WORKSHOP PROGRAM JULY & AUGUST 2026
Writing the Archive with Wassan Ali
Date: Saturday, July 4th
Time: 13:30-17:30
Location: Amerika-Gedenk Bibliothek
Organised by trans*missions, Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek, and Spinnboden Lesbenarchiv.
Please register at veranstaltungen@spinnboden.de with a few lines about your interest in participating.
“Before heterosexuality, there were the normals, and there were the gender variants—fairies and queens, butches and ‘he-shes,’ hermaphrodites and sexual intermediaries,” writes Kadji Amin in his polemical essay We Are All Nonbinary. In this workshop, participants will collectively read intersectional archival material from the Spinnboden Lesbenarchiv, tracing representations of gender in relation to the contradictory normal. Through our readings of archival material and accessible theoretical texts, we will probe ways in which gender is presented—gender as dependent on racialised and nationalist discourses, gender as hinging on sexuality. Taking as our starting point some of the ways in which categories such as woman/man/trans/lesbian/other appear in the archive, participants will write their own contributions to the zine Writing the Gender Archive #3 (contributing is not a requirement to participate).
Writers will receive a small honorarium for their contributions. The workshop is hosted by Wassan Ali and the zine will be designed and risograph-printed by Zack Darsee. Some participants will have the opportunity to read their texts during the Transgender Day of Remembrance event organised by trans*missions.
The workshop takes a gender expansive approach and welcomes participants of all and no gender identities. The material speaks particularly to the diasporic, racialised, and migrant experience. The workshop will be held in English/German.
Wassan Ali explores intersectional histories in the archive and their impact on the present. She contributed to the collection Nicht die Ersten: Bewegungsgeschichten von Queers of Color in Deutschland and to the hand-bound book Reading Roses in Constellation with an essay on Gillian Rose and digestion. She also currently co-edits an Inter-Asian anthology. Ali is an associate in the research project Queer Theory in Transit.
Drawing, Mechanised Music and Trans Noise
with Judy Greta Moore
Date: Friday, 17th July
Time: 11:45 – 15:00
Location: Gründerzeit Museum
Language: English & German
Our workshop will take place in the Gründerzeitmuseum. We will make drawings inspired by the collection and the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. We'll be making observational drawings which engage with objects directly as well as more abstract and impressionistic drawings which tap into some more emotional resonances of the space.
These drawings will then be used as inspiration for visual scores for noise compositions. Using field recordings, samples, spoken texts, other vocals, various synths, drum machines and other instruments we will compose pieces which reflect the relationship between the collection and our contemporary lived experience. The workshop will include group discussions, story-telling and a lot of play. Zero experience of drawing or music is necessary, but is of course also welcome!
Judy Greta Moore is the author of the trans memoir comic "Everything is Somewhat Repaired," which was awarded a Berlin Senate Comics Endowment. Her work has appeared in the Museum of Communication (Berlin), the Freud Museum (London), the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), the National Portrait Gallery (London), The Cartoon Museum (London), Whose Museum (Malmo) among others. When she's not drawing, she likes to make Hi NRG goth music, watch monster movies and eat candy. She smells of White Diamonds by Elizabeth Taylor.
Text_ile Archives
Date: Thursday, 23rd July
Time: 12:00 – 16:00
Venue: Floating
Language: English & German
The old favorite pre-transition T-shirt or the bed sheets in which we first became aware of our queerness speak of other times and of the people we once were. In this workshop, we engage with the archive inscribed in the textiles from which we have grown and transformed. As we cut up and weave these textiles into sculptures, we search for the stories we want to tell about our past today. Through experimental writing exercises and text collages made from our own writing and borrowed passages from current favorite texts, we reweave memories, language, and material.
The workshop combines artistic experimentation with text and textile, as well as moments of individual and collective work. You do not need any prior experience in writing or weaving. The only important thing is that you bring:
• several clothing items or other textiles that are meaningful to your own story and that you are willing to transform
• (queer) texts that are meaningful to you
The workshop offers insight into the artistic universe of the performance mo(_)rning becomes them. Those interested can experience the current stage of the work on July 3 & 4, 2026 as part of 48 Stunden Neukölln.
