Transversale Ästhetik

In what sense could the figure of Malcolm X be considered ‘transversal’? Let us understand transversality in part as rejection of hierarchy that is at the same time not content with the horizontal. Let us also suggest transversality calls into question of the very idea of leadership in the search for a different organizational practice. Does Malcolm X then begin to emerge not so much as mobilizer of others, but as the mobilization in others. When we hear someone say he spoke for us, could we think of this phrase outside of the Western political epistemology of representation and leadership? Are there aspects of his oratorial style, of his performances, that point in this direction? In this seminar we are going to read the Autobiography, but we are also going to read, listen to, and watch a constellation of figures and movements, before, during and after Malcolm X to rethink the way Malcolm X served. Figures and movements like Yuri Kochiyama, women in the Black Panther Party, Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement, and the traditions of the itinerant preacher in the American South will be studied. Students should read the Autobiography, in any available language, prior to attending the seminar.

Stefano Harney & Guest: Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz What would it mean to move from thinking about decoloniality to putting it into practice - in an art school, in a city, in a society? What is the relationship of decolonial theory to anti-colonial praxis, to post-colonial theory (and another kind of practice) and to the continuing domination of the neo-colonial and the imperial? What are the connections to the history of Third Worldism and the Non-aligned Movement? What are the links to development theory? For instance, to notions of underdevelopment, combined and uneven development, and the problem of the comprador classes? Finally, what is the relation of decolonial theory and practice to anti-blackness and to indigenous philosophies? This seminar will be co-led with the Director of the Academy of World Culture in Cologne (ADKDW), Max Jorge Hindered Cruz. This seminar is conceived as a collective endeavour. Students will be invited to contribute readings, documentaries, and suggestions for guests in the seminars. Guests will contribute their own perspective, including Her Excellency Tonika Sealy Thompson, Ambassador of Barbados to Brazil, who will speak on her concept and practice of decolonial diplomacy.

What does it mean or take to pierce through the current structures and forms of oppression, separation and isolation? This seminar begins in (home)sickness and our extraordinary capacity to persist without remedy. Our aim is to resist the modernist preoccupations with and calls to straightness, sanity or positionality. Our aim is to revive the liberation of our forms of longing for something or someone that is not here/now. Our aim is to thrive nonetheless, despite the normative efforts to understand and to cure the strangeness of our desires, and to do so by way of mobilizing and researching through the aesthetic/feeling of perforation. Drawing on interdisciplinary texts/media, this seminar bridges the roles of creativity and critique at the intersection of experimental writing, sound and image making, queer ecologies, and feminist & anticolonial methods. We will study the holy works of Nathaniel Mackey, Renee Gladman, Jamilah Sabur, Greg Tate, Geri Allen, Sandra Ruiz & Hypatia Vourloumis, with an interest in opening up the field of creative expression.