OPLATZ BOX – The Refugee Movement Is The Movement Of The 21st Century
Napuli Langa
Napuli in the tree.
Napuli is an activist who has started to occupy a tree in Oranienplatz.
Since the occupation of the Oranienplatz movement, Napuli Langa was the only Black woman who was able to survive in those tents with the men. And even when we occupied the school, she only visited; she decided to stay in these tents. And when the eviction came in 2014, she did a spontaneous protest by claiming a tree in Oranienplatz that is now very known as the Napuli tree. She stayed in the tree for six days. And she was demanding for an info point, and she was resisting the eviction of the Oranienplatz movement. So in this image, this was the second occupation, which again, she did on her own to protest the withdrawal of this contract of the info point we had with the district, because they had threatened to take it away. And this was the second protest.
OPLATZBOX is a mobile archive dedicated to the feminist struggle in the Refugee Resistance Movement with a focus on testimonies and visions of women* and queers from Black, Indigenous, migrant and People of Colour communities. Showcasing films, podcasts, publications and ephemera gathered and produced by International Women* Space / IW*S across 10 years as well as art works, performances, radio programs, poetry, music and talks OPLATZBOX is a temporary education centre of migrant anticolonial knowledges open to all over a period 5 days.
A monument to the resistance and worldmaking of Black women* that shaped the fabric of the refugee movement and its enduring legacy, OPLATZBOX is part of the arts and culture festival “Oplatz wird 10 – Baustelle Migration“. Ten years after the beginning of the occupation of Oranienplatz square, the festival organized by IW*S celebrates the empowerment histories of the Refugee Resistance Movement in Berlin and makes proposals for a diverse, postcolonial, grassroots democratic, and postmigrant society.
International Women* Space was founded as a radical feminist wing of the Refugee Resistance Movement in Berlin, which emerged from the protest occupation of Oranienplatz square in Kreuzberg in 2012. From the beginning, the self-organized making of culture based on the lives, struggles, histories and visions of migrant women, dykes, intersex, non-binary and trans people has been an important focus in the work of IW*S.
“Women* who had become refugees in their own regions before attempting to reach Europe through the deadly routes available. Women* fleeing war, poverty, environmental disaster caused by corporation’s greed, women* feeling persecution for not conforming to the gender they were assigned at birth. … we needed to speak to each other to understand the paradox of seeking protection in one of the western countries, knowing the roles they play in destabilizing our regions, through wars and neo-colonialism. In a less insane world this would be the last place we would choose.”
IW*S propose that listening to one another and creating records of survival in the face of violence, erasure, death and deportation are the base for creating strategies for a common struggle, for working on transformation together. A grassroots archive of resilience, achievement and loss, OPLATZBOX amplifies this Black, migrant, queer feminist take on decolonization put into practice through feminist self-organising.
Addressing the violent repercussions of colonialism, the dangerous migration routes, the fortressed borders to Europe, the realities of deeply engrained structural racism in Germany, the testimonies and reflections document migration as a political movement. A feminist anti-racist, anticolonial movement that connects a multiplicity of BIPOC and migrant histories and struggles in and beyond Germany.
OPLATZBOX is the first manifestation of the transterritorial decolonial feminist network WHEN THE JACKAL LEAVES THE SUN: Decentering Restitution | Pedagogies of Repossession.
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