On Mutiny and Federation: Pirate Care Gathering - Agit & Casino for Social Medicine, Berlin, 18-21 September 2025
2025-07-21 by pirate

On Mutiny and Federation: a pirate care gathering

Day 0 – Thursday 18 September 2025

19:00 @ Agit, Nansenstrasse 2: Book Launch: Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity (Pluto Press, 2025).

With: Valeria Graziano – cultural theorist and organizer; Marcell Mars – β€œadvanced internet user,” co-founder of Memory of the World shadow library and Zagreb’s Multimedia Institute/MAMA; Tomislav Medak – commons and disability activist, environmental researcher, co-founder of MAMA; Morana Milijanovic – sailboat captain and educator, active in maritime search and rescue since 2019, mostly with Sea-Watch and Louise Michel; Cassie Thornton – artist and activist whose recent practices include The Hologram, Casino for Social Medicine, and Feminist Economics Department.

Day 1 – Friday 19 September

Day focus: Criminalisation of Solidarity

10:30–12:30 @ Casino, Sonnenallee 100: Anarchist School of Medicine and Resistance/Rest/Restitution... [ASMR]

ASMR [Anarchist School of Medicine and Revolt/Rest/Repair/...] is a mutualist clinic experimenting with offering free high quality health care in third spaces. The project originated at the Casino for Social Medicine, where it offered a week intensive, then three months-long program in which different health care practitioners, doctors, healers, body workers, layman specialists, researchers, and health autonomy organizers provided their services in the space of the cafe. Apart from providing free health care, ASMR extracts the doctor from the hospital, the bodyworker from the self-care industry, the artists from making symbolic gestures, the visitor from passivity, the health activist from making speeches, the healer from a hushed atmosphere and has them practice in a public space side by side. This leads to new formats of health support and to dissolving the β€œexpert’s” ability to assume a distanced impersonal position. In our sessions, the β€œtreatment” often flows equally between the practitioners and the incomer.

Please note: Antigen tests are available in the morning for those attending ASMR

12:30–14:00 @ Casino, Sonnenallee 100: Workshop: Crip Mutual Aid: DIY HRT & Disabled Survival Strategies

12:30–14:00 @ Agit, Nansenstrasse 2: Screening: hold on to her (full film screening, 80 min) with Robin Vanbesien

hold on to her traces a lived social infrastructure of care, solidarity and struggle that addresses a recent case of police and state violence in the context of migration border control in Belgium. In 2018, two year-old Mawda Shawri, daughter of Phrast and Shamden and sister to Hama, was shot dead by a Belgian police officer during a car chase on a central highway. In 2023, over 40 people, both undocumented and documented resident activists, assembled before the camera at La Voix des sans papiers in Brussels to stage a collective hearing of documents from and reactions to Mawda’s case. Together they produce the counter-evidence of this deadly Channel crossing.

14:30–16:00 @Agit, Nansenstrasse 2:

  • Workshop: Archival Media Research on Networks of Care Indigenous Solidarity in the Americas and Europe, 1970s, 80s, and 90s. with Antonio Serna | Documents of Resistance

This workshop will begin with a brief overview of archival media research on solidarity in the movement for indigenous rights, followed by a reflective discussion on building contemporary networks of care.

  • Presentation: Cooperation Town with Shiri Shalmy

Shiri Shalmy is a community and political organiser. She is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Town, a worker cooperative coordinating a movement of over 50 self-organised community food co-ops across England. Previously she was a trade union organiser with UVW, a co-founder of Sex Workers Union, a founding member of Women's Strike UK and Feminist Antifascist Assembly and a co-founder of Antiuniversity Now. She is a board member of Gida, a new Black and Global Majority led housing cooperative. In her presentation she will describe the founding principles and work of Cooperation Town within feminist and class contexts and will discuss forms of political and community organising outside of mainstream political left tendencies.

17:00–20:00 @ Casino, Sonnenallee 100: Evening Plenum: Global Apartheid and Solidarity beyond the State with members of Sea Watch, Louise Michel and others

Day 2 – Saturday 20 September

Day focus: Healthcare Activism

10:30–12:30 @ Casino, Sonnenallee 100: ASMR Free Clinic (open)

12:30–14:00 @ Casino, Sonnenallee 100: Workshop: From Self Care to Systems Change with Lattices of Love

A discussion and ideation session about if and how to use The Hologram, a mutual aid practice and social network that cares for carers, for systems change work. This discussion can be expanded to discuss more broadly how to stretch and redefine motivations behind self care and therapy to remake uncaring structures and institutions.

Presented by Lattices of Love from Ireland: a collaboration between Workhouse Union (Rosie Lynch and Noortje van Deurson), Thom Stewart (designer of the Community Cafe), and Cassie Thornton (originator of The Hologram), Mark Garavan (author of Care), and visual artist Sarah Browne. We are exploring how ways of talking, questioning, and witnessing create a different approach to care within uncaring structures. Presenters include Workhouse Union, Thom Stewart and Cassie Thornton.

14:30–16:00 @ Agit, Nansenstrasse 2: Workshop: Abortion as Collective Care and Resistance / Mapping Feminist Health and Safety Networks Facilitated by activists from Turkey and Brazil

In this session, we will explore how networks of care, built through clandestine solidarity, have supported decision-making in loving and safe waysβ€”especially in contexts of legal restrictions. At the intersection of new media, gender, and healthcare resistance, our work engages with biopolitical struggles such as abortion access and HPV stigma. We propose contributions inspired by groups like Mor Γ‡atΔ± (en.morcati.org.tr), the Istanbul Convention and the Latin American collectives who have accompanied self-managed abortions for decades. Through these tactics and conversations, we propose a space where life-affirming practices and digital resistance feminist strategies come together to conspire communities and make this accessible to everyone.

