12.00 – 4.00pm
Pasquale Virginie Rotter- (c) Shaheen Wacker
With Pasquale Virginie Rotter (holistic process facilitator, somatic coach, and healing being)
A famous photograph of Hanna Bekker vom Rath shows her as an elderly woman, standing on a table, smiling contentedly and completely at ease. Other pictures or records of her also make it clear that she did not allow herself to be confined by expectations of restrained, decorative femininity. We see her reading, painting, thinking, smoking; her granddaughter describes her in her biography as an extremely ambitious table tennis player and a breakneck driver. She did not shy away from poses that are still considered ‘masculine’ today – poses that the German artist and writer Marianne Wex (1937–2020) analysed in the 1970s on more than 200 panels in her groundbreaking work ‘Weibliche’ und ‘männliche’ Körpersprache als Folge patriarchalischer Machtverhältnisse (‘Feminine’ and ‘Masculine’ Body Language as a Consequence of Patriarchal Power Relations). In this workshop, we will look at how, when, and where FLINTA have been taught to this day to make themselves gesturally small, narrow, and inconspicuous: to tilt their heads with a friendly smile, to keep their arms close to their bodies, to cross their legs demurely instead of taking up space with their legs apart like the infamous ‘manspreader’. How can we playfully question and unlearn these mechanisms, and how can we instead learn to occupy space in a positive way and make our voices heard without marginalising others?
* FLINTA is a German acronym that stands for ‘women, lesbians, inter, non-binary, trans, and agender’. In feminist practice, this term is used to refer to all groups that are negatively affected by patriarchy.
Interested in ways to unlearn physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually internalized oppression, Pas has developed several somatic approaches to guide groups and individuals in holistic transformation processes. Pas works as a Holistic Facilitator, Somatic Coach (#thelovinggaze), Author and Healing Being, working at the intersections of body, activism, trauma, healing and community. As a Black, genderfluid, chronically ill, and class ambivalent being, Pas practices a decolonizing perspective on body and intellect as well as the recognition of transgenerationally mediated and embodied knowledges in violent power relations. Pas has published in the practice book “Decolonizing Transformation”, the feminist community blog mädchenmannschaft.net, the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s empowerment dossier, Missy Magazine and as Ally in Yalta. Positions on the Jewish Present. Development of the project EmpA - Empowerment, Sensitization and Antiracist Opening at the Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin (2018-2020), Artist in Residence in Fordypningsrommet - The Arctic Hideaway (2018), portrayed in the photo book Daima. Images of Women of Color (http://www.edition-assemblage.de/daima) by Nzitu Mawakha (2013), performer in Leise Transformation, Making Mirrors - Von Körpern und Blicken (2011) and Earthport (Berlin/Cairo 2016 and 2017), translator of Vertrauen, Kraft und Widerstand: Kurze Texte und Reden von Audre Lorde (2015), scholarship holder of the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (2017), co-initiator and adminx of the feminist and adultism-critical children’s book Wir sind Heldinnen! Unsere Geschcihten (2017).
This event is part of the series FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES, an intersectional, discursive accompanying programme curated by Sonja Eismann (editor of Missy Magazine) and Josephine Papke (author and journalist).
Due to the limited number of participants, please register here in advance. Public events are included in the admission fee. Meeting point: Ticket desk in the foyer.