4 February 2025
8:00 AM EST/ 2:00 PM CET
DocTalks x MoMA
8:00 AM EST/ 2:00 PM CET
DocTalks x MoMA
In Front of Everyone’s Eyes:
Cruising Infrastructure in Berlin’s Hasenheide and Whole Festival
CAROLINA SEPÚLVEDA
Harvard University
Respondent: Qiran Shang, University of Pennsylvania
Cruising: Whole Festival at Ferropolis, 2024. Credit: Tomás Eyzaguirre
The research begins with the premise that queer bodies and their collective associations are intricately shaped by their continuous interaction with the urban environment. Similarly, urban life is formed and contested by the diverse collective actions that subjectivities play in the public sphere, serving as indicators for measuring cultural currents. Cities, in this manner, are molded by infrastructures, demonstrating how sets of processes, policies, and practices converge differently in specific places and at particular times.
The proposal delves into the interaction between queer individuals and urban infrastructure within Berlin’s parks. Here, I explore the concepts of “body as infrastructure,” “infrastructured bodies,” and “queer infrastructure” to explain the dynamics between queer bodies, collective affects, and the urban environment. The study focuses on two moments of collective revolt against infrastructure in different time periods. Firstly, I scrutinize the Turnplatz, the first open-air gymnasium inaugurated in 1811 within Hasenheide Volkspark, which faced closure in 1819 following an uprising culminating in the assassination of poet Kotzebue. Secondly, I link Hasenheide's historical Turnplatz to its contemporary role as a cruising site—a practice involving seeking sexual encounters in public areas, typically among men—ultimately connecting it to the genesis of the WHOLE Festival, a three-day queer event situated in Ferropolis, so-called the “city of iron,” featuring cruising areas alongside music stages and darkroom spaces.
The evolution of Hasenheide park from a site emphasizing bodily rigor and discipline in the 19th century to a renowned venue for bodily pleasure through cruising or public sex reflects a broader cultural transformation in contemporary Berlin. Lastly, these cases shed light on the interplay of inclusion and exclusion dynamics arising from the intersection of identity formation, infrastructure, and modern life.
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Thinking Like a River:
Land, Water & Territorial Imagination in Colonial Punjab (1849-1920)
JAVAIRIA SHAHID
Columbia University
Respondent: Sonali Gowri Dhanpal, Columbia University
Left: The Bar Before Colonization: Caption: “Here the Bar is seen in its natural condition before the introduction of canal irrigation. At this site the jungle growth in the foreground is less than usual. The ragged clumps of trees are characteristic.”
Right: The Bar After Colonization. Caption: “This illustrates what Government waste lands will look like when irrigation is developed in a few years’ time. This illustration speaks volumes.” (Source British Library)
During the pivotal decades spanning India's subjugation to the British crown in 1857 and its eventual partition in 1947, the arid wastelands of Punjab underwent a profound transformation under the sway of colonial governance and economic imperatives. Once inhospitable desert wasteland, these lands were transfigured into fertile fields dedicated to the cultivation of lucrative cash crops (sugarcane, wheat & cotton) and the mobilization of labor.
British engineers and planners, discerning India's hydrological challenge not as one of water scarcity but of its erratic abundance at the wrong time, embarked upon a monumental endeavor to tame the Indus. Their ambition was succinctly articulated by Geoffrey de Montmorency, Governor of the Punjab from 1928 to 1933, who envisioned nothing less than to "make the desert bloom." The solution they proposed: perennial canal irrigation and alluvial planning—a strategic approach to reining in Punjab's tumultuous environment by orchestrating land utilization in harmony with the rhythms of irrigation and water management, negotiated against the caprices of rivers, rainfall, and soil. My dissertation project traces the intricate web of transformations wrought by this endeavor in the Chenab Canal Colony. Here, I examine how the architecture of mandi towns served as the nexus for the convergence of imperial networks spanning the Indian subcontinent, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian Ocean world, between the dynamics of extraction between colonial power and the indigenous knowledge and labor. By shifting the focus from notions of improvement to considerations of depletion, this project reconfigures our understanding of water and land and their intrinsic value within the imperial paradigm.