„The project investigates cooperative mobility practices of cycling. It contributes to a media-scientific concept of mobility against the background of the cooperative and sensory design of public spheres.“
OVARIAN PSYCOS
Documentary by Joanna Sokolowski and Kate Trumbull-LaValle (USA 2016) | 72 min. | Original version | Free admission Date: 16.10.2025 | Doors open: 6:30 PM | Start: 7:00 PM Location: Kino Endstation
Wallbaumweg 108
44894 Bochum
About Ovarian Psycos
Riding at night through the streets of Eastside Los Angeles is considered dangerous. But the Ovarian Psycos Bicycle Brigade, a misfit crew of feminist women of colour, use their bikes to confront the violence in their lives. In their first joint full-length film, Sokolowski und Trumbull- LaValle portray three of the crew protagonists: Xela de la X, founder of the group, single mother and rapper, street artist Andi, who aspires to become a leader in the crew, and bright-eyed recruit Evie.
»Our initial concept of the film was an all-out-super-heroine story. A story where confident, unwavering young women – the Ovas – take back the streets en masse, on bikes, shouting in the face of convention. But once we started production the film took a turn. The real super- heroine work was happening behind the scenes, in daily life, within their personal relationships as mothers, daughters, and sisters. We met working-class young women who were strong but vulnerable. Feminism isn’t something the Ovas choose, but it has been inherited. Inherited from living in a community politicised by the civil rights movement, and by the realities and challenges of growing up within the context of colonisation, immigration, racism, misogyny and gendered violence. These were women dramatising power and freedom on their bikes, at night, publicly in the streets, and at the same time struggling to hold onto that same power as single mothers, aspiring artists, students and working women.«
– Joanna Sokolowski and Kate Trumbull-LaValle.
This event is organized in cooperation with the Bochumer Cycling Club Windkante, Ruhr University Bochum (Chair of Gender Media Studies) and the SFB Media of Cooperation.
„digital:gender – de:mapping affect. a speculative cartography”
edited by Julia Bee (Ruhr-University Bochum), Irina Gradinari (Fernuniversität Hagen) and Katrin Köppert (Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig)
How do digital objects influence our critical thinking when they affect our emotions? Julia Bee explores this question together with colleagues in the publication digital:gender – de:mapping affect. a speculative cartography, published in 2025.
The publication looks at the intersections that now exist between gender studies and the objects of digital media culture—memes, apps, posts. Speculative experiments are carried out to test out entry points to the contemporary constellations of digital media culture and gender theory approaches using individual objects. Feeling and affect play a key role here: having our emotions appealed to by artistic and media objects changes our critical thinking about them. The “cartography” of contemporary digital media culture thus constitutes a situated method.
Irina Gradinari is Junior Professor of Gender Studies at FernUniversität in Hagen. Katrin Köppert is Junior Professor of Art History/Popular Cultures at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.
organized by Julia Bee (Ruhr-Universität Bochumg & SFB 1187) and the Research at Risk working group
How does media shape our understanding of the climate crisis? What role do they play in activism and political mobilization? The Spring School “Media Climate Justice: Research, Skillsharing, Hacking” (April 11-13, 2025, Ruhr University Bochum) invites you to discuss these questions in a practical way. Organized by the Research at Risk working group, the Spring School offers workshops, inputs and networking opportunities for all interested parties from science, journalism, activism and art.
How we perceive the climate catastrophe and the associated ecological crises depends largely on how they are negotiated in the media. It is therefore also a question of the media whether and how people can be politicised or mobilised for climate justice. We highlighted this at our first Spring School in spring 2024 on climate, media and anti-fascism.
Now we want to continue our efforts to connect activism, journalism, art and science – and go beyond analyses: This time, the focus is particularly on digital research practices, climate journalism and climate activism on Tiktok: we’re learning some skills for sharing! For our programme, we have invited Correctiv’s climate editorial team and the research collective Tactical Tech, among others. We will be looking at climate narratives, migration and the far-right appropriation of the climate discourse. There will also be a workshop on climate justice issues in teaching at the university. In addition to inputs and workshops, there will be a performance on Saturday evening. Afterwards, we hope to raise a glass with you.
