SAOIRSE: On Solidarities

“Saoirse” is an online study group series by Pádraigín O’Flynn (with the support of Hannah O’Flynn),  organised by “with the rubbles of old palaces”. The group intends to share and understand a variety of transnational and cross-issue solidarities, both historic and current, in order to process how we can engage in such movements working towards collective liberation. From record-breaking protests to international courts, the call for transnational solidarities have been brought to the forefront in recent months as Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues to escalate. We have therefore considered it necessary to focus on the connection and interdependence between different liberation movements, and to look at their common histories and imagined futures. Saoirse, the title for this study group, stands for “freedom” in Gaelic.

The study group will take place online.

The language for the study group will be English.

First session: Wednesday 28th of February, 7.30pm (CET).

Second session: Wednesday 20th of March, 7.30pm (CET).

To take part in the study group please register by messaging info@withtherubbles.org / @withtherubblesofoldpalaces

Against Agent Orange: The Fight Continues

An art exhibition, screening, community gathering and fundraising.

On the occasion of the Tết 2023 (Vietnamese New Year), the Collectif Vietnam Dioxine (CVD) is joining forces with DAMN* (Deutsche Asiat*innen Make Noise) and “with the rubbles of old palaces” to present an exhibition on Agent Orange by illustrator Trâm-Anh, accompanied by the screening of Thuy Tiên Ho's and Laurent Lindebring’s movie “Agent Orange, a Time Bomb” (57mins). The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director on zoom, while Trâm-Anh and several members of CVD and DAMN* will be present at the event. On this occasion, CVD will be raising money to support Madame Trần Tố Nga, one of the victims of Agent Orange, in her lawsuit against Agent Orange’s manufacturers such as Monsanto and Dow Chemicals. 

Bring your best clothes to celebrate entering the year of the cat together, while learning more on the devastating impacts of Agent Orange for people and the environment. There will be drinks and some snacks! This is a donation-based, fundraising event in solidarity with the victims of Agent Orange. 

Saturday, 21 January 2023

Doors: 4pm

Screening: 6pm

Q&A: 7pm

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO THE FUNDRAISING

The photograph on the poster is by Lê Minh Trường (Vietnam, 1970), with an illustration by Vo Trâm Anh.

WHO ARE WE?

CVD (Collectif Vietnam Dioxine) is a collective based in France that brings together individual volunteers and partner organisations to fight for the official recognition and reparations for the effects of the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. We support all the victims of Agent Orange and MrsTrần Tố Nga in her lawsuit against Agent Orange ’s manufacturers. We also fight for the recognition of the crime of Ecocide.

vietnamdioxine.org

IG: collectifvietnamdioxine

FB: collectifvietnamdioxineofficiel

DAMN* (Deutsche Asiat*innen Make Noise) is a political platform and fluid activist collective that connects, amplifies and mobilises members and voices of the Asian diaspora in Germany.

damnberlin.com

IG: damn_berlin

What is Agent Orange?

Agent Orange is a herbicide developed by the US army in 1940. It was the most heavily used herbicide by the US army during the Vietnam War. The herbicides were used to defoliate the forests (in order to draw out the Vietnamese Guerilla fighters who were hiding in the jungles), to clear the military bases and to destroy enemy crops. Its main chemical is Dioxin.

Dioxin is a cancerous substance and teratogenic (products that cause malformations in newborns). It causes skin diseases and attacks the immune system, reproductive system, and nervous system. According to the latest estimates, between 2.1 and 4.8 million Vietnamese were directly exposed to herbicides between 1961 and 1971, to which must be added an unknown number of Cambodians, Laotians, American civilians and soldiers, and their various Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and South Korean allies. But the total number of victims is probably higher because dioxin is transmitted by contamination of the food chain: breast milk, cow's milk, consumption of contaminated meat or fish.

Sixty years later, dioxin-related symptoms are still present in Vietnam. Today, we can see that there is still a significant amount of dioxin in some very localised areas. Three generations of Vietnamese are affected by herbicides. Malformations, hyperencephaly, skin diseases, cancers, nervous system or brain deficiency are some of the ailments suffered by the victims.

