Lubi Barre
Bad Manners II: Writing Like the Timeline Isn't Watching
Block seminar, English, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Saturdays/Sundays, 18.4./19.4. and 25.4./26.4.2026, each 10-17 h, Hardenbergstr. 33, room 110

Registration on Moodle starts on 9.4.2026:https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=3010
Enrolment Key: timeline

What happens when we reject linearity and write across time—backwards, sideways, circular?
This seminar explores how artists can break free from "time discipline" and engage with memory, myth, prophecy, and embodiment to imagine alternative creative futures. We will read and respond to texts that resist dominant timelines—those shaped by colonialism, capitalism, heteronormativity, and productivity culture. Through discussion, creative prompts, and interdisciplinary materials, students will be invited to write outside the expected, experimenting with speculative and ancestral modes of storytelling. A space for risk-taking and radical imagination, this course encourages students to engage time not as a fixed path but as a malleable force in artistic work.

This seminar uses inclusive readings and multilingual, cross-genre sources. Its focus on nonlinear time and cultural memory creates room for a wide range of lived experiences, disciplines, and identities. Students from all backgrounds are encouraged to contribute and challenge how art and narratives are shaped.

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).