Radical Peace: Closing the Empathy Gap

The knowing subject occupies the entire body – the luxurious headquarters of broad and complete knowledge – founded and based on the sweetness and competence of the senses, knowledge attuned to its limbs and to the world, toned-down and pacified, ready to agree, delivered from resentment, consenting, a luminous, transparent, vibrant, spiritual, flexible, quick, lively subject body – a body that thinks

-Michel Serres

https://www.facebook.com/events/884477691657358/permalink/895857403852720/

 

The Assembly organized by Vanessa Gravenor and me at the Gallery Körnerpark in Berlin as a point of its departure takes the Matrixial Gaze Theory of Bracha L. Ettinger, which puts the stress on materiality of creative processes. The Assembly takes place inside of the exhibition of Mathilde ter Heijne Blood Sweat and Tears, which refers to the first Women’s Peace Congress in Hague in 1915 and compares it with the situation of peace activists nowadays.

 

During the assembly, together with the invited speakers: artists, theoreticians and activists, we will try to figure it out what relevance has a matrixial theory to the political engagement, how could it be used as a side of resistance, how to keep on listening our bodies that think? 

 

 

September 1, 2016, 7–10.30 pm

Symposium

Keynote talks by Ewa Majewska, Olga Lewicka, Katia Krupennikova

Followed by a round table discussion with the speakers and Mathilde ter Heijne

 

Using Bracha Ettinger’s matrixial theory as a jumping off point, the symposium works with the matter of conflict resolution in times where precarity is so ubiquitous that effective response-ability is often negated. Re-approaching the subject of peaceful conflict resolution from a historically materialist feminist perspective, the exhibition at Körnerpark re-opens the dialogue on peace as a collaborative process of inter and co-subjectivity where historical assemblies flow into the voices of the future. 

The following speakers will speak Thursday, September 1: Ewa Majewska on weak resistance, Olga Lewicka on the politics of bearing  and Katia Krupennikova on confusion and sensitivity of Post-Peace era. 

 

Mediated and organized by Zofia nierodzinska and Vanessa Gravenor

 

September 4, 2016, 5:30–8 pm

Performance series 

On the last day of the show Blood, Sweat and Tears a series of activities and performances will take place in the exhibition space. 

 

Including:

– Michaela Wünsch, FeMale HipHop, a lecture

– Nina Prader, spoken word

– SINGA, Concert

 

Galerie im Körnerpark 

Schierker Straße 8, 12051 Berlin

 

Press Contact

Denhart v. Harling, segeband.pr, dh@segeband.de, +49 179 4963497

Fot: Sören Schölecke

Download here: Peace_6,

Radical Peace: Bridging the Empathy Gap, a booklet for the assembly.

as·sem·bly
əˈsemblē/

Assembly is a group of people, entities, technical devices and objects, which we could all call agents, who have influence on each other and who gather together in a network. 

Assembly in the Old English was also called a ding (thing), which could mean that things etymological definition is embedded in severalty and that things as well as subjects are any consistent entities. 

Assembling is a material practice of bringing together or gathering into one place, body, or whole. 

A speaking body is an assemblage, which consists of words and codes of a (un)specific social milieu, as well as of matter shaped by and actively shaping the social sphere.