All interested parties from university, activism, journalism, art and civil society are cordially invited! Journalists, people interested in research, committed people – spread the word & come along.
About Research at Risk
Research at Risk is a working group in media and performance studies that understands research as a practice of knowledge production, exchange and criticism, which is not only facilitated by academics, but also by activists, journalists, artists and others. We work in the field between climate justice and antifascist coalition building with a strong emphasis on intersectional approaches. In 2022 and 2023 Research at Risk invited a variety of speakers to present and discuss different ways in which individual researchers as well as critical research as such are put at risk. For this purpose, we organized two lecture series on flight and scholarship as well as petro fascism. Departing from these conversations we are continuing our work in this practice-oriented spring school to tackle the above-mentioned interceptions between right wing politics and anti-climate sentiment.
Round table “TikTok hacken? Protest und Bildung auf Videoplattformen”
hosted by Julia Bee (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) and Jasmin Degeling (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
How can TikTok be a platform for political education and queer-feminist activism? In the round table “Hacking TikTok? Protest and Education on Video Platforms” media scholars and content creators take a critical look at TikTok’s potential as a space for democratic discourse.
February 21, 7 pm Quartiershalle in der KoFrabrik Stühmeyerstraße 33 44787 Bochum
About the panel discussion
In this panel discussion with Ole Liebl, Caspar Weimann, Judith Ackermann, Jennifer Eickelmann, and Philipp Hohmann, the hosts Julia Beeand Jasmin Degeling discuss the protest and education on TikTok.
Against the backdrop of digital platforms contributing to societal fascization and the particular advantage digital media provide to right-wing political strategies, the participants will discuss which formats and artistic practices on TikTok and similar platforms can promote democracy through political education and queer-feminist activism.
TikTok creators critically address antifeminist and right-wing (online) radicalization, masculinity critique, queer joy, sexuality, and gender on their channels. They position themselves as queer-feminist and antifascist voices and advocate for the queer community.
In this discussion, content creators and media scholars will examine the possibilities of political education and a democratic media culture on TikTok. Join us and be part of the conversation on TikTok as a tool for political education and the role we can play in it.
The panel discussion is organized by the Chair of Gender Media Studies with a special focus on diversity at Ruhr University Bochum, the Chair of Media Anthropology at Bauhaus University Weimar, the DFG research network Gender, Media, and Affect, and KosmoPolis e.V.
Executive Summary
In view of anthropogenic climate change, the issue of mobility and thus also cycling has taken on an increasingly prominent role in public debates in recent years. The mobility sector causes almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. Of these, road transport is the largest emitter, which is largely attributable to passenger cars. In addition, war-related resource problems are increasing the pressure to develop alternatives to petrol-based mobility like cycling. This also causes controversies about forms of mobility, giving rise to issue publics.
Against this background, the subproject investigates how bicycle mobility is cooperatively generated. This finds expression in cooperatively constituted bicycle media that help shape publics in relation to sustainable mobility. The project is based on the working hypothesis that bicycle mobility cannot be reduced to mere movement from A to B. It is shaped by various (moving) image, data, and media practices in which sensory, bodily, and digital aesthetics become entangled and from which mobile publics of cycling emerge.
The objective of this project is to provide (1) a systematically designed empirical analysis of cooperative media practices of bicycle mobility and (2) a theoretical conceptualization of bicycle media as cooperative media of mobility. The project explores cooperative practices of bicycle mobility at two levels: (1) bicycle collectives and their cooperative media practices, and (2) audiovisual practices such as vlogs, films, and community apps.
We employ a multidimensional methodological approach that combines media-aesthetic analysis with participatory observations and interviews with selected bicycle groups (bicycle collectives). Furthermore, the project will create public science formats in order to build a cooperative research design that systematically integrates civil society initiatives into the research process. How (moving) images, apps, sensors, and body technologies work together to generate cycling and forms of a mobile public remains a gap in research that this project seeks to fill. The project will thereby make a systematic and conceptual contribution to bicycle mobility research by investigating the cooperative practices of generating bicycle mobility and the publics associated with it.
