A hybrid format weekend event to offer resources on community mental health and collective healing
3-4 July, 2021
at feldfünf e.V.
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 7-8
10969 Berlin
and online
Concept:
Bogs are queer ecosystems. They are slow, infertile, and acidic. They are wetlands, like Berlin once was, a place of transition between land and water, without presumption of a seamlessly harmonious collaboration between the two. They are earth’s fermentation pits: they absorb the toxic and slowly turn it into fuel and make habitats for the strange—frogs and carnivorous plants alike.
This weekend is an invitation to bog down with us and regenerate in person and online. We present a weekend devoted to community healing. Topics include the intersection of art and chronic illness, navigating the white supremacist health industry, and tools for coping with trauma that come from lessons learned in queer community.
Reach in. Get bogged down with us.
Access:
The venue is barrier-free (including gender-neutral toilets). The space is such that there are big windows that open to a large public outdoor area, so the indoor spaces are well ventilated. Chairs with backs are available and speakers will be given microphones. A projector may be used. If you have needs that we can help accommodate to ensure your participation in this event, please send us an email to: hello@covenberlin.com.
If you attend in person, please come with a negative Corona test result (or vaccination or COVID recovery).
The venue is barrier free (including toilets). When indoors, everyone needs to wear a mask. When moving around outside, you also need a mask, unless you are seated with appropriate distance from others.
The venue is 400 meters from the U6 Bahnhof Kochstr./Checkpoint Charlie. There is an elevator from the U6 platform to the sidewalk. There are many deep curb drops and there are cobblestones on the sidewalks on the way to the venue, so they are not smooth.
Each day has its own access details and online access info.
Schedule:
Saturday, July 3 at 17:00
Launch of The Fatigued and Compassionate Oracle! Zine and Reading Group with Sickness Affinity Group
In collaboration with Sickness Affinity Group, COVEN BERLIN invites you to celebrate the launch of SAG’s zine The Fatigued and Compassionate Oracle! and to take part in a special edition of SAG’s regular monthly Mad and Crip Studies Reading Group. The Reading Group is about accessing text in a way that is most interesting and supportive to you.
One week before, the reading material will be made available on COVEN’s website in German and English with audio recordings, including excerpts from The Fatigued and Compassionate Oracle!, a zine whose aim is to create space for collectively answering questions, doubts, desires, and calls for advice around topics of accessibility, institutional struggles, and intersectional exclusion.
Sickness Affinity Group (SAG) is a group of art workers and activists who work on the topic of sickness/disability and/or are affected by sickness/disability. Sickness Affinity Group functions as a bi-monthly support group that challenges the competitive and ableist mode of working in the arts by sharing experiences and information and by prioritizing the well-being and access needs of its group members. Feel invited to join!
Participation Access Information
Register here for the Reading Group or email hello@covenberlin.com if this form isn’t accessible to you :-).
You can participate in the reading group live in-person OR in real time via Zoom. There are a limited number of seats available for the in-person reading group and the Zoom. If you join online, the Zoom link will be sent to you after registration. An English and German text transcript will be available live for all participants. Because the Zoom session will be recorded, you have the option to switch off your camera and mute your microphone. In-person participants who don’t want to appear in the film may let us know before the beginning of the session. A recording of this event will be made available afterwards online with German and English subtitles.
If you would like someone to come pick you up and escort you to the venue, please request this in your registration form.
Sunday, July 4
18:00 – Workshop by Zoya
The waterlogged, acidic mush of the bog is home to a variety of specialised creatures. The fungi, plants and animals who reside there sustain themselves by adapting to the low nutrient levels available in these peculiar ecosystems.
How often do our conflicts escalate, or different kinds of relationships fall apart, because we lack the resources to regulate our overwhelmed systems and care for one another? Despite shared ideas on how we would like to live and stay accountable to one another, we often meet with the devastation that we lack the tools and capacities to do what we envision. This talk/workshop focuses on two practices we may try to cultivate in order to adapt to the lack of nutrients available to us: slowing down to tune into our bodies, and saying no.
Zee works with words, spaces and images, organising and facilitating conversations on topics including sex education, transformative justice, art and cinema.
20:00 – A Conversation on Care between SchwarzRund and FemmeFitness <3
Having worked and shared online space together many times over the last year, SchwarzRund and Anisha (from FemmeFitness) will have a long overdue catch up about community work during a pandemic. How has this time affected accessibility, community and what has that got to do with empowerment? They will begin to unpick the idea of ‘Health’ in their own work and experience (what does health really mean? Who is it for?), thinking about the foundations of white ableist institutions, but also dreaming up alternatives for the future.
Anisha Müller(FemmeFitness) is an artist and movement instructor from the UK who gives empowerment workshops and talks. She specialises in feminist body practices where her main achievement has been founding and teaching the dance workout class: FemmeFitness. Her work is driven by the need to confront and discuss the policing of bodies, safer spaces and critical whiteness. Aiming to bring QTIBIPOC to the front, she has given workshops in London and Berlin including with Sophiensaele, Weißensee Kunsthochschule and Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
SchwarzRund came to Bremen as a Black German Dominican at the age of three and has lived in Berlin for over a decade. On schwarzrund.de and in various magazines they write about multidimensional realities of life inside and outside of communities. They also negotiate this on stage as a speaker and poet. They studied cultural studies and gender studies in their bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Their research focuses on Queer Black interventions and Afrx-Latinx identities. 2016 Afroqueer novel BISKAYA, 2020 Afroqueer novella Quasi / ach.Je Verlag / @SchwarzRund everywhere.
They are one half of a duo making a podcast on disability, accessibility, and queerness called Rampe? Reicht!. Check out their blog and patreon for much more!
Participation Access Information
No registration for this event is needed. Please come with a negative Corona test result (or vaccination or recovery). There will be spoken German language interpretation available. The speakers will have microphones to be more audible.
We will soon release a video of both talks which will be accompanied by a German sign language interpreter, German and English subtitles at cyberbog.covenberlin.com.
If you would like someone to come pick you up and escort you to the venue, please email us (hello@covenberlin.com) with the subject line: “July 4 Ubahn Escort”.
This event is a part of COVEN’s YEAR OF THE BOG. Its remnants and artifacts in the form of video, podcast, and meme will be up shortly on our CYBERBOG.
This event series is supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
