Past events

February 20, 2025 - Stratigraphies and Counter-Stories from the Horn of Africa and the Diaspora

A panel discussion with Andrea Conte, Medhanie T. Mariam, Muna Mussie, Angelica Pesarini and Dawit Petros organized by Jermay Michael Gabriel and Vera-Simone Schulz

Bringing together scholars, artists and cultural practitioners, this roundtable centered counter-stories and narratives from the Horn of Africa and the diaspora from the perspectives of history, contemporary art, critical heritage studies, Black studies, and critical museology. Sounding out possible alliances between academic and artistic research, the roundtable seeked to confront uncomfortable histories, toxic heritage, but also to unearth stories of resistance and resilience. Addressing the archives of colonial Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana) and its various media, but also counter-archives through a lens that prioritizes critical engagement, ethical consideration, and the amplification of voices from the Majority World, we seeked to discuss diverse case studies brought forward by the panelists and investigate possibilities for dialogue and collaboration.

This was an event of Black History Month and formed part of the project "Epistemologies of Conviviality: Temporalities and Aesthetics of the Built Environment" at Leuphana University funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

February 7, 2025 - LIAS Workshop: Beyond Restitution: Indigenous Practices, Museums, and Heritage

This workshop connected Indigenous representatives, artists, and researchers with European collections. One of the most salient characteristics of European collecting and musealization was to separate so-called objects from Indigenous peoples and their practices. This workshop asks what is needed to undo this violent separation.

Regarding collections from South America, Germany has a special responsibility: Since the burning down of the Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in 2018, for example, Germany has been one of the biggest holders of objects from the Upper Rio Negro (Amazonia) Indigenous communities.

The main questions of the event were:
What does it take
… to collect without owning?
… to restitute meaning?
… to return practices?
… to respect Indigenous approaches to care?
… to facilitate ritual practices? 

Among the experts invited are: Glicéria Tupinambá, anthropologist and artist, Serra do Padeiro, Bahia, Brazil; Francy Baniwa, anthropologist, Içana River, Amazon, Brazil; Francisco Huichiaqueo, artist and filmmaker, Wallmapu, Chile accompanied by members of the Mapuche Community of Bollilco; Mama José Shibulata Zarabata and José Manuel Sauna Mamatacan (representing the Kággaba, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia); Christine Chávez, Curator of the Americas Collections, MARKK Hamburg; Romy Köhler, Department of Anthropology of the Americas, Bonn University; Stefanie Schien, Curator of the South America Collection, Ethnologisches Museum zu Berlin; Frank Usbeck, Curator for the Americas at the State Art Collections Dresden / Ethnographic Collections Saxony; Carla Jaimes Betancourt, Professor of Cultural Heritage, Department of Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn (moderator).

The workshop was made possible by collaboration with the research training group “Cultures of Critique”, the Leuphana University Kunstraum, and the São Paulo-based project “Decay Without Mourning: Future Thinking, Heritage Practices”, funded by Volkswagen Foundation, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Wallenberg Foundation, and the RiksbankensJubileumsfond.

February 5-7, 2025 - Textile Ecologies

An online conference at Leuphana University Lüneburg organized by Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College) and Vera-Simone Schulz (Leuphana University Lüneburg / KHI Florenz)

Among the artifacts crafted by humankind, textiles have always held a uniquely interdependent relationship with the environment. Textiles derive from vegetal (hemp, raffia, ramie, cotton, or bark cloth), animal (wool, silk) and even mineral origins (as in the case of asbestos fibers). The production of textiles has depended upon access to and the processing of raw materials, while cloth manufacturing has reshaped entire landscapes from the transplantation of mulberry trees for sericulture to the mounds of murex shells discarded after the extraction of Tyrian purple dye. Textile patterns abound with imagery of flora and fauna, while fabrics have come to shape myths and metaphors of the natural world. Textiles have connected distant regions, but they have also been responsible for and complicit in the enslavement of human beings and the exploitation of agricultural, artisanal, and industrial labor. Textile production has led to the despoliation of landscapes and water resources, often in unequal ways that resulted from colonialism and environmental racism. Despite the recent concern with historical legacies of environmental harm, the field of ecological humanities has mostly neglected the textile realm. This online conference considers the relationship between textiles and the environment and brings together scholars, artists, and cultural practitioners who grapple with the aesthetic dimensions, ecological conditions, and the past, present, and potential futures of cloth.

