and Liza Mattutat

Susan Buck-Morss is Distinguished Professor of Political Theory at the CUNY Graduate Center, NYC, where she is a core faculty member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. She is Professor Emeritus in the Government Department of Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. She is the author of numerous books including Year 1: A Philosophical Recounting (2021), Revolution Today (2019), Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (2009), The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (1989) and The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (1977).

When Susan Buck-Morss's essay Hegel and Haiti appeared in Critical Inquiry in 2000, it stirred public excitement far beyond academia. In retrospect, this essay turns out to be a starting point for a broad discussion of the hidden historical influences on enlightenment philosophy, on the one hand, and its highly problematic racist and colonial legacy, on the other. While contemporary discussions are often polarizing, Buck-Morss proposes in her essay an ambivalent assessment of Hegel and his philosophical contributions. Hegel, she argues, achieved at least glimpses of a truly global perspective, by interpreting the Saint-Domingue slave revolt as a manifestation of universal freedom, but he nevertheless remained wedded to racist patterns of thought.

In the workshop, we will reread the essay Hegel and Haiti against the backdrop of debates on canceling culture in academia. With Susan Buck-Morss we will discuss different critical approaches to the contested legacy of the Enlightenment. How should we deal with this heritage? How can we take the historical situatedness of philosophy and theory into account without completing them of any responsibility? What hermeneutical strategies can help us in our critical assessments?

21.06.2023 Public Lecture | Poster

A Philosophical Dissolution of History: The Myth of Year 1
Susan Buck-Morss (City University of New York)
6-8 pm, Central Building, C40.256
Organized by Anne Gräfe, Erich Hörl, Susanne Leeb, Liza Mattutat and Ben Trott

Susan Buck-Morss is Distinguished Professor of Political Theory at the CUNY Graduate Center, NYC, where she is a core faculty member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. She is Professor Emeritus in the Government Department of Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. She is the author of numerous books including Year 1: A Philosophical Recounting (2021), Revolution Today (2019), Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (2009), The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (1989) and The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (1977).

Dissolving the history of “origin” stories means unravelling of modernity’s myth about itself. National/religious/cultural traditions are exclusionary histories. Against these conventions of the ownership of slices of historical time, I argue for a communist inheritance of the past.

Hosted by the DFG Research Training Group 'Cultures of Critique’, the Center for Critical Studies (CCS), and the Research Initiative ‘The Disruptive Condition’, Leuphana University Lüneburg.

13.-15.06.2023 Public Conference | Flyer

Radical Desires and Decolonial Critique
Kunstraum and Room C40.601
Organized by Hauke Branding and Julian Volz

Guests: Todd Shepard (Johns Hopkins University, USA), Émilie Notéris (Paris), Sido Lansari (Ecole des Beaux-arts of Lyon, France), Jule Govrin (Berlin), Lukas Betzler (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg), Julian Volz (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg), Jan-Hauke Branding (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg) and Stasya Korotkova (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg).

About 50 years ago, the mass-protest of gays and lesbians against discrimination was at once an assertion of a new collective consciousness, while also creating a radical new subjectivity and a collective sense of identity. They fought for social and legal equality while at the same time refused to be co-opted by bourgeois society as just another civil rights movement. Politics were supposed to be wild, playful, and subjective; experiences and desires were put in the foreground of collective action – aiming at the interconnection between subjective, bodily experiences, radical avant-garde theory and emancipatory politics. Starting with the unboundedness of (sexual) desire they sought to transgress schemes of binarity and wanted to transform society as a whole.

In their pursuit of a general revolution, the gay liberation movement also produced very problematic but also productive ambivalences and contradictions. With regard to France there is one particular conflict-laden issue: the relations between ›Arab men‹ (especially Algerian men) and French gays. In different formats, we want to go beyond mere historicization of these ambivalences and explore which problems of the present appear in a different light through them, and which aspects could be linked to today's problems.