Have the United States accepted responsibility?

No, they still refuse all responsibility for the damages caused by herbicides, and have never paid even a cent to Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian victims of Agent Orange and other defoliant.  American veterans who were victims of Agent Orange filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers of Agent Orange, because they did not have the right to sue the American government. In 1984, these manufacturers signed a settlement agreement with the veterans' associations: in exchange for stopping all further lawsuits, the manufacturers paid $180 million to a compensation fund for American veterans who were victims of Agent Orange. In early 2004, the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA) filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers of Agent Orange. The two main manufacturers involved are Monsanto and Dow Chemical. In France, a lawsuit is currently underway against the manufacturers, including Monsanto, initiated by Mrs. Trần Tố Nga, a French victim of Agent Orange/Dioxin.

HER FACE 她的脸 Cloud Tongues 云母语

CLOUD TONGUES 云母语

They say mother tongue is the language you count in. But I count in all languages. Hierher, hierher, nicht links, nicht rechts, nicht vorne, nicht hinten, aber hierher, hast du keine Angst? 一二三四 cinc sis set ocho nueve. One speaks a language best when drunk. “师傅我去中央美术学院”。My mother once said: “lo que tienen las nubes, es que no las puedes meter en una caja”. Mein seltsamen Lungen, wie sich spreizende Pfauen. When I don’t want to be understood, I speak Mandarin. But they are all entangled in a way — a constant chain of mistranslation. 母语在哪里？Com comença un a oblidar la seva pròpia llengua materna? Yo, que ya he luchado contra toda la maldad / 它与我们在一起，它像我们一样, / Tengo las manos tan deshechas de apretar / 它是我们的手指, / Que ni te puedo sujetar / 它是我们对世界的脸。/ Vete de mí…

HER FACE 她的脸

Theatre about diasporic poetry, disappearance and hauntological reoccurrence.

‘My death will be mine alone. Once one passes the door, one cannot transfer even any experience at all to others. (Auch mein Tod wird allein meiner sein, ich kann ihn nicht abgeben oder austauschen; ist die Schwelle einmal überschritten, kann ich nicht einmal mehr irgendeine Erfahrung davon anderen vermitteln.)‘ (Susanne Gösse). How can the untransferable dreams and myths be celebrated again, when ‘death’ interrupts the game of ‘life’? Endless piles of paper rise, as do endless fragments of words and luminescent poetry. The act of ‘translating’ produces linguistic friction, as well as bled wounds. There opens a fugitive path where German, Chinese and more languages are connected, ‘on a merry-go-round of tortured and bleeding words’, producing delirium and joy of disorientation.

 ‘Where is the mother tongue? It is with us, it is like us, it is our finger, it is our face to the world (Zhang Zao).’ ‘Her face’ is a face that has gone through multilingual and polyphonic surgery. The frame shatters, the portrait collapses, and mercury cascades on the floor, into individual rooms and households in this Berlin winter. The linguistic rubbles of poetry that have remained restless enter the rooms as if exiled. ‘All doors open. All doors close’ …

 In this performance series, situations will contextualise each other and resonate with each other, exposing and concealing the inherent ‘theatre’ mechanism in the topography of everyday urban life. A mixture of nonfictional and fictional: private alchemy, family events, bathtub ballet, culinary eroticism, pensive reading, private parade, paranormal solo concert, toxic imaginary autobiography, etc. All stories depart from the texts left behind by a Berlin resident. The series collect fragments of poetry by Hölderlin, Celan and the Chinese exile poet Zhang Zao, who lived in Tübingen, thereafter gifted them - to eight families in Berlin, to the kitchens, bedrooms, living rooms and bathrooms. Eight or more homes will be transformed temporarily into theatre. The coming spring, these theatre situations will be collected and sculpted into the ruined walls of the 'adjacent' ‘Zeitspeicher' (Wasserspeicher).