Wednesday, February 5
3-3:30 pm Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College) and Vera-Simone Schulz (Leuphana University Lüneburg / KHI Florenz): Welcome and Introduction

Session I: Matter and Materials
Chair: Janet Purdy (Art Institute of Chicago)

3:30 pm Deborah Jeromin (Leipzig): Parachutesilk

4:00 pm Bellinda Widmann Kambili (Leuphana University): ‘African Wild Silk’: Waste Silk Supplement, Discourse, and Material, 1895-1932 

4:30 pm Airin Farahmand (Radboud University): Polyester: A Genealogy of Comfort in the Fashion Industry

5:00 pm BREAK (30 minutes) 

Session II: Collectivity and Ecology
Chair: Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College)

5:30 pm Antonia Behan (Queen’s University): Net Works: Global Handweaving Revival and Ecology in the Interwar Period 

6:00 pm Juan Carlos Guerrero-Hernández (University of Nevada, Reno): Textiles, Ecology, and Resistance in Encoded Textiles’ Makuñ 

6:30 pm Katrin Seiler and Alexandra Weigand (Plantae Institute): Healing Textiles – Toward New Human-Plant Collaborations 

Thursday, February 6

Session III: Textile-Human-Relationships
Chair: Carolyn Wargula (Bucknell University)

2:30 pm Yongxin Kong (Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts): From Trash to Treasure: The Circulation of Human Hair in Textile Art 

3:00 pm Magdalena Furmaniuk (University of National Education Commission, Kraków): The Matter from a Matter: Contemporary Artistic Gathering as a Form of Textile Object Creation 

3:30 pm BREAK (30 minutes) 

Session IV: Seas of Cloth
Chair: Dipti Khera (New York University)

4:00 pm Rajarshi Sengupta (Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur): Nachu, Floating Seaweeds of Machilipatnam: On Ecology and Signature Style 

4:30 pm Maura Coughlin (Northeastern University) and Cécile Borne (Brittany): Stories of Salvage on the Brittany Coast 

5:00 pm BREAK (30 minutes)

Session V: Textiles in Relation to the Earth and Oceans
Chair: Vera-Simone Schulz (Leuphana University Lüneburg / KHI Florenz)

5:30 pm Zakiyyah Haffejee (Cape Town): Indigo Waves: Intercontinental Textile Narratives 

6:00 pm Sandrine Colard (Rutgers University) and Giulia Paoletti (University of Virginia): Textured Images: An Ecology of Textiles and Threads in African Photography 

6:30 pm END 

Friday, February 7

Session VI: Textiles, Cultural and Ecological Heritage
Chair: Nicholas Robbins (UCL)

2:30 pm Yang You (Shanghai): Can Textiles Patch the Sky They Burnt? Yin Xiuzhen’s Sky Puzzle (2015) 

3:00 pm Jessica Gerschultz (St Andrews): “Upcycled Blues”: Collective Quilting on Tripoli’s Syria Street 

3:30 BREAK (30 minutes)

Session VII: Matter and Ornament
Chair: Sarah Fee (Royal Ontario Museum / University of Toronto)

4:00 pm Maria Gajewska (University of Cambridge): Mad for Madder: A Dye that Crossed the Ocean 

4:30 pm Jennifer Konrad (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz): The Power of Textiles: The Landscape Dress of Elector John George I of Saxony as an Economic Symbol of his Territorial and Socio-Cultural Wealth 

5:00 pm BREAK (30 minutes)

Session VIII: Textiles, Sustainability, and Memory
Chair: Mei Mei Rado (Bard Graduate Center)

