THE GARDEN: Nature Is not Natural. AIDS, Collectivity, Radioactivity

Talk + Screening

Talk: Marc Siegel in conversation with Club des Femmes (So Mayer, Selina Robertson) (digital) on In Our Hands, Greenham: The Common Ground of Anti-nuclear Feminisms and Activist Film Curation. 
Screening: Carry Greenham Home, Beeban Kidron/Amanda Richardson, UK, 1983, 69', 16mm, OV with subtitles

Nature Is not Natural. AIDS, Collectivity, Radioactivity - Marc Siegel and international guests critically return to the local contexts of Derek Jarman's work and his film "The Garden" (1990) to work out their relevance to a contemporary global situation. The discussions take us from AIDS to COVID; from a threatening nuclear power plant hovering over queer performances taking place in and around a beautiful, barren garden, to the environmental disaster that is a dangerous horizon of our present; and from collectivity around AIDS activism to collaboration and collectivity in art and activism today. The discussions will take place in the bar of Betonhalle. Live visitors are also welcome.


Marc Siegel is Professor of Film Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. His research focuses on queer studies and experimental film. His book A Gossip of Images is forthcoming from Duke University Press. He is co-founder of the Berlin-based artists' collective CHEAP and a Member of the Academy of World Cultures in Cologne.

Club des Femmes are a queer feminist collective founded in 2007 by Sarah Wood and Selina Robertson. We curate film screenings and events. Our mission is to offer a freed-up space for the re-examination of ideas through art. In the age of the sound-bite, Club des Femmes is a much-needed open platform for more radical contextualisation and forward-looking future vision: chance to look beyond the mainstream. In 2018, Club des Femmes and the Independent Cinema Office co-curated Revolt, She Said: Women and Film after ’68, a BFI funded national film tour that offered a queer feminist response to the 50th anniversary of May ’68.

So Mayer is a writer, bookseller and activist. Their publications include A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing, Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema, and The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love. They work with Burley Fisher Books, Club des Femmes and Raising Films.

Selina Robertson is a freelance film programmer who works part time at the Independent Cinema Office. She is PhD candidate at Birkbeck College researching through a creative practice a cultural history of London’s feminist film exhibition practices of the 1980s.

Betonhalle
7.30 pm 
in English
Free admission; prior ticket booking and registration online necessary!
The talk will be in English and will also be live-streamed via YouTube