We are very excited to announce a new addition to our team! ✨ Lisa Ama has joined SUPERRRs Policy Team!
SUPERRR: A good way to get to know someone is via their side projects and hobbies. What are some of your current side projects, Lisa Ama?
Lisa Ama: I’m grateful that many of my academic and professional interests also overlap with my personal life – especially in the realm of activism and my involvement in various social justice movements. I worked on the topic of Berlin’s colonial legacy and cultural restitution during my Masters and have been involved with groups and efforts surrounding those issues ever since. Coming from a family of artists, I also often find myself connecting my interest in politics with art. I think it’s fascinating to explore how socio-political questions are being negotiated in different mediums of artistic expression – especially from marginalized perspectives – and I spend a lot of time going to various modern and contemporary art exhibits around the city. Another big, big love of mine is music. I play the Cello (although I don’t have access to an instrument at the moment) and also sing in a choir right here in my neighborhood every Thursday. Because I am very much in my head in much of my work, a lot of my side projects and hobbies involve getting more into my body/ doing things with my hands. I enjoy crafting and baking experiments, foraging and gardening (I used to have a plot at the beautiful Himmelbeet in Wedding but am sadly only tending to my balcony at the moment…) as well as hiking or just spending time outside in the sunshine.
SUPERRR: With Superrr Lab we are thinking a lot about the future(s). What is an object/or application that does not yet exist – but something that you would like to have at your disposal in a preferable digital future? Something you would use every day and cannot imagine living without?
Lisa Ama: A tool that I’d like to have at my disposal would be a “Surveillance Glitcher/Disruptor” – a tool designed to subvert and dismantle invasive surveillance technologies in creative and empowering ways. I’m thinking that this device could actively mask our digital footprint, scrambling location data, anonymizing personal information, and confusing any algorithms tracking my behavior. Maybe it could even alert me to nearby surveillance devices, like facial recognition cameras or data-collecting drones, and provide real-time options to avoid or disrupt them. Beyond just protecting privacy, this tool would act as a form of resistance, giving everyday people the power to disrupt systems of mass surveillance that disproportionately impact marginalized communities.
SUPERRR: What's your biggest energy sucker these days?
Lisa Ama: Lately, I’ve been starting to really feel the impact of the days getting shorter as well as the increasing construction on public transport routes out of Wedding, making it harder to navigate the city here in Berlin. On a less trivial note, however, it honestly is the global political situation that’s the biggest energy drain for me these days. I’m wondering what solidarity looks like when we are witnessing daily genocidal violence, famine, displacement and various forms of oppression – from Palestine, to Sudan, Congo...At the same time, we are witnessing the domestic erosion of our civil rights and a shift to the right and far right extremism in Germany and beyond. I’m grappling with how to hold all of it, how to address our own complicity, and disentangle ourselves and others from the narratives and myths that expose and distort our realities… all of it is enraging and draining.
SUPERRR: What is a small humble change you would like to see in the world? How can we work towards it?
Lisa Ama: I often think about how it is possible to sustain our work, our activism, our movements, and ourselves in these times of crisis and uncertainty. The work of Mariame Kaba, U.S. organizer, educator, and abolitionist has been really important for me in this regard. And so I think I’d like to see us practicing "hope as a discipline," as Mariame Kaba, describes it – actively employing hope in the face of injustice, not as passive optimism but as a daily, intentional practice. In this view, hope or developing our own visions of the future is precisely not about blind optimism or toxic positivity but a radical endeavor that is vital to our survival. By viewing hope as a practice, we build the resilience needed to continue working for more just futures.
SUPERRR: Things we should all read/know about! Please share some of your favorite projects, texts, links, inspirations with us:
Lisa Ama:
I forgot to mention above that I’m also really into poetry. As Audre Lorde teaches us, “poetry is not a luxury” and I truly believe in the necessity and power of poetry to expand our political imagination and our capacity to envision and fight for new worlds and futures. So I thought I’d highlight two of my biggest inspirations – the work of Aja Monet, an American surrealist blues poet who recently was the first poet to ever perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, as well as the work of May Ayim, Afro-German poet and activist who was also a central figure in the Black Women’s Movement in Germany.
I’m a Senior Fellow or Alumna of a Humanity in Action Fellowship as well as of the RISE Leadership Program – two communities that I remain connected to and that, when meeting fellow participants or reading applications of future Fellows, makes me incredibly hopeful given the inspiring bottom up projects and crucial community work that people are doing out there. Please reach out to me if you have questions or are interested in either of these programs!
SUPERRR: Last but not least, what's your favourite Meme?
Lisa Ama: I’m not a huge social media/meme person, but over the years I have really enjoyed the several different iterations of the Anime Butterfly Meme. It offers such a great template to playfully express and call attention to confusions, double standards, and the absurdities of our (online) world.
