A SPIN project for The Feminist School

Queer-feminist collectivity is often created under precarious conditions by people looking for places of belonging outside of normative social-political structures. The collectivities we create can give us solidarity, support, and pleasure, but they can also be places in which conflicts arise, and there is a lot at stake. Hear Me Out will bring together the knowledges of invited guests and audience to develop strategies that might help us navigate conflict expression and build stronger communities

Queer-feminist collectivity is often created under precarious conditions by people looking for places of belonging outside of normative social-political structures. The collectivities we create can give us solidarity, support, and pleasure, but they can also be places in which conflicts arise, and there is a lot at stake. In these moments of conflict, how do we stay in community with those we are in conflict with? What tools and strategies do we have to express our pain and hurt to each other without putting ourselves or the collectivity we so urgently need in danger? What modes of expression and listening might help us to learn and heal? How do we take conflict with us as we move forward together?

Departing from the notion of the school, we will hold a “teach-in” to bring together the knowledges of invited guests and audience to think through and develop tools and strategies that might help us navigate conflict expression and build stronger communities together. The teach-in is a model of sharing practical and urgent knowledge that has part of its his/her/theirstory in the aids activism that emerged out of New York City during the early years of the crisis. Teach-ins happen within a space of common cause, curiosity, and circumstantial connection in which the active centralization of a question or problem can create a proliferation of new knowledges and partnerships.

Our invited guests will include conflict mediator Aline Bauwens, community-based project Creatives with Unseen Disabilities, social healer Lucas Johnson, and writer and activist Olave Nduwanje.

This SPIN project is curated by Marnie Slater and James Parnell, produced by Laura Deschepper and coproduced by Kunstencentrum BUDA, WORM (Rotterdam) and SPIN (Brussels). Visuals are made by Sevgi Tan.

Lunch is included in the teach-in. We ask for a free contribution for this on the spot.

The Feminist School is part of the European programmeapap – FEMINIST FUTURES, a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.