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a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. kalDesign: Aziza Ahmad ©kal

a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. kal

A trans*oceanic platform for slow approaches, performative interventions and poetic strategies in visual and literary forms, kal traces decolonial and feminist futures and pasts that are connected through bodies of water lapping at different shorelines.

Allah you gave us a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. Kal. A spell cast with the entire mouth. Back of the throat to teeth. Tomorrow means I might have her forever. Yesterday means I say goodbye, again. Kal means they are the same. […]

Fatimah Asghar, Kal, 2018

Gathering artists and writers from South Asia, the South Asian diaspora and post-migrant Europe, kal unfolds in multiple strands including a series of publications, a DIY radio channel called radio kal, and the three Houses of Kal - a constellation of feminist infrastructures for transdiciplinary and collaborative art practices & alternative pedagogies in Karachi, Colombo and Berlin.
 

Radio Kal: DIY Feminist Radio Workshop: Tooling # 2: Acidrains of Andromeda|Soundhounds of the Profound mit psXssotm, 2021. ©kal

Radio kal

A fleeting space for artistic experimentation and for gathering community across space and time. 

Ayesha Chaudhry, ‘How Petals Move‘, 2021. ©Ayesha Chaudhry

Collective and self-organized spaces

The Houses of Kal are conceived as a low-residency program with a public programming and publishing outlet as well as a collective and self-organized space in the making from May to September 2021.

Houses of kal Colombo ©kal

House of kal in Colombo

The House of kal Colombo brings together a group of artists to realize a self-organized space within which studio practices, studio visits, workshops, long-term collaborations, and an open house form an experimental low-residency program from May to September 2021. 

kal

The title takes inspiration from Fatimah Asghar’s poetic invocation of the Hindi-Urdu word ‘kal’. Expressing a time beyond the here and now, the meaning of ‘kal’ moves fluidly and shifts its meaning based on who speaks, from where and when. Passing between inside and outside along the movement of tongues, ‘kal’ is a queer word that cannot be fully explained, denoting ephemerality and transience.
 
Thinking of the body as a site of memory and of speculation, kal looks towards forgotten and imagined radical futures of yesterday and tomorrow, disrupting binary contours of time or being. Thematic strands of kal focuse on the fabulation of ecologies after patriarchy and colonialism, capitalism and gender, and on decolonial feminist imaginaries  and their ancient and futurist ways to interrogate and counter racism, Islamophobia and fascism.
 
As kal unfolds in current pandemic time and amidst deep ecological and social transformations, so does our shared language and programming. kal is a platform for learning/imagining and practicing vocabularies at the crossings of art, feminisms and eco-politics that articulate radically different ways of being alive together in entangled futures, pasts and present.

a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. kal is co-initiated by Aziz Sohail and The Many Headed Hydra. This trans*oceanic platform is a collaboration with District*School Without Center and supported by the Goethe Institut South Asia, the Department for Culture and Europe in the Berlin Senate, Pro Helvetia New Delhi and ifa.

Background:
In late Summer 2019 the project Is It Possible To Live Outside Of Language? (IIPTLOOL) curated by Aziz Sohail in Karachi, explored connections between language, queerness and the city. From here, a thematic strand of kal cross-connects queer futurisms between Karachi, California, Colombo and Berlin.
 
Since 2016, the The Many Headed Hydra (TMHH) has initiated and published queer, feminist and decolonial research, art making and writing with a focus on ecologies, myth making and situated practices in lived relationships with bodies of water. Across 2019 TMMH has been active within temporary and continuing formations with artists, activists and writers from the shores of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean (nurtured by Colomboscope and IIPTLOOL).

House of kal Karachi © kal

House of kal Karachi

In the late summer months of 2021 the House of kal in Karachi presents a diverse program in the frame of its one-week Open House. In addition to an exhibition of works by House of kal Karachi participants, visitors can expect intersting gatherings, conversations and performances. 

House of kal Berlin © Goethe-Institut Sri Lanka

House of kal in Berlin

After 18 months of planning and overcoming all kinds of challenges, the House of kal in Berlin facilitated a multifaceted program consisting of an exhibition, gatherings, conversations, performances, and workshops that connected practitioners in Berlin and across Colombo, Karachi and spaces in South Asia both digitally and in person.

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