transkulturalität_mdw 2025
queer trans* culturality

June, 20. and 21, 2025

mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Team: Marko Kölbl, Isabel Frey, Hande Sağlam, Lisa Gaupp, Therese Kaufmann

Coordinator: Eva Christina Moreno
moreno-e@mdw.ac.at
T +43 1 71155-3813

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This gathering convenes activists, artists, and researchers from diverse backgrounds to develop queer stances and critiques on transculturality—a concept that interrogates essentialist boundaries of the familiar and the foreign and problematizes the notion of ‘culture’ itself. Building on Queer of Color Critique, which exposes the blank spots in discourses around race within queer theoretical frameworks, we extend this analytical lens to broader contexts involving ethnic minorities, postmigrant communities, and forced migration experiences, particularly through embodied expressions in music, dance or theatre. 

Against the backdrop of rising global fascism, the rights of queer and trans people, of ethnic minorities, migrants and refugees face intensifying threats. Paradoxically, while gender and sexual non-conformity face widespread backlash, we simultaneously witness the weaponization of LGBTIQ+ rights advancing racist agendas through homonationalism. Engaging with transculturality through queer and trans* perspectives in performing practices, we open up room for the following themes: forms of queer migrant and postmigrant cultural practice, like (post)migrant club culture; the significance of music and dance for national minorities, like Roma, Croats and Slovenes in Austria; urban and vernacular queer POC cultural expressions from a global viewpoint; the role of performing practices for refugees in navigating racism, resident status, queerness; transcultural understandings of trans*gender expressive culture. 

By integrating insights from research, performing arts, music, and activism, we aim to examine how intersections of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and minoritized and racialized difference manifest in practice. Our symposium creates space to share creative responses to these intersections and to develop strategic resistance against the multiple assaults on minority rights within today's authoritarian drift.

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Programme 
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Friday, June 20
Bankettsaal
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13:30	Welcome Address Ulrike Sych (Rector of mdw) Marko Kölbl (For the Transculturality Team)
13:45	Opening Talk Transpolitical Audiotopias: (Un)doing Gender, Race and Modernity in the Haunted Settler-Colony Mbongeni Mtshali (University of Cape Town, South Africa) Chair: Isabel Frey
14:45	Break
15:15	Panel Discussion Sexuality, Expressive Practices and the Refugee Experience in Global Border Regimes Henrie Dennis (Afro Rainbow Austria), Tonny Africa (Queer Base Vienna, Austria) and Mbongeni Mtshali (University of Cape Town, South Africa) Moderation: Therese Kaufmann
16:30	Lecture Cruising a State of Abjection: Ambivalent Musical Performance of Queer Worldmaking in Northern Cyprus Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay (University of Milan, Italy) Chair: Hande Sağlam
17:30	Break
17:45	Panel Discussion Queerness and Identity-laden Cultural Expression within “National Minorities” in Central and Eastern Europe Lydia Novak (Kolo Slavuj Vienna, Austria), Marek Michael Konček (Roma Violinist, Bratislava, Slovakia), Lena Kolter (Artist, Performer, Writer, Carinthia/Vienna, Austria) Chair: Marko Kölbl
19:15	Dinner Break
20:15	Lecture Performance Stranger in a Strange Land: The Possibilities of Black Music in Jewish Spaces Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell (Interdisciplinary Artist in Yiddish Culture, Atlanta GA, USA) Moderation: Isabel Frey

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Saturday, June 21
Bankettsaal
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11:00	Lecture Queer Trans Culturality in Practice: Negotiating Ambiguous Gender Spaces in Kete Ensembles, Ghana Jason Otoo (University of Cape Coast, Ghana) Chair: Lisa Gaupp
12:00	Duo Talk Trans*sonic Practices: Centering Transgender Perspectives in Music Research and Industry Ilgaz Yalçınoğlu (Humboldt University Berlin, Germany) and Saeleen Bouvar (Transtronica Hamburg, Germany) Chair: Therese Kaufmann
13:00	Break  (For Restaurant Recommendations in the Area click here)
14:45	Film Screening (Art House Kino, Future Art Lab) Wildness (Wu Tsang, USA 2012, 74 min) Curated and moderated by Djamila Grandits (Film Theorist and Curator, Vienna, Austria) Followed by a Conversation with Wu Tsang (tbc) and Rey Joichl (tbc)
17:00	Performative Proposal Drafting Queer Postmigrant Club Culture as Intangible Cultural Heritage Ari Kozanoğlu (Kudur Berlin, Germany), Sabine Schwaighofer (Homoriental Vienna, Austria), Tonica Hunter (Sounds of Blackness Vienna, Austria) and others Impulse: Marko Kölbl                      Respondent: Klara Koštal Chair: Marko Kölbl and Isabel Frey
18:30	Dinner Break
19:30	Artist Talk (Joseph Haydn Hall) Marko Kölbl in Conversation with DŽIPSII (Singer, Beograd, Serbia)
20:15	Concert (Joseph Haydn Hall) DŽIPSII
From 22:30	Party Curated by Kudur (Club Collective, Berlin, Germany) Spektakel Vienna
	Event Recommendation Homoriental Party - DJ Yasemin Marea Alta Vienna