When The Jackal Leaves The Sun, Chapter #1

Chapter #1
OPLATZBOX: The Refugee Movement is the Movement of the 21st Century

An archive of feminist perspectives on the Refugee Resistance Movement

Collectively organized by Jennifer Kamau / International Women* Space with artists and cultural workers from the decolonial feminist network When The Jackal Leaves The Sun
As part of Oplatz wird 10 – Baustelle Migration

5 – 9 October 2022
Oranienplatz, 10999 Berlin

Exhibition, Performances, Radio, Workshops, Poetry, Music & Talks
open daily 12 – 22 h

IW*S Cinema
open daily 18 – 22 h

30 September to 11 October 2022
Billboard exhibition at different sites around Oranienplatz

with Angela Davis, Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Anike Joyce Sadiq & Judith Hamann with leo & Nino Bulling, Aziza Ahmad, Barby Asante, Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, Denise Garcia Bergt, Hanaa Hakiki, International Women* Space, IWS Radio, Jennifer Kamau, Jo’Art, Lica Stein, Memory Biwa, Muhammed Lamin Jadama, Napuli Langa, Nino Bulling, Oranienplatz Comic Workshop, Pippa Samaya, Pungwe Listening, Sarah Imani, Semra Ertan, Semra Ertan Initiative, Sista Mimi, String Archestra, Suza Husse, Vitjitua Ndjiharine, WeAreBornFree! Empowerment Radio

Click here for full programme

“The Refugee Movement is the movement of the 21st century. It’s the movement that is challenging the effects of global capitalism. It’s the movement that is calling for civil rights for all human beings.”
– Angela Davis on her 2015 visit to Berlin in conversation with refugee protesters occupying the Gerhardt Hauptman school in Kreuzberg

OPLATZBOX is a mobile archive dedicated to the feminist struggle in the Refugee Resistance Movement with a focus on testimonies and visions of women* and queers from Black, Indigenous, migrant and People of Colour communities. Showcasing films, podcasts, publications and ephemera gathered and produced by International Women* Space / IW*S across 10 years as well as art works, performances, radio programs, poetry, music and talks OPLATZBOX is a temporary education centre of migrant anticolonial knowledges open to all over a period 5 days.

A monument to the resistance and worldmaking of Black women* that shaped the fabric of the Refugee Movement and its enduring legacy, OPLATZBOX is part of the arts and culture festival “Oplatz wird 10 – Baustelle Migration“. Ten years after the beginning of the occupation of Oranienplatz square, the festival organized by IW*S celebrates the empowerment histories of the Refugee Resistance Movement in Berlin and makes proposals for a diverse, postcolonial, grassroots democratic, and postmigrant society.

International Women* Space was founded as a radical feminist wing of the Refugee Resistance Movement in Berlin, which emerged from the protest occupation of Oranienplatz square in Kreuzberg in 2012. From the beginning, the self-organized making of culture based on the lives, struggles, histories and visions of migrant women, dykes, intersex, non-binary and trans people has been an important focus in the work of IW*S.

“Women* who had become refugees in their own regions before attempting to reach Europe through the deadly routes available. Women* fleeing war, poverty, environmental disaster caused by corporation’s greed, women* feeling persecution for not conforming to the gender they were assigned at birth. … we needed to speak to each other to understand the paradox of seeking protection in one of the western countries, knowing the roles they play in destabilizing our regions, through wars and neo-colonialism. In a less insane world this would be the last place we would choose.”
– In Our Own Words. Refugee Women Tell Their Stories, ed. IW*S, 2015, p. 4

IW*S propose that listening to one another and creating records of survival in the face of violence, erasure, death and deportation are the base for creating strategies for a common struggle, for working on transformation together. A grassroots archive of resilience, achievement and loss, OPLATZBOX amplifies this Black, migrant, queer feminist take on decolonization put into practice through feminist self-organising.

Addressing the violent repercussions of colonialism, the dangerous migration routes, the fortressed borders to Europe, the realities of deeply engrained structural racism in Germany, the testimonies and reflections document migration as a political movement. A feminist anti-racist, anticolonial movement that connects a multiplicity of BIPOC and migrant histories and struggles in and beyond Germany.

OPLATZBOX is the first manifestation of the transterritorial decolonial feminist network WHEN THE JACKAL LEAVES THE SUN: Decentering Restitution | Pedagogies of Repossession. A decolonial feminist infrastructure for memory politics, art and transformative justice connecting Nairobi, Windhoek, Kigali, Dresden, Dar Es Salam, Dakar, Cape Town and Berlin.
Initiated by Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Jennifer Kamau, Memory Biwa, Michael Bader, Rehema Chachage, Reneé Akitelek Mboya and Suza Husse with District*School Without Center, International Women* Space, Nyabinghi Lab, SOMA and Wali Chafu Collective.

When The Jackal Leaves The Sun. Decentering Restitution | Pedagogies of Repossession unfolds through six chapters of interventionist and research-based cultural practices, accompanied by international legal expertise and activist engagement. Departing from and deeply engrained in contemporary anti-colonial struggles on the African continent and in Germany, When The Jackal Leaves The Sun embarks on a collective, transdisciplinary process with the aim to create decolonial tools and interventions.

When The Jackal Leaves The Sun. Decentering Restitution | Pedagogies of Repossession is funded by the TURN2 Fund of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) and the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media). OPLATZ WIRD 10 – BAUSTELLE MIGRATION is funded by Berliner Projektfonds Urbane Praxis.