“The Coloniality of the ‚Annular‘? – Hocquenghem, Guyotat, and the Arab Revolution” by Todd Shepard
Over the course of the 1970s, a surprising number of well-known French artists, activists, philosophers, and political theorists invoked anal sex as a way to rethink the operations of power, and resistance. In "Sex, France, and Arab Men, 1962-1979" (2017), I analyzed this in the context of the dense thicket of troubling and meaningful sexualized French invocations of “Arab men” in the era. This talk delves further into the writings of the French philosopher and gay militant Guy Hocquenghem and the French writer Pierre Guyotat—who wrote much of (anal) sex between males but rejected homosexual identity, preferring to raise questions about gendered identities—to assess how questions of empire, race, and gender both were central to their claims and raise questions about the limits as well as the horizons of their radicality.
 

Programme

Tuesday. June 13, 2023
Kunstraum, Campus Hall 25, 6 pm – 7.30 pm,
Book presentation: Guy Hocquenghem’s “Homosexual Desire” with Lukas Betzler & Hauke Branding
Moderation: Stasya Korotkova

Wednesday. June 14, 2023
Central Building, C40.601,
4 pm – 4.15 pm
Welcome and Introduction: Hauke Branding, Julian Volz

4.15 pm – 4.30 pm
Film Screening: Les derniers paradis by Sido Lansari

4.30 pm – 6.30 pm
Panel discussion: “Radical Desires and Decolonial Critique” with Sido Lansari, Jule Govrin, Émilie Notéris
Moderation: Julian Volz, Hauke Branding

6.30 pm – 7.30 pm
Evening Break

7.30 pm – 7.45 pm
Film Screening: »La guerre d'Algérie avait tout transformé«

7.45 pm – 9 pm
Keynote Todd Shepard: “The Coloniality of the ‚Annular‘? – Hocquenghem, Guyotat, and the Arab Revolution”

Thursday. June 15, 2023
10 am – 12 am
Internal Workshop with Todd Shepard

Kunstraum, Campus Hall 25
7 pm – 9 pm
​​​​​​​Filmscreening "Bashtaalak sa'at" (Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day?) by Mohammad Shawky Hassan (66 min, AR & E with English ST, EG, LB, D 2022).
Film program curated and presented by Sido Lansari. Sido Lansari is an artist and the former director of the Cinémathèque de Tanger.

Partner Event
June 15 – 16, 2023
„Aufstand der Perversen. Die Schwulenbewegung der 1970er im Spannungsfeld von Psychoanalyse und historischem Materialismus” with Martin Dannecker & Antoine Idier
Organized by AK Ungeduld & Theorie
For further information: siakut@leuphana.de

18.04.2023 Online lecture

Is Bolsonarismo over? Making sense of the far right in Brazil and Globally
Rodrigo Nunes

After four years under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil has voted to bring former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva back into power. A tighter race than most expected and a series of increasingly daring protests afterwards suggest, however, that this electoral setback is not yet the end for the social and political force that Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign catalysed. Situating Bolsonarismo in the broader context of a resurgent far right, this talk will examine the conditions that made it possible in order to ask what its permanent defeat would entail – and what that means for the incoming Workers’ Party (PT) government. 

Rodrigo Nunes is a senior lecturer in political theory and organisation at the University of Essex. He is the author of Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organisation (Verso, 2021) and Do Transe à Vertigem: Ensaios sobre Bolsonarismo e um Mundo em Transição [From Trance to Vertigo: Essays on Bolsonarismo and a World in Transition] (Ubu, 2022), as well as articles in several international publications.

This event is organised by Ben Trott and Raphael Daibert. It is hosted by the Cultures of Critique DFG research training group and the Center for Critical Studies (CCS).

To register for the event and receive Zoom log-in information, please write to kdk@leuphana.de

This semester we welcome the third generation of PhD students at Cultures of Critique. Over the course of the semester, they will present and discuss their PhD projects in the weekly Forschungskolleg. In the Basiskolleg we will discuss various concepts of critique from enlightenment to the present. Our alumnae Isabel Mehl, Anna Königshofer and Alia Rayyan as well as our alumnus Heiko Stubenrauch will join us for one session each. With them we will discuss texts that were central to their PhD theses.

