Radical Empathy

This five-part workshop series invites participants to explore how queer storytelling can hold, transform, and reimagine conflict – both personal and collective. In an intimate closed group of up to 30, we will create a space where differences are not erased but lived, opening up new ways of being connected.

Queer lives are shaped by contradictions – between belonging and exclusion, visibility and erasure, intimacy and alienation. Instead of suppressing them, this series invites us to hold, quarrel with, and even find joy in their friction.

We will ask questions such as:
• How can we live conflicts differently?
• What can we learn from one another about responding to tension with more than silence or aggression?
• What does queer experience teach us about the joy of irritation, the art of quarreling, the utopias of disagreement?

Practices we’ll explore together:
• Fishbowl-inspired storytelling: one story opens, others weave in.
• Embodied listening: holding difference through the body.
• Mindfulness & circle practices: slowing down, making space for complexity.
• Generative visioning: imagining queer futures shaped not by consensus but by shared vulnerability and empathy.

Event Overview: Upcoming Guests and Dates:
• Sunday, September 21, 2025: Mark Pertuis – Queer Mama
• Sunday, October 19, 2025: Matias Klitgard – gayconsentlab
• Sunday, November 30, 2025: TBC
• Friday, January 23, 2026: Olympia Bukkakis – Drag performers and activists
• Friday, February 13, 2026: Merten Legatz – Lecturer at TU, specializing in queer worldmaking.

neo seefried (*1995) is a freelance cultural mediator, curator, artist and author with a focus on queer realities, club culture and social participation. Living and working in Berlin, neo combines educational formats such as workshops, podcasts and exhibitions with an activist, intersectional practice. Neo studied Art Education (University of Leipzig) and Curatorial Studies (ZHdK) and has worked for the Schwules Museum, Schloss Biesdorf, Kunstmuseum Basel, Universität der Künste Berlin, TU Berlin, HFBK Hamburg, Haus für Poesie Berlin, Tanzquartier Wien and independent art spaces such as Parat, Clubbüro, Baby Angel and Last Tango in Zurich.

With the support of the Senatsverwaltung für Inneres und Sport – Berlin State Commission against Violence, we have developed the program “Conflicts as a Starting Point – Resilience as a Community Experience.” The project opens respectful, dialogical spaces for queer people in Berlin. It makes differences visible, invites individuals to endure them, and creates opportunities to address them productively and creatively. The aim is to overcome social fragmentation within queer communities and to strengthen new forms of exchange, cohesion, and mutual participation.

General information
Participant: this workshop series is open to LGBTQIA+ people, with particular encouragement for those holding multiple marginalizations.
Language: Depending on the group’s needs, sessions will be held in German and/or English.
Cost: Free of charge, registration required.