This is another transcultural performance project by Paper Tiger and Kunstrbetrieb Birach in collaboration with with the rubbles of old palaces on the free theatre scene, in the aftermath of the pandemic. ‘Theatre’ will wander as an exiled spectre between the urban, historical and cultural spaces of Otherness. Celan once described, one / bowstring / spreads its pain among you (die Eine / Sehne / spannt ihren Schmerz unter euch).

Her Face consists of eight performances and an exhibition between November 2022 and April 2023, the first being Cloud Tongues on the 12th of November 2022.

Her Face has been realised by Paper Tiger and Kunstbetrieb Birach. Its first performance, Cloud Tongues, has been done in collaboration with with the rubbles of old palaces.

Supported by Neustart Kultur #Prozessförderung (Fonds Darstellende Künste).

COMIZI D’EMIGRAZIONE

Come join us for the Comizi d’Emigrazione zine launch and aperitivo on the 26th of October at 6PM at with the rubbles of old palaces.

Comizi d’Emigrazione is a collection of love letters that explores the interrelations between queer love, sentimentality and migration as an attempt to voice possible counter-narratives. Thus, when does love become a reason to leave? What does it mean to experience love far from home, to live intimacy in your second language? What are its implications one subjectivity and collectivity?

Starting with the love letters to Pier Paolo Pasolini, “not so dear” Silvio Berlusconi, and Mina by Alice Minervini, the zine includes contributions by Yasmin Ali Ahmed, Angel Dust, Ricardo Guimarães, Dani Lussi Martini, Colette Downing, Oh Imanuela, as well as illustrations by Ronni Winkler. The art direction and editing has been done by Alice Minervini, and the design by Agostino Quaranta.

TIME TUNNELS

Happiness — Nostalgia: a Story of Linear Time

Time Tunnels (Happiness — Nostalgia: a Story of Linear Time) is a re-reading of Sia Armajani’s work before/after (1970). In her work, Sepideh Behrouzian reconceptualises Armajani’s formulation of a linear temporality into a structure where happiness is the object of desire. This happiness becomes not only the object of acquisition, possession, distribution and contagion, but also a duty that perpetually stays out of reach.

In Time Tunnels, Behrouzian instrumentalises the popular and very distributed footages of Iran’s previous regime. This footage was once used in the previous regime’s propaganda to represent the happy prospect of Iran in an era to come. Today, these footages are used by the opposition to look back at a lost happiness. In both cases, happiness becomes an object impossible to acquire, yet with a strong power to evoke on and mobilise society. Through associations and cinematic effects, Behrouzian inserts these footages into two opposing linear temporalities, happiness becoming an unattainable promise that stretches both into the future and the past, creating a tunnel of linear time.

Sepideh Behrouzian’s Time Tunnels will be projected at with the rubbles of old palaces, followed up by a Q&A on the artist’s research for this project and an open discussion with the public.

Time Tunnels (Happiness — Nostalgia: a Story of Linear Time) is part of the series Promises of Ever-coming Prosperity  // نوید آبادانی  with Sepideh Behrouzian.

Time Tunnels’ sound design has been created by Shakib Sharifzadeh.

WHAT’S A SANDWICH WHEN THE FILLING IS BREAD?

In this session we discussed Hannah O’Flynn’s ongoing research on the colonial history of the baguette. This research stems from an ongoing collaborative research on the politics of food with Vita Buivid, developed from an initial performance with Vita Buivid, Francisco Mojica and Giorgos Gripeos. 

In this session we first traced back into the relation of wheat importation by the Spanish to the colonised Americas and the violent construction of race by the colonisers. We later looked into the development of the baguette in relation to the French Revolution and the development of a new understanding of labour. We finally discussed the apparition and popularisation of the baguette and the baguette sandwich across several of the French colonies, and their significance in relation to new forms of labour, mobility and “life styles”.

Presenting: Hannah O’Flynn

Commenting: Amit Rai, Litchi Ly Friedrich, Raúl Silva

“those who tremble when the world is quivering, those who shudder the the world is shivering”

This session was a discussion on Manthia Diawara’s documentary One World in Relation on Edouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation. Specifically on the understandings of being in relation, thinking against essentialised identities that flatten out complexity, on unreadability and the violence of wanting to understand or excluding what cannot be understood. 