Aru Ray Tormann is a trans* choreographer, dramaturg, and curator working at the intersection of performance, text, and participatory formats. For several years, Aru’s artistic practice has engaged with queer grief, death, and experiences of transition, exploring care as both a framework and a method of artistic practice. Alongside their own projects, they collaborate with artists and collectives as a dramaturg and develop spaces for collective experimentation, learning, and exchange.
@aru.ray.tormann // www.aruraytormann.com
Fanmail4Fanzines! Hands-on community zine making with Lost and Found Press
Date: Saturday, 1st August
Time: 13:00 -17:00
Location: Spinnboden Archive (access info)
Language: English
Discover the power of independent queer zine publishing and co-create a community zine! Aimé Dabbadie will select about 50 zines from Spinnboden and Lost and Found Press's collections for participants to interact with. After a quick introduction to queer zine history, each participant will create their own fanmail pages about a zine of their choice. All pages will then be combined into a new zine. All materials will be provided and no previous knowledge needed!
More info and examples here: https://aime-dabbadie.com/fanmail4fanzines
15 participants max. Workshop lasts 4 hours (from 13:00 until 17:00)
Aimé Dabbadie (they/he) - Lost and Found Press
Lost and Found Press, a one-person queer publishing project and archive by Aimé Dabbadie, documents underground drag, punk, and DIY cultures through photo zines and archival reprints. The press publishes original photographic work, restores out-of-print queer zines, and hosts community workshops that center queer cultural memory and aim to demystify self-publishing.
Somatic trans* biographing with Gerd Katter
Date: Thursday, 6th August
Time: 14:00-17:00 Uhr
Duration: 3 hours
Location: Floating
Language: English & German with translation
How do we touch each other like living archive documents?
What do our trans*, queer, crip, neurodivergent bodyminds need to feel comfortable telling our stories? How do we want to share our biographies and connect with those of others?
Through consent-based somatic exercises, we’ll build physical contact with one another and with our voices, listening and sensing.
Together, we’ll explore the emotions tied to our biographies: joy, grief, cringe, pride… :)
We will be guided and prompted by the biography and voice of Gerd Katter, a trans*cestor and former neighbour from Britz. Together, we will develop a storytelling ritual in which we honour our own stories and those of our trans*kin < 3
Lotti Mani (they/none) are an artist and, educator and much more in Berlin. They co-curate the trans*missions project, co-organize a residency for queer ecology in Estonia, create trans*feminist culture, art and carewebs, and develop participatory, neuroqueer performance formats. www.lottis.art
Walking Queer (Lesbian) Histories: A Citywalk and Writing Workshop with Monti
Date: Tuesday, 11th August
Meeting: Infront of Gethsemane Gemeinde in Prenzlauer Berg
Time: 13:00-17:00
We will do a short city walk and writing workshop exploring lesbian and queer histories in Berlin through underground publications and places. We will meet at Gethsemane Church — an important meeting place for opposition and queer groups in the late DDR — and take a short walk through Prenzlauer Berg (~15 minutes), guided by writing prompts and h*stories along the way. Through site-responsive writing exercises, we will explore writing outside and responding to stories embedded in the city. The walk ends at Sonntags-Club, where we will work with selected materials from the Spinnboden lesbian archive and develop our own texts in response. We will look at publications produced by East German groups such as Lesben in der Kirche and the Terrorlesben, alongside parallel materials from West Berlin.
Open to all. No prior writing experience necessary. Can be facilitated in English and German (bilingual participation welcome). Participants may write in any language.
Meeting: 13:00 (at Gethsemanegemeinde). End: 17:00 (at Sonntagsclub)
Monti A. Maria (they/them) is a crossdisciplinary poet, researcher and educator. They co-lead the project trans*missions, edit the open-call smut gazette WOMANWOOD, make books with Litmus Press and give guided history tours in Berlin in the Summers.
