Really excited to be working with Nina Prader and Vanessa Gravenor on our upcoming exhibition, "Scan the Difference: Gender, Surveillance, and Bodies," an interactive, critical seminar and educational training at VBKÖ May 15-21. Using methodologies derived from intersectional feminism, Scan the Difference: Gender, Surveillance, and Bodies (STD) deviates from the traditional art show. Through a series of lectures, a zine-making workshop, and lecture-performances, the aim is to create awareness and visibility on how bodies have been scanned medically, culturally, and politically. Thinking about the base of Vienna with a universal health care system, it is important to reflect critically on what rights bodies have and how these rights are threatened by the rise of the Right. Over the course of the exhibition, we will explore questions relating to archiving the self in the age of data collection and digitalization. What strategies do we have to own our body, medically and/or politically? What is the difference between “scanning” and “positioning” (You are vs. I am) from a doctor’s exam, a police report to your cultural I.D., verbal, digital or on paper.

Check out Vanessa Gravenor's video teaser

https://vimeo.com/330362672/f8e62c182e

Please check out the latest Ottoman History Podcast where I interview Professor Jennifer Derr from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Abstract: Colonialism and violence are frequently paired in studies of the modern Middle East, but environment and violence are less commonly paired. But in this episode, Jennifer Derr explains the indelible connection between the two in a conversation about her recent monograph The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt. According to Derr, the transformation of Egypt's economy under British rule was experienced as a form of violence for ordinary Egyptians. "The violence of colonial economy and specifically colonial labor was made manifest on the bodies of laborers." In our conversation, we explore the transformation of the Nile and its environment under colonialism and consider how these transformations changed the nature of disease in the region with damaging consequences for the workers in intimate contact with the new nature of the Nile.