Contradiction Studies

Für Widerspruch sorgen. Impulse and Talk

Carolin Zieringer (RTG Contradiction Studies)

03/14/2024 7:00 pm

Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst | Teerhof 21, 28199 Bremen

It is almost a commonplace that we live in contradictory times. But what does it mean to take social contradictions seriously? Which contradictions must be endured – and which not – in a democracy? Is every form of contradiction already emancipatory, and if not, where do we draw the line? How does contradiction become a collective, democratic practice that is not limited to a “yes, but…”?

Carolin Zieringer investigates these and similar questions from a radical-democratic and queer-feminist perspective. Taking Jala Wahid’s play with ambiguities and emotions as a starting point, Carolin Zieringer sets out to discuss how we can remain open to contradictions and uncertainties in a world permeated by exclusion and violence, what role care plays in this, and when it is structurally impossible to care.

As part of the exhibition
Jala Wahid: I Love Ancient Baby

Please find more details at the GAK Homepage

Back to overview
city

“The city is a laboratory not only of modernity, but also of contradiction.”

Julia Lossau
problem to be solved

“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”

Martin Nonhoff
prison of difference

“‘Contradiction is the prison of difference‘ writes the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Worlds of Contradiction asks: how can we explain and describe the world without making it more coherent and systematic than it is?”

Michi Knecht
power and resistance

“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

Gisela Febel
decolonial scholarship

“Creating decentralizing and decolonizing scholarship on contradiction, contradictory phenomena, and contradicting processes is a challenging task.”

Kerstin Knopf