Workshop with Karin Michalski

In 2003, the activist group Feel Tank Chicago coined the slogan »Depressed? It Might be Political« and called for demonstrations in pyjamas and bath robes. Queer feminist theoreticians, including Ann Cvetkovich, Lauren Berlant and Heather Love, who belong to Feel Tanks in various US American cities, are discussing a political approach »public feelings« to emotions like depression and »feeling bad« in the context of neoliberal working and living conditions, transphobia and homophobia, sexism, postcolonial hierarchies and racism. They address, in particular, »activists, academics and artists, who are dedicated to social change, but often feel discouraged, frustrated or out of place«.
– Ann Cvetkovich

The workshop will depart from a joint debate about current artistic video and film projects that employ images and narratives in order to politicize a »feeling bad«. These films often reject strictly defined attributes of identity, and in their reference to negative feelings offer, as »queer« does, an opportunity of establishing new alliances.
Artists and filmmakers, and everybody interested in feminist queer topics are invited to participate. The workshop will be based on the film curatorial programmes curator Karin Michalski has made for exhibitions, film festivals, and queer art and theory conferences in the past years, including the Queer Art Conference freaky Berlin in 2009 (curated by Renate Lorenz), the Queer Again? Power, Politics and Ethics conference at Berlin Humboldt University in 2010, and the film programme Feeling Bad within the live event programme Chewing the Scenery (curated by Andrea Thal) at the Venice Biennale in 2011.