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Every living being comes with cell membranes. The membrane represents a common feature of unicellular organisms, plants, and human and non-human animals. Can the concept of the membrane therefore help us overcome anthropocentric thinking? And if so, how does it allow to address hierarchies and power imbalances among humans? Can it mobilize decolonial critiques of a posthumanist discourse as a model to thinking in gender studies and feminist science and technology studies? Will a queer understanding of desire or a Black feminist understanding of eroticism help us to draw new, unexpected connections between these relationships and environments? Regarding the materiality of membranes, we are confronted with questions of sustainability, not only in artistic practice, but in everyday life, too. In dealing with clothing, packaging, and all other envelopes (cars, airplane cabins) whose porosity in the sense of their evaporation or microplastic contamination is constitutive for climate change, the membrane is present.

Taking these topics and questions as a starting point, the conference explores the potential of the membrane as a concept-metaphor or model in scholarly and artistic investigations, It opens up intersectional and transdisciplinary approaches, pursues them in an experimental way, and invites discussions – within the Gender Studies Association, the civic public of Leipzig, Halle, and internationally. Urgent questions about decolonizing Gender Studies will be raised. Addressing power inequalities and structural domination, as they are taking hold also at universities and art academies, the conference will be supported by an awareness team as well as translations (Engl.-German) and German Sign Language Interpreting (DGS).

membra(I)nes is the first Gender Studies Association’s conference taking place at art institutions and in Eastern Germany. It will work upon borders, in between cities, political systems, and academic norms. A Round Table on the East/West divide will close the conference. Performances, workshops, art exhibitions, radio, and a concert provide a public program that surrounds and and pervades the conference and includes impacts the cities and regions.

>>> please register online

For further informatione and the programme please visit: https://www.hgb-leipzig.de/membraines/ (only available in german)