Presenting:  Litchi Ly Friedrich, Hannah O’Flynn

Commenting: Zane Zajanckauska, Najendra Caldera, Amit Rai, Hubert Gromny

A DISENLIGHTENED DREAM

In this session we discussed the performance work of Hannah O’Flynn, Dust Floating in the Dark // A Disenlightened Dream, done with the help of Litchi Ly Friedrich as a performer. The performance meanders through thoughts on around ocular-centrism, colonial tools for control, binary thinking, the Enlightenment and the metaphorical constructions of light and dark, and Dutch windows.

The session then developed into a discussion on the possible violence of metaphors, and traps of binary thinking.

Presenting: Hannah O’Flynn

Commenting: Rosalia Namsai Engchuan, Raúl Silva, Litchi Ly Friedrich, Amit Rai

COMPLICATED HAPPINESS

In this session we discussed the film of Rosalia Namsai Engchuan, Complicated Happiness. The film is inspired by the Thai Park in Berlin: a meeting place since more than 20 years for Thai migrant women that transformed into a tourist attraction that has become too big. Now there are already plans for its transformation, and it is unlikely that this process can be stopped. This attempt at formalisation of the informal will fail: most Thai women I spoke to do not plan to follow the transformation of Thai Park. This place will soon be a distant memory. What many forget is that this park was never first and foremost about selling food. What people see is the commodification of authentic food and the need to regulate informal economic practices. What they don’t see is the people. Once again Thai women are hypervisible so that they themselves become invisible. This video is set in the future at a time when the Thai Park is no longer there. It is a reminder of the liminality of social spaces and through a fictional storyline allows the Thai women to leave before they are forced to do so.

The presentation of the film was then followed by a discussion on the racial and gendered implications local government health and safety policies, as well as gentrification projects.

Presenting: Rosalia Namsai Engchuan

Commenting: Raúl Silva, Assem Hendawi, Litchi Ly Friedrich, Hannah O’Flynn, Amit Rai, Hubert Gromny

A DIAGRAM OF A DIAGRAM OF A DIAGRAM

This session was an introduction to the ideas in the chapter Many Politics, from Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet’s Dialogues.

Presenting: Amit Rai

Commenting: Litchi Ly Friedrich, Hannah O’Flynn, Sepideh Behruzian, Rosalia Namsai Engchuan

HOW DID HUBERT GET BABY LENIN BADGES? ON TODAY’S EPISODE…

Historical Materialism – Colonialism – Black Nationalism

In this session we discussed the limits of the historical materialist ontological framework when thinking the racial architecture of colonialism. What motivated the discussion of the topic is the prevailing presence of historical materialism in the critical discourses on global configurations under capitalism. The main points of departure for this session were the works of Denise Ferreira da Silva “Toward a Global Idea of Race” and Cedric Robinson’s “The Limits of Western Radicalism: The Making of Black Radical Tradition”. An example of such a limit would be how the value produced in the colonial slave system as well as the dispossession of land of Indigenous peoples has been considered as outside the capitalistic mode of production and categorised instead as “primitive accumulation” – placing them as the pre-history of capital. Another limit would be the question of resistance of the global subaltern to being politically represented as a unified working class subject. 

Presenting: Hubert Gromny

Commenting: Flavia Palladino, Amit Rai, Ian Nolan, Litchi Ly Friedrich, Liu Chao & Hannah O'Flynn

PIRATE PPT INCEPTION

Wind-shattered voices, the tales in shells and wrecks along the coasts of South China Sea

When it comes to historical imagination, it is usually based on empires/nation-states and is shaped by borders. This session attempted to bring the attention to those people and figures who lived largely out of such narratives and defied borders. When one shifts the geographical centre of narratives, a ghostly topography emerges: of marginal insurgence, autonomy and at times well defined criminality (in contrast to warfares, lawful oppression and legitimised exploitation).

