Organization and Concept   Talking Eyes is presented by the Research
Group Visual Culture based at the Graduate School 'Gender as Category
of Knowledge' at Humboldt-University Berlin: Nana Adusei-Poku, Lukas Engelmann, Marietta Kesting, Katrin Köppert, Anne-Julia Schoen, Todd Sekuler

Design Studio Füsun Türetken Berlin

Thanks to  b_books, ICI Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin, Institute for Queer Theory, C/O Gallery Berlin, NGBK, Lehrstuhl für Mediengeschichte Siegen University and Studio Füsun Türetken

Main funding by DFG Graduate School 'Gender as Category of Knowledge' at Humboldt-University Berlin

Nana Adusei-Poku

holds a master's degree in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths College London with a dissertation project on the Visual Representation of Black Feminity on the example of Grace Jones called “Devil Inside?” Since 2009 she is a doctoral fellow within the interdisciplinary program ‘Gender as a Category of Knowledge’ at Humboldt University. She was a visiting scholar at Ghana University Legon, London School of Economics and Political Sciences and the Columbia University New York. Her research interests are located in the realm of Visual Cultures, Cultural Studies and Critical Race Theory. She examines in her PhD project "Conditions of Existence" contemporary Black artists form the US and Germany. Her trans-disciplinary approach analyses ideas of race and gender in Visual Cultures from a philosophical cultural studies perspective and examines subversions through visual representations by emerging Black artists and their aesthetic interventions. Adusei-Poku taught a course on the Gaze, Race and Gender in Visual Culture, which was awarded with the Faculty Award for Excellent Teaching 2011, she is currently a lecturer for Postcolonial, Queer Theory and Visual Culture at the University of the Arts in Zurich (ZHdK).

Selected recent and forthcoming publications:
Nana Adusei-Poku (Ed.): 'The Flexible Sex. Gender, Happiness and Crisis in the Global Economy Berlin, Oktober 28-30, 2010. Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung with articles by Rosi Braidotti, Clare Hemmings, Heidi Safia Mirza, Juliet Jacques, Berlin. April 2012

Marietta Kesting

Ph.D. candidate in Visual Culture Studies and History at Humboldt University of Berlin, taught at the University of Vienna, Institute for Contemporary History, and a doctoral fellow within the interdisciplinary program ‘Gender as a Category of Knowledge’ at Humboldt University. Working title of the thesis: “Visualization of Migration, Racism, and Gender in Post-Apartheid South Africa – Crossmappings of documentary photographs and film.” Her M.A. thesis in cultural studies analysed the politics of visibility in Johannesburg, comparing the inner city ‘ghetto’ Hillbrow and the gated community Dainfern. She is also curator of documentary film screenings at the Film Archive Austria – “Film Kunst Dokument” and director of documentary films: ‘Sunny Land’ 87 min, HD (Premiere: Berlinale Forum 2010), ‘Howzit!? Life in Johannesburg: Hillbrow and Dainfern’ 60 min, HDV.

Recent Publications:

Sun Tropes. Sun City and (Post-)Apartheid Culture in South Africa. (ed. by M. Kesting and A. Weskott) Berlin: Augustverlag 2009.

Politics and Visibility in Johannesburg: Hillbrow and Dainfern (German: Politik und Sichtbarkeit in Johannesburg: Hillbrow und Dainfern), Lit Verlag, Berlin; Vienna 2009.

Todd Sekuler

holds an M.P.H. in sexuality, gender and health from Columbia University, and is currently a Ph.D. student at the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie at Humboldt University in Berlin and at the Institut d’Ethnologie Méditerranéenne, Européenne et Comparative at the University of Axe-Provence. Among other curatorial projects, in 2011 he co-curated a film series at C/O Berlin with the artist Aykan Safoğlu, critically exploring a retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography. He was a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst research fellow from 2007 through 2008, and is since 2012 a doctoral fellow within the interdisciplinary program ‘Gender as a Category of Knowledge’ at Humboldt University. In his dissertation he explores the relationship between gender non-conformity, biomedicine and the French nation-state.

Katrin Köppert

studied Gender Studies and German Literature at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. She is a doctoral fellow within the interdisciplinary graduate programme „Gender as a Category of Knowledge“ at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. Her dissertation project deals with media techniques of queer desire in line with visual politics of affect. She is currently working in the research-project „Media amateurs in Gay Culture. Photographic Self-Representation of Men in the 20th and 21st Century“ at the University of Siegen which is funded by the German Research Foundation. She taught courses on Queer Theory at the Humboldt-University of Berlin and the University of Siegen as well.

