diffrakt | zentrum für theoretische peripherie

Next week, the #sofar reading group will once again be discussing some older stories (or “classics”): • Kurt Vonnegut, The Big Trip Up Yonder / Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1954/1968) • Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron (1961) • R. A. Lafferty, Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1966) If you’d like to join us, whether this time or later, please send a brief note to [email protected] with the subject line “SO FAR”. Meetings of the group take place on Monday evenings every three weeks, sometimes at diffrakt, always online, and discussions are normally in English. #sciencefiction #speculativefiction #bookstagram #diffrakt

Groundwork A Workshop on Reimagining Soil and Collective Life Saturday, 23 May 2026, 12 to 3 pm studio nagelneu, prinzessinnengarten kollektiv, Hermannstraße 103, 12051 Berlin Workshop with Sophia Doyle | Åsa Sonjasdotter As part of the series #damageddeliberations, this workshop brings together artist @asa_sonjasdotter and researcher @_catastrophia_ for a collective inquiry into land, agriculture, and their entanglement with political and economic power. Taking place at @studio_nagelneu at @prinzessinnengarten_kollektiv in Berlin Neukölln, the workshop explores soil as both material and metaphor: as a site of extraction and regeneration, of ownership and resistance, and of contested meanings – from industrial agribusiness and colonial food systems to nationalist appropriations of “land and soil”. Together, we will consider how questions of soil open up broader debates about democracy, access, and collective responsibility in times of ecological crisis. As capacity is limited, please register by sending an email to [email protected]. Funded with the generous support of the Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt. Image: Åsa Sonjasdotter #cultivation #workshop #prinzessinnengarten #diffrakt

Utopische Unterernährung Samstag, 16. Mai 2026, 19:30 Uhr diffrakt | zentrum für theoretische peripherie Gespräch mit Leonhard Müllner (Total Refusal) | Thomas Spies | Ervehea Ziza Mark Fisher stellte fest, dass die Depression eine Annahme von Welt sei. Massenmedien wollen diese Annahme über ihre Dystopieerzählungen in Vergnügen umwandeln. Gerade Film und Games wirken heute wie besessen von Endzeit, die Postapokalyspe tritt als das dominante Genre der Unterhaltungsindustrie auf. Ist es das Ende der Menschheit, das wir mit Zombiegeschichten oder verpesteten Stadtruinen herbeifiebern, oder träumt der Kapitalismus unbewusst von der Zerstörung als politische Katharsis? Und gibt es hier Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede in Film und Videospielen? Moderiert von @digital_stranger_ , diskutiert die Drehbuchautorin und Regisseurin @eeeeervehea gemeinsam mit dem Spieleforscher und Medienaktivisten @legobert_link_ von @totalrefusal über die Abwesenheit von Utopie in den gegenwärtigen Erzählmedien Film und Videospiel. #utopie #dystopie #postapocalypse #diffrakt Bild: Dying Light 2, Total Refusal

The #storytellings reading group continues its engagement with the writing of history: • Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past , Power and the Production of History (1995) “We are never as steeped in history as when we pretend not to be, but if we stop pretending we may gain in understanding what we lose in false innocence. Naiveté is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naiveté is always a mistake. Th is book is about history and power. It deals with the many ways in which the production of historical narratives involves the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means for such production. The forces I will expose are less visible than gunfire, class property, or political crusades. I want to argue that they are no less powerful. I also want to reject both the naive proposition that we are prisoners of our pasts and the pernicious suggestion that history is whatever we make of it. History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.” (p. xxiii) As a bonus, we’ll also watch (as much as possible of) Raoul Peck’s Exterminate All the Brutes (2021), partly inspired by Trouillot’s work. If you would like to join us, whether now or in the future, please send a short note to [email protected] with the subject line “Storytellings”. Meetings of the reading group take place on Monday evenings every three weeks, at diffrakt and online, and discussions are normally in English. Image courtesy of @amentrupwomelsd . #history #power #michelrolphtrouillot #diffrakt