In this session we discussed how these sea-bound traditions interfere the land-based orthodox narratives. To do this, we looked at he traces of those criminalised who attempted to subvert state power, and the unseen hands who financed their revolutionary entrepreneurship.

Presenting: Liu Chao

Commenting: Sepideh Behruzian, Raúl Silva, Ian Nolan, Litchi Ly Friedrich & Hannah O'Flynn

WELEDA AND THE NAZIS

In this session we looked at esoteric Hitlerism, the occult, and Nazism's relationship to coloniality. We then looked at what this history can tell us about the right and its present's networking and organisation.

Presenting: Elias Haase

Commenting: Amit Rai, Hassan Özgur Top, Sepideh Behruzian, Raúl Silva, Ian Nolan, Litchi Ly Friedrich, Hannah O'Flynn & Hubert Gromny

VLADMAIL RECORDS vol. 538: Indebted with Vladimiro

This session,  a continuation of session #3, was on Hannah O’Flynn’s second thesis block witch was in the process of being destroyed. This time we looked at neoliberal mechanisms of capital reproduction through debt relations. Specific examples that were discussed were: uneven geographical development through debt and colonial histories, the subprime crisis and the dispossession of the black and latinx communities in the US, and the 2008 financial crisis, with special attention given to the Greek case.

Presenting: Hannah O'Flynn

Commenting: Hubert Gromny, Litchi Ly Friedrich, Raúl Silva & Francisco Mojica

POTATO FISTS: Round 1

Getting to Know You: Everything You Wanted to Know About Ireland and England but You were Afraid to Ask (the year dot - 1852)

This session looked at the long history of the colonial relationship between Ireland and England. In it we discussed the events and legal precedents established in the construction of pre-colonial Europe, and their relation to the constitution of the colonial systems that followed.

Presenting: Ian Nolan

Commenting: Hannah O'Flynn, Litchi Ly Friedrich, Rafael Mayu Nolte, Raúl Silva, Gizem Koç

VLADMAIL RECORDS vol.3: ENGULFING

This session turned around Hannah O’Flynn’s developing research for her thesis. The central question of this session was to look at how the fiction of the infinite reproduction of capital has been historically constructed. To do this, we examined the mechanism of the spatial frontier of appropriation, a.k.a. the colonial project of capitalism. Attention was be put on the exploitation of the colonised subject and the woman’s body, agricultural technology and the acceleration of “natural” reproductive time into the time of capital. This was done in dialogue with the Hong Kongnese horror film ‘Dumplings’, by Fruit Chan.

Presenting: Hannah O'Flynn

Commenting: Amitabh Rai, Raúl Silva, Sepideh Behruzian, Rafael Mayu Nolte, Litchi Ly Friedrich & Ian Nolan

SEAGULL CRAP ISLANDS

This session was on Tupac Amaru, the change of paradigm and the modernisation of Peru. An introduction of Peruvian history, we looked at pre-Hispanic approaches to economy, sociology, family, etc. in relation to colonisation in the 16th century. This led to discussing the process of modernisation and how structures of social inequality are based in history. As well, the change of paradigm in relation to the landscape due to Christianity/Catholicism, which transformed the relationship between nature and God, and allowed for systems of extraction to exist. Towards the end of the session we looked at the relationship of some political and revolutionary movements, ideas and groups from the 1950s onwards with the pre-Hispanic cultures will be presented.

Presenting: Raúl Silva

Commenting: Hubert Gromny, Litchi Ly Friedrich & Hannah O'Flynn

COPY PASTE PROPAGANDA: IBERIAN EDITION

On the first session we looked the Spanish Inquisition, its structure and significance within its contemporary time and the present narrative of the Islamic presence on the Iberian peninsula. We also looked at Islamic architecture on the Iberian peninsula, where we discussed the impossibility of segregating influences. Through this we observed a long history of aesthetics’ use as a political tool, the Great Mosque of Cordoba being a significant example. We finally looked at the bureaucratisation of the Inquisition, and its implications beyond its geographic and temporal frame.

Presenting: Litchi Ly Friedrich

Commenting: Sepideh Behruzian, Raúl Silva & Hannah O’Flynn