17:00–20:00 @ Casino, Sonnenallee 100: Evening Plenum: Struggles in healthcare with MedAct (Cate Bailey, Juliette Brown)

Session on the active campaign against Palantir in the UK National Health Service, with specific reference to building solidarities between healthcare workers, BDS activists and community members. Palantir specialises in AI powered military surveillance technology and data analytics with a long history of human rights abuses and well-established complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. In 2023 Palantir were awarded a Β£330 million contract to manage vast amounts of sensitive health and personal data, sparking the formation of No Palantir in the NHS; a collaboration between Healthworkers for Free Palestine, Medact and Just Treatment, and local Palestine Solidarity Groups. We are health workers based in East London who have formed a local group to co-ordinate resistance to the contract. We will present a summary of the campaign, successes, challenges and the climate of state repression for solidarity with Palestine in the UK. This is a work-in-progress and we actively invite solidarities and suggestions from workshop participants.

  • Reports back from the workshops of the day + Collective reflections on reproductive justice, health data politics, harm reduction, and community survival strategies

Day 3 – Sunday 21 September

Day focus: Mutiny and Federation

10:30–12:30 @ Casino, Sonnenallee 100: ASMR Free Clinic (open)

12:30–14:00 @ Casino, Sonnenallee 100: Workshop: Breaking Free of the Psychedelic Renaissance / Grief and Solidarity Practices With Rayne + ChrisPi

14:30–16:00 @ Agit, Nansenstrasse 2: Workshop: Equipping the Lifehouse with Adam Greenfield

17:00–20:00 @ Casino, Sonnenallee 100: Evening Plenum: Mutiny and Federation

  • Kalina Drenska – Global Care Chains

What happens where the global care chain breaks? Bulgaria offers a specific case study in both Eastern Europe and globally when it comes to care labor migration. The country is defined by closed borders labor policies towards migrant workers, aging population, underfinanced care systems, while in the same time care workers are migranting en masse to other European countries for better salaries and working opportunities. This creates enormous care gaps and deficits in the local systems that are currently not being filled by migrant labor. Starting from this example and a study that LevFem - a Bulgarian feminist socialist collective - did in the last 2 years among Bulgarian care workers in the country and abroad, this session aims to shed light on the labor consitions and care deficits that emerge in care "donoring" countries (in Eastern Europe, but more broadly also in the Global South), while also exploring the possibilities for a European (and maybe even global) campaign that tackles the care inequalities that emerge out of these dynamics.

  • Z. Blace – Stealth Tools for Visibility, Sharing, Archiving

A quick overview of the Wikimedia open publishing ecosystem, its adjunct projects and alternative commons constellations (from global to communal), including services, tools, and communitiesβ€”especially queer and feministβ€”often targeted by systemic violence. Beyond cybersecurity, the focus is on tools and methods for being strategically stealth/visible, (an)archivable, and sharable/vaulted as trusted sources of public/communal knowledge. With input from vulnerable groups, peer supporters, and professionals (from Berlin queer MDs to Wiki Medicine), the session links to harm reduction work and imagines practical prototypes within limited shared time.

  • Reports back from the workshops of the day
  • Collective reflections on federation, solidarity, and pirate infrastructures

20:00 @ Casino (Sonnenallee 100): Closing Party

AGIT ACCESS DETAILS:

Address: AGIT, Nansenstrasse 2, 120147

Closest Ubahn Station: Hermanplatz (U8), 6min walk

Closest Bus Station: Sonnenallee/Pannierstr (171), 3 min walk.

There is wifi, a kitchen and a toilet. The toilet is not accessible for wheelchairs as it is very narrow and has a small step (about 5cm). There is an accessible toilet at the pizzeria next door that they are happy to allow the use of.

The first room at Agit opens onto the street and the second room is also up a small step (about 5cm).

CASINO ACCESS DETAILS:

address: Sonnenallee 100, 12045 Beriin (https://g.co/kgs/T4L41Yb)

closest bus station: Erkstrasse (M41, M43), ca 1min walk

closest ubahn station: Rathaus Neukolln (U7), ca 7min walk

the space is on street level, access through door without any steps

door is more than 90cm and opens inside

various seating options, including sofas, wooden chairs and cushy benches

permanently non-smoking, functioning air change system

we use low scent cleaning supplies

bathrooms are in the basement, only accessible through a flight of stairs (10)

not gender-assigned

no toilet equipped for wheelchair users (the next closest is, which is at CafΓ© K-fetisch)

during the entirety of the event we are going to take care of each other and work towards meeting each others needs in community as best we can, and not reproduce isolating ableist, capitalist or patriarchal systems.

please stay home with any cough and cold symptoms, and any symptoms that are not usual for you. we have FFP2 masks and tests available at the entrance of the Casino. tests will be required for attending the Mutual Aid Clinic in the morning.

dogs allowed

we kindly ask their humans to check in with people around them about their comfort and possible allergies

no personal identification required to enter

we do not call the police

all events in the Against All Odds series are free

guest event entry determined by the organizers

that said: nobody is turned away for lack of funds

all bartenders, organizers and other staff are currently volunteers

wifi exists

to give us (anonymous) feedback, use this form: https://office.casinoooo.org/apps/forms/LrLGPxdzt5H5Nmbr/edit

our conflict resolution process is still in the works

If you have questions or if you would like to attend an event and might need assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us at info@casinoooo.org

(information last updated: April 2025)