Lecture by Dominik Mattes (IfSKA, FU Berlin) within the Berlin Anthropology Seminars:

Affective Presence. How minority religion takes place in Berlin

Drawing on selected scenes from our documentary film Becoming present. Religious Diversity in the City, this contribution explores how minoritized religious groups in Berlin seek, establish, aspire to, and sense various forms of affective (co)presence and conviviality in the German capital. In accompanying the women protagonists of four religious communities to their places of religious gathering, witnessing their ritual and secular engagements in and with their natural and social environments, and conversing with them about their historical trajectories and personal aspirations within and beyond the cityscape of Berlin, the film aims to convey a sense of how religious communities build and sustain affective presence and how they co-shape and partake in diverse forms of urban conviviality. Affective presence, in this context, may be understood in a territorial and material sense. Still, it is no less important to account for social and political registers of presence, as well as for temporal connections that while profoundly determining the groups’ sense of being in the here and now transcend the confines of contemporary Berlin.

The film will be shown in German and as it is still a rough cut we will provide a handout with short descriptions of the scenes in English.

This lecture is part of the bi-weekly Berlin Anthropology Seminars. This series constitutes a joint initiative by anthropologists from the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at FU Berlin, ZMO, and Ethnologisches Museum. It intends to shape and cultivate an inclusive platform and open regular meeting point for exchange and discussion on current research by Berlin-based anthropologists. Please spread the word among colleagues, junior or senior, who may be interested. For further questions contact m.oschwald@fu-berlin.de
Organizers: Paola Ivanov, Claudia Liebelt, and Kai Kresse.