Friday, June 9th 2023 at 6 pm

Nachbarschaftsgarten Kreuzberg, Entry Corner Zülicher Straße/ Golßenerstraße, 10969 Berlin

This event will take place in English spoken language.

With Soli-KÜFA at 6pm and DJ-Set with DJ Smiley after the Talk!

[O]ne of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone.

-bell hooks

Communities have been and continue to be spaces of coming together for many, but for others, they also signify spaces of resistance, love, care and, often, a tool of survival. Nevertheless, the required labour to built communities in the first place and continuous efforts to sustain them are often rendered invisible.

In the context of this year’s topic labour within our project #CommunitiesSolidarischDenken (Engl. Thinking of communities in solidarity), we would like to warmly invite you to our community event The Love And Labour of Community Organising on Friday, June 9^th 2023, from 6 pm in the neighbourhood garden Kreuzberg (Nachbarschaftsgarten Kreuzberg).

In this light, this event revolves centrally around how categorisation and definitions affect the community (building) at large along following questions:

In what way is community organising considered or not considered to be work/labour?
What does it do with us or for/against us if it is not perceived nor acknowledged as such? Does this follow a well-known pattern? Or does it open possibilities of freedom?
What kind of labour do we actually mean when we speak of labour in this case? Which facets of such labour should be highlighted or were being made invisible?
And how could we include navigating these questions in our own every-day practice?

There is a growing awareness about how forms of work reinforce and partly substitute hierarchies of power, systems and legacies of oppression. Therefore, we would like to take the occasion to not only discuss alliances and coalitions of labour but also precarious, illegalised, invisible, unprotected labour from an intersectional perspective and its forms of resistance and care for each other within community building.

Togther with our special guests Marlize Andre (Casa Kuà), Clementine Burnley and Lucy Ng’ang’a (Break Isolation Group/IWS), we would like to offer the space for an open community conversation in which we can together produce, exchange and pass on knowledge, elaborate on it and contribute to necessary frameworks for successful alliance politics, coalitions and communities.

We’ll be welcoming you from 6pm. The communitWe’ll be welcoming you from 6pm for a Soli-KÜFA. The community conversation will take place between 7.00pm – 9.00pm and afterwards we will end the night with some dancing and an extra nice DJ-Set by DJ Smiley.

Our guests

Lucy Ng’ang’a

Lucy Ng’ang’a is an activist in IWS, a member and the Project Coordinator of Break Isolation Group (BIG), a self organized group by refugee women* for refugee women in International Women* Space( IWS).

BIG aims at breaking isolation, building the capacity of refugee women* to empower them navigate through the Asylum system.
We organize workshops, peer-peer empowerment activities, Lager mobilization visits, Soup kitchen program, soft skills/self development, self care and wellness, nurturing leadership and entrepreneurial skills among the women whereas embracing diversity through queer and cultural inclusitivity.
As women*, we create a platform and build our capacity to speak in our own voices, express ourselves freely, for us and about us and denounce others speaking about us on our behalf without including us through the Lager audio reports.

Marlize Andre

Marlize Andre is a medical professional, activist, and advocate for marginalized communities. With a focus on addressing systemic discrimination in healthcare, Marlize works tirelessly to center the needs and wishes of marginalized communities. They are particularly passionate about advocating for the rights of transgender women and increasing healthcare accessibility for marginalized populations. Marlize’s expertise lies in migration policies and their intersection with healthcare for transgender, intersex, and non-binary persons of color. Through their work, Marlize aims to create an equitable healthcare system that addresses systemic discrimination and uplifts marginalized communities.

Registration:

This event is a BIPoC safe space and therefore, explicitly aimed at people who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color.

Please register at contact@xartsplitta.net by June 7th, 2023. 

This event is explicitly addressing self-identification of people affected by racism, so we are very interested why you would like to participate.
It would be great if you could write something about the following points in your registration:

• In what way have you previously dealt with the topic so far?
• How do you situate/position yourself within this discussion?
• Do you have needs or require support to participate (e.g. language assistance etc)?

Where to find Nachbarschaftsgarten Kreuzberg?

---

This event takes place within the LADS funded project #CommunitiesSolidarischDenken.

Monday, June 5^th 2023, starting at 7 pm

OYA Bar (Mariannenstraße 6, 10997 Berlin)

There will be no translations, the event will be held in German/English spoken language.

On the occasion of this year’s overall topic “Labour”, we would like to invite BIPoC PhD students and master students interested in doing a PhD to a networking meeting.

People who have recently completed their PhD and or have been working in the academic field for some time are also welcome to come, get to know each other and exchange knowledge!

Our hope is to strengthen and support connections within our academic communities. A lot has already been achieved, work, recognition and spaces have been fought for and in this sense we would like to join in opposing the isolation and exploitation of our community members in and through the university system. For aspiring academics as well, networking is fundamental here and, unfortunately, is still too often embedded in elitist, white spaces.
We hereby like to counter this with our own space.

At the network meeting we want to create an open exchange to get to know each other, to learn from each other and to collect needs and wishes. We will see if this leads to another meeting or further ideas. Let’s get into conversations together, share and empower.

Register by May the 29th, 2023 to contact@xartsplitta.net

The network meeting will be a BIPoC Safer Space, so we are very interested in why you want to attend. Please write something about yourself when you register or answer the following questions:

• Why do you want to attend?
• What are your expectations from the network meeting?

---

This event takes place in cooperation with the project #CommunitiesSolidarischDenken.

May 25th – October 26th 2023, 6.30 – 8.30 pm

at xart splitta (Hasenheide 73, 10967 Berlin)

This literature circle will take place in English spoken language.

In recent years, there has been growing awareness about how forms of work reinforce and partly substitute hierarchies of power, systems and legacies of oppression. In capitalism, the categorisation and definition of what labour is and whether or how it is acknowledged or compensated render many forms of labour invisible or unaccounted for.

From care work, which is often undervalued, underpaid and invisibilised in various contexts, to sex work, which is stigmatised and criminalised, to the ongoing legacies of colonialism and the rebranding of (free) labour, to the struggles and emerging solidarity of people living within capitalism, to counterstrategies of survival under the oppressive systems, the definition and understanding of what labour is influenced many facets of our lived realities.

The reading circle aims to understand and discuss different aspects of labour, labour resistance and labour organisation, by exploring various forms and their contextualisation intersectionally.  We will approach the literature from the perspective of our lived experiences. Therefore, by linking our understanding of the literature, our personal experiences and (political) practices with theory, we aim to create a space where we can exchange, enrich and understand theory not only as ‘academically produced and usable’. With room for discussion and exchange, we want to foster a space of imagination informed by history, thought of in the present and envisioning a future (practice).

Information on registration and participation

The reading circle will take place every last Thursday between 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm (25 May – 28 Nov 2023) and consists of seven meetings with following topics:

25. May: Care Work

29. June: Labour and Rest

27. July: Stigmatisation and Criminialisation

31. August: Racial Capitalism

28. September: Borders and Illegalisation

26. October: Community, Solidarity and How to Organize

30. November: A Future Without Through a Present Within

This sessions will take place in our facilities at Hasenheide 73, 10967 Berlin. We will open our room an hour before the start of the reading circle and are inviting participants warmly to read the literature there or acclimate to the space at the point of arrival.

The reading circle is held in English spoken language and literature will be made available in English. Reading the literature fully is not a prerequisite for participation. However, we encourage you to share your suggestions and wishes regarding the suggested literature.

The literature will be made available to you after confirmation of registration. It will be in English written/spoken language and abstracts of a non-fiction mixture of academic publishings, articles and poems. Reading the literature fully before a session is not a prerequisite for participation.

The reading and discussion group is explicitly aimed at people who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color.

The offer deliberately takes place outside of an academic setting and is explicitly also aimed at people who do not position themselves as parts of academic circles and/or theories. The basis for the meetings is mutual recognition of different forms of knowledge and one’s own experiences.

Please send registrations by Friday, April 28th 2023 to: contact@xartsplitta.net

It would be great if you could write something about the following points in your registration:

• Why you have decided to participate in the literature circle?
• What your expectations and hopes are concerning the literature circle and it’s topics?

---

This event takes place within the framework of the LADS funded project #CommunitiesSolidarischDenken.