Trans*scaffoldings - tracing personal gestures of support up to mutual community infrastructures
Date: Friday, 14th August
Time: 15:00 - 19:00 Uhr
Duration: 3-4 hours, 2 breaks
Venue: Nachbarschaftscampus Dammweg 216
Language: English, German
Sickness, madness, lonelyness - how to ask for help, how to support, and how did our trans*ancestors and queer siblings do that. From counseling to care pods, aids crisis mutual support systems, helping out in case of relapse or lost of home, holding friends, to cooking a meal for a trans*community member. All these people in transition, their stories, and how they created hidden paths through medical complexes, violence, discrimination and systemic oppression, builded relational support structures: trans*scaffoldings. Did these structures of giving and receiving, formed out of necessity or also with the intention to live otherwise?
Our searching and sharing on trans*scaffoldings, will be nourished by archive material (will be prepared) and our own oral histories, which we will record. By listening with archive voices the gestures and experiences from very personal support requests and answers, to mutual community infrastructures, will be traced together through play and artistic architectural methods. The trans*scaffoldings unfolds by merging these stories with building models out of un-usual and eat-able materials. Instead of houses we will create their scaffoldings, as bodies of connection, that can be re-build, touched and eaten. May we build our own trans*candyland and find tasteful expressions for shared agency, joy and euphoria, which lie behind and beyond the systemic wastelands of lonelyness, madness and sickness.
Rain Wegmann (they/them), is an urban researcher, artist and community worker with a background in urban studies and landscape architecture. They follow their special interest in spatial justice, necropolitics and crip trans*feminisms in urban and rural contexts on the normalization of spaces and infrastructures. Through sensory encounters, situated research and queer curation, critical reflections and playful embodyminded performances - their critical spatial practice is a Doing With. Rain does not work alone, creates accessible neuroqueer art and learning in and beyond institutions, together with friends, collaborators and collectives.
The Fountain of Youth - A Movement & Performance Workshop on Camp
Date: Tuesday, 18th August
Time: 16.30-20.00 Uhr
Duration: 3.5 hours
Venue: Failing Femmes, Berlin-Treptow (The space is wheelchair accessible and has wheelchair accessible bio toilet.)
Language: English
The Fountain of Youth refers to the idea of mythical springs that instantly restore youth to the drinker or bather. Sometimes live performance can act as just such a fountain of youth, offering transformation & rejuvenation for those who throw themselves into the pool! This movement and performance workshop revolves around this vibe of magical transformation and the practice of punk, queer performance making. Specifically, we will look into the genre of ‘camp.’ The workshop will start with a quick queer camp history session, drawing references from both USA and German artists and scenes. Following looking into reference images, Layton will guide various approaches to the embodiment of camp – somatic exercises for resealing and opening to new ways of moving, playing with exaggeration, excess and the ridiculous. We will work with drag, make-up, masks and adorning ourselves and each other. The third part of the workshop will center on making short performances for one another to enjoy inside Failing Femmes or outside in the garden of the Wagenplatz. This workshop is open to whoever is desiring to explore heightened levels of artifice, affectation and exaggeration through playful embodiment, as well as trying out performance! You can be a seasoned cat or a first time performer. Please bring any campy items (z.b. make up, wigs, costumes, special objects, etc) that you might want to work with and share with the group.
LAYTON LACHMAN is a queer artist living in Berlin. They create performances which channel experiential physical practices into immersive, sensory complex worlds. Utilizing a diverse range of performance contexts, Layton’s choreographies are seen on stage, in galleries, museums, and in public space. In addition to their performative practice, Layton is often involved in collective DIY project spaces & curation projects, as well as regularly teaching in Berlin and as a guest artist at universities in the USA. Their teaching draws from extensive somatic research and experiential anatomy, including their training as a teacher of Open Source Forms, working as a Pilates teacher for 10 years, their intensive study of Yoga and their improvisational practice and choreographic research alongside SALTA collective, T.E.N.T. collective, Abby Crain, mara poliak, Samuel Hertz, and many other brilliant artists. IG: @lachmoninof