Recent and forthcoming publications:

2012: Intra-Activities of the Queer Diaspora. Berlin Kreuzberg and the „Jerusalem-Kings“ phenomenom, in: Claudia Simone Dorchain/ Felice Naomi Wonnenberg (Ed.): Contemporary Jewish Reality in Germany and Its Reflection in Film, Boston/Berlin: DeGruyter

 
2012: (Scrap-)Book of Tears. Mon­ta­gen des Selbst im (Zeit-)Ge­füge von Schmerz und Hoff­nung, in: Su­sanne Regener/Katrin Köp­pert (Hg.): Privat-öffentlich. Me­diale Selbst­ent­würfe von Ho­mo­se­xua­li­tät, Wien/Berlin: Tu­ria + Kant
 

2012: Quee­ria­spo­ri­zing. Fil­mi­sche Räume im Trans*it zwi­schen ´Rasse‘ und Ge­schlecht, in: Clau­dia Bruns (Hg.): “Rasse” und Raum. Dy­na­mi­ken, For­ma­tio­nen und Trans­for­ma­tio­nen an­thro­po­lo­gi­schen Wis­sens im Raum (Trie­rer Bei­träge zu den his­to­ri­schen Kul­tur­wis­sen­schaf­ten), Wies­ba­den: Dr. Lud­wig Rei­chert

2011: „Alle wa­ren sport­lich, ju­gend­lich und jungenhaft.“ Fotografische Selbst­zeug­nisse des jun­gen– und ju­gend­be­weg­ten Me­di­en­a­ma­teurs Heinz Dör­mer, in: His­to­ri­sche Ju­gend­for­schung. Jahr­buch des Ar­chivs der deut­schen Ju­gend­be­we­gung, Band 7, Schwal­bach: Wochenschau-Verlag, 197-211.
 
2011: Quee­ring Ter­ro­rists. Ver­ge­schlecht­lichte Bil­der­po­li­ti­ken im Kon­text von Krieg und Ter­ror seit 9/11 – in­ter­de­pen­dent be­trach­tet, in: So­phia Könemann/Anne Stähr (Hg.): Das Ge­schlecht der An­de­ren. Eine Wis­sens­ge­schichte der Al­te­ri­tät: Kri­mi­no­lo­gie, Psych­ia­trie, Eth­no­lo­gie und Zoo­lo­gie, Bie­le­feld: tran­script, 83–102.

Lukas Engelmann 

studied History and Gender-Studies in Berlin at Free University and Humbolt- University. He is currently working on a PhD about the history of clinical visualizations of AIDS as a doctoral fellow at the interdisciplinary program ‘Gender as a Category of Knowledge’ at Humboldt University in Berlin. With an inter- and transdisciplinary approach from both history of science and medicine and cultural as well as visual history, he follows the transformations of the „Krankheitsbild AIDS“ („AIDS as a clinical picture“) in clinical AIDS-Atlases and asks for the relation of a clinical visuality and social/cultural framings of AIDS. His research interests include the history of medicine and science, feminist and queer theory, visual culture studies as well es „Bildwissenschaften“ (visual science). Following the „New Materialism“ in the humanities, he is especially interested in historical ontologies as converging points of perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Gender-Studies. From January to May 2012, he is a Visiting Fellow at the Department for the History of Science at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachuesetts.

Recent and forthcoming Publications:

Eine analytische Bildpraxis. Die pathologisch-anatomischen Zeichnungen Jean Cruveilhiers in ihrem Verhältnis zu klinischen Beobachtungen, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 35, S. 7-24, 2012   

Agents of Sex and Disease, From Syphilis to AIDS,  (with Stefan Wünsch) contribution to a forthcoming Edition about the Popularization of Sexuality in the early 20th Century in Germany. 

Anne-Julia Schoen

is presently an assistant lecturer at the Department of English and American Studies and holds an M.A. in English and American Literature, History and Psychology. She is currently working on her PhD which is concerned with the impact of the Formless (G. Bataille) on gender configurations in the works of Anglo-Jewish writers and artists in London 1910-1937. She is an associated collegiate of the Research Training Group “Gender as a Category of Knowledge” and through her PhD also associated with the English Department at King’s College London. Her main interests are Anglo-Jewish Modernisms, 17^th Century Literature and Culture, representations of trauma in art and literature, and Gender configurations before, during and after the First World War. Together with her colleague Kathrin Tordasi she is organizing a conference at Humboldt University which will be held in July 2012, “Grids of Modernism: Rhythm and Form. Tides of Coercion, Liminality and Regeneration in British modernist art and literature.”

Contact: schoenjulia(at)web.de