For January we have organized two workshops. The first one, Critique Now. Interdisciplinary Perspective on Critical Practices,is meant to kick-off discussions among the third generation of PhD students and to say farewell to the parting second generation. The second workshop, Feminist Critique of Criminal Law, will bring together scholars and activists to discuss various feminist positions on criminal law.

18. - 26.11.2022 Congress | Flyer
The future of critique
("Die Zukunft der Kritik")

Congress - Lectures, Workshops, Performances

Bonn 18.- 19.11.22
Berlin 24.- 26.11.22

Everyone is a critic today. But where is the criticism?
We are all experts who evaluate each other.
But where do we get the criteria?

The "Zukunft der Kritik" is a cooperation between the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH, Bonn, in collaboration with the German section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), the DFG Research Training Group "Cultures of Critique" at Leuphana University Lüneburg and the Institute for the History of Art and Images at Humboldt University Berlin.

12.1.2023 Workshop | Flyer | Blooklet
Critique Now. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Critical Practices
Guests: Manuela Bojadžijev (HU Berlin), Isabelle Graw (Städelschule, Frankfurt), Orit Halpern (TU Dresden), María Inés Plaza Lazo (The New Institute, Hamburg) and Nishant Shah (ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands)

Thursday, 12.01.2023, 2.00 - 7.00 p.m.

Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, C40.704

Organized by Beate Söntgen and Liza Mattutat
Moderators: Amelie Buchinger, Rebecca John, Ulrike Jordan, Liza Mattutat, Thorsten Schneider

In recent years, different developments have challenged the concept of critique. On the one hand, new technologies and modes of distribution have given rise to a large number of new practices of expressing dissent, discomfort and objection whose criticality needs to be clarified in each case. On the other hand, postcolonial, decolonial, and transcultural perspectives have problematized fundamental assumptions about critique rooted in the Enlightenment. These developments raise new questions about the validity claims, situatedness, and subjects of critique.

We invited international scholars from various academic disciplines to address these questions against the background of their own research. Their contributions will be the starting point of discussions about a contemporary concept of critique among the third generation of PhD students of the Research Training Group Cultures of Critique. As with this event we would like to welcome the new fellows and say goodbye to the parting group.

26. - 27.1.2023 Workshop | Flyer
Feminist Critique of Criminal Law
Guests: Dania Alasti (FU Berlin), Daria Bayer (Universität Hamburg), Boris Burghardt (HU Berlin/Leuphana Universität Lüneburg), Dilken Çelebi (WWU Münster), Franziska Dübgen (WWU Münster), Rehzi Malzahn (Köln), Liza Mattutat (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg), Leonie Steinl (HU Berlin)

Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, C40.606

Organized by Daria Bayer, Boris Burghardt, Liza Mattutat and Leonie Steinl

There is not one feminist critique of criminal law, but rather various critiques that are sometimes in conflict with each other. They range from immanent critique, which aims at the abolition, criminalization or reform of specific criminal offences, via approaches of restorative and transformative justice, to abolitionist critique, which calls for the abolition of criminal law altogether. What societal function do these positions assign to criminal law? Which concepts of critique and which concepts of law are implicit in them? Are they mutually exclusive or can they complement each other? The workshop Feminist Critique of Criminal Law aims to address these questions by bringing together representatives of various feminist positions on criminal.

The workshop is organized by the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique in cooperation with the Leuphana Law School. Discussions will be in German.

Please register by January 06, 2023 by sending an email to kdk@leuphana.de with "Strafrechtskritik“ in the subject line.

31.01.2023 Online Workshop
The Wages for Housework Campaign. What Yesterday's Struggles Mean for Today.

Guest: Silvia Federici (New York City)
Organized by Liza Mattutat and Ben Trott

Tuesday, 31.01.2023, 4:15-6:15 p.m.

In the 1970s, feminist groups around the world came together to demand wages for domestic work. Their demand was based on a feminist critique of the Marxist separation of productive and reproductive labor. They insisted that the capitalist wage labor system was only possible under the condition of women's unpaid housework. In doing so, they transformed domestic work into a political arena.

