Community Standards #2: Social Pleasure (Re)production
Lecken Zine, Berlin 2023
Our second zine, published for the Sophiensaele festival Leisure and Pleasure, reexamines the autonomist-feminist critique of social reproductive labor—all the (traditionally feminized) work that goes into “reproducing” society: babymaking, sexual and emotional availability, housework, elder and child care, tradition-keeping. Queer communities are often removed from the care and structures that traditional social reproduction involves, and in fact queer life is often at odds with what sustains cisheteropariarchy.
To order a copy go to:
https://lecken.berlin/zines/community-standards-2/
https://lecken.bigcartel.com/product/community-standards-2-social-pleasure-re-production
Social Pleasure Center
Community Center since 2021
Social Pleasure Center (SPC) is a space for hosting access to communal activities for connection and resilience. SPC is conceived as a choreography of the social body, hosting ‘technologies for mutual empowerment’ and coordinating the emergence of community’s proposals as a commitment to radical hospitality and redistribution of resources. SPC gathers primarily but not exclusively the LGBTQI+ community with a strong liaison to the Berlin dance and art scene. SPC intersects migrant cognitive labour, solidarity initiatives linked to social justice and is centered on pleasure as an organizing principle, in the line of a joyful yet militant feminist praxis.
To view our weekly program and archive please go to the SPC website:
https://www.socialpleasure.center/about
BÄSH
Raving Bodies, Racing Minds, Lecken Festival, Berlin
‘bäsh is the multisensorial meeting space of heather purcell and marc lohr where pen strokes are interwoven with sound waves and your ears start seeing (sexy) little creatures that bring polyrythmic harmony to your eyes.’
RAVE FITNESS
RageFitness is a high-intensity choreography, that remixes moves and sequences from ThaiBo, aerobics and martial arts into a fast-paced blend. The choreography itself takes place for one hour to 160BPM music (techno, gabber, dub step, happy hardcore, trance, footwork) though sometimes it can be preceded by a self-defense tutorial, extending the class to one and a half or sometimes even two hours. Participants follow the choreography in synchronicity, interrupted only by intermissions in which individuals are called upon to punch and kick boxing pads.
REDUSE REUSE RAVE
Lecken Untertage Performance installation, Berlin Germany,
https://lecken.berlin/.
SPIEL CLUB ORANIENSTRASSE 25,
Neues Gesellschaft für Bildene Kunst, 16. November 2019-19. Januar 2020
The »AG Spielumwelt« existed at the nGbK from 1969 to 1972. Its founding ideal was to develop artistic practices with and for children, so as to raise critical awareness of capitalism’s effects. The re-enactment of the »Spielklub« takes the form of a 2-month experimental set-up, for which the nGbK exhibition space will be transformed into a symbolic model of the Oranienstrasse. Local school classes will spend PlayDays there, devising ways to deal with current urban development issues in Berlin and, more specifically, in the Oranienstrasse, for example, housing policy, rent levels and participation in movements for social change.
CANCELED 2020: COMMUNITY STANDARDS
Lecken Zine
The suspension of nightlife, and cultural life more generally, has meant not only a loss of income and already tenuous material stability, but also the loss of group sociality and the pleasures of the collective body. Social distancing raised the question: what exactly is the fabric of queer community and solidarity made up of beyond the dancefloor and the darkroom?
