Kin City · Reimagining Urban Space within Ecological Limits · October 17-19 · ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics
Much of the world’s population now depends on cities as places to live. But for a growing number of people, cities are not safe places. Threats range from massive pollution to heat waves and rising sea levels. Cities are largely responsible for these problems. As ‘engines of growth,’ cities drive colonial capitalist globalization. One consequence of this process: devastated ecosystems return the stress they have been subjected to, for example in the form of the increasing violence of climate change.
How can we politicize the dual role of cities as both drivers and ‘victims’ of the disasters of our time? How can we reclaim and reinvent cities as infrastructures of both human and other-than-human life? How can we connect urban and ecological struggles? At “Kin City” researchers, artists, and activists will search for answers.
Conference · Debora Darabi, Sandra Huning, Farhana Sultana, and more
The City as Environmental Hell: Reports, Reflections, and Alternatives
International conference
Date: Thursday, October 17 · 9 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Location: ZK/U, Siemensstraße 27, 10551 Berlin
09:00 a.m.: Registration and breakfast
10:00 a.m.: Welcome address · Magdalena Taube and Krystian Woznicki (berlinergazette.de)
10:15 a.m.: Keynote · “Urban Planning and ‘Making Kin’: Reflections on Multispecies Environmental Justice in Spatial Planning” · Sandra Huning (Technical University Dortmund) · Moderation: Manuela Zechner
11:00 a.m.: Panel · “Contested Urban Ecologies in Athens: Caring Communities, Environmental Racism, and Green Policing” · Nelli Kambouri (Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences) and Dafni Karavola (Reporters United) · Moderation: Sotiris Sideris
12:00 p.m.: Talk · “Capitalism and Environmental Stress in Berlin” · Debora Darabi (Charité University Hospital Berlin) · Response · “Environmental (In)Justice in Berlin” · Ellen Gomes (activist) · Moderation: Ela Kagel
12:45 p.m.: Project presentation · “Turning Shopping Malls into Care Centers” · Paula Mikat and Cléo Mieulet (Sorge ins ParkCenter)
01:15 p.m.: Lunch break
03:00 p.m.: Talk · “Urban Environmentalism in Sarajevo: Limits and Possibilities” · Svjetlana Nedimović (Riječ i djelo). Moderation: Iskra Krstić
03:30 p.m.: Project presentation · “Balkans as Mining Colony: Rebooting Urban Eco-Struggles” · ZBOR (Združeni Balkanski Otpor i Rad)
04:00 p.m.: Talk · “Kin Cities in a Settler State – Whose Kin?” · Christine Winter (University of Otago/Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka) · Moderation: Rose Wanjiku
04:45 p.m.: Talk · “Climate (In)Justice in the Megacities of the Global South” · Farhana Sultana (Syracuse University) · Moderation: Magdalena Taube
05:30 p.m.: Dinner and opening of the bar
07:00 p.m.: Performance-lecture and installation · “Chuquicamata: Necropolitics and Autopoiesis of a Mining City” · Constanza Mendoza
Registration
Free entry, limited seats, conference registration required by October 15. Vegan catering is optional and will be available by reservation only. The daily package (breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee/tea) costs 25 Euro, which must be paid in advance.
Performance Lecture and Installation · Constanza Mendoza
Chuquicamata: Necropolitics and Autopoiesis of a Mining City
Performance lecture and installation: Constanza Mendoza
Date: Thursday, October 17 · 7 p.m.
Location: ZK/U, Siemensstraße 27, 10551 Berlin
The Atacama Desert in Chile is marked as a colonial and imperial ‘empty’ space, conquered, occupied, plundered, and polluted for centuries. The first mineral extracted was silver, mined by the Spanish Empire in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. In the 19th century, sodium nitrate was ‘discovered,’ which led to the Pacific War with Bolivia and Peru. Atacama and the nitrate industry ended up under the Chilean flag, but in British hands until the late 1940s, when Germany invented synthetic nitrate. The Great Copper Mine emerged in the late 1940s as an alternative to the crisis in the nitrate industry.
US private investment developed the Great Copper Mine in Atacama and the creation of the mining town of Chuquicamata. Constanza Mendoza was born in Chuquicamata in the year that President Salvador Allende nationalized copper mining. Using a multi-scalar approach, the artist relates the history and politics of Chuquicamata to her own family, linking times, spaces, and urban ecologies that have been separated for too long.
Registration
Free entry, limited seats, registration for the performance lecture required by October 15.
Oral Storytelling · Cata von Noxen, Sara Petrolova, Model Y. Schrottkiste
VWagner City-Edda
Oral storytelling: Cata von Noxen, Sara Petrolova, and Model Y. Schrottkiste
Date: Friday, October 18 · 7 p.m.
