Manuscripts of Foreign Body(s): Foreign intimacies Workshops Weekend

Manuscripts of Foreign Body(s), is a critical visual collective workshops-based project, by Ahmad Baba and Michalina Mrozek, proposing the approach of, TLGBQIA+ bodies of color, as manuscripts of duality; being sites of oppressions as well as sites of resilience. The project will be developed, through organizing critical collective practices, in two days intensive workshops,“ Foreign intimacies Workshops Weekend “ on the 4th and 5th of September 2021 at Oyoun.

The workshops are platforms for experimenting and developing a communication mechanism, from/to TQ BIPOC identifying individuals, enhancing our own interpersonal relationships, as well as how we can find a middle line for circulating experiences, without judgement neither evaluation, but more of sharing, reflecting, relating, constructive criticism, and developing something new.

The intimate collective workshops will invite QTBIPOC artists from different disciplines to come together and create a safe(r) space(s), for investigating bodies on different levels, and bring forward narratives that speak to their own personal stories. Together we will develop a driving force that lacks in many spaces we exist in, and see how we could focus on the discourses of resilience through the lens of our struggles, and not the opposite. The workshops will emphasize on body politics approaches, empowerment of bodies of color, oneness and closeness, and how bodies of color, as sites of oppressions, could develop a mechanism of defense without burning out one's mental capacities.

*The workshops will be in English and translated into German, Arabic and Polish.

Anmeldung // Registration

Programme Saturday

11-12:30 Decolonizing Embodiment Workshops (Dance Therapy)
Everybody is a body, but not everybody experiences their bodies in the same way. The intersection between race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity construct our bodies and experiences that we didn’t have a choice on. The body(s), specifically of Color and Queer, are at once sites of, oppression, resistance, and resilience. So how can we experience embodiment with each other, but most importantly with ourselves? And how does collective dancing or movement emphasize our individual experience(s) in our bodies and in relation to other bodies? In these series of workshops, we will investigate body(s) from a therapeutic approach, of how we can express what our bodies hold within, from microaggressions to racism, from resistance to empowerment, so we can find our ways back to our body(s) through the movement cycles and the manifestations of our stories that we present through our body(s).

The workshops will go for two hours, including an opening circle, several interventions and a closure/reflection round ending the session. You don't need to have dance experiences. These workshops are a priority for QTBIPOC individuals, and everybody else is welcome if they understand the space they are attending and their position in it. Bring your body, and have comfortable clothes on.

powered by: Ahmad Baba - interdisciplinary and social artist, currently a dance movement therapist (M.A) in the making, investigating intersectionality in arts therapies and gender body politics, in mental health for marginalized communities. Since 2016, conceptualizing and developing a pragmatic critical collective workshops and visual projects, with QTBIPOC groups and artists, focusing on alternative narratives for identity(s), and a different approach to experiences of oppression(s) that communities of color face in a western context.

13-14:30 Rediscovering Femininity Through A Post-Colonial Lens
Through the colonial lens, femininity has been warped and pathologicised as something foreign, oppressive and weak to our bodies. We’ve been made to look down, resent and be afraid of exploring the depths of our expression and the power it holds for us, and the power it held for our ancestors. Through this workshop, we will explore the experiences we’ve had with expression through our bodies, look through the historical beauty and implications of living so unadulteratedly and using the dance form of ‘Vogue Femme’ from Ballroom culture, which is a celebration of femininity and the allowance to be. This workshop will explore this all with sound, movement and dance.

powered by Mandhla - a 24 year old trans-feminine gender non-comforming performance and visual artist born and raised in Zimbabwe, Africa. As a current resident in Berlin, she brings a blend of experimental R&B and Soul music intertwined with visual projections and performative dancing. Her art explores the daily trials that Trans*, enby and femme* immigrant bodies experience with love, identity, sex and acceptance. A strong lover of fashion, the art of vogueing and music, she promises to bring to you an experience that takes you to a world of beauty and divine epiphanies through fierce queer representation and black femme* power.

Interview session powered by Michalina Mrozek
She is a filmmaker and film educator who has been working as an independent filmmaker in Berlin since the beginning of 2013. She has many years of experience in educational work with youth and young adults as a project manager and filmmaker. For the past four years, she has increasingly realised projects with people of LGBTQ+ orientation, through which she has developed her own and respected style of working with queer people.

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Programme Sunday

11-12:30 Drag personas as Mythological creatures : Be your own Guardian angel, Monster and Superhero
Strategy for marginalized bodies to go against the dominant narrative when creating their drag personas. How to envision and conceptualize your drag persona. From finding the right name, experimentation with makeups and looks, to composing your performance. Using drag as a way of analyzing the complexities of your identities, twisting others' projections on you, reclaiming the parts of you that are degraded by the dominant narrative of the society. Drag begins with acknowledging the foreignness of your body. Then, amplifying , twisting and reclaiming it.

powered by: Isu Mignon Mignonne (異水 謎龍 未姩) (it/it/its) - Isu questions how itself* appears in the world, and twists it through various kinds of performance. It can be ritualistic, it can be multi-layered, it can be cathartic. It resurrects the invisible queer death through green screen. It wears the female figure as an anaglyph 3d illusion. It reclaims the power of instrumentalizing one’s body and praises the sacred hole through the vibration of the snake.

13-14:30 LABORATORY OF DESIRES
We all feel desired or undesired in certain ways. Perceptions of gender presentation, body shape, skin color, hair have an incredible influence on the way were socially perceived, and by consequence, desired. For people of color and trans people, these perceptions frame all your sex experiences and often creates layers of trauma that stop you to allowing yourself to new experiences. Desires are not natural, they’re learned. There is no such a thing as “preferences”, desire is thought and desire is a product of the experience. For BDSM practitioners and kinksters in general, desire can be a very tricky topic. Who’s DOM and WHO’S sub? Are some folks socially perceived as sub and others as DOM? What does being a top and being a bottom mean? What is a power bottom or a submissive top? The same way I believe gender is not a stationary state, neither are sexual roles. I believe we’re all tied up in several social ropes and can only move in certain ways. THE DESIRE LAB is a workshop shaped as a round of discussion, where attendants are encouraged to speak up about how we wish we were desired as we see ourselves and study them together. The lab is a small studio made in collaboration with Michelle Gutierrez (@caribe_lunar) where in group we have a space to produce visual imagery, solo or in group, about what we wish and we desired. The Lab will provide masks, accessories, lights, toys and also people who may want to volunteer to be in the photos or videos, or not. Or stay anonymous with masks if they wish. The consent terms and guidelines will be made with the assistance of the sex educator and performer Lina Bembe.

powered by: LUX VENEREA (aka Naya de Souza) - Comedian, Speaker, Chef, Performer, Poet, cangaceira transviada. Left the Sertão of Brazil to be a travesti*. Also left debts in the bank of brazil and believes that sleeping alligators get turned into YTpeople's purses.

Interview session powered by Michalina Mrozek
She is a filmmaker and film educator who has been working as an independent filmmaker in Berlin since the beginning of 2013. She has many years of experience in educational work with youth and young adults as a project manager and filmmaker. For the past four years, she has increasingly realised projects with LGBTQ+ communities that aim for more visibility and tolerance.

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Anmeldung // Registration

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Förderung des Fonds Soziokultur aus dem Programm der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM) „NEUSTART KULTUR“ Gemeinsam. Schaffen. Patenschaften für das WIR der Verschiedenen ist Teil des Bundesprogramms Menschen stärken Menschen und wird gefördert vom Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend