Baldauf/Lorenz: Summer term 2015

MARCH Focus week:

Focusweek / Dissertationseminar 1

March 17th – March 20th, 2015

In this seminar we want to discuss the promise and problems of concepts of utopia, including concrete utopia (Ernst Bloch), black optimism (Fred Moten), queer futurity (José Munoz) or untimely utopia (Maria do Mar Castro Varela). Here, utopia is seen as a potentiality, located in a historically specific mode of cultural production, created collaboratively, often by those who can’t afford to do without future. On Friday, in our workshop, we want to explore the potential of utopia as a method: Is there a utopian force that drives our work? What does it mean for our work to approach utopia as a method?

APRIL Focus week:

Focusweek / Dissertationseminar 2

April 14th – April 17th, 2015

In this seminar we want to concern ourselves with discussing the conditions of coming together, its possibilities, limitations and paradoxes. Through the lens of postcolonial methodologies, we explore the relationship between togetherness and otherness, the same and the other, identification and misidentification.
Thursday slot machine with and Friday workshop with Margarita Palacios, London, who has been working on issues of memory, violence and the postcolonial condition together with various artists. She is currently researching on detention centers in Chile (see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychosocial/our-staff/full-time-academic-staff/margarita-palacios

MAY Focus week:

Focusweek / Dissertationseminar 3

May 5th – May 8th, 2015

In the Tuesday seminar we will follow up on our discussions around the concept of “opacity” (Edouard Glissant). The promise of the politics of opacity will be discussed in the current context of biopolitics/necropolitics and in differentiation to related concepts.
Thursday and Friday: workshop with a member of the Pocha Nostra performance troup (more information: Fernanda Nogueira).

JUNE Focus week (for the participants of the 3rd, 4th and 5th year):

Focusweek / Dissertationsseminar 4

June 16th – Friday, June 19th, 2015

The seminar in June is dedicated to the needs of the third and fourth year candidates of the program, who are working on their dissertations and PhD projects. The seminar will provide a context to reflect on the task of writing in general and more specifically on writing particular chapters of dissertation. In a more hands-on matter, we want to engage in a collaborative process of reading, editing and discussing as well as re-writing of dissertation chapters, learning from our respective writing experiences.
Thursday and Friday: Special guest and workshop with Cathy Lane on Sound and Listening, London. For more information please contact Hong-Kai Wang.