{"id":47798,"date":"2025-09-09T11:47:53","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T11:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bethanien.de\/exhibitions\/house-of-kal-spectres-of-sultana\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T14:35:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T14:35:44","slug":"house-of-kal-spectres-of-sultana","status":"publish","type":"kb_exhibition","link":"https:\/\/bethanien.de\/en\/exhibitions\/house-of-kal-spectres-of-sultana\/","title":{"rendered":"Specters of Sultana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Specters of Sultana: A Speculative History of Subcontinental Science<\/em><\/strong> is the third chapter of the project <em><strong>Becoming B<\/strong><\/em>. With contributions by <strong>Areez Katki, Aulic Anamika, Chitra Ganesh, houa\u00efda, Iskander Abdalla, Kei Watanabe, Leila Bencharnia, Omar Kasmani, Perera Elsewhere, Sumona Dhakal, Wooly Aziz<\/strong>, and <strong>Zuneera Shah<\/strong>, the exhibition imagines, based on the groundbreaking 1905 science fiction story <em>Sultana&#8217;s Dream<\/em> by Bengali Muslim educator Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, imagines Sultana as a time-traveling &#8220;ghost in a machine&#8221; of South Asian history.<\/p>\n<p>In 1905, under British colonial rule, the subcontinent experienced the partition of Bengal. Protests erupted on the streets and anti-colonial sentiments shaped politics, science and art. In Calcutta, Begum Rokeya published her dream of a utopian feminist society.<\/p>\n<p>120 years after the publication of this key text, amidst the devastating aftermath of multiple partitions and the rise of postcolonial ultranationalisms, Begum Rokeya&#8217;s words make it clear that Sultana&#8217;s Dream was less fiction and more a factual account. It was about a hidden history, an inventory of actors and queer pioneers of anti-colonial scholarship on the subcontinent.<\/p>\n<p><em>Specters of Sultana<\/em> is a speculative archive of anti-colonial scholarship from a South Asian perspective, presented through objects, images, sounds and texts of queer feminist diasporas from South Asia and the Middle East. Family archives, historical research and anti-colonial speculative practices are interwoven to trace Begum Rokeya&#8217;s fantastical trajectories of non-linear time and liberatory imagination to create an alternative history of discursive decolonization.<\/p>\n<p>Organized by <strong>Promona Sengupta<\/strong>, <strong>Aziza Ahmad<\/strong> and <strong>Aziz Sohail <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Events<\/p>\n<p><strong>25.09., 7 p.m.<\/strong><br \/>\nExhibition opening<\/p>\n<p><strong>28.09., 5 &#8211; 7 p.m.<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>On the Arts of (Un)Telling Dreams<\/em><br \/>\nWorkshop with Omar Kasmani and Iskander Abdalla<\/p>\n<p><strong>04.10., 4 &#8211; 6 p.m.<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Disobedient Dreamscapes: Worldbuilding, Time-travel <\/em><br \/>\n<em>and Comradeship across South Asia<\/em><br \/>\nWorkshop with Sumona Dhakal<\/p>\n<p><strong>18.36 &#8211; 19.36 pm<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Turning Worlds \/\\ 720\u00b0 Upside Down<\/em><br \/>\nReading with Aulic Anamika, Zuneera Shah and Shaunak Mahbubani<br \/>\nPerformance with houa\u00efda, Promona Sengupta<\/p>\n<p>All events are held in English.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The exhibition is funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the Institut f\u00fcr Auslandsbeziehungen (IfA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","categories":[108],"class_list":["post-47798","kb_exhibition","type-kb_exhibition","status-publish","hentry","category-becoming-b-en"],"acf":{"article_image":47821,"article_image_bu_de":"Archival photograph, courtesy Mitra\/Sengupta family","article_image_bu_en":"Archival photograph, courtesy Mitra\/Sengupta family","datum_suche":""},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Specters of Sultana - Bethanien %<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bethanien.de\/en\/exhibitions\/house-of-kal-spectres-of-sultana\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Specters of Sultana - Bethanien %\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Specters of Sultana: A Speculative History of Subcontinental Science is the third chapter of the project Becoming B. 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