home as practice, sonic elsewheres - impressions from last nights event, featuring two films by the one who started Books of Others: Bani Abidi.
Song selection for this post by bestie and cutie darling resident anthropologist Omar Kasmani
Reunited with this Berlin-favorite after 15 years 💓 @marisamoratahurt — we had once said our goodbyes at a cafe in Kreuzkölln and taken a Polaroid to mark it.
Join us for a conversation on how cities serve as sites of both belonging and difference.
Across ethnography, writing, and multimodal work, the panelists examine how migration, memory, and affect shape the lived experience of difference and belonging in urban life. We invite you to engage these themes through your own experiences in Berlin.
We’ll end the evening with a shared buffet.
In conversation with
Tilmann Heil (KU Leuven; UFRJ) – works within and addresses hierarchies and ways of living with difference, with research across Senegal, Spain, and Brazil.
Arshi Javaid (HU Berlin; Einstein Fellow) – explores memory and migration in Kashmir through everyday life, sensory experience, and urban relationships
Omar Kasmani (FU Berlin) – Karachi-born writer and theorist tracing migrant life, queer love, and political heartbreak in the German capital. Asks how erotic desire maps on to social disturbance in Berlin; why urban matters are also matters of the heart.
Ammara Maqsood (UCL) – examines how people live with and across difference in non-liberal contexts, reflecting on Hindu (be)longing and invisibility in Karachi through the collaborative multimodal digital project Absent Presence ()
Simone Toji (HU Berlin; Iphan, Brazil) – is a researcher and writer whose work combines ethnography and literary experimentation to explore migration and urban life in São Paulo, focusing on how migrants and cities transform one another.
Moderated by Sadia Bajwa (HU Berlin)
Hosted by _subkontinent, supported by the Einstein Foundation and organized by Sadia Bajwa and Arshi Javaid with Berlin South Asia Studies, Humboldt University.
Pease RSVP (link in bio) so we can get an idea of numbers. Looking forward to seeing you soon :)
Post by: @roopiostudio
On love and heartbreak in the German capital, or why urban matters are also matters of the heart — a few snippets from my lil photo-essay, Other than Love — just out in the volume Queer-ethnografische Potenziale edited by Friederike Faust, Alik Mazukatow, Klara Nagel and (my dear friend) Todd Sekuler.
I’m honored to be part of this Festschrift in honor of Beate Binder @euroethnoberlin
Eid is teaching (Berliner) nephew the etiquette of receiving eidi and screening outfits of nieces back in Karachi; it is face-timing with mommy-K and sharing family photos on WhatsApp; it is grinding your own masala, enjoying sheer-khorma and kharak you did not make — feasting until food-coma sets in!
Big thank you @lakda.zahra and @tareekhdaan for hosting our eid-milan!
And so, a new chapter begins for Books of Others @barettinobar . Here are glimpses of the soft opening last night—a trial run, a promise, and a preview of what is to come. We can’t wait to welcome you all soon!
@the_scene_maker selected the song for this post. He says “The lyrics go something like: The night is young. The affair too. Whatever happens, let happen!”
“I’m feasting without fasting” I told mum over the phone on the topic of Ramazan. She cracked up, called me a useless believer: na-la’iq (or incompetent) being her most frequent term of affection for me. Here are some mum-inspired and other incompetent delights this month!
