SVR Gender Studies and Margherita von Brentano Center for Gender Studies, FU Berlin presented the opening panel of our workshop COLLECTIVE < RE > VISION on July 16, 2021. Writing can be hard, lonely, and underappreciated. Taking up the theme of collective writing and collaboration, we aim to trouble the preconception of writing as the loneliest of tasks and focus on contemporary and collective modes of writing in research, art, and literature. Bringing together a group of interdisciplinary writers interested in gender and sexuality, we will think together about research, writing, and publishing. The panel discussion considered writing from queer perspective and explore some of the practical, structural, conceptual and creative aspects of writing, revising and organizing collectively.

Is writing still the loneliest task?

The panel was moderated by SVR organizers Tunay Altay and Daniela Petrosino.

Panelists:

Irem Aydin is a Berlin-based freelance theater director, writer, editor and community organizer. She studied Spanish Language and Literature at Istanbul University and attended the master’s program in Theater Creation at University Carlos III de Madrid in Spain. Her professional experience mainly focuses on directing and writing plays, organizing events, workshops, creative tasks, moderation and the issues of LGBTQI*, immigration, diversity, inclusion and equity.

nina friedman is currently pursuing a master in Gender Studies from the University of Utrecht and Universidad de Granada. Their present research involves engaging black and trans* feminist thought and abolition theory in considering an ethical orientation to the question of justice.

Omar Kasmani is a post-doctoral research associate in social and cultural anthropology at the Collaborative Research Center, Affective Societies at Freie Universität, Berlin. His work pursues critical and queer notions of intimacy, religious affect and post-migrant be/longing via the study of contemporary Muslim lifeworlds. His first monograph Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy and Saintly Affects in Pakistan is forthcoming with Duke University Press.

Ghiwa Sayegh is a queer feminist writer, independent publisher, and archivist. She is the founding editor of Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, and the co-founder of Intersectional Knowledge Publishers. She is pursuing an MA in gender studies at Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis. She is passionate about queer theory, transnational circulations, and imagined or unknown histories.

Ier Vermeulen is a Gender Studies Research Master’s student at Utrecht University. They are currently working on the topic of Trans*ness as Radical Ontological Refusal, engaging with embodied poetic non-binary writings of(f) the body. Their research interests include trans* embodiment, ontology, and Radical Black Feminist Scholarship.

The recording of the panel is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_sMJj8Xhtw&t=8s, for those who missed it.