Dr. Annika Haas
Futures Beyond Repair
Seminar, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Thursdays, 10-12 Uhr, 12 dates: 15.10.; 29.10., 12.11.; 19.11.; 26.11.; 03.12.; 10.12.; 17.12.; 21.01.; 28.01.; 04.02., 11.2.2027, Medienhaus, Grunewaldstr. 2-5, room 310
Block day: Friday, 20.11., 10-18 Uhr (Excursion / visit of exhibition)

Anmeldung auf Moodle ab / Registration on Moodle begins 12.10.2026: https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=3329
Einschreibeschlüssel / Enrollment Key: repair

Repair is an ambiguous term. The far-right claims to repair societies as a violent necessity in order to restore a better past that never was. At the same time, repair is an urgent necessity when it comes to concrete political reparations for continued colonial violence or climate injustices. However, even reparations remain symbolical gestures when they are not embedded in sincere efforts to work together towards accountable and just futures. Instead of claiming repair as a pathway towards better futures, this seminar will think about futures ‘beyond repair’. As the artist Natascha Sadr Haghighian suggests in the book Beyond Repair (Archive Books, 2020), this way of thinking begins with the acknowledgment of an irreparability, and bears the potential to think and move beyond the reparative, restorative and reproductive mode of thinking and doing. In order to imagine the future differently, we must critically interrogate the underlying narratives that shape our thinking about 'the future', such as crisis, the good life, and progress. In what ways does our attachment to these narratives influence the futures we consider possible and desirable? In this seminar, we approach this question through the discussion of artists’ writings, and theoretical texts from the fields of visual culture, art theory, decolonial, affect and queer theory. Course work includes individual and collective writing exercises as well as the discussion of artworks and exhibitions.

Leistungsanforderungen für den unbenoteten Schein / Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Course work: 1 response paper or a summary of one of the theoretical readings in the course (2 pages); 1 piece of writing that is being developed alongside the writing exercises over the course of the semester (1-2 pages). All course work must be submitted until 31 January.

Annika Haas is a writer and scholar in media studies, based in Berlin. Her current research is concerned with artistic practices in a broken world beyond repair. Recently, she has co-curated the exhibition "The Unworld to Come: Imagining an Otherwise" at the Contemporary Arts Center at the University of California Irvine. She received a PhD from the Berlin University of the Arts with a dissertation about Hélène Cixous’s philosophy and writing through the body. Since 2020 she has been teaching media theory and courses on the relation of technology, capitalism, and (bad) feelings at the Berlin University of the Arts. She works as a postdoc in the DFG-research group "Aesthetic Practice" at the University of Hildesheim. Annika’s backgrounds in media studies and in media art contribute to her understanding of theory as an aesthetic practice. Experimental publishing, hosting conversations and writing workshops are part of this practice. >> https://annikahaa-s.com/teaching/