Nächste Termine// Next Dates:

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20. Februar 2025 19:30 Uhr

Gäste: Rebecca Frances und Tonja Wetzel
"Fucking Literature - Ein philosophisch literarischer Abend zu Erotica"
in English and German

Die Literatur der expliziten Darstellung von Sexualität wird als Erotica bezeichnet und blickt auf eine lange Tradition zurück. Gemeinsam mit unseren Gästen Rebecca Frances und Tonja Wetzel werden wir erotische Texte aus ihrer eigenen Feder hören und besprechen. Darüber hinaus lesen und analysieren wir weitere Texte von namhaften Autor:innen, um die vielfältigen Wege der modernen Erotica zu erkunden. Dabei widmen wir uns einerseits theoretischen Fragen: Was macht eine erotische Beschreibung aus? Wie übersetzt Literatur die Unmittelbarkeit sexueller Erfahrung in Text? Kann Text etwas, das Sex nicht kann? Was gewinnt die Literatur durch ihre Form, und was geht dabei verloren? Diese theoretischen Überlegungen verknüpfen wir mit einer praktischen Reflexion über den Schreibprozess und seine Herausforderungen.

The texts will be in both English and German, reflecting our bilingual context. Everyone is welcome to contribute in all varieties of English and German. As mentioned above, we will combine theoretical questions with feedback on our guests’ work-in-progress. If you are working on erotica yourself and would like to present your work, please feel free to reach out to tobi.wieland@fu-berlin.

Deutsch und Englisch// Contributions in English will be very welcome// Donation-based from 10€ and up// Auf Spendenbasis ab 10€/

Tonja Wetzel's body of work playfully explores gender expression and sexuality in different media with a focus on storytelling and performative creation. Serendipity and coincidence are part of their practice. Performance and accident manifest in their works, challenging expectations of perfection, and highlighting the role of the material and machine as an active agent during the process of creation. Exploring sexuality in the media of porn performance, the body of the artist traverses different modes of existing, operating and manifesting. In collaboration with filmmakers and other performers, the body becomes a tool and fleeting artwork. Their printmaking practice follows an ongoing thread of autobiographical narration. The performance of one's own gender expression and sexuality is captured in drawings, prints and bold letter commentary, creating a dense map of queer existence, exploring the boundaries of body, autonomy, human/machine relationship and sexual agency.

Rebecca Frances is an ex-yoga teacher, masseuse and researcher whose work circles around relaxation, arousal and altered states of consciousness.  She holds a degree from Cambridge University where she studied the philosophy, literature and art of the body and of sexuality.  She grounded her intellectual exploits into physical practice through yoga, sexological bodywork, qi gong, butoh, pranayama and thai massage, all the time chasing the language behind exactly what happens when two bodies touch.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL COLLOQUIUM

Expanding body thoughts, prospectives for the future.

Sexuality is an existential dimension of the human form of being in the world. We premise our philosophical investigations on the experience of the ongoing violation of this anthropological fact. The social norms and ideals, which govern us in our intimate interactions alone or with others, are inscribed in our bodies. They express a heteronormative, misogynist, and racist paradigm.

With the discursive format of the “Philosophical Colloquium ”, we like to address key aspects of a progressive concept of sexuality. What are the groundworks of a philosophy of sexuality that does justice to the plurality of our sexual, somatic and spiritual expressivity? We are convinced that, subversively understood, the erotic is “source of power and knowledge” (Audre Lorde). Taking this claim as a starting point, we aim at a conceptual framework for an emancipated sex-positive culture. We believe there is a lot of conceptual work to be done to reach emancipation, given the intersectional and trans-temporal consistency of the binary, anti-pluralistic paradigm.

Analytical background and discursive connections

We want to investigate the theoretical groundworks of a philosophy of sexuality. 

Our first analytical perspective is shaped by questions concerning the ontology, epistemology and the discursive history of the prevalent anti-pluralistic paradigm. 

How are sex, gender and the erotic conceptualized in the scientific and public discourse? How to account for the enormous changes of this discursive field and how to move on? 
How thinking beyond the binary schemes of sex and gender? What are the ethical implications and presuppositions of affirming both, openness and bonding through love? What is a fair practice, to balance between the tension of need of care-taking and freedom of erotic expressivity? What privileges and role expectations condition the social space in which we are oneself in the other? 

There will be space to reflect on the practical dimension of the varieties of the forms of life and love. We aim also to address, the aesthetical dimension of the social spaces of queer expressivity and somatic empowerment.

How can we reconsider the relation between sex and art? Can sex be art? Can a participatory and activist art contribute to a sex-positive culture? Playing with Oscar Wilde’s “Bonmot”, if everything in the world is about sex, except sex, why then is power play so beautiful?

We believes that these theoretical, practical and aesthetical dimensions are analytical and since they intersect in the reality, they cannot be taken apart. They stand in the background of our investigations and become more concrete and detailed by the topics of the series of the Philosophical Colloquium. 

Format of the “Philosophical Colloquium”

What we will do during the night is theory. 

We will invite researchers with expertise in these fields of study. The program will be specified throughout the year. The format is discursive as the content is conceptual. 

We will not discuss everything and all together, but we will have a focus on individual aspects and revealing phenomena. One of the organizers will host each event: a preluding discussion with the host will be follow by a talk with the invited guest, and after that all participants will gather in small groups, without moderation, to reflect the topics brought up so far. In a final collective and moderated discussion, inspired by the topics invoked throughout the night, we will deepen and structure the body thoughts and bring up together new prospectives for the future.

TOPICS

• SEX-POSITIVITY & MAINSTREAM 
• CONSENT & CONFLICT CULTURE 
• FORMS OF LIFE
• COLLECTIVE EMANCIPATION/S
• THINKING FLUID IDENTITIES, A NON-ESSENTIALIST UNDERSTANDING OF GENDER
• FORMS, SHAPES, SPACES & SUBLIMATIONS... PHYSICAL & METAPHORICAL
  

-> all workshops  

-> all lectures / talks/ salons

-> experimental spaces / play spaces/ practice