Unqualified Comments

                                   – is a platform that brings together people with the aim to discuss thoughts in progress. Unqualified commentsplays with the term “unqualifiziertes Kommentar” which in Germany is used to dismiss or degrade someone’s opinion. All our authors, collaborators and participants have a personal connection to some extend to us and so do the articles or comments always come from a personal point of view of the author. Hence Unqualified commentsis promoting and celebrating thought in process – conversation and connection beyond borders and seeks to bring people together in thought and engagement to connect each other to resist shortening and falsification on social media yet also does not seek for academic level content but to foster the discourse between author and reader and participant. Unqualified comments has a focus on and is yet not limited to lesbian, queer and female* authors and topics.

The publication starts at a very low-key level in the form of a platform that might take the shape of a magazine. Friends and friends of friends located in very different places and from very different backgrounds have been approached to contribute texts, comments and essays about topics that they invested in and or are concerned with personally and deeply.

The idea is to create a platform to connect, exchange, think and discuss with one another. Therefore the texts we gather are intuitive and not necessarily coming from a deep expert knowledge of the matter. We encourage intuitive reaction or sentiment towards a topic or a thought that is of meaning to the author and in all cases considered and thought through, but maybe a thought or sentiment in progress an offer to expand on and an invitation to others to think about and respond. We believe that there is a valid and important realm between academic and populist. A sphere that hosts a vivid discourse and encourages discussion. Needless to say that forming strong bonds amongst individuals also across oceans, as well as language, national, cultural to name a few kinds of borders only is of urgency in the times we live in.

Central to the Unqualified Comments articles and contributions by various authors is the comment section. We hope to engage people with our posted contents such that they feel enticed to take the time to share their thought – write a response, take a photo, annotate the original article and send it back to us, record a song, a short audio comment, a video, a drawing or any other kind of response to an article and send it to us in the COMMENT section of the platform. We will visually curate and layout those article pages and are very excited to see what we receive.

The individual article page is supposed to grow little by little as we will add the received comments on the respective articles page. Maybe we will make a physical publication in some form once we have various comments on one article together. These events and publications could come in collaboration with our various existing partners, friends and collaborators.

Another key section of the Unqualified Comments platform is the podcast section: Here we invited various friends from all over the world to give us each week a short summary of 1 – 2 minutes on what the media in their respective country have been focusing on / reporting on and in which tone in the past week. This section might spark some interest into looking and informing us more deeply on places and people and information we do not have access to easily. This podcast has one special featured country every week – where we go a little bit more in depth.

More exciting features, collaborations, articles and new connections to come very soon.

Warmly, UC

Reach us: unqualifiedcomments@gmail.com