At our workshop Silvia Federici, one of the initiators of the campaign, opened with a talk on the history of the campaign, the feminist movements of the 1970s, and their reception today. The second half of the workshop was discussion-based and provided an opportunity for a critical reflection on the history, legacy and contemporary relevance of feminist theories of social reproduction.

The event was organized as a collaboration between the Research Training Group Cultures of Critique and the Center for Critical Studies (CCS).

The summer term 2022 is quieter than usual at the Research Training Group Cultures of Critique. The writing phase during which the PhD-students complete their dissertations started in February. To enable them to focus on this task, the Research Training Group reduced its program to two workshops: At the end of April, an online workshop with Susanne von Falkenhausen and Astrid Mania continues the series From Where I Stand. At the end of May, a workshop with artist Renuka Rajiv is scheduled, in which the PhD-students will create a zine. Beyond these events, the summer semester will be devoted to preparations for the third generation of the Research Training Group, which will start in October 2022.

27.04.2022 Public Workshop / Flyer
5-7 p.m., online
From Where I Stand: Reading Mary Josephson
Public reading and discussion between Susanne von Falkenhausen (HU Berlin), Astrid Mania (HfbK Hamburg) and Oona Lochner.

Organized by Oona Lochner

To receive the zoom link, please register via kdk@leuphana.de

28.-29.05.2022 Internal Workshop
online
From Dream to Zine. Schreib- und Darstellungsweisen zwischen Wissenschaft und künstlerischer Praxis (From Dream to Zine. Modes of Writing and Representation between Scientific and Artistic Practice)
Guest: Renuka Rajiv (Bangalore)

Organized by Sebastián Eduardo, Rebecca John, Ulrike Jordan and Nele Wulff

After a long period in our home offices due to the pandemic, we are pleased to be able to hold public events again in the Winter Semester 2021/22. We will also be back on Campus for our in-college formats, the Basic and the Research Seminar.
In the Basic Seminar recent publications of media and social studies are on the agenda. We are lucky to be able to discuss some of them with the authors. This semester's guests are:
Iris Därmann (Humbold-Universität zu Berlin), Ana Teixeira Pinto (Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg), Ben Trott (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg) und Joseph Vogel (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

18.03.2022: Public Workshop und Lecture | Flyer
Absentees: Some Effects of Violence on Latin American Performance Art in the 21st Century
Guest: Mariví Véliz (University of Miami)

Organized by Sebastián Eduardo und Ulrike Jordan
nGbK, event space, 1st floor, Oranienstraße 25, 10999 Berlin

If forced disappearance has already gained an endemic status in Latin America – how may artistic responses look like, coming from the very places of loss? This workshop with Marivi Véliz focuses on the different ways that violent deaths or disappearances relate to performance art in contemporary Latin America. In the public evening lecture “Women to Power: Art, Politics and Migration in Regina José Galindo and Tania Bruguera”, Véliz will address the disparities and complexities of migration, highlighting the role of female artists in Latin American performance art while focusing on Central American immigration to the United States and migration as culture.

Please register until March 16^th with sebastian.eduardo@leuphana.de

27.-28.01.2022 Public Workshop
Resilience versus Resistance. Semantics of Vulnerability in the Discourses of Resilience and Immunization
(Widerstandsfähigkeit versus Widerstand. Semantiken der Verletzlichkeit in den Diskursen der Resilienz und Immunisierung)
Guests: Stefanie Graefe (Universität Jena) und Sofia Bempeza

Organized by Thorsten Schneider, Judith Sieber und Nele Wulff
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Room C40.606
Registration via thorsten.schneider@leuphana.de

17.12.2021 Public Lecture
Purple Panic
Lecturer: Pınar Öğrenci

Organized by Sebastián Eduardo und Ulrike Jordan
Registration via ulrike.jordan@leuphana.de

9.-10.12.2021 Internal Workshop
Critical Potentials: Refusal – Fugitivity – Failure – Waywardness
Guests: Kathrin Busch (Universität der Künste Berlin), Knut Ebeling (Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin)

Organized by Rebecca Hanna John, Malte Fabian Rauch
Leuphana Universität, Rotes Feld, W 106

