Living Together / Looking Apart (2022)

Abstract

The three-day academic and artistic gathering focused on the representational strategies, practices and histories of living together in the so-called multicultural and multi-ethnic societies in the Global South and within Europe with a particular focus on multilayered (in)visibilities and visuality. The conference was organised by Juliana Streva, Salma Siddique, Fritzi-Marie Titzmann and Hannah Tzuberi on behalf of "Beyond Social Cohesion: Global Repertoires of Living Together" (RePLITO), a research project funded in the framework of the Grand Challenge Initiative Social Cohesion by the Berlin University Alliance (2021-2024). The program was realized in collaboration with Off-University and our academic cooperation partner Prof. Dr. Faisal Devji from St. Anthony's College in Oxford, UK. With the cultural centre Oyoun we deliberately chose an event space outside the University to enable dialogue beyond academia and include activist and artistic voices in the exploration of how living and looking are intertwined.In our introduction to the event we drew attention to what Fatimah Tobing Rony calls visual biopolitics whereby visual representation determines which lives are made to matter more than others, "who is visible and who is invisible, … and who is protected and who is not" [1]. Proceeding from this, we examined contexts of segregation, integration, friction and minoritization to offer new insights into religious divisions and secular ambiguities. We are particularly interested in approaches that are concerned with aesthetics, images and iconicity, to explore how looking becomes closely intertwined with living. While the controlling look or gaze has been central to the way in which the gendered, racialized and colonized body has been made visible, we also seek out what Paula Amad refers to as the visual ripostes [2], evident in powers relations embedded in imperial, postcolonial and global antagonisms.Each day was devoted to a specific perspective, thus creating different strands of dialogues within the conference. Invited speakers from Turkey, India, and the United Kingdom, together with Berlin-based scholars, activists, and artists, made the conference a thoroughly inspiring and engaging event, not to mention an interested audience eager for discussion. RePLITO Living Together / Looking Apart (2022) 3 Day 1: Minorities in Perspective Following introductory greetings by the two speakers of RePLITO, Schirin Amir-Moazami and Nadja-Christina Schneider, the first day started with a lecture by Hannah Tzuberi.