October 1, 2021 → Who Are We #4 Roaming Workshops: Approches to Decolonial Work During a Pandemic, Minor Cosmopolitanisms, University of Potsdam

In autumn 2021 we participated in a series of events convened by the Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms at the University of Potsdam entitled ‘Approaches to Decolonial Work During a Pandemic’ that deals with a postcolonial approach to ecologies, inequalities, bodies, indigeneities and alternative genealogies. The three events were hosted respectively by the participants  Xart Splitta e.V., Floating e.V. and the guides from the Jewish Museum and framed by the researchers of Minor Cosmopolitanism. We came out of these exchanges with the need to spend more time understanding what decolonial work might look like for us, how to connect and formulate common goals between design disciplines, community work that deals with everyday emergencies such as healing wounds of racism and theory focussed institutions. These encounters reinforced the need to dedicate time to work on common, careful methods of exchange, while also bringing up absurdities of working within different bubbles.

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Who are We? is a discursive, self-reflexive event format that strives to accompany its participants’ independent spatial and artistic practices of sensible, urban transformation. Its first session happened in 2020 in Berlin. The initiative aims to encourage a discussion on “our” organisations: Who belongs to them? What are the existing power structures? Which communication and decision-making cultures are prevailing?  Which projects, spaces, cities “we” design and build accordingly? How do they influence the way “our” city is produced and represented?

by: Licia Soldavini & Mascha Fehse
with Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms and Gilly Karjevsky