Screening and conversation with Sofia Lemos as part of a public assembly on the space and time of epidemics, curated by Andrea Bagnato and Ivan L. Munuera.

Vulnerable Beings: Sounding Out starts from the consideration that the current COVID-19 pandemic is neither unprecedented nor the only one: for a large part of the world, infectious diseases were and remain part of daily life. What were modernity’s blind spots in dealing with disease, and to what extent are they still with us today? What geopolitical maps and bodies matter? To answer these questions, we will reach back to unexpected histories and geographies, and look ahead toward possible futures. The ideas developed in the first assembly will be built upon and expanded into other bodies, environments, narratives, and politics. Sounding Out will explore invisible vulnerabilities and co-dependencies; wildness as a way of confronting exclusion; and the colonial traces embedded in medical institutions. We will highlight localised medical traditions and their conflict with Western medicine; investigate targeted violence in the context of settler colonialism; and explore local and global genealogies of activism. For three days, we will sound out the voices of Jack Halberstam, Himali Singh Soin, Isabel Amaral, Sofia Lemos, Edwin Nasr, Uriel Orlow, Jasbir K. Puar, Sarah Schulman, Nerea Calvillo, Lucía Casani and Mónica Carroquino, Tamara Giles-Vernick, Michael Marder, Elise Misao Hunchuck, Françoise Vergès, and Michael Wang.