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Lensbased invites you to another online event:

Conversation with Silvia Federici

23.01.2021, 13:30

The seminar will be live-streamed on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lensbasedclass

Lensbased invites you to an online seminar with Susan Kelly from Goldsmiths University of London

‘Financialisation, Micro-politics and the post-Covid University’
12.01.2021, 13:30

“An informal session to discuss the intensification of financialisation processes in UK universities since Covid crisis, using Goldsmiths as a case study. The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed already fragile marketised universities in the UK to the brink of bankruptcy. After the withdrawal of funding for all arts and humanities study in 2010, many universities in England have become entirely dependent on student fees (and therefore debt) as well as income from real estate such a student accommodation to fund education and research. Competition between institutions, customer satisfaction and the ‘student experience’ have become watchwords of the sector, staff have become increasingly precarious and overworked. When the Covid crisis hit in March 2020 this process was accelerated. The right wing Tory government announced in July a new government ‘restructuring arm’ for universities who fall into financial trouble: loans on the condition of closing ‘low value degrees’ and of ensuring ‘free speech’ on campuses. The mendacity of this ‘offer’ was matched by the luring of students back to campuses in September 2020 with the promise of ‘blended online and face to face learning’, with many students forced almost immediately to quarantine for weeks in student accommodation policed by often over-zealous security guards. It became clear to many that the promise of beginning university life with all of its sociality was a lie, perpetuated to ensure fees were paid and rent contracts signed to keep the sector afloat. Staff, students have been stitched into this new arrangement in a variety of ways that make imagining resistance and autonomy incredibly difficult. Yet, resistance is brewing, building on many years of staff-student solidarity, creativity and refusal to accept that this is as good as it gets. In the session we will be joined by current final year BA Fine Art students who built a student strike hub in the 2019-20 staff strikes and who are currently working on a documentary about resistance to the destruction of art schools and university education in the UK. We can discuss how these alliances can work and how we kick the banks off campus and reclaim education as a common good.”

The seminar will be live-streamed on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lensbasedclass

Lensbased invites you to an online seminar with Dr. Simon Strick from ZeM Brandenburg:

‘Media Technologies of Digital Fascists’
15.12.2020, 13:30

“In this presentation, I am going to discuss some thoughts on the visual, media-specific and memetic registers that online activists of the Alt-Right use in their highly effective communication. Introducing analytical concepts like “reflexive fascism”, “attention economy”, and “memetic knowledge”, various figures, memes, and styles of US-American Alt-Right propaganda will be analysed for affect, gender, meanings, and possible intervention points. The seminar takes the time to do some mood work, i.e. look for affective responses in the group discussion.”

The seminar will be live-streamed on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lensbasedclass

LET’S SEE

Hardenbergstraße 33, / Room 115.  / 14:00h.

October______________
– 29. // !!SHIFTED FROM 22nd!!

November_______________
– 5.
– 19.

December______________
– 3.
– 17.

January_______________
– 14.
– 28.

February_______________
– 11.

Hardenbergstraße 33, / Room 115.  / 14:00h.

April______________
– 16
– 30

Mai_______________
– 14
– 28

June______________
– 11
– 25

July_______________
– 9

It is closely linked to our DOCUMENTING TROUBLE workshop series.

dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y
Belgium/France 1997, Director: Johan Grimponprez, 68 min, digital betacam, eng. original 
“dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is a stunning Timeline-Musical. A Multi-Source-Footage-Montage. Or as Slavoj Žižek used to write about it: Holiday from History“*bb

Followed as always by attractions like conversations, Live-Music (this time I am happy to announce our mates Can&Georgina in the audio-section!!!), and drinks.

Fieday / Nov 2nd / 21:00
Neue Nachbarschaft
>basement<
Beusselstr. 26
10553 Berlin

We encourage you to come and looking very much forward to spend the night with you!

Documenting Troubles, semester workshop

The coming semester will revolve around the documentation of troubles, and the troubles of documenting. We’ll look at artistic practices that employ a notion of the document with the aim of providing a lesson and a proof (as in the verb’s etymological roots) so as to contest existing narratives or shed light on ones that are repressed. But we will also, no less importantly, trouble documenting — questioning and rethinking notions of veracity, realism and facticity, performativity and fiction. In an age during which imminent ecological disaster is denied, prevalent systemic racism occluded and extreme levels of economic inequality masked by elaborate tax evasion schemes, the urge to document, to insist on truth claims however provisional, seems vital.

Which of these terms might still feel relevant, and why? Can performative practices be considered documentary? Or are documentary practices by definition performative? Can fabricated images make truth claims? Is truth by definition fabricated? The semester will be an invitation to revisit some of these troubles, and stay with them.

For the first class meeting please prepare a short project outline (one-page max.), which sketches an idea that you wish to develop during the semester. It can, but doesn’t have to, relates to these questions. It can be rough, loose or speculative. We will follow the projects as they develop during the class meetings, with the aim of eventually staging an exhibition together (timing and format TBA), related to the questions and discussions that develop throughout the semester.

The meeting will be dedicated to student/participants presentations, encouraging the development of new work.

Series of meetings will be hosted by Lensbased class which will be facilitated by Boaz Levin. Meetings will be open for public and participants will be expected to be fully engaged with the process.

Hardenbergstraße 33, / Room 115. 
30.Okt.
INTRODUCTION OF THE PROJECT

13.Nov.   14:00

27.Nov.  14:00

11.Dez. 14:00

15.Jan.  14:00

22.Jan. 14:00

5. Febr.  14:00

Classmeetings will take place in R 115 / 14:00h 

 Hardenbergstraße 33, 10623 Berlin