Trees and Termites, Ghosts and Goddesses Digital Mythologies for Troubled Times Wednesday, 13 May 2026, 7.30 pm diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery Screening with works by AFSAR x DAVRA | Anan Fries | Hua Wang | Wendi Yan | Zhang Xu Zhan Conversation with Anan Fries | Hua Wang | Nora Wölfing Curated by Nora Wölfing What stories do trees tell each other? How do termites celebrate a feast? What does the passenger pigeon say to its extinctors? In the midst of the ongoing climate crisis and across anthropocene discourses, contemporary art has been looking for new ways to tell the tales of our planet as a complex, interconnected, multiple being, where humans are just one species among many, but also to revisit historical narratives that continue to shape our worldviews. By means of speculative narration, artists conjure natural deities, rework premodern ontologies, and reactivate suppressed or forgotten ways of knowing. Digital media, in this context, becomes a tool for storytelling that exceeds linear time — interweaving past, present, and possible futures. Can we create new myths for these troubled and troubling times? Trees and Termites, Ghosts and Goddesses | Digital Mythologies for Troubled Times brings together five video works that explore these questions through interspecies relations, speculative narratives, and forms of more-than-human storytelling. The videos showcase a carrier bag of speculative fiction, opening discussions about media arts’ capacity to create new tales in the echo chambers of our time, inviting audiences into a shared space of imagination, reflection, and communal tale-telling. Schedule: Introduction by @noraganli @afsar_asianfeministstudio x @davracollective , “Proxy Conference: In Forest“ (2023), 35 mins @zhangxu_zhan , “Termite Feeding Show” (2025), 15 mins @huawang_wanghua , “Through the Eyes of Trees” (2025), 6 mins @wendiyan , “Dream of Walnut Palaces” (2025), 10 mins @hairygaze , “R.I.P. – Redemption“ (2024), 10 mins #mythology #speculation #videoart #art #diffrakt

Post-Mayday Book Market Saturday, 2 May 2026, 3 to 6 pm diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery Books Cakes Conversations On 2 May 2026, from 3–6 pm, diffrakt and the @kritischlesen collective invite you to a joint second-hand book sale. Come by, browse, hang out! There will be a curated selection of books from select theory publishers and from the depths of our shelves as well as review copies from kritisch-lesen.de. All proceeds will support the respective collectives. There will also be a children’s book table (supporting the respective children)! The perfect setup to unwind after May Day and discover new reads – and of course there will be a donation-based bar as well! (Please note: The image is mainly representative of the reason for the book market, not necessarily of the books for sale.) #books #bookstagram #kritischlesen #diffrakt

Vidim Te (I See You) Monday, 4 May 2026, 7.30 pm diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery Screening and conversation with Sam Lubicz Part of the Dalmatian archipelago, Iž is a small island (12.2 km long). Its largest village, Veli Iž, is home to fewer than 300 year-round residents. Through interviews with locals (aged 12 to 99), and a mix of new and archival footage, the film looks at local traditions and histories, personal nostalgias, and adapting to rapidly changing times. Residents reflect on environmental concerns – rising sea levels, abandoned cars, and the infrastructure demands of a growing summer tourist season. With outward migration on the rise and elder generations passing on, the film considers what futures await small island communities like Iž. The film will be shown in English, Croatian, German with English subtitles. After the film, there will be a conversation with the director @slubicz . This event is part of the series #damageddeliberations. #infrastructure #art #film #diffrakt

More #bureaucracy with the #counterinfrastructures reading group: • Cornelia Vismann, Files. Law and Media Technology (2000/2008) “This book focuses on the media-technological conditions of files and recording devices with a view to their largest area of application, the law. More precisely, it will investigate how files control the formalization and differentiation of the law. Consider, as a kind of vanishing point, the Rechtsstaat, the fully developed state governed by the rule of law composed of the abstract law on one side and the agencies that set down and enforce the law on the other. Files process the separation of the law into authority and administration. They contribute to the formation of the three major entities on which the law is based: truth, state, and subject. This inquiry is therefore not concerned with the content of the files stored in agencies, institutions, or enterprises, but with the part that official records have in the emergence of the notions of truth, the concepts of state, and the constructions of the subject in Western history.” (p. xii) If you’d like to join us (whether now or in the future), please send a brief note to [email protected] with the subject line “counter | infrastructures”. Meetings of the reading group take place on Tuesday evenings every three weeks, at diffrakt and online, and discussions are normally in English. #readinggroup #bookstagram #diffrakt

Coming up with the #sofar reading group – two stories, fifty years apart: • Samuel R. Delany, Among the Blobs (1976) • H.H. Pak, Never Eaten Vegetables (2026) If you’d like to join us, whether this time or later, please send a brief note to [email protected] with the subject line “SO FAR”. Meetings of the group take place on Monday evenings every three weeks, sometimes at diffrakt, always online, and discussions are normally in English. #sciencefiction #speculativefiction #bookstagram #diffrakt

