In the lecture, Elisa R. Linn builds on her Ph.D. research on artistic and social self-organization as ‘biopolitics from below’ and notions of border thinking (Gloria Anzaldúa/Walter Mignolo) as a way of thought and practice that originates from the subaltern experience of borderlands. Here, she unfolds how the Berlin Wall functioned as a “condom” against the Other during the AIDS crisis and amidst the Cold War confrontation. While addressing how the two German nation-states instrumentalized and fortified sovereignty and external borders at the cost of the Other, Linn examines empowering self-organization processes, notions of performativity, becoming minoritarian, and life practices beyond essentialist notions of representation of marginalized communities – such as the LGBTQI+ community, the punk movement, and the guest/contract workers. How did these groups not only exist in hegemonic structures but transform thinking into striking the border? Moving beyond the categorizing logic of identity itself, the lecture traces the way bodies migrate from one identity, from one gender to another, considering the border as a place of articulation. Contrary to an ethno-nationalist understanding of migration, Linn gathers theoretical-aesthetic perspectives that break with the hegemonic speech about migration as a state of exception, alienation, or threat, which gains more relevance in the light of transnational migration and asylum policies today. How can the border and its liminality be recontextualized, demobilized, and (re)appropriated – beyond territorial, categorical thinking to transcend the framework of the nation-state?

In this context, Linn invites Sung Tieu to discuss the self-organizing strategies of citizen-led foundations at the dormitory complex ‘Gehrenseestraße 1’ in Berlin Alt-Hohenschönhausen. This complex was primarily used to house Vietnamese contract workers before, during, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Elisa R. Linn (Elisa Linn Roguszczak) is a writer, exhibition maker, and educator. In her practice, she is concerned with politics of self-organization, representation, collectivity, migration, non-essentialist notions of identity, and the minor, challenging modernist conceptions of the nation-state and the 'great man.' She co-runs the Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V. and teaches at Leuphana University and ZHdK. She is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program and pursuing her Ph.D. in philosophy with Marina Gržinić at AdbK Vienna. She has held the interim professorship of the chair of Art Theory and Mediation, representing Prof. Dr. Kerstin Stakemeier at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg in the summer semester 2022. Linn contributed to publications and magazines such as Frieze, Starship, artforum, Texte zur Kunst, BOMB, ArtAsiaPacific, Jacobin, and the Journal for the History of Knowledge. Since 2012, she has jointly run the curatorial and artists project km temporaer with Lennart Wolff. She is also co-organizing the Film Club der polnischen Versager*innen in Berlin-Mitte. 

Sung Tieu is an artist based in Berlin. This lecture is presented in the context of her previous engagement as Guest Professor from Winter Semester 2021 until Summer Semester 2022.

The lecture will be held in English.