ICI Berlin

Thank you to the organizers of this great and most inspiring workshop 'The Self at Scale': James Harker, Clio Nicastro and Laura Scuriatti @bard_college_berlin Image Credit @cepeppel #iciberlin #scale #bardcollegeberlin

The first recording we are presenting from the symposium Frantz Fanon’s Social Therapy: “To Give Body to an Institution” is the introduction by Camilla Caglioti, Marlon Miguel, and Elena Vogman. Get an overview of the symposium’s themes by watching the recording via the link in bio. The symposium was organised by Camilla Caglioti, Marlon Miguel, and Elena Vogman as part of the research project Madness, Media, Milieus. Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, funded by Freigeist Fellowship of the @volkswagenstiftunghannover ) in collaboration with @iciberlin . It took place on January 29–30, 2026 at ICI Berlin. #FrantzFanon #SocialTherapy #InstitutionalPsychotherapy #disalienation #psychiatry

Workshop: Queer and Feminist Theory. In Honour of Teresa de Lauretis. With Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Christoph Holzhey, and Antke Antek Engel Organized by @iciberlin in cooperation with @iqt_queerinstitute Image Credit @cepeppel #iciberlin #teresedelauretis #queer #feministtheory

Heather Love: The Map and the Territory. Representation, Scale, and the Real in Queer Studies, 18 May 2026, 19:30 This talk addresses the question of the map and the territory through the intellectual and institutional history of queer studies. It has been the burden of queer thought to push back against philosophical realism and the idea that, for instance, gender is simply there, a set of incontrovertible biological facts or an ordinary feature of shared experience. The performativity thesis in queer theory has brought about a new era of gender freedom by loosening the relation between culture, language, and self-understanding from the ‘givens’ of the body, law, and history. But it has resulted in two problems, which Heather Love investigates in this talk: 1. Reference: the long-standing problem of material reality and its appearance within queer and trans theory and 2. Scale: the non-adequation between queer thought and the needs, interests, and self-understanding of the LGBT community. Love will argue that by taking the map for the territory, and representation for existence, queer scholars have not only made it difficult to address ‘bodies that matter’, they have also intensified the methodological problem of scale. Part of the ICI Lecture Series Scale. #iciberlin #scale #queerstories

This is the second video in our short three-part video series with the editors of ‘Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking’, who reflect on the nature of collective artistic practices and how this subject is explored in their Worlding Public Cultures chapbook. Stay tuned for the next clip! 'Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking' was co-edited by Eva Bentcheva, Annie Jael Kwan and Ming Tiampo for Worlding Public Cultures in partnership with Asia Forum. @alikati @ming_tiampo @asia_forum 🟢 “I think how you've just anchored collectives also within Asia, Annie, that's been extremely important for our book. Ming, because you're an art historian as well, I wanted to ask you, how does that content of our book actually shift our understanding of art history? What would you say? Thanks for that question, Eva. I think what it does is it really challenges the way that we think about how we write art history in terms of the individual and in terms of how we historicise individual artists, but it also encourages us to think a little bit more deeply about what is the role of art in society. So from the perspective of the great artist, which was a concept that was developed during the Renaissance with Vasari's ‘Lives of the Artists’, it is a project that really challenges the ways in which we think through how we imagine the history of art, not as a history of individuals, but really as a history of individuals that are located within larger collectives, larger communities. And it also then helps us to think through and open up the question of what is the role of art in society today. It helps us to point to the ethical, political responsibility of art as a world-making exercise, not just for the one, but for the many.” 🟢 Thinking Collectives is available for 14.50€. The Open Access version is also available for free via our website: /catalogue/doi/10.37050/wpc-co-01 #iciberlinpress #worldingpubliccultures #collectivism #thinkingcollectives #globalAsias