26.-27.11.2021 Public Workshop and Talk
Idle Positivity
(Unbeschäftigte Positivität)
Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.: Workshop
Saturday, 7:30 p.m.: Discussion with  Katja Diefenbach, moderated by Malte Fabian Rauch

Organzied by Till Hahn, Malte Fabian Rauch and Thorsten Schneider
diffrakt, zentrum für theoretische peripherie, Crellestr. 22, 10827 Berlin

29. - 31.10.2021: Internal Workshop
Critical History of Philosophy
(Kritische Philosophiegeschichte)
Guests: Antonia Birnbaum (Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Wien/Université Paris VIII Saint Denis), Roberto Nigro (Leuphana Universität, Lüneburg), Frank Ruda (University of Dundee).

Organized by Till Hahn and Charlotte Szász
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, C40.176

28. - 29.10.2021: Public Conference |Flyer
Critical History of Philosophy
(Kritische Philosophiegeschichte)
Guests: Antonia Birnbaum (Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Wien/Université Paris VIII Saint Denis), Katja Diefenbach (Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt / Oder), Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach (Universität Konstanz), Roberto Nigro (Leuphana Universität, Lüneburg), Frank Ruda (University of Dundee), Tove Soiland (Freie Universität, Berlin), Samo Tomšič (HfbK Hamburg / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Organized by Till Hahn and Charlotte Szász
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, C40.704 and online
Registration via till.hahn@leuphana.de

Due to the persistently high Corona infection numbers, we will continue to work digitally during the  summer term 2021. Therefore, a workshop on questions of methodology and research ethics, organized in cooperation with Birgit Kaiser (Utrecht University) and Kathrin Thiele (Utrecht University), as well as an introductory workshop on Black Studies, organzied by Susanne Leeb (Leuphana University Lüneburg), will replace the weekly basic seminar. 

9.-10.6.2021: Internal workshop, postponed to 29. - 31.10.2021
Critical History of Philosophy
(Kritische Philosophiegeschichte)

7.-8.6.2021: Public Lecture, postponed to 28. - 29.10.2021
Critical History of Philosophy
(Kritische Philosophiegeschichte)

26.-28.05.2021: Internal Workshop
“HOW?“ Questions of methodology, intentionality, and situatedness in research as a (critical) praxis
In cooperation with Terra Critica - Interdisciplinary Network for the Critical Humanities
With Birgit M. Kaiser (Utrecht University) and Kathrin Thiele (Utrecht University)
Organisiert von Amelie Buchinger, Sebastián Edouardo, Katerina Genidogan und Judith Sieber.

28.4., 30.4., 5.5., 7.5.2021: Student workshop (limited number)| Flyer
From Where I Stand meets Pact of Silence – How to break it?
Institutional critique & instituting otherwise from a feminist perspective
with Arnika Ahldag (Delhi/Bangalore), Meenakshi Thirukode (Instituting Otherwise, Delhi)
Organized by Rebecca John, Oona Lochner, Isabel Mehl, and Nele Wulff
To receive the zoom link, please register: kdk@leuphana.de
(please indicate “From Where I Stand” in the subject line)

22.-23.4.2021: Public meeting| Flyer
Liquidity, Flows, Circulation: The Cultural Logic of Environmentalization. Part II
with: Jakob Claus (University of Oldenburg), Martin Doll (Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf), Katerina Genidogan (Leuphana University, Lüneburg), Rahma Khazam (Institut ACTE, Sorbonne Paris 1), Sebastian Kirsch (ZfL, Berlin), Esther Leslie (Birbeck, University of London), Annie McClanahan (University of California, Irvine), Kassandra Nakas (Leuphana University, Lüneburg), Maryse Ouellet (University of Bonn), Malte Fabian Rauch (Leuphana University, Lüneburg), Hannah Schmedes (University of Potsdam), Beny Wagner (Winchester School of Art, Southampton University), Christian Schwinghammer (University of Potsdam).
In cooperation with DFG Forschungsgruppe "Mediale Teilhabe" (TP 1 Elemente einer kritischen Theorie medialer Teilhabe)
Organized by Mathias Denecke, Holger Kuhn and Milan Stürmer.
For more information and registration: http://liquidity-flows-circulation.org/

