6 May 2026, 17:00 - 21:30
Class Outside
collective reading with Spookstad Collective, film screening followed by a discussion with Aylin Kuryel, Fırat Yücel, Deniz Buga, dinner by het Rode Keukentje
hosted by Iliada Charalambous
as part of Assembling in Resistance
In 2024, Amsterdam became one of many cities where people mobilized against the systematic destruction of Palestinian lives and infrastructures. In the midst of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, students and staff organized encampments, teach-ins, and demonstrations, calling on the University of Amsterdam and other institutions to sever ties with Israeli entities. Class Outside is a collective video diary emerging from this moment. Filmed during the May 2024 student encampments and subsequent actions, it captures everyday moments of resistance, solidarity, and clashes, exploring a landscape filled with bodies, slogans, cobblestones, and dreams.
This event will be a collaboration with het Rode Keukentje (Little Red Kitchen) who will cook a delicious dinner for us all, part of our fundraising efforts to support the North Flower Association in Nablus, Palestine; a grassroots organization doing crucial mutual aid work: creating safe spaces for kids & youth through tech clubs, theatre, football, and providing direct aid (food baskets) to families under occupation. Please do help us share the info about the fundraiser and get in contact with us for organising fundraising events together!! Link to donation page here
Following dinner, we will engage in collective reading in collaboration with Spookstad collective - an Amsterdam-based publishing initiative that emerged out of the squatting collective Mokum Kraakt, with the goal of disseminating practical knowledge of direct emancipatory action through publishing. Our reading will center the publication Between Palestine and Us that documents the student uprising in Amsterdam in May 2024. As an activist archive and counter-history, the book documents the student's mobilization and points to the necessity of both independent archiving in popular struggles and to the ongoing urgency of international solidarity with Palestine.
The film screening will be followed by a discussion together with the directors of the film and the Spookstad collective.
Program
17:00 – 18:30
dinner provided on a donation basis by our comrades of the mutual aid collective het Rode Keukentje. All donations will be put towards fundraising efforts for practical solidarity to support the North Flower Association in Nablus, Palestine
18:30 – 19:30
Collective reading of Between Palestine and Us together with Spookstad Collective.
19:30 – 20:40
Class Outside filmscreening
20:40 – 21:30
Discussion with Aylin Kuryel, Fırat Yücel, Deniz Buga and Spookstad collective.
Biographies
Aylin Kuryel is an Assistant Professor in Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. Her research areas are nationalism, image politics, aesthetics/resistance, and the politics of emotions. She is the (co-)editor of Utanca Bakmak (Looking at Shame, Cogito, 2023), Sıkıntı Var (Essays on Boredom, İletişim Press, 2020), Being Jewish in Turkey: A Dictionary of Experiences (Türkiye’de Yahudi Olmak: Bir Deneyim Sözlüğü, Iletisim Press, 2017), Küresel Ayaklanmalar Çağında Direniş ve Estetik (Resistance and Aesthetics in the Age of Global Uprisings, İletişim Press, 2015), and Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Possibilities (Rodopi, 2010). She has been involved in projects as an artist and is working as a documentary filmmaker. Among her documentaries are The City and the Messiah (2024), Translating Ulysses (2023), A Defense (2021), CemileSezgin (2020), The Balcony and Our Dreams (2020), Heads and Tails (2018), Welcome Lenin (2016). She is part of the Image Acts collective.
Fırat Yücel is a documentary maker and film editor based in Amsterdam and Istanbul. He collaborates with Aylin Kuryel under Image Acts to produce essayistic documentaries and curates video series for Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema in Istanbul. Only Blockbusters Left Alive (2016), Audience Emancipated: The Struggle for the Emek Movie Theater (2016), Heads and Tails (2019), March 8, 2020: A Memoir (2023), and Translating Ulysses (2023) are among his documentaries. The anthology film for which he served as artistic director, Seen Unseen: An Anthology of (Auto)Censorship (2024), premiered internationally at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam and was screened at MoMA Doc Fortnight, as well as CPH:DOX. He was a fellow at BAK Utrecht’s Fellowship for Situated Practice 2023-2024. His latest short, happiness (2025), premiered at Visions du Réel, is part of a trilogy on desktop cinema.
Deniz Buga, Istanbul, 1982. Currently lives in Amsterdam. Their film, video, and photography works primarily focus on urbanism, minority politics, and queer stances. Their work was presented at various film festivals and museums, including the San Sebastian Film Festival, Oxford Modern Art Museum, Centre Pompidou, and C/O Berlin. Buga was a resident artist at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.
Spookstad is an Amsterdam-based publishing initiative that emerged out of squatting collective Mokum Kraakt. Spookstad’s goal is to bring the message, aims and practical knowledge of direct emancipatory action to a wider audience