🟢HOT OFF THE PRESS! 🟢 ICI Berlin Press is thrilled to announce the publication of the latest book in our Cultural Inquiry series, ‘Performing Embodiment: Choreographies of Affect, Language, and Social Norms’, Ed. by Alberica Bazzoni and Federica Buongiorno. Combining the notions of performativity and embodiment, this book situates the body in the realm of processes, movement, and poiesis, seeking to generate alternative configurations to mind–body dualism. Focused on language, literature, dance, affect, gender, sport, and disability, the contributions to this volume emphasize doing over being: the body does and is done; it is engaged in a movement of co-constitution with the world. It is in doing that bodies produce knowledge and shared or contested social meaning. Such a relational process is best described through the notion of choreographies — patterns of movement which capture the embodied dynamic of passivity and activity, design and improvisation, inner and outer states, and which fittingly describe the modalities through which social norms discipline bodies, or are challenged by them. The book is available as a paperback for 16.50€ and as a hardcover for 45€. You can also download it for free as a PDF via Open Access at our website (link in bio).  @albe_abu @federicabuongiorno Cover design by Studio Bens. Photograph by Claudia Peppel, ‘Stairs’, 2025 @cepeppel @studiobens #embodiment #phenomenology #performativity #mindbodydualism #choreography

Queer and Feminist Theory: In Honour of Teresa de Lauretis. Workshop, 11 May 2026, 16:00-19:30 Teresa de Lauretis coined the term ‘queer theory’; for her, it was a means of denaturalizing sexuality and developing a theory of lesbian desire, which she provocatively, yet affirmatively, called ‘fetishistic’ and ‘perverse’. Drawing on semiotics, psychoanalysis, and the analysis of power, Teresa de Lauretis formulated a process of sexual structuring that informed her understanding of queer theory. In 1990, she titled the conference on lesbian and gay sexualities held at UCI Santa Cruz ‘Queer Theory’. She hoped that queer theory would bring about ‘new forms of community’ and ‘resistance to cultural homogenization’. Yet, she was also among the first to criticize the danger of normalization that accompanied the institutionalization and rapid spread of the term queer. As early as 1994, she described queer theory as vacuous and overhyped in an essay entitled ‘Habit Changes’. She criticized the shift in focus from sexuality to gender inclusivity, democratic representation, and multiculturalism. Lauretis was also a decisive critic of Freud, Laplanche, and psychoanalysis; nevertheless they remained the focal point of her thinking. Organized by @iciberlin in cooperation with @iqt_queerinstitute With Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Christoph Holzhey, and Antke Antek Engel Image Credit @cepeppel #iciberlin #queer #feminism #teresadelauretis

The Self at Scale. Workshop, 4-5 May 2026, 10:00-18:00 Why does it seem so productive today to be simultaneously the subject and object of one’s writing? This workshop starts from the premise that certain writing and artistic practices position the theorizing self as a mediator between the subject and larger scales of social organization.
The contemporary fascination with autotheory, autofiction, and related genres, such as auto-sociobiography or mythobiography, is a case in point. These forms show the interplay between theorizations of personal life, subjectivity and historical or collective experience. However, these practices also have their own histories. The workshop is therefore interested in the politics and aesthetics of this interplay, in the genealogies of these forms, and in the moments when these practices have intensified. Organized by James Harker, Clio Nicastro, and Laura Scuriatti for Bard College Berlin in cooperation with ICI Berlin #scale #workshop #iciberlin #subjectivity Image Credit @cepeppel

Tyler Reigeluth: The Socio-technical Unconscious of ‘Smart’ Environments Available to watch @iciberlin video page As technological systems become increasingly distributed, embedded, and multiscalar, an ever-larger part of how they function seems to escape human perception and understanding – at least at an individual level. This growing lack of ‘technical culture’ (Gilbert Simondon) reinforces forms of alienation towards technical objects wherein the latter would function automatically and independently. #iciberlin #technology

Lisa Messeri: 1:1 – Drawn to Scale Available to watch @iciberlin video page #scale #iciberlin

Biomedical Visions: The Art of Science and the Science of Art. Introduction by Alfred Freeborn Available to watch @iciberlin video page #biomedical #iciberlin #scienceofart

The ICI Berlin is in spring recess. We will resume our public activities on 4 May and look forward to the upcoming events and to seeing you there. Image Credit @cepeppel #recess #iciberlin