16.4.2021: Public lecture| Flyer
From Where I Stand meets Pact of Silence – How to break it? Institutional critique & instituting otherwise from a feminist perspective
Arnika Ahldag (Delhi/Bangalore), Meenakshi Thirukode (Instituting Otherwise, Delhi):
17.00 Uhr, Online-Vortrag
To receive the zoom link, please register: kdk@leuphana.de
(please indicate “From Where I Stand” in the subject line)

In the Basic College, we turn to critical practices. Not only do they pull out the stops of judgment and discernment that have been common since the Enlightenment, but they also aim at disruption, hacking, commoning, obfuscation. They express themselves in ways of life and resistant aesthetics. This semester's guests at the Basiskolleg are: Ruth Sonderegger (Akademie der bildenden Künste wien), Matt Colquhoun (London), Julia Grosse and Yvette Mutumba (Contemporary &), Camilla Wills / Eleanor Weber (Divided Publishing).

10. - 11.12.2020: Public meeting| Flyer
Liquidity, Flows, Circulation: The Cultural Logic of Environmentalization Part I
Ursula Biemann, Esther Leslie, Annie McClanahan, Yvonne Volkart
DFG Graduiertenkolleg "Kulturen der Kritik"
Organized by Mathias Denecke, Holger Kuhn und Milan Stürmer
For more information and registration: http://liquidity-flows-circulation.org/

26. - 27.11.2020: Internal workshop
Rhetorik – Kritik – Mondialisation. Zur rhetorischen Analytik strategischer Züge des Handelns beim Reden
mit Thomas Glaser (Universität Erfurt)

Unfortunately, there will be no public events in the summer semester 2020 due to the Corona pandemic. Intra-college events such as research and basic collegia will be conducted via videoconference. In the Basic College, we address questions about the representational conditionality of critique, cultural situatedness, and the transcultural mode of action of critique. Topics are e.g. different ways of writing, critical practices, delinking/decolonial thinking.

15.11.19: Internal workshop
Marx from the Margins: Discussing Marxism from a post-colonial perspective
Nikita Dhawan (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen)
María do Mar Castro Varela (Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin)
Hosted by the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique"
Organized by Sebastián Eduardo, Rebecca John

16.11.19: Public conference | Booklet
The Unforeseen. On the Lure of Risk in the Participatory Arts
A conference by DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique,
Leuphana University of Lüneburg and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
Conference in English, Free admission
Lecture Hall Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin

29.05.19: Public lecture | Announcement
Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY): Four Theses on the Comrade
Hosted by the DFG re­se­arch trai­ning group "Cul­tu­res of Cri­tique / Kul­tu­ren der Kri­tik"
public, 18.00h, Leuphana Central Building C40.704

29.05.19: Public Workshop | Announcement
Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY): Crowds and Party
Hosted by the DFG re­se­arch trai­ning group "Cul­tu­res of Cri­tique / Kul­tu­ren der Kri­tik"
registration by May 14, 2019 is requested (kdk@leuphana.de)
public, 11.00 — 15.00h, Leuphana Central Building C40.704

06. - 08.06.19: Non-Public Workshop
Art Critique Revisited
Andreas Beyer (University of Basel), Juli Carson (University of California, Irvine), Parul Dave-Mukherji (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Maja and Reuben Fowkes (Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art, London), Yuriko Furuhata (McGill Uni- versity, Montreal), Johannes Grave (Bielefeld University), Isabelle Graw (Städelschule, Frankfurt), Julia Grosse (Berlin), Angela Harutyunyan (American University of Beirut), Camilo Sarmiento Jaramillo (Del Rosario University, Bogotá), Monica Juneja (Heidel- berg University), Wolfgang Kemp (Leuphana University, Lüneburg), Florencia Malbrán (New York University, Buenos Aires), Beatrice von Bismarck (Academy of Fine Art, Leipzig), Margarete Vöhringer (University of Göttingen), Haytham el-Wardany (Berlin), Sarah Wilson (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London), Michael F. Zimmermann (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)
A Workshop by the DFG Research Training Group "Cultures of Critique / Kul­tu­ren der Kri­tik"
Organisation: Prof. Dr. Beate Söntgen (Leuphana University, Lüneburg), Hon.-Prof. Dr. Julia Voss (Leuphana University, Lüneburg)
non-public, Leuphana University Lüneburg

