Candy Girls & Billige Plätze

Rike van Kleef, Sonja Eismann, Josephine Papke (Mod.)

Who gets visibility in pop culture – and who remains confined to the cheap seats? Drawing on their books »Candy Girls« and »Billige Plätze – Gender, Macht und Diskriminierung in der Musikbranche«, Sonja Eismann and Rike van Kleef discuss feminist perspectives on pop-cultural phenomena, the history of female fandom, and the persistence of sexism and structural inequality within the music industry.

At the heart of the conversation lie the connections between pop, power, and desire: who gets heard, who gets seen, and which mechanisms shape cultural participation? The discussion looks both at historical developments and at current debates within the music industry and contemporary pop culture.

Together, Sonja Eismann and Rike van Kleef explore the role that solidarity, communities, and feminist critique can play in shaping cultural spaces, and what possibilities these perspectives might open up for the future.

The conversation will be moderated by Josephine Papke. The author and journalist works as an online editor at Missy Magazine and focuses on pop culture, feminism, and queer and BIPoC perspectives. Working at the intersection of journalism, performance, and socio-political discourse, she engages with questions of representation, identity, and cultural participation.