COURTYARD CONVERSATIONS: Negotiating Space Together
We invite you to the final reviews of the Gender & Space (IKA) studio, presented as a symposionistic gathering with invited guests featuring engaging talks, discussions, installations, and interventions on the themes of feminist spatial practices, queer use, inclusivity, accessibility, feminist infrastructural critique, or commoning. Together with the students Hof Initiative, we are continuing to revitalize the courtyard and explore ways to create a vibrant community space.
Gender & Space Studio /IKA,
Petra Hlaváčková & Nicole Sabella
and Hof Initiative
with Arundhathi Arun, Mahaut Beyret, Sara Hawy, Bharvi Kankaria, Jessica Cortina López, Nora Maleh, Rogin Mougoui, Alex Salem, Kora Witt
Guests
Ewa Majewska (SWPS, Warsaw)
Maria Topolčanská (AVU, Prague)
Emilia Castañeda Rossmann (Catcalls of Vienna)
Adéla Šoborová (FA BUT, Brno)
Ishita Shah (Curating for Culture, India)
and others
Ewa Majewska is a feminist theorist of culture, associate professor at the SWPS University in Warsaw, Poland, author of eight books, including: The Caring Leviathan? Hiacynt Pink Files, Biopolitics, and the Queer Critical Theory (Brill, 2026); Weak Avant-Garde? (MOCAK, 2026); Feminist Antifascism (Verso, 2021) andarticles in: Signs, Third Text, Journal of Utopian Studies, European Journal of Women's Studies, Jacobin, e-flux, Interalia and others. She lives and works between Berlin and Warsaw. More: https://ewa-majewska.com.
Maria Topolčanská is an architect and architectural theorist. She is Rector Emerita of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (2022–2024), where she has been lecturing since 2017. She is engaged in research and publishing in the field of contemporary architecture and is a supervisor of theoretical and artistic PhD students. She studied architecture at FAD STU in Bratislava and Metropolis Master in Architecture and Urban Culture at ETSAB in Barcelona. She is interested in exploring the political dimensions of architectural practice and housing theory in contemporary cities, as well as forms of pedagogy and publishing in the fields of art and architecture.
Emilia Castañeda Rossmann is a political science graduate (Contemporary Latin American Studies, Universidad Complutense de Madrid), with a strong focus on the intersection between academic research and applied socio-political practices. Her academic work centers on gender-based violence, decolonial feminist political theory, and the territorial dimensions of violence in Latin America, with particular attention to organized crime related femicides, feminist resistance in border regions, and body-territory frameworks. She has experience in feminist and anti-violence initiatives, contributing through research, communication, and collective organizing.
Catcalls of Vienna
Initially, starting in New York City in 2016 as a local “Chalk back” initiative, today it grew up to a movement tackling gender-based street harassment worldwide. The Catcalls of Vienna collective was founded in July 2020 by a group of local activists. Their Instagram serves as an online platform, where victims of street harassment can share their experiences, including recalling the verbal/physical assaults and the place where it happened. Chalking on the ground the very quotes of catcallers with the hashtag #stopstreetharassment the initiative reclaims public spaces and makes street harassment visible.
Ishita Shah is trained as an interior designer and an architectural historian. Over the last few years, she has been developing a community-based curatorial practice, which focuses on cultural preservation and creative collaborations across individuals, families, and organizations with an intention to deepen the culture for archiving in India and across South Asia. Her projects Constructing Personal Archives and the Women of Vaastukala Archive – are situated under the aegis of a Curating for Culture collective. She is a consulting archivist and/or curator at Pattani Archives, Glenmorgan Estate, and Shreyas Foundation.
Adéla Šoborová is an architect and educator, she is a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at Brno University of Technology, where she currently leads a studio / critical laboratory awarded the Bohuslav Fuchs Prize. As part of her doctoral research she investigates the manifestations of progressive educational methods in spaces for education. She completed an internship at the Faculty of Architecture in Graz, where she focused on landscape architecture and interdisciplinary approaches at the Institute of Contemporary Art. She is also a graduate of the School of Imagination at the Institute of Anxiety.