COVEN BERLIN presents: DANK MEMES 4 DANK TIMES (DM4DT), May 22 + 23, 2021
A weekend of live-streamed events, all available at www.twitch.tv/covenberlin.
Is the internet a bog? A slow sludge, preserving artefacts and people long gone? What about the remnants of content past, immortalised for all to see in the Wayback Machine? Do they linger in the bog forever, or do they turn into peat, to be reused and recycled into fuel for new content? Can internetpeat be used for good?
– Idil Galip’s abstract for her performance/talk, Is the Internet a Bog?
The sun has gotten brighter and the days have gotten longer, but the times remain extremely dank. And so we invite you into our dripping virtual bog-cave, full of soda bottles and cheez dust, to bask in the light of our memes from your computer screen.
Memes are images with text captions that spread virally online, and the quintessential expression of an era, a new art form or a ready-made construct to be deployed for the lulz or to slowly poison other people’s minds. They are called “dank” when especially potent and intoxicating, to borrow a word from lovers of fine marijuana. Dank also means “unpleasantly damp and cold.” Well, we, dear readers, have been unpleasantly damp and extremely intoxicating for months, and we have something to say about it.
PROGRAM
MAY 22 TIME CHANGED to 14-16h: COMMUNAL MEMEMAKING
Join us to make memes online together. We want to harness the positive power of memes as a way of expressing oneself and coping. We will share meme-making tips and provide materials like templates and photo editing programs. We encourage you to also use good old fashioned magazines and scissors for collaging. We’ll share the results with each other and on social media :-).
MAY 22 – 19-20:30h: RATE MY DANK MEMES
We’ve gathered our favorite memes as well as audience submissions, and will rate, analyze, workshop, razz, and cherish them on Twitch Livestream, withh you taking part in the chat :-).
Alongside COVEN BERLIN will be Idil Galip (Meme Studies Research Network founder, Carnival of the Grotesque enjoyer, Meme Doctor of Edinburgh), Crab Content (short king, meme researcher), NAYA (FKA Lux Venérea, Our Kanzlerin of Germany @bundaskanzlerin, comedian, chef, Poet, Bottom activist, cangaceira transviada).
PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR MEMES FOR RATING!!
MAY 23 – 14-16h: IS THE INTERNET A BOG?: Artists’ Talk/Performances and Roundtable
Idil, Crab, and Naya give serious and professional (yet performative and bizarre) talks on the power of queer feminist memes, including the recycling of old/dead content (like troll dolls) and outdated materials (such as the Impact font in memes), and how queers build communities around such memes to create regenerative mutual aid networks. We will host a discussion afterwards with the artists.
MAY 23 – 19-20:30h: MOIST SECRETS: Emotional Labor Queen Podcast Live Recording
Local Celebrity and Meme Lorde of Berlin, Emotional Labor Queen, AKA Cleo Kempe Towers, will be gracing us with a live episode of their podcast, MOIST SECRETS. They will talk about memes, mental health, queer love, and ASTROLOGY. In their podcast, Towers works through power dynamics, ritualistic obsession, emotional labor, femme survival, and astrological healing, and this episode asks what role memes play as emotional support, artistic outlet, and communication method in our matters of the heart. Expect the most danceable, sexable, and cryable queer bops of today spliced in.
PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR MEMES AND QUESTIONS to ELQ!!
Access note:
We have money put aside to meet access needs: if you have a need, please don’t hesitate to reach out. If you inform us up to 2 weeks before, we can also provide audio transcription or sign language, for example. We will do our best with requests that come closer to!
All events in the Dank Memes 4 Dank Times weekend will be streamed online. For Rate my Dank Memes, and Is the Internet A Bog Artist Talks, we will have live transcription in English and translation in German in the chat. For Moist Secrets, we will release a transcript of the podcast text in English and German shortly afterward.
All events are available at www.twitch.tv/covenberlin/, a link you can visit in your browser. Here is Twitch’s accessibility statement.
You can always ask us for translation help, technical help, and other needs in the Twitch chat or by email.
Access contact: hello@covenberlin.com
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.
Event name borrowed from @dank_memes_for_dank_times.
This event is hosted by feldfünf.
This event series is supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
Also please consider PayPaling some money towards the incredible meme artiste NAYA’s surgery costs – Contact@luxvenerea.com 🐸
