“Asylum“ was once used to describe a place where people can find shelter, but is now mostly known as a filtration method to decide which humans deserve saving. How can we avoid accepting the status quo of borders, visa and Frontex? How can we imagine asylum differently? And how does a world look like where people have equal rights to freedom of movement? 

In a two day workshop, we want to approach these questions with the help of „imaginative justice“. Our approach uses imagination as a practical tool of resistance, helping us to understand how we can create collective vision(s) for other futures.

For anyone who is interested in the topic, writers, artists, activists, dreamers... No pre-knowledge is required. Please bring a device that you like to write with (a laptop, a notebook etc.).

In English (Arabic, German and French are most welcome for individual writing)

You are free to join both days or only one of them.

Day 1

On the first day of the workshop, we will get a closer idea to the reality of asylum and create a practical exercise of handling asylum cases with the technique of “rewriting judgments”. 

Day 2

On the second day, we deploy our imagination collectively and individually through exercises of “world building” to go as wildly creative as possible to visualize a world with freedom of movement.

Miriam Coretta Schulte, 1987, studied Theatre Studies and Directing in Paris and Giessen (Germany) and works as a theatre maker and dramaturge. In her work, she often focuses on the potential and powerlessness of bodily functions and body fictions. One example is the physical mnemo-technique “Hack-No-Tech”, which she designed together with Catalina Insignares in Paris and has since elaborated further in workshops. For “a night called layla”, she developed dance techniques to learn Arabic at the festival Treibstoff Theatertage in Basel, 2017. In 2018, she spent three months in Cairo. There she began to develop the project “Mimesia”, a research format in alternating forms and constellations, which explores the question of whether the process of admiration can be translated into an empowering practice. Since 2019, she’s collaborating with Salma Said on several theatre and research formats. Together, they are about to prepare a new work examining the performativity of asylum law.
https://schultemc.wordpress.com/

Salma Said likes to juggle between performance and media art, activism, and research. She studied literature, film and cultural anthropology focusing on gender and activism in Egypt. In 2011, Salma co-founded Mosireen, a non-profit media collective that has released (in 2018) the largest video archive of the Egyptian revolution,The 858, Archive of Resistance. Salma has been involved in various film and theater projects as a writer and performer including: Fiction film “Rabie 89” (2010) directed by Ayten Amin,theatre performance “Lessons in Revolting”  (2011) directed by Laila Soliman and “rosa & louise -a feminist manifest” (2018) directed by Ariane Koch & Sarina Scheidegger. Most recently, the theater performance Behind Your Eyeballs (2021) co-created by Miriam Coretta Schulte and the short film “When in Berlin” (2021) directed by Sondos Shabayek. Salma and Miriam are currently working on an artistic research and performance on the topic of asylum law.