April 23–25, 2026
Revolutionary Motherhood. Asja Lācis and other Activist Mothers* (de/en)
WORKSHOP
(registration by 4/22.: asjalacis@posteo.de)
Latvian theater maker Asja Lācis, a firsthand witness of the so-called Theater October 1917 in St. Petersburg and Moscow, was known for her unwavering belief in the revolutionary cause of the proletarian art movement and her theater work with proletarian kids and workers – she was also a mother herself and, according to her only daughter, a rather bad one: caring for the future of mankind and others’ children while neglecting her own (Dagmāra Ķimele, Asja,1996). She was by no means alone in this conflict between socio-political engagement and artistic ambitions on the one hand and parental responsibilities on the other. Even Alexandra Kollontai, the great pioneer of the politicization of women’s issues, of comradely love and non-reproductive sexuality (until these topics faded into oblivion again under Stalin), addresses in her memoirs the emotional turmoil she felt when leaving her young son with his grandparents to devote herself to her studies. Whether to become a mother or not, and how collective child-raising could look (and feel) like are topics that traverse Kollontai’s literary work (Red Love, 1923), and prominently reemerge in the figure of Milda in Sergej Tretjakov’sI Want a Baby (1924-1926). The question of how to reconcile parenthood and work or political initiative affected many women and fewer fathers of her generation in ways that may still seem all too familiar to us today.
Using Lācis as our reference point, we will continue to discuss accounts of other activist (non)mothers and draw connections across the past century to the Jetzt-Zeit: even today, activists and artists are still confronted with questions about the compatibility of family and political vocation and artistic aspirations. Even though the division of roles in many – though by no means all – private relationships may have changed in the meantime, patriarchal structures are regaining political power worldwide, and heteronormative and property-based concepts of love and family are being normalized in public discourses, especially on social media and in the so-called manosphere. In light of these developments, the political significance of the challenges of (equal and gender-sensitive) parenthood in activist-artistic fields of work is becoming ever more important.
April 23, Thursday
2 pm // WELCOME
2:30–4 pm // COLLECTIVE REVIEW OF SOURCES
»A stranger to her«. Lācis and the notion of estranged motherhood Sources by and aboutLācis as well as on socialist motherhood – Caroline Adler (Hamburg) and Mimmi Woisnitza(Lüneburg)
Coffee-break
4:30–5:30 pm // INPUT & CONVERSATION
Mothering the Revolution? Collective Care in the Work of Alice Constance Austin andAlexandra Kollontai – Liza Mattutat (Hamburg), Moderation: Antonia Rohwetter
Coffee-break
6–7:30 pm // KEYNOTE LECTURE
Lācis as Litmus Test – Susan Ingram (Toronto) followed by an open conversation withworkshop-participants and audience, Moderation: Mimmi Woisnitza
Susan Ingram is a literary and cultural scholar and professor in the Department of Humanitiesat York University in Toronto. Since 2002, she has published extensivley on Asja Lācis’multilingual, autobiographical writing style, including in the monograph Zarathustra’sSisters: Autobiography and the Shaping of Cultural History (2003), and was the first toexamine Lācis from a feminist perspective and positioned her within European culturalhistory.
Snacks
8:30 pm // PERFORMANCE LECTURE & CONCERT
Variations of Bad Mother – Alice Creischer (Berlin), Inga Gaile (Riga), Lauratibor Kiezchor(Leitung: Öz Kaveller) and many more.
We will be reading Inga Gaile’s play Sliktā Māte/Bad Mother/Schlechte Mutter (2023) together in multiple languages, in which she explores Lācis’s feminist legacy from a Latvian perspective. The reading will feature the Lauratibor Kiezchor and other participants in the exhibition.
April 24, Saturday
10–11 am // OPEN MORNING CONVERSATION
Bad Mothers and Others – Moderation: Mimmi Woisnitza
Coffee-break
11:15 am–1 pm // INPUTS & CONVERSATION
Social and very specific: Anna Seghers’ Literary Motherhood from Social Means to an Aesthetic Vision of Writing – Wiebke Bernstorff (Hildesheim)
Mother figures and unfulfilled motherhood: The Women surrounding Brecht – Sarah Ralfs (Berlin), Moderation: Caroline Adler
Snacks
2–3:30 pm // INPUTS & CONVERSATION
Militant Mothers in West Germany: Feminist Film Practice after 1968 – Antonia Rohwetter (Lüneburg)
Auto- and co-production of paternal care. The Birth of Caring Masculinity from thePractices of the 1968 Movement – Florian Kappeler (Berlin), Moderation: Wiebke Bernstorff
4–5 pm // CLOSING CONVERSATION
Was tun, today, tomorrow? – Moderation: Mimmi Woisnitza
Individual evening plans
April 25, Saturday
2–7 pm // PERFORMANCE
Where should I look at? (after Asja Lācis and Inga Gaile) – Bühnen zu Baustellen | Baustellen zu Bühnen, Mariannenplatz
In dialogue with the author Inga Gaile (Riga), Konstanze Schmitt developed a performative research format in 2024 with the Berlin-based performers Anna Stiede, Martin Clausen and Ingo Tomi, based on Asja Lācis’ avant-garde manifesto New Directions in Theatre Art (1921) and Gaile’s play The Bad Mother (2023). The collective explores workers’ theatre and songs, art as an anti-fascist intervention, and the figure of Asja Lācis, who herself worked in this field as a theatre maker. The question: How can art, how can we as artists, have a social impact today?
Conversation & drinks @ Kunstraum Kreuzberg