Lubi Barre
Bad Manners: Writing Like Culture Is Not Looking
Block seminar, English, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
2 Weekends, each 10-17 h, Saturday/Sunday, 10.5./11.5. & 31.5./1.6.2025,
Hardenbergstr. 33, room 150

Registration on Moodle starts on 14.4.2025: https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=2639
Enrollment Key: write

Have you felt your creativity stifled, your voice silenced, or your artistic ambitions constrained by the invisible rules of dominant culture? Societies impose spoken and unspoken norms—dictating how we think, behave, and express ourselves. Often, these norms serve to enforce conformity, marginalizing those who challenge them. For artists, this can mean feeling out of place, misunderstood, or excluded for daring to think, desire, feel, or look differently.
This seminar, Bad Manners: Writing Like Culture Is Not Looking, is a space for artists to break free from these cultural restraints and reclaim their voices. Through an immersive blend of readings, discussions, and creative exercises, we will explore how inherited narratives shape our work and how to transcend them. Participants will examine how societal expectations influence their art, unearth the suppressed elements of their creativity, and practice writing as a radical act of self-liberation and cultural redefinition.
This seminar is not just a workshop; it’s a call to arms for artists ready to dismantle the rules that stifle their creativity. If you’ve ever longed to create with complete freedom, this could be the tipping point to reclaiming your artistic practice.

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: regular and active participation, reading, writing and discussing in English.

Lubi Barre is a writer, curator, and educator born in Paris, raised in Mogadishu and California, and currently based in Hamburg, Germany. With a degree in Anthropology from UCLA, her work reflects a deep engagement with cultural narratives and storytelling. She co-curated the inaugural Black Writers Book Festival, celebrating international and diverse voices in literature, and has taught creative writing seminars at Hochschule Düsseldorf and workshops at Kiel University. Her experience includes curating literary events such as the AHAB Reading Series and Fluctoplasma Festival, focusing on amplifying marginalized voices and fostering dialogue around identity and creativity. As a published author, her works include the short collection Here and There (Punktum Bücher), James Baldwin: Jimmy's Blues (Engeler Verlag), Kontinentaldrift: Das Schwarze Europe (Das Wunderhorn Verlag), and My Old Man: Tales of Our Fathers (Cannongate Books).