01.11.18: Public lecture
BICAR (Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research): Nadia Bou Ali, Natasha Gasparian, Angela Harutyunyan / Alex Demirović (Goethe University Frankfurt / Leuphana University Lüneburg) / Sami Khatib (BICAR / Leuphana University Lüneburg):
Critical Theory and Social Practice
Hosted by the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique / Kulturen der Kritik”
public, 18.00h, Kunstraum of Leuphana University, Campus Hall 25

02.11.18: Public workshop
with Prof. Dr. Angela Harutyunyan, Prof. Dr. Nadia Bou-Ali, Dr. Sami Khatib, Mark Hayek, Natasha Gasparian, Ziad Kiblawi, Andrea Comair:
The Specters of Marx and the Fate of Critique
Hosted by the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique / Kulturen der Kritik” in cooperation with BICAR (The Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research)
public, 10.00h, Leuphana Central Building C40.254

08. - 09.11.18: Internal workshop
Terra Critica
Hosted by the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique / Kulturen der Kritik” in Cooperation with Birgit M. Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele (Terra Critica)
non-public, Utrecht University

14.11.18: Public lecture
Oraib Toukan (Clarendon Fellow, University of Oxford, Ruskin School of Fine Arts):
The Cruel Image
Hosted by the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique / Kulturen der Kritik”
public, 18.00h, Leuphana Central Building C40.154

28.11.18: Public lecture
Prof. Dr. Timon Beyes (Leuphana University Lüneburg):
Geheime Ordnungsweisen. Organisation als Kulturtheorie
public, 18.30h, Leuphana Central Building C40.256

05.12.18: Public lecture
Martin Parker (University of Bristol) / Markus Reihlen (Leuphana University Lüneburg):
Shut down the Business School: Alternative Forms of Organizing
Hosted by the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique / Kulturen der Kritik”
public, 18.00h, Leuphana Central Building C40.154

09. - 11.12.18: International conference and workshop | Program
Marx: The Untimely Contemporary
with Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges), Michael Heinrich (Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung, Berlin) and other guests
on occasion of 200 years of Karl Marx; in cooperation with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Ramallah, Goethe-Institut Ramallah, Birzeit University and the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center 
public, Ramallah and Birzeit

18.12.18: Public lecture | Announcement
Eva Illouz (Hebrew University of Jerusalem / Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton):
Happycracy: How Happiness controls our lives
Hosted by the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique / Kulturen der Kritik” in Cooperation with the Center for Digital Cultures (CDC)
public, 18.00h, Leuphana Central Building

18.4.18: Public lecture | Announcement
Birgit Kaiser/Kathrin Thiele: Terra Critica – Why critique?
18.00h, Kunstraum

16.5.18: Public lecture | Announcement
Dieter Mersch (Zurich): Digital Lives. Einige Aspekte einer Kritik
in cooperation with Centre for Digital Cultures (CDC)
18.00h, Leuphana Central Building C40.154

21. - 23.06.2018: International Conference | Announcement
Critical Stances
Hosted by the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique / Kulturen der Kritik”
Leuphana Central Building C40.606

03. - 04.07.18: Public Workshop | Program
From Models to Monsters. Representing the World Economy and its Discontents 
Hosted by the DFG research training group “Cultures of Critique / Kulturen der Kritik” 
Kunstraum of Leuphana University, Campus Hall 25

08.11.17: Public lecture
Alex Demirović, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Berlin: „Autoritärer Populismus und die Erneuerung der Rechten“
(in cooperation with the lecture series „Denken gegen Rechts: Perspektiven der Kulturwissenschaften“ organized by Manuela Bojadžijev and Susanne Leeb of Leuphana University)
18.00h, HS 1

09.11.17: Public workshop | Announcement
“From Where I Stand. #2 – Zwischen Theorie und Pose”
with Karolin Meunier und Martina Kigle
(in cooperation with Kunstraum of Leuphana University)
16.00h, Kunstraum, Campus Hall 25

