MEME THE PAIN AWAY // Workshop with Anahita Neghabat
Who’s Laughing Now? And how can humor confront power?
We will have the last laugh as we take memes as tools of resistance against authoritarianism and its impact on marginalized lives. Inspired by Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, we explore how failure can become a resource for survival, joy, and critique—especially from the situated perspectives of queer, racialized, and otherwise marginalized communities.
Schedule
This workshop — which also marks the finissage of the Who’s Laughing Now? exhibition — is limited to 10–15 participants and requires registration here: https://tinyurl.com/yc2ntjc7.
Together, we will create memes that transform anger, vulnerability, and everyday struggles into sharp, playful counter-images. In doing so, we reclaim laughter as both critique and endurance. Selected memes will enter the exhibition, carrying these voices into public space.
Please bring your smartphone. No prior knowledge required! The workshop will be held in English, with the possibility of translation to German.
About Anahita Neghabat
Anahita Neghabat is a social anthropologist, artist, and meme-making activist from Vienna. Her work is concerned with critical education, intersectional feminism, and (anti-Muslim) racism. Since 2019, she has been using memes to comment on Austrian interior politics; since 2021, she has been holding political meme workshops. She currently works in critical education and is pursuing her doctorate in philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
