Dissolving Our Market Value

The format invites the participants to consider solidarity and differences in economic questions in the form of community care practice. In doing so, a coming to terms with structures will play a special role and we will work together to consider solidary art practices.

Open to people who self-identify as part of a marginalised or underrepresented group in the arts and cultural community. Please write 1-2 sentences why you would like to join the workshop to produktion [at] viertewelt.de.

October 31, 2021
Working through Conflict and the Possibility of Inter-community Solidarity?
With Kathy-Ann Tan

In this experimental and participatory workshop, we will discuss and brainstorm some strategies and techniques of how to deal with, and work through, conflict within queer, BIPoC* and otherwise marginalised communities in the arts scene(s) in Berlin. While "diversity", "integration" and "accessibility" have become buzzwords in Berlin's arts and cultural scene in the last decade, many attempts to "decolonise" institutions or practice anti-racist methodologies continue to be undermined by acts of tokenism, extractivism and instrumentalisation. These are perpetrated by both white- and BIPoC-led institutions, and is a reflection of a larger "divide-and-rule" mechanism at work in white-dominant, western societies. How can we as artists and cultural practitioners work through our own internal divisions, tensions and conflicts while still understanding that the larger goal must be to support the work of underrepresented and minority artists who are faced with the challenges of navigating and surviving institutional whiteness? How can we be aware of, and challenge, abelist attitudes? Are trans-community forms of solidarity possible? How can we practice forms of care, calling in (as opposed to calling out), and conversation that continue to create and hold space for a multiplicity of dissenting voices while working toward a larger goal of dismantling cis-white-heteropatriarchy?

Kathy-Ann Tan is a Berlin-based curator, writer and independent scholar of the visual arts and performance, postcolonial and decolonial theory, critical diversity studies and gender/queer studies. She is interested in alternative models of art dissemination, exhibition-making and institution-building that are attuned to issues of social- and transformative justice. Her ongoing project www.decolonialartarchives.com aims to collaboratively build an online and offline forum for artists and curators to develop ways of interrogating colonial narratives and countering neo-colonial forms of domination and control.

Organized by Melmun Bajarchuu (critical companion), Annett Hardegen (dramaturge/producer/co-director) & Julia*n Meding (performance artist)