Location: ZK/U, Siemensstraße 27, 10551 Berlin
A look from the future to the present. Cata von Noxen, Sara Petrolova and Model Y. Schrottkiste tell and decipher the forgotten “VWagner City-Edda.” How will future generations view all the hesitation and procrastination in the face of today’s climate change? How hopeless will the current situation appear from the perspective of the future? Is the city alive, dead, or even undead? Do we really want to know what the smart city thinks about us? Has everything been gambled away? What happened to the belief in the omnipotence of our own actions?
Registration
Free entry, limited seats, registration for the oral storytelling event required by October 15.
Sari-Sari Night · Pepe Dayaw and Special Guests
The City of Milk, Honey, and Other Leftovers
Sari-Sari night: Pepe Dayaw and special guests
Date: Saturday, October 19 · 7 p.m.
Location: ZK/U, Siemensstraße 27, 10551 Berlin
A short walk in the streets and around every corner you can find old clothes waiting to find their new emperors. There are renegades of the hunter- gatherer, scavenging food from various surplus coffers. There are recycled ghosts that come alive at night, armed with leftover hunger. The nextdoor neighbor harvests honey from her backyard. Milk is cheap and so is the chance for a new tomorrow. And then there is high-quality coconut oil. The city is a lush forest, all you need is love, determination, and a proper visa.
In an auto-ethnographic pseudo-report cum variety show of sorts, Pepe Dayaw pays tribute to Berlin – the city that has become their home base for the past eleven years.
Since moving to Europe in 2010, Dayaw has been fashioning autofictional performances based on their fluid perspective of a Filipino queer migrant subject.
In 2012, Dayaw began a series of leftover dinners in private homes in Madrid, creating impromptu meals out of food found in refrigerators and pantries and what the guests brought. In 2013, Dayaw moved to Berlin and continued to perform cooking (with what is there) as Nowhere Kitchen, eventually traveling to four continents. Working with and queering themes of nostalgia, home, memory, and embodiment, they fuse different folklores; primarily using the arts of flavor, movement, music, and critical hospitality to craft stories through improvised scores and unusual scenarios.
In addition to independently developing their own vocabulary of dance and ethics of movement, Dayaw is a textile/fashion/costume designer, writer, and a karaoke-loving amateur singer.
Registration
Free entry, limited seats, registration for the Sari-Sari Night by October 15.
Registration
Workshops · Svjetlana Nedimović, Claudia Núñez, Dzina Zhuk, and more
24 hour hackathon
The “Kin City” Festival offers five workshops, each with a 24-hour program: “Caring Urban Ecologies,” “Contesting ‘Green’ Coloniality,” “Undoing Urban Borders,” “Hacking Liquid Tree City,” and “War-Torn Urban Ecologies.” Here, we will bring together scholars, activists, and cultural workers to explore and construct the (potential) intersection of environmental and urban struggles from multiple perspectives.
The workshops will feature guests invited by the organizers. Additional participants can register for one of the five tracks until October 1. More information is available here. Participants are always chosen for their diverse backgrounds, so what comes out of the hackathon-style workshops is always surprising. Past results have included podcasts, games, interactive narratives, artwork, videos, and more.
Publication · Magdalena Taube and Krystian Woznicki
Urban Ecologies, Infrastructures of Life, and Internationalist Struggles
Text: Magdalena Taube and Krystian Woznicki
Publisher: kuda.org, Novi Sad
Our planet of cities is trapped in an economic-ecological vicious circle. To break out, we must expand critical reappraisals of the histories and continuities of colonial-capitalist urbanization and connect urban and environmental struggles across borders.
This 100-page publication is an elaboration of the festival themes and an extended introduction to the “Kin City” text series that will be published in BG throughout 2024. It includes artwork by the Colnate Group and is available as an open access book in English, German, and Bosnian-Serbo-Croatian. You can order a print copy for 10 Euros plus shipping at office[at]kuda[dot]org.
Organizer · Funders · Partners
Celebrating the 25th anniversary of BG | berlinergazette.de, the “Kin City” festival is organized by the non-profit Berliner Gazette e.V. and funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, the German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb, and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
The event is a cooperation with ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics and Satellit. Outreach partners include: Berlin Journals – On the History and Present State of the City, Common Ecologies, Harun Farocki Institut, Kuda.org, LeftEast, Supermarkt, Undisciplined Environments, and transcript.
This website features texts and photos by BG, artworks by Colnate Group, and archive material by Codelco. License: CC by NC 4.0. See for imprint and privacy policy below.
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