An illuminating conversation that, underpinned by lived experience, traces the racist structures of the German discourse landscape and creates a new vocabulary for acts of solidarity.
How does solidarity emerge? When are political alliances formed across differences, and why do certain political movements receive more solidarity than others? What makes up solidarity work and what fault lines, interests and strategies shape it? In their new volume Hierarchies of Solidarity, Sinthujan Varatharajah and Moshtari Hilal jointly reflect on a practice that, as an act against oppression, expresses itself in both seemingly small everyday gestures and global political contexts.
Moshtari Hilal (born 1993 in Kabul) is an artist, researcher and curator based in Hamburg. She is a co-founder of the collective AVAH (Afghan Visual Arts and History) and the research project CCC (Curating Through Conflict with Care). In her work, which encompasses both artistic and discursive formats, she is concerned with beauty, ugliness, shame and power. Hilal studied Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science with a focus on gender, decolonial studies and Cultural Studies in Hamburg, Berlin and London.
Sinthujan Varatharajah (born in Jaffna) lives in Berlin as an independent researcher and essayist. They studied Political Geography and works on the subjects of statelessness, mobilities and geographies of power(lessness) with a particular focus on infrastructures and architectures. For several years, Varatharajah was also engaged with various human rights organisations in London and Berlin.