5:30 pm Rabiu Yusuf (Ahmadu Bello University): Dyed in Tradition and Sustainability: Unraveling the Intersection of Textile Production and Ecological Practices in Bunkure, Kano, Nigeria 

6:00 pm Anooradha Siddiqi (Barnard College): Kandyan Ecologies, Kandyan Style: Sri Lankan Craft and the ‘Asian’ Episteme

6:30 pm Inês Jorge (University of Birmingham): ‘Cloth Travels’: Journeys of Fabrics Across the Portuguese City of Guimarães in Ann Hamilton’s Side-by-Side Installation for the Contextile Biennial (2018) 

7:00 pm Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College) and Vera-Simone Schulz (Leuphana University Lüneburg / KHI Florenz): Final Discussion

January 28, 2025 - What do we talk about when we talk about… with Charlotte Wiedemann

Reading Session with Charlotte Wiedemann (Journalist, Author, LIAS Public Fellow)

What do we talk about when we talk about … is an irregular series of reading sessions that respond to the acceleration and polarization of public discourse in light of the escalation of violence in Palestine, Israel and the Middle East. The format aims to return to a core skill of critical study, namely reading and discussing texts, sharpening terms and developing concepts. The sessions will be moderated by guests who have already published texts on aspects of this broad field and long conflict. The sessions are open to all students and members of the university.

This event is a cooperation between LIAS, Kunstraum and Literaturbüro Lüneburg.

January 21, 2025 - ana zeno de courcy - If Our Bodies Could Rust

If the body could rust, how would it decay?
Through the strain of resilience or the quiet erosion of touch?

In this work, the body is both structure and surface, enduring weight and releasing it. Balanced on a metal grid perched atop ice packs, the performer’s movements carry the duality of strength and surrender—jumps that echo with force and pauses that stretch with fragility and hesitation. 

The costume—kinesiology tape, shoes, socks, hairpins—clads the body in readiness, only to be undone. Piece by piece, the layers are stripped away, revealing the skin beneath, marked by effort and time.

This is not a narrative of recovery or return. The body here bends and stretches, resists and releases, unable to reclaim its original shape. It becomes a witness to its own transformation, a site where forces meet and leave their trace.

The body dreams of surfaces and seams.

Mattresses, those intimate witnesses of rest, cradling exhaustion and fear, linger in the recited text. They too hold a record of what has passed, only to be discarded. 

Evacuation. Exhaustion. Dispossession. 

This performance moves through cycles of endurance and undoing. It is a quiet rebellion against the demand to be whole, a space where the body speaks of exhaustion and surrender. 

This performance was part of the event programme of the exhibition Sapphic Entaglements with Ruxin Liu, ana zeno de courcy, Sasha Levkovich and Clara Mannott from 21.01. - 04.02.2024. This exhibition was  curated and organized by Sophie McCuen-Koytek and Linn Felgendreher as part of the Kunstraum.p2p format. It was sponsored by the Studierendenwerk OstNiedersachsen.
 

January 21 to February 4, 2025 - Sapphic Entanglements

Exhibition with Ruxin Liu, ana zeno de courcy, Sasha Levkovich und Clara Mannott

Queer studies scholar Kadji Amin calls for “fuck[ing] with the universalizing presumptions of the taxonomical method from within by generating idiosyncratic interpretations and translations that explode the epistemological and ontological foundations of taxonomy itself.” (Amin 2023) Sapphic entanglements answers this call by facilitating and creating community discussions that detangle and retangle sapphic dimensions of intimacy, connection, longing, dreaming and being. While sapphic as a term derived from Sappho, an ancient Greek poet exploring lesbian desire and love, it has evolved into an umbrella term for a spectrum of sexualities and genders. The works displayed in this exhibition explore sapphism as embodied knowledge, friendship, community, shame, desire, failing, falling, envy, self and something always in motion evading meaning.

This exhibition was curated and organized by Sophie McCuen-Koytek and Linn Felgendreher as part of the Kunstraum.p2p format. Both are students in the master's program “Critical Studies” at Leuphana University. More information about the exhibition and the artists can be found on the Kunstraum website.