The bicycle is a medium of social change. Its diverse utopian potential results not least from its equally diverse and often overlooked medial qualities: it mediates, it connects, it translates; it modifies the perception and organization of space and time, of bodies and of sociality. Conversely, media-scientific thinking can also be changed by bicycle media. The bicycle is not only a medium of social and ecological change: cycling opens up perspectives, changes spaces, creates new relations and redistributes agency.
Fahrradutopien thinks from the bicycle and complements existing approaches to mobility research with perspectives from media culture studies. The contributions combine media studies and research on bicycle activism with a love of cycling. The focus is on bicycle films and vlogs, traffic and infrastructures, virtual reality and bicycles, bicycle collectives and bicycle feminism.
Open Access: https://meson.press/books/fahrradutopien/.
Bee, Julia. 2025. “Feministischer Fahrradaktivismus, Fahrradmedien und das Recht auf Stadt”. In digital:gender – de:mapping affect Eine spekulative Kartografie, edited by Irina Gradinari und Katrin Köppert. Leipzig: Spector Books. Julia Bee. Leipzig: Spector Books. ISBN: 9783959056731. https://www.spectorbooks.com/book/digital-gender-de-mapping-affect.
Bee, Julia, Katrin Köppert, and Irina Gradinari, eds. 2025. digital:gender – de:mapping affect: Eine spekulative Kartografie. Leipzig: Spector Books. ISBN: 978-3-95905-673-1.
2024
Angerer, Marie-Luise, Ingrid Richardson, Hannah Schmedes, and Zoë Sofoulis. 2024. Technologies of Containment: Holding, Filtering, Leaking. Lüneburg: meson press. https://meson.press/books/containment/.
Bee, Julia, and Miglė Bareikytė. 2024. “Liefern. Logistiken, Daten und Politiken”. Navigationen Special Issue 24 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/10577.
Schmedes, Hannah. 2024. “-1.153 Characters. Towards a Queerfeminist Infrastructural Critique of Wikipedia”. FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und Visuelle Kultur 74: 153-66. https://doi.org/10.57871/fkw7420241712 .
2022
Bee, Julia. 2022. “Radvlogging und Radcommunities. Ästhetik des Radfahrens zwischen Alltag und (digitalen) Medien”. In Fahrradutopien: Medien, Ästhetiken und Aktivismen, edited by Julia Bee, Ulrike Bergermann, Linda Keck, Sarah Sander, Herbert Schwaab, Markus Stauff, and Franzi Wagner, 39-76. Lüneburg: Meson Press. https://doi.org/10.14619/1952.
Bee, Julia. 2022. “‚Das braucht ein Gesicht!‘ Medialität und Praxis des (Beinahe-)Unfalls”. Edited by Dominik Maeder. Navigationen. Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften. Unfälle. Kulturen und Medien der Akzidenz 22 (2): 59-77. https://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/19025.
Bee, Julia, Ulrike Bergermann, Linda Keck, Sarah Sander, Herbert Schwaab, Markus Stauff, and Franzi Wagner, eds. 2022. Fahrradutopien: Medien, Ästhetiken und Aktivismus. Lüneburg: Meson Press. https://doi.org/10.14619/1952 .
Bee, Julia, and Isabell Eberlein. 2022. “Fahrradfahren ist politisch! Gespräch mit Isabell Eberlein von Changing Cities”. In Fahrradutopien. Medien, Ästhetiken und Aktivismen, edited by Julia Bee, Ulrike Bergermann, Linda Keck, Sarah Sander, Herbert Schwaab, Markus Stauff, and Franzi Wagner, 107-25. Lüneburg: Meson Press. https://doi.org/10.14619/1952.
Julia Bee. 2022. “Cycling Media and Collectives. Cycling Vlogs and Mobile Infrastructures”. Eracle. Journal of Sport and Social Sciences 1 (5): 94-109. https://doi.org/10.6093/2611-6693/9629.
Pinzuti, Pinar, and Julia Bee. 2022. “Fancy Women Bike Ride, Gespräch über Feminismus und Fahrradaktivismus mit Pinar Pinzuti”. In Fahrradutopien: Medien, Ästhetiken und Aktivismen, edited by Julia Bee, Ulrike Bergermann, Linda Keck, Sarah Sander, Herbert Schwaab, Markus Stauff, and Franzi Wagner, 173-84. https://doi.org/10.14619/1952.
