Activities

> June 2023
Double Bind Postcolonial
Critical perspectives on art and cultural education
Postcolonial perspectives in the art world and in cultural education are booming. Yet these concepts are mostly used without a deeper engagement with them. More comprehensive debates around and with theories of postcolonialism are urgently needed, for example, to expose the impositions of dominant Eurocentric exhibition and mediation practices. The contributions to this volume illuminate the responsibilities of art and art education from an explicitly postcolonial perspective. The focus is on the "double bind" that pervades the field and manifests itself in a dilemmatic position between subversion and affirmation. In doing so, discriminatory practices in the field are unmasked as well as an (auto)critical theory development is advanced.

> August 2023
Forming Hegemony
Pedagogical Connections to Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci is considered the most cited Italian author in the humanities and social sciences since Machiavelli. The examination of Gramsci not only shapes cultural studies, but is also the basis for perspectives of critical pedagogy. This is also increasingly true for the German-language discourse, where a systematic reception of Gramsci's work in educational science has so far been lacking.
This volume brings together current transdisciplinary and transnational contributions and is intended as an impetus for further thinking - in a Gramscian way.

> May 2023
Book launch: Freund*innenschaft. Dreiklang einer politischen Praxis.
The event will take place as a hybrid event. During the evening, the authors will present the book and their ideas and look forward to a discussion with the audience.

> March 2023
Just stay composed.
Two places. Straddled between two societies, two forces, connected with friends, languages, sounds, tenderness across half the globe - on good days the I floats. On bad ones, the burden of the situation and the coldness of the surrounding society are unbearable.
Just stay composed. Do not pose. Just stay composed.


> February 2023
Zwischenwelt, In-between World. In 1986, the Muhammad Iqbal Monument was erected in Munich, commemorating the poet, philosopher and mentor of the independent postcolonial state of Pakistan. Iqbal, who completed his doctorate in Munich in 1907, lived in Bavaria for many years and died in Pakistan in 1938.
In 1962, Gani Bilir arrived in Kiel as a so-called Gastarbeiter. His payslips, which are visible in the film, are discovered by the filmmaker in the family archive. They are a document of the inhumane working conditions of migrant workers and their lack of recognition as humans in Germany.
A variety of places, moments, and snatches of historical memory are woven in the film into a particular decolonial view of our time. The telling of history and the politics of memory in Germany are oriented to a white dominant society. The longings, experiences and struggles of Black people, People of Color, Indigenous people and migrants are marginalised. Three sisters, Saboura, Basira and Kirat, gather at historically significant sites in Bavarian history. They approach these stories with their own biographies and the sculptures by the artist Ahu Dural. As poets, the children of migrant workers, thinkers they stand for the many stories of resistance and biographies of the in-between world.
> January 2023
In the Green Salon of the Volksbühne, Bahar Oghalai, Veronika Patočková, Sabina Salimovska, Hila Latifi and Leila Haghighat (moderator) talk about education and resistance. Trovania Delille makes a performance.
> January 2022
Carolina Tamayo Rojas and Trovania Delille talk about education under postcolonial conditions at Widerstand und Widerrede.
Archive
> März 2022
The b-Lab* presents the book in Leipzig: Lalitha Chamakalayil and Leila Haghighat on "Education - A Postcolonial Manifesto".
> Januar 2022
The b-Lab* has a contribution as part of the podcast "Resistance & Widerrede" on the occasion of the "International Day of Education". (Trovania Delille & Carolina Tamayo Rojas speak on "Education under Postcolonial Conditions".
> November 2021
Contribution at the International Marxist Feminist Conference: (María do Mar Castro Varela, Meryem Choukri, Leila Haghighat, Saphira Shure & Carolina Tamayo-Rojas speak on "KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, DIFFERENCE AND VULNERABILITY").
> November 2021
The b-Lab* is a cooperation partner* in the third phase of "Schools of Tomorrow 3" (SoT) of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). In November 2021, the bildungsLab (Samia Aden, Narmada Saraswati, Saphira Shure, Purnima Vater and María do Mar Castro Varela) will present critical positions on racism in schools and education.
> October 2021
The b-Lab* launches its own publication series titled "resistance and desire" with UNRAST Publishing.
> September 2021
The b-Lab* has a contribution in the project URGENT PEDAGOGIES (written by María do Mar Castro Varela & Saphira Shure).
> September 2019 (14th and 15th)
"Reading Bodies! Corpoliteracy in Art, Education and Everyday Life", cooperation with the House of World Cultures.
> October 2018 (4th till 6th)
The b-Lab* was represented by Samia Aden & Carolina Tamayo Rojas, who spoke about "Ethical Tensions in Research Practices in the Global South and North" and María do Mar Castro Varela, who discussed the issue of "Epistemic Violence" in the 2nd Conference of the Refugee Research Network at the Center for Flight and Migration
> August 2018 (5th and 6th)
KNEE-DEEP Theory Meeting No 1 in Berlin. The b-Lab* will be reading Spivaks: An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012): just as we learn languages best when we are fully immersed in them and spend days just listening to and speaking the new language, so it is with theories. We will dive knee-deep into Spivak's theorizing this weekend by reading her texts, listening to lectures, watching films, and discussing, discussing, discussing....
> Juni 2018 (13th)
Closing Festival Schools of Tomorrow (SoT), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin: b-Lab* will offer a workshop (14h-16h) entitled "Tampering with the Teaching Machine" at the closing event of SoT. In table talks we will discuss education, racism and power with participants*. View table talk topics here.
> December 2018 (14th and 15th)
"Heterogeneity in Refuge-Related Educational Work - Analytical and Practical Perspectives." Annual conference of the SchlaU Workshop for Migration Education in Munich.
> December 2018
The bildungsLab* speaks on the topic "Re-Thematizations. Views from the bildungsLab*". Participating are: Saphira Shure: "Race, Nation & School, or: Why Schools Are Racist"; Lalitha Chamakalayi: "I Didn't Know....! On Not Addressing Deportations"; Arzu Çiçek: "In the Tension between Prevailing Structures and Alterity"; María do Mar Castro Varela: "Shattering Desire and Counterpointing Solidarity. Postcolonial Thematizing Practices."