As part of the City of Bern’s Action Week Against Racism, we are very happy to invite you to a symposium and film screening.
SYMPOSIUM
The symposium with Ana Teixeira Pinto, Ingo Niermann and Priska Gisler explores the complex relationship between constructions of masculinity and the contemporary far right, but with a special attention to the cultural roles of sport and human–animal relationships. Through various perspectives and disciplines, the discussion examines how ideals of strength, loyalty, and dominance are mobilized within far-right narratives. The symposium highlights how seemingly apolitical domains such as athletic competition and pet ownership can become arenas for the performance, normalization, and transmission of exclusionary gender norms and political ideologies.
FILM SCREENING
Swiss artist Roman Selim Khereddine weaves together migration, memory, and structural racism in poetic imagery, engaging questions of belonging and post-migrant identity in Switzerland. In his interdisciplinary practice, he works with human-animal relationships as a reflection of social power structures, a motif that connects thematically to the preceding symposium at Kunsthalle Bern. The screening uses the shared experience of watching film as a moment of leisure to make subtle forms of exclusion and dominant narratives visible. The concluding Q&A opens up a space for reflection and dialogue.
Organized and curated by the Kunsthalle Bern team in collaboration with Giuliana Beya Dridi.
Registration is kindly requested: claudia@kunsthallebern.ch.
Drop-in participation is possible depending on capacity.
Programme
13:30
Opening
13:40
Ingo Niermann, The Outer und Inner Pets of the Manosphere
14:00
Ana Texeira Pinto, Oh Man! The World Ends, Masculinity Endures! (online)
14:30
Break
15:00
Priska Gisler, „Lebensbilder“ in the Natural History Museum Bern: Some flashlights on a colonial history of masculinity, animals and sport“
15:30
Round Table moderated by Aïcha Revellat
16:30
Film Screening: Roman Selim Khereddine, Derb Sultan Symphony, (2022, 20min), Beiss die Hand (2024, 12min)
17:15
Artist Talk mit Roman Selim Khereddine & Giuliana Beya Dridi
17:30
Apéro
