Lecture Series 2020 "minor constellations in conversation"

In this two-part series Hannah Vögele, Kathleen Samson, and Yael Attia co-hosted a conversation between Dr. Vanessa Thompson, based at the Goethe Universität in Frankfurt, and Dr. Sara Salem based at LSE in June 2020. They brought their interests in decolonial studies, critical race theory, travelling theories and the articulations of race in Europe together in a co-written article titled “Old Racisms, New Masks: On the Continuing Discontinuities of Racism and the Erasure of Race in European Contexts”, and it was thrilling for Hannah, Kathleen, and Yael to be able to talk with them about their academic work and practice.

The “Erased in Translation” series shines light on how when race is addressed in Europe there is a logic of locating it as something that happens “over there”, or “back then”. In episode 1 we focus on the “over there”, discussing travelling theory, untranslatability and US centricity in academic research. We challenge dominant narratives by pointing to specific articulations of racism, and talk about ways of resisting and creating anew in and beyond the academy.  

“Embodied Practices – Looking From Small Places” is an edited transcript of a conversation between theatre and performance scholar Sruti Bala (University of Amsterdam) and sociologist, criminologist and anthropologist Dylan Kerrigan (University of Leicester) that took place as an online event in November 2020. Throughout their talk, Bala and Kerrigan engage with the legacy of Haitan anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Specifically, they focus on his approach of looking from small units, such as small villages in Dominica, outwards to larger political structures such as global capitalism, social inequalities and the distribution of power.
They also share insights from their own research on embodied practices in the Caribbean, Europe and India and answer questions such as: What can research on and through embodied practices tell us about systems of power and domination that move between the local and the global? How can performance practices which are informed by multiple locations and cultures be read and appreciated adequately?
Sharing insights from his research into Guyanese prisons, Kerrigan outlines how he aims to connect everyday experiences and struggles of Caribbean people to trans-historical and transnational processes such as racial capitalism and post/coloniality. Furthermore, he elaborates on how he uses performance practices such as spoken word poetry and data verbalisation to connect with systematically excluded groups. Bala challenges naïve notions about the inherent transformative potential of performance in her research on performance and translation. She points to the way in which performance and its reception is always already inscribed in what she calls global or planetary asymmetries.
At the conclusion of this conversation, they broach the question: are small places truly as small as they seem?

The online event took place on November 19, 2020 within the framework of the Minor Constellations in Conversation series organised by the current doctoral fellows of the RTG Minor Cosmopolitanisms at Potsdam University, Free University and Humboldt University.

This multimedia essay is a conversation that occurred across a saltwater ocean between two artist-researchers, Sofia Varino and May Joseph, about the ins-and-outs of one’s relationship with salt(s). It proceeds from an understanding of salt as an important political agent and element that generates various scales of history and personal intimacy via a single grain.

Due to the pandemic, this project has undergone various re-conceptualizations of both content and format. Although we had to depart from our initial idea of an in-person conversation in 2019, the uncertain times also prompted us to think of alternative and creative ways to engage salt(s) on a digital platform. Instead of trying to produce some sort of ontological knowledge about salt(s), this is about our learnings from living alongside this recalcitrant powder as it seeps, contaminates, purifies, saturates, and dissolves.

Over the course of a year, Sofia wrote from Berlin and May wrote from across the Atlantic (the saltiest ocean of them all) in Connecticut entering into a conversation based on Sofia’s 28 Indices of Salt [a.vi.s.u.a.l.e.s.s.a.y], and May’s poetry collection SALT DIARIES.