Date: Friday 25 September
Time: 14:00-17:00
Location: Varia (Gouwstraat 3, Rotterdam)

The fifth session of the Counter Coloniality Study Group will have a show and tell format. What soap operas and tv drama that’s have been imported and aired in your local television, and dubbed in your language? Come in and share your favourite tv soaps, iconic characters, and dramatic dialogues.

While we compare notes on the usual tropes of baby switching, evil twin villain, poor girl turns out to be an heiress and death by the staircase, we also look at look at how culture is translated - or lost in translation - when a show is imported, exported and dubbed. We will find traces of colonial connections, cultural imperialisms and the soft power of mass pop culture.

To guide our thinking we will read from excerpts of the following texts: Structure, Audience and Soft Power in East Asian Pop Culture by Chua Beng Huat To be Continued- Soap Operas Around the World by Robert C. Allen Koreanovelas, Teleseryes, and the “Diasporization” of the Filipino/the Philippines by Louie Jon A. Sanchez

During this session, members of the AFSAR- Asian Feminist Studio for Art & Research are invited to join as online participants to the study group. As a contemporary collective and platform spanning Asia and its diasporas, the Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research (AFSAR) engages with the continuities, shifts, and departures within feminist discourses.

The Counter Coloniality seed investigates the manifold ways in which colonisation - as attitude, process, knowledge imposition, organisational model, force and output - is deeply embedded into the technologies we use everyday. This is evident in various aspects of technologies we use routinely; from the human and environmental cost of rare-earth element extraction like cobalt or lithium used in device components, to the outsourcing and underpayment of labour in Africa and Asia for annotating artificial intelligence data or moderating disturbing content on commercial social media.

Varia’s Counter Coloniality Seed organises a Study Group in 2026. We (usually) meet on the last Fridays of the month, from 14 - 16/17h, in Varia. We may take notes together and there will be snacks. We would love for participants to join as many sessions as they can, in order to get continuity in our discussions and our group dynamic, however this is not a requirement.

To join, please send a message to info@varia.zone with the subject title [Counter Coloniality Seed Study Group: Soap opera] with your access needs and dietary requirements, if any.

This event falls within Varia’s Counter-Coloniality Seed research thread and is supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.