This symposium explores the possibilities and limitations of conceptual activism. What does it mean to engage in politics through concepts? Does ‘conceptual’ imply that this kind of activism has less practical relevance or lacks material power? To what extent do concepts imply embodied practices and material relations? Which concepts are interesting from queer and trans theoretical and political perspectives?
The focus is on how the dynamics of queering and transing, or intersectional, decolonial practices, challenge the separation of academia, art, and activism. Inspired by Davina Cooper’s work, conceptual activism is seen as a way of imagining otherwise, involving the materialization and embodiment of concepts. Bringing marginalized concepts into practice can help to create alternative futures.
In today’s conflictual times, when the risks and dangers posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, and extractivist racial capitalism are often overlooked, with authoritarian politics and regimes acting as the driving force behind these issues, the symposium interrogates conceptual activism as a counter-hegemonic ontology and epistemology. The objective is to fight the normalization of material, symbolic and epistemic violence as modus operandi in everyday life and doing politics. The question is: Can queering and transing as a dynamic interweaving of power and desire advance trans*versal justice and sustain critical movements against domination?
In English
10:30 Morning Coffee
11:00 – 11:30 Welcome
Antke Antek Engel & the Organizing Team
11:30 – 12:15 Collective Reading
Davina Cooper’s Article on Conceptual Activism
12:15 – 12:30 Coffee Break
12:30 – 14:00 Workshop I
Navigating Conflictual Consensus:
A Playful Approximation to a Conceptually Activist Term
Friederike (Fred) Landau-Donnelly, Alexandra Papademetriou, Sifen Wibell
14:00 – 15.30 Lunch Break
15:30 – 17:00 Workshop II
Becoming the Chimera: Trans*Ecology in Practice
Rethinking Nature, Bodies, and Metamorphosis
Asmae Ourkiya
17:00 – 17:15 Coffee Break
17:15 – 18:15 Video Tour through the Exhibition (live-stream available)
Desbatismos/Debaptisms:
Dissident Cartographies and Artistic Practices of Deprogramming
Co-Curator Fer Nogueira in Conversation with Rafael Baioni
18:15 – 19:00 Time for a Cup of T, Cool Down & Time to Recover
19:00 Discussion (live-stream available)
Conceptual Activism:
decolonial – trans_ecological – queer
With
Aylon Cohen
Gergana Mineva
Yv Nay
Asmae Ourkiya
Alexandra Papademetriou
Rubia Salgado
Ferdiansiyah Thajib
Sifen Wibell
Organized by
The Institute for Queer Theory (iQt) in cooperation with ICI Berlin. Organized by Sagniquee Banerjee, Antke Antek Engel, Karolina (kasu keys) Heck, Friederike (Fred) Landau-Donnelly, Rafael Baioni, Samu/elle Striewski.
The symposium is part of Queer Cohabitations, a series of events celebrating the Institute for Queer Theory’s 20th-anniversary (March-October 2026).
Image credit © Film still from Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz: (No) Time, 2020