16.11.17: Public lecture | Announcement
Pınar Öğrenci: „Becoming Witness and Suspect in Times of War: Recording of Everyday Life and Self Censor“
(in cooperation with dem Kunstraum der Leuphana University)
14.00h, Kunstraum, Campus Hall 25

21.-23.11.17: Public workshop | Announcement
»Post-X Politics«
(in cooperation with the Digital Cultures Research Lab and Kunstraum of Leuphana University, GEM Lab and Post-Media Lab)

29.11.-01.12.17: Public conference | Announcement
“Judgement Practices in the Artistic Field”

05.12.17: Public lecture | Announcement
Pınar Öğrenci: „Migration and Symbols: Recording of Everyday Life“
in cooperation with Kunstraum of Leuphana University
18.00h, Kunstraum, Campus Hall 25

11.-12.01.18: Public workshop | Announcement
“CritiqueLab. »Toolkit for Critique in digital cultures«” with Marie-Luise Angerer, David Berry, Timon Beyes, Manuela Bojadzijev, Alex Demirovic, Gabriele Gramelsberger, Orit Halpern, Frédéric Martel, Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, Roberto Nigro, Stefan Römer, Carolin Wiedemann & Ulf Wuggenig
(in cooperation with the Digital Cultures Research Lab and Kunstraum of Leuphana University)

24.-25.01.18: Public workshop | Announcement
“Rücksicht auf Darstellung”
with Eva Geulen, Anselm Haverkamp, Jan Müller und Gerhard Schweppenhäuser, Sven Kramer und Sami Kathib werden den workshop als Diskutanten begleiten.

4.-5.5.17: Internal workshop
„Überzeugen – Unterbrechen. Rhetorik als Technik, Wissenschaft und Widerstand“
with Thomas Glaser, University Erfurt.

9.5.17: Public lecture | Announcement
Kathi Weeks, Duke University: „Down with Love. Feminist Critique and the New Ideologies of Work“
(in cooperation with the Gender and Diversity Research Network of Leuphana University and Kunstraum of Leuphana University).
16.15h, Kunstraum, Campus Hall 25

9.5.17: Public lecture | Announcement
Michael Hardt, Duke University: „Where have all the Leaders Gone?“
(in cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art)
18.15h, HS 2

10.5.17: Internal workshop
with Michael Hardt, Duke University, and Kathi Weeks, Duke University
(in cooperation with the Gender and Diversity Research Network der Leuphana University with Kunstraum of Leuphana University).

1.6.17: Public workshop | Announcement
„From Where I Stand“
with Amy Tobin (Goldsmiths College), Victoria Horne (Northumbria University), Jessica Gysel and Katja Mater of Girls Like Us Magazine (Brussels)
(in cooperation with Kunstraum of Leuphana University)
15-18h, Kunstraum, Campus Hall 25

6.6.17: Public lecture | Announcement
Silvia Federici (Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York): „Between the Wage and the Commons“
(in cooperation with the Gender and Diversity Research Network of Leuphana University with the Digital Cultures Research Lab).
18.15h, HS 3

7.6.17: Internal workshop
with Silivia Federici (Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York)
(in cooperation with the Gender and Diversity Research Network of Leuphana University Digital Cultures Research Lab).

8.6.17: Public lecture | Announcement
Florencia Malbrán, Brown University and New York University, Buenos Aires: „The Embedded Critic. Writing about Art in Latin America“
Subsequently: Internal Feedback-workshop.
(in cooperation with the Kunstraum of Leuphana University).
18.00h, Kunstraum, Campus Hall 25

In the Winter Term 2016/17 the College began. We started out by negotiating basic terms of critique in our Basic Seminar, from Enlightenment to the present.
What is the historical significance of critique? What kind of dialectic might be conciliating theoretical critique and "Kritik im Handgemenge" (critique in a scuffle, Marx)? Is critique a process of negotiation of existing conditions (Adorno) or one of affirmation on an immanent basis of forces, affects and intensities (Deleuze)? What are feminist or postcolonial genealogies of critique?