For it’s next session, the #storytellings reading group will pick up a brief reference in Walter Benjamin’s „Theses on the Concept of History“ and turn toward cosmo-historical speculation with • Louis-Auguste Blanqui, Eternity by the Stars. An Astronomical Hypothesis (1872) “We share the destiny of the planets, our nourishing mothers within whose bosom this inexhaustible existence accomplishes itself. The stellar systems carry us along within their immortality. Being the only organization of matter, they possess its fixity and its mobility all at once. Each of them is but a strike of lightning, but such strikes illuminate space eternally. The universe is eternal as a whole as well as in each of its fractions, be it a star or a speck of dust. Such it is at this very minute, such it was in the past, and such it will always be, without one atom or one second of variation. There is nothing new under the sun. Everything that is being accomplished has been and will be accomplished. However, although it is self-identical, the universe is not immutable or immobile; the universe of then is not the universe of now, and the universe of now will not be the one that the future will bring. On the contrary, it transforms continually. Every one of its parts is in an uninterrupted movement. Although they are destroyed here, they reproduce themselves simultaneously elsewhere, as new individuals.” (p. 143) If you would like to join us, please send a short note to [email protected] with the subject line “Storytellings”. Meetings of the reading group take place on Monday evenings every three weeks, at diffrakt and online, and discussions are normally in English. #astronomy #cosmology #louisaugusteblanqui #diffrakt

Ouro Negro é a gente (Black Gold Is the People) Wednesday, 22 April 2026, 7.30 pm Film by Aline Baiana with Quilombola Fisher Folk from Ilha de Maré Conversation with Aline Baiana This event is part of the project #damageddeliberations. The Quilombola People from Ilha de Maré, in Baía de Todos os Santos, struggle to maintain their way of life and preserve the ecosystem on which they depend. The Quilombos in the region have suffered for decades with the industrialization of their surroundings, receiving only the ills of the promised “Progress” since the celebrated discovery of the so-called “black gold” in Bahia that led to the creation of the first commercial oil well in Brazil in 1939. Combining interviews with fishers, shellfish gatherers, traditional craftspeople and allies in the struggle and archival material on what is called “development” in the region, such as the construction of the Mataripe refinery and the Port of Aratu, the film raises questions such as what is considered wealth and by whom, in addition to showing that to this day in Brazil black lives continue to be sacrificed to guarantee the accumulation of capital of a few. The film will be shown in Brazilian Portuguese with English subtitles. After the film, there will be a conversation with the director @dalinebaiana . #quilombo #ecology #soil #diffrakt

On the Politics of “Friendship of Peoples” Thursday, 23 April 2026, 7.30 pm Lecture performance and conversation with Manca Arnuš | de_colonialanguage In January 2026, @ma__rnus and @de_colonialanguage embarked on a three-month project to explore the concept of “Friendship of Peoples”. This seemingly benevolent catchphrase, coined and promulgated by the USSR, proved too good to be true. Essentially, it served as an anti-imperialist facade both in internal and external Soviet policy, but at its core, it was a myth, deeply rooted in the automythologies of the USSR and the utopian socialist project. The Friendship ideology permeated the textual, the visual, the architectural, the literal, the cultural, the public. It guaranteed equality between all fifteen socialist republics – but anchored in Moscow. It supported the rights of all ethnic minorities in the USSR – but in Russian. It championed the dissolution of the colonial empires and the newly emerged nation states in the “Global South” – but through the prism of an imperial and colonial logic. It gave – but it mostly took away. The exploration and dismantling of the myth of Soviet friendship was based on group readings, fieldwork, artistic and academic research, and the participatory practice of constructing a counter-monument to Friendship at the Open-Air Museum of Decoloniality on Alexanderplatz in March 2026, as the rhetoric of the Friendship of Peoples can be found manifested in different places in Berlin as well. Alexander’s Square features a Brunnen der Völkerfreundschaft (Friendship of Peoples Fountain), and, hidden among the Plattenbauten of Marzahn, there is a mosaic column dedicated to the Deutsch-Sowjetische Freundschaft (German-Soviet Friendship). The results of this collaborative work will be presented and discussed in the format of a lecture performance grounded in conflict. Who is friends with whom? The drama will unfold in several acts, combining textual, audio, and bodily imagery of ideological friendship, reconfiguring the verticality of transactional friendship into its upturned mode: decentralized horizontality. #politicsoffriendship #friendship #ideology #decolonialanguage #diffrakt