administrax

4+ Airport

Wednesday, Mai 22nd 2019, 7pm, @ aquarium am Südblock

Guest speaker: Nahed Awwad

Airports are often described as so-called non-places. But what does this mean?

No airport can function without an armada of people working behind, in front of and under the scenes of regular airport operations. Airports are nowadays capitalist (private) entities that not only enable the mobility of millions of people, but also generate the livelihoods of millions. In many places, airports are important employers who engage tens of thousands of people. For them, the airport is neither a gateway nor a transit point: it is a fixed point in their day to day lives.

However, not everyone who counts airports as part of their everyday working lives is allowed to walk through the futuristic entrances through which travellers enter and experience this place. People who work in the low-wage sector at airports walk through countless back doors, through which they are supposed to silently disappear again. This also includes thousands of Tamil workers.

Today, they are employed as cleaning staff, baggage handlers or security officers at airports globally.. Their skin colour or supposed origin has become part of heir daily uniform. Many of these workers are former asylum seekers who escaped the racist persecution and genocide of Tamil people in Sri Lanka with aeorplanes. In a narrative twist, they today often work exactly in the places in which they arrived as travellers without return tickets.

In our next event, we ask ourselves what it mean when people who used to enter airports in order never arrive have become the enablers and softeners of the mobility of privileged citizens? If airports are non-places, are they consequently non-people?

As part of the event, we will be showing excerpts from the film »5 Minutes from Home« by Nahed Awwad: www.nahedawwad.com/5-minutes-from-home/

The event will take place in spoken English. The location including the bathroom is wheelchair accessible.

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Nahed Awwad is an independent filmmaker; She has worked with well- known Palestinian filmmakers, local Palestinian TV stations and later international networks. In 2004 she got her film diploma from the European film college in Denmark and has released eight documentary films between experimental, short and feature length. Awwad’s films were screened at various international film festivals, including HotDocs film festival, Canada 2013, Dubai international film festival in 2012, Vision du Reel Film Festival, Nyon, Switzerland in 2005 and 2008 and the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 (Cinema Sud). In 2009 she was granted the International Trailblazer Tribute -Middle East Trailblazer in MIPDOC.

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»Dissolving Territories« part II is funded by the Regional Centre for Civic Education Berlin.

In the second part of Dissolving Territories, different questions in the context of the violent expulsion of state territories and the creation of new social landscapes, infrastructures and communication channels will be examined and discussed from a decidedly Tamil perspective. Dissolving Territories will focus on eelam-tamil voices and approaches, voices and life-worlds that have always remained unheard. With this series we want to look at memory cultures and the construction of narratives through the lens of a Tamil point of view and thus attempt to discuss territorial and cultural-geographical questions as well as deconstruct local myths around the themes of flight and resistance in Germany.

Thursday 24th May, 7pm

A Talking Dance Duet by Dr. Priya Srinivasan in collaboration with
Carnatic vocalist Uthra Vijay, Visual Design and photography by Arun Munoz. This performance features the poetry of Tamil women and heroines through time such as Avvayar from 3rd Century BCE to Kannagi, Andal, and a more recent female Tamil war colonel from Sri Lanka. Their texts and perspectives are placed in conversation with Srinivasan’s contemporary perspectives on the war on women and women’s bodies. At the same time the performance explores queer desire in this context. How can we reimagine alternate feminist aesthetics from the perspective of Tamil women’s engagement with war, violence, injustice, desire, and choice?

Roundtable/discussion with Iris Rajanayagam and Dr. Sandra Chatterjee
(Munich/Salzburg)

About Uthra Vijay Dr. Priya Srinivasan and Dr. Sandra Chatterjee

Uthra Vijay is the Artistic Director of Keerthana School of Music in Melbourne . She is an accomplished classical Indian Music Vocalist, composer and educator, winning several awards and performing in a range of venues in India, Australia and Europe. She has been collaborating
with Dr. Priya Srinivasan in unique experimentations between music dance. Her primary goal is to work both for the South Asian communities of Melbourne and for wider communities to open minds and hearts through music.

Dr. Priya Srinivasan is a dancer, scholar and choreographer originally from Melbourne who combines theory and practice. She has a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and has created the form of “talking dances” based on her award winning book “Sweating Saris Indian Dance as Transnational Labor.” Her work brings together live bodily performance with visual art, music, interactive multimedia and digital technology to think about archives of the body, migration, and
female labor working with many collaborators -foremost among them is Carnatic singer Uthra Vijay. Her work has been presented in diverse settings in many theatre houses, galleries, universities, museums,
parks, historic buildings, and in public spaces around the globe. Her goal is to use art to create connections and bring down walls between diverse peoples.

Dr. Sandra Chatterjee is founding-member of the Post Natyam Collective, teaches, researches, performs and organizes projects at the intersection of theory and artistic practice, focusing on gender, postcolonial and migration studies. Her current research critically interrogates “contemporary” dance (in Europe) in the context of articulating culturally marked aesthetic difference/multeity. www.sandrachatterjee.net

Photography credit: Arun Munoz

Wir freuen uns in diesem Jahr einen neuen DGS I Kurs mit Diana Spieß anbieten zu können. Der Kurs umfasst 10 Termine vom 15. September bis 17. November 2018 und findet jede Woche samstags von 13-14:30 Uhr in den Räumen von xart splitta statt. In dieser ersten Kursstufe lernen die Teilnehmenden grundlegende Kenntnisse zur Deutschen Gebärdensprache wie das Fingeralphabet, Vokabeln, Fragewörter, Zahlen und einfache Sätze. Außerdem werden die Teilnehmenden in drei wichtigen Grundtechniken der Deutschen Gebärdensprache eingeführt: die visuelle Wahrnehmung, die Mimik und die nonverbale sowie gestische Kommunikation.

Zu Diana Spieß:

Bist DU taub? ICH bin es! „GEBÄRDENSPRACHE IST SPANNEND, VIELFÄLTIG UND WOW!“

Diana Spieß wuchs in einer tauben und gebärdensprachnutzenden Familie als taub Geborene auf. Sie ist auf dem Gebiet der Gebärdensprache Muttersprachlerin. Von frühster Kindheit an bestand ihr Interesse an einem Austausch mit der hörenden Welt. Nach einer Ausbildung und der beruflichen Tätigkeit als Sozialpädagogische Assistentin, qualifizierte sie sich erfolgreich zur Gebärdensprachdozentin. Seit dem ist sie neben vielen anderen Sozialen- und Schulprojekten im Bereich der Gebärdensprachvermittlung sehr aktiv.

Homepage: www.lebendige-gebaerden.de

Der Kurs ist nun ausgebucht. Wir hoffen ihn nächstes Jahr wieder anbieten zu können.