CW#1 l SEASON 3 l Thinking About the Meanings of the Archive

Theme: Solidarity

15 January 2023, Wednesday | Season 3, Episode 1

Apartment Project and online

 

Livestream link: https://youtube.com/live/h4mB2bKIweY

Organized by the Apartment Project Berlin and funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe

 

Thinking about the Meanings of the Archive

 

19.30 Panel discussion with filmmaker Najwa Ahmed and dancer and choreographer Gizem Aksu, moderated by researcher Nil Mutluer

21.00 Concert by İpek Ural (PEK)

 

 

In order to create solidarity, creating space for community across disciplines and borders enables thinking together about and against marginalization. «Chromatic Wednesdays» invites WAWA to discuss how such spaces can be generated in a panel discussion. WAWA, Women+ Artists’ Web Archive is a database that strives to create visibility and a network of solidarity for women artists from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. It asks: How can an online archive go beyond simply being a digital database and serve its community in a more embodied manner? What forms of archiving should it take? What are its socio-political and cultural implications? With these questions in mind, the panel will cover WAWA’s ongoing journey, and initiators and members will unpack terms such as «living», «engaged» and «interactive» archive to conceptualize alternative ways of activating archives.

 

The panel discussion will be followed by a concert by WAWA member İpek Ural (PEK).

 

 

Najwa Ahmed is a Palestinian visual artist, writer and curator based in Berlin since 2020. She graduated in English studies in Palestine and completed studies in visual arts at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin and the Berlin University of the Arts. In Palestine she was active in the social and cultural field as a translator, social worker and project developer. In Brussels she worked as a dramaturg, creative director and theater performer. Her artistic practice moves between writing, theater, film, video, land art and visual art. She explores themes of displacement, queer politics, identity and belonging, collective memory and intersectional feminism. She writes for Arabic and English language publications and platforms, such as JEEM – Sexuality and Gender, Visual Verse, CFFP’ magazine Disrupted, the NewArab and Sasapost.

 

Gizem Aksu is an independent choreographer, dancer, activist and former academic from Istanbul living in Berlin. She graduated in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University and Contemporary Dance from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, where she also earned her PhD. Due to her enthusiasm for undermining the ground of social theory with artistic experiments, she shifted from political science to dance, installation, film, and text. Through her art, she creates a portal where spirituality and politics intertwine, approaching the body as an energetic field by finding artistic expressions and incarnations that are socially interactive, physically provocative, and contextually situated. As a researcher and activist, she is closely connected to feminist sociocultural studies, social anthropology, and queer studies.

 

Nil Mutluer is a social scientist who holds a PhD in Comparative Gender Studies from the Central European University and advocates for rights and freedoms. Nil works and acts in the intersectional space of academia, civil society, media, and arts. She has published in various academic and non-academic journals and newspapers on diversity (gender, ethnic, and religious), nationalism, migration, memory studies, and Turkish politics. She is currently a Senior Researcher at the University of Leipzig and a Research Fellow at EUME – Forum Transregional Studies in Berlin.  Between 2021 and 2022, she produced the socio-political discussion program Başka Düşünce (The Other Thinking) at ArtıTV and also co-produces intermittent sociological and political analysis programs on television.

 

İpek Ural (PEK) is a classical pianist from Istanbul and has performed in various choirs, rock bands and operas between 2009 and 2012. Ural has been composing her own recordings for the last two years and started releasing her songs in 2021. She is also busking in Berlin since 2020. She describes her art as an expression of her emotions through dreamy sounds. Her songs are based on real events and situations, so they can be described as her emotional diary and a self-healing method that allows troubled emotions to flow.

 

 

«Chromatic Wednesdays» is a bi-weekly event series bringing together creative thinkers across diverse backgrounds. As part of this interdisciplinary program, the panel discussion and concert will be presented at 19.30 (doors open at 19.00) at Apartment Project (Hertzbergstraße 13, 12055 Berlin) and can also be followed online on Youtube (https://youtube.com/live/h4mB2bKIweY).

 

Please find more information on WAWA here: https://wawa-network.org