Saturday 23.4. 19:00
On the first day, questions of gender and race will be negotiated in the panel “Gazing back, gently”. The political subject according to Hannah Arendt is an acting subject. But how can we act as subjects when systems continuously restrict our freedom? Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner, Aidan Riebensahm and Elahe Haschemi Yekani discuss cinematic strategies of making existences visible (i.e., representation) as a revolutionary act. Which histories are denied and obscured by dominant culture? Aidan’s own participation in the film Futur 3 and the work of the Jünglinge Film Kollektiv is taken as a possibility to talk about production conditions and reception, and to imagine possible subversions of a gazing dominance culture.
Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner (sgl)
Simoné is a writer, translator and researcher. Simoné is interested in (queer) fandoms online, horror from a post migrant perspective and language in video games and gives workshops on socio-political issues. “Messer, Zungen”, Simoné‘s debut novel, will be published by Matthes & Seitz in July 2022. A video game novel accompanying the novel is set to be published in September of 2022.
Elahe Haschemi Yekani
Elahe Haschemi Yekani is a Professor of English and American Literature and Culture with a focus on Postcolonial Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. A cultural and literary studies scholar, she has worked on topics like the Anglophone novel, Black Atlantic and Diasporic Writing, Gender/Masculinity Studies and Queer Theory, and Popular and Visual Culture. She is the author of Familial Feeling and The Privilege of Crisis. Her latest book Revisualising Intersectionality, written with Magdalena Nowicka and Tiara Roxanne, has just been published open access with Palgrave Macmillan.
Aidan Riebensahm
Aidan Riebensahm was born in the Leinebergland and completed a bachelor’s and master’s degrees with a focus on theater at the Department of Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Communication at the University of Hildesheim. Aidan works as a cultural journalist and mediator. Between 2016 and 2019, Aidan conducted aesthetic-performative research with the collective Team Soft on the possibilities and limits of solidarity in friendships. As a Gay*memaster and member of the editorial team, Aidan won the German multimedia prize in 2019 together with the team of the gaming show Let’s Play Showmasters. Aidan’s master’s thesis examined Black self-portrayal under and against a white gaze regime in the context of the German Museum for Black Entertainment and Black Music. In the Cool-Tur business and beyond, Aidan is searching for intersectional queer utopias in transgressive temporalities.