December 19, 2024 - Non-human rave  

“Non-human rave” drawed out the sonic and musical potential of human and non-human improvisation. Using a musical instrument designed to read electrical impulses, Daria Melnikova connected the electrodes to fruits, vegetables and mushrooms. As the objects changed, the style of the music changed with them, allowing visitors to tune in to different non-human harmonies.

As a musician, DJ and art lover, Daria Melnikova finds herself captivated by the connection between sound and expression. For her, music transcends just an auditory experience. It also finds its perfect visual loose in the body movements. Each beat and each melody immerse us into the space where boundaries between sound, movement, and emotion dissolve, and that’s where she finds the real art of music and willingness to share it with the others.

The event was part of the “Kunstraum peer to peer” format that aims to support independent and collaborative study by students.

December 3-15, 2024 - Dis/b/orderly

Exhibition with Sudabe Yunesi, Robert Bostantzis Diamantopoulos und Georg Juranek

The construction of a Fortress Europe as a “European gated community” (Pichl 2024) is no longer just the goal of a pan-European New Right and self-appointed, neo-national socialist border guards, but has also found its way into European governments through the agendas of supposedly progressive and moderate parties. EU´s migration and asylum policies increasingly reflect the hatemongering imagery - that of the migrant or refugee as enemy - of authoritarian movements. Dis/b/orderly formulates a critique of territorial demarcations in the form of modern, naturalised borders that serve to establish imagined, separate communities. The exhibition exposes the intertwined processes within nationalist, capitalist, colonialist and racist relations of power and domination as the cause of border demarcations, questioning the hegemony of the cultural ‘inside’ and the constitutive ‘outside’ formulated through borders and softened by migration (Hall 2018). The works point to the absurdity of a homogeneous European identity and the intertwined responsibilities not only for the causes of flight and migration, but also for the deadly and brutal consequences within and beyond European borders.

This exhibition was curated and organized by Sophie McCuen-Koytek as part of the “Kunstraum peer to peer” format. 

November 20, 2024 - Presentation and performance lecture: Maximiliane Baumgartner - WIE DU MIR, SO TEIL ICH DIR (TIT FOR TAT)

This presentation and performance lecture was held in German and was part of the exhibition The Professor´s Body. On Academic Affect and Habitus.

November 13, 2024 - Public Workshop: Rahel Spöhrer - Haptic Academia

Universities are known as environments hostile to the body and affect with a primary focus on cognitive, rational, and critical thought. They are also sites of disciplinary power, inequalities, discrimination, and abuse. At the same time, the bodies that move through these institutions experience their constitution through the skin: the negation of the body becomes a tactile experience within that very institution.

Against the backdrop of this ambivalent reality, the workshop Haptic Academia examined the tactile encounters that shape everyday life on campus. Following a written conversation between Laura U. Marks, who researches and writes about haptic relations, and Rahel Spöhrer, participants were invited to rethink and renarrate campus life from the place of the body, affect and touch.

In short readings, walks, and a series of writing exercises, participants explored what the university, dedicated to the production and transfer of knowledge, is and becomes when we consider the touchy aspects of this environment, and attend possible modes of responding to and ultimately resisting the tactile hostility of the Institution.

This public workshop is part of the exhibition The Professor’s Body. On Academic Affect and Habitus with Leda Bourgogne and event program with Franzis Kabisch, Ho Rui An, Rahel Spoerer and Maximiliane Baumgartner from 23.10.2024 - 27.11.2024.

November 6, 2024 - Screening und Gespräch: Ho Rui An - Student Bodies, 2020, 24:35 min

This Screening was part of the exhibition The Professor´s Body. On Academic Affect and Habitus.

October 30, 2024 - Screening: Franzis Kabisch - DEKLINATIONEN (CAN I INHERIT MY DEAD PARENTS’ DEBTS?) , 2016, 28 min

This Screening war part of the exhibition The Professor´s Body. On Academic Affect and