Timeline

Towards a Shimmer on the Horizon #6

(c) Fertig Design

A post-capitalist summer series at ZK/U. In the evening, outdoors, with a shared meal and two performances.

ZK/U BerlinSiemensstr. 27, 10551, Berlin, Germany

Max Folly: Contradictions - A collective exploration of intersectional experiences

Philipp Goll: Resisting Russian petro-aggression. Indigenous rights in Siberia, extractivism, Ukraine war

Lo Moran: Creating connections around comforting harvest season food

Towards a Shimmer on the Horizon aims to explore steps, practices, thoughts and sounds that could shift consciousness towards post-capitalist desires, that may illuminate new structuring elements of society, that open up wishful imagination, that could give a glimpse of shimmering possibilities. The series is not about the distant utopia, but rather about exploring a next step towards a shimmer of a world that is not structured by extraction and power, from different positions, and acknowledging existing damage, precarity & complexity. (full concept here: www.zku-berlin.org/timeline/towards-a-shimmer-on-the-horizon/)

How can we ever move beyond established extractive structures, if all our desires and attention are captured inside? If we never have enough time, if moving within is what's rewarded, or even tied to immediate survival?

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A full day with two comprehensive projects that both take a bit of time and stand for themselves, connected with a shared harvest season meal in between by Lo Moran. So it’s almost a festival for the closing of our summer series Towards a Shimmer on the Horizon. 

Starting already in the afternoon with a workshop and collective participatory exploration of intersectional experiences in Berlin with Max Folly. How can we move forward in solidarity, understanding different experiences and needs?

In the evening, a film screening and conversation with 3 guests, hosted by Philipp Goll, focuses on a lesser discussed aspect of a very current issue - how fossil fuel extraction in Siberia is connected to centuries of colonial violence against Siberia’s indigenous populations - and the interconnections of these extractive structures beyond their local context.

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Max Folly

Contradictions - A collective exploration of intersectional experiences

There are different efforts by organizations and individuals to work for equality of people marginalized by/within the established neoliberal colonial structures. This workshop/intervention aims to look into the plurality of marginalized identities, to understand them via participants' lived experience, and consider ways of dealing with contradictions and pluralities within efforts and genuine solidarity towards changing or escaping structures and working towards equality.

Policies or exclusive spaces created to dismantle established structures often group folks with highly different needs and levels of privilege under one big umbrella term (such as w*men, BIPOC, FLINTA, etc.) They often fail because they end up being abused by some and underused by others, hence creating another unbalanced structure of power inside their own communities. How can we understand the demands of very diverse demographics to be able to thrive together?

Contradictions is a group dynamic inspired by this conundrum. We invite you to participate in this collective exploration of intersectionalities. This is how it works: affirmations about everyday life in Berlin, privilege and culture will be stated and the audience gets to answer by positioning themselves physically in a human board in a way of expressing agreement or disagreement to the stated affirmation. This will be followed by a discussion on those topics, where the audience gets to partake, by explaining why they agreed or disagreed and developing their thoughts about it. Our goal with this time together is to learn from each other’s realities, experiences and boundaries, so we are able to make spaces safer for each other in the future. https://www.instagram.com/follyghost/ 

Max Folly aka Folly Ghost is a Brazilian DJ, producer and curator based in Berlin. Beyond his work behind the decks, he also organizes and curates talks about a wide variety of subjects involving music and more. Max is a proud instigator of social and political debates and an avid advocate for diversity in clubs and beyond. His experience as a trans immigrant motivates him to incite conversations about discrimination and colonialism that aim to locate and dismantle normalised violence against minorities.

 

Philipp Goll
Resisting Russian petro-aggression. Indigenous rights in Siberia, extractivism, Ukraine war

With the Russian war against Ukraine, it became clear that the Russian Federation is continuing the colonial policies that run through its history and various political systems. While Russia's colonial aggression towards Ukraine is much discussed, the centuries of violence against the indigenous population in Siberia often goes unmentioned. The event takes as its starting point the demand proclaimed by Ukrainian activists for solidarity with the anti-colonial struggle of indigenous peoples in Siberia and the decolonisation of the Russian Federation. 

Based on a viewing of the film portrait of the Nenets reindeer herder, writer and activist Yuri Vella (1948-2013), we will examine the complex of Russian petro-aggression and discuss forms of indigenous resistance with the film's director Liivo Niglas, the human rights activist Tjan Zaochnaya and the antropologist Stephan Dudeck. Our discussion will focus on the intersection of extractivist oil and gas production, the oppression of indigenous people in Siberia and the war of aggression against Ukraine. This is particularly central to the German context, as (West) Germany has also built its prosperity since the 1970s on the import of fossil fuels from Russia. 

Film screening followed by a conversation with:

Tjan Zaochnaya grew up in an indigenous family of hunters on the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka. As a member of the Itelmenen, she was committed to human rights in the former Soviet Union until she was expelled from the state in 1980 and came to Germany. Since then, as a member of the Society for Threatened Peoples in Munich, she has mediated between indigenous peoples of Russia and human rights activists in German-speaking countries. (in an interview:  https://indigenous-russia.com/archives/24366).


Stephan Dudeck works as an anthropologist at the University of Tartu. Since the early 1990s, he has conducted numerous field studies on indigenous rights to self-determination in the face of expropriation and resettlement by the state and the oil industry in reindeer herding communities. His publications cover topics such as indigenous resistance in Russia's West Siberian oil province, sustainable nature relations among reindeer herders in the Taiga and gender relations in the Arctic. He is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies e.V. (IASS), Potsdam. Most recently, he co-authored an article on collaborative research practices in anthropology: Stephan Dudeck et. al, "Shaping Arctic's Tomorrow through Indigenous Knowledge. Engagement and Knowledge Co-Production", in: Sustainability 14,3 (2022), https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031331

Liivo Niglas is a documentary filmmaker and anthropologist at the University of Tartu. His research focuses on various aspects of indigenous cultures in Siberia, including the life of the Nenets of Western Siberia and their struggle against oil and gas extraction in the pastures of their reindeer (LAND OF LOVE, 2016) or the disappearing cultural tradition of the Itelmen in Kamchatka (ITELMEN STORIES, 2008-2010). His visual work is accompanied by numerous publications, among them: Eva Toulouze/Liivo Niglas, Yuri Vella's Fight for Survival in Western Siberia: Oil, Reindeer and Gods (2019) https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-3645-6 

Philipp Goll is a media scholar at the University of Siegen. His current research interest is about the visual anthropology of the Siberian shaman drum. Since Russia's war against Ukraine he has devoted himself to the history and present of decolonial indigenous resistance movements in Siberia. Most recently he translated an essay by the Ukrainian filmmaker and author Oleksiy Radynski "The Case Against the Russian Federation" for the german newspaper "taz" (https://www.e-flux.com/journal/125/453868/the-case-against-the-russian-federation/

 

Lo Moran: Creating connections around comforting harvest season food

Lo Moran is a interdisciplinary artist and educator who desires to create sites for accessibility, community and reimagined ways of being together. Recent projects have involved karaoke, autobiographical comics and archiving socially engaged art ephemera. For this event they are looking forward to preparing a hearty and warm fall meal to compliment the nights program and create connections around comforting harvest season foods. http://lomoran.com/about