Susana Vásquez Torres
Printing the Future by Hand: Graphic Interventions in Public Space
Intensive Workshop, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
4 Sundays, 11-18 h, at following dates: 19.10., 26.10., 2.11., 9.11.2025, Hardenbergstraße 33, room 102

What kind of future can we print into the present? This seminar explores graphic art as a form of political intervention and collective imagination. Rooted in feminist, decolonial, and urban theory, it combines critical reflection and hands-on practice to examine how visual strategies can reclaim and re-signify public space.

Participants will study historical and contemporary examples of graphic activism—from feminist posters by the Guerrilla Girls, zines from punk-feminist movements, and anti-colonial street art by Latin American collectives like “Serigrafía instantánea” and “TPS”—to understand how images circulate outside institutional systems and activate dissent. We will analyze how cities communicate through signage, advertising, and spatial design—and how graphic interventions can hack these everyday codes to open cracks for alternative imaginaries.
Can a print on a wall shift the atmosphere of a place? Can a napkin carry a future? Through screen printing, stenciling, and zine-making, students will develop site-specific interventions that respond to the symbolic and political fabric of the city. The course includes theoretical sessions, collaborative workshops, and a final group project that transforms urban space into a laboratory for counter-narratives.

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Participants are expected to actively engage in both the theoretical and practical components of the seminar. This includes regular attendance, participation in discussions and workshops, short readings, and the development of a collaborative final project.

Susana Vásquez Torres (Lima 1990) Bachelor in Fine Arts by the Peruvian National School of Fine Arts and Master in Art in Context by the UdK Berlin. Interdisciplinary feminist artist whose work encompasses performance, screen printing, book art and documentary animation. From political activism and feminist struggle, she has developed projects that seek to question and denounce the prevalence of violence in patriarchal societies as well as generate spaces of empowerment and exchange. Among these, the projects Bleeding Stories (2019-2024) and The Wounded Hours (2016-2018) stand out. Her work stems from intersectional feminism and community art and explores themes such as violence, femicide, menstruation, migration and mourning. She currently works in different artistic projects seeking the generation new narratives to build thoughts and structures that do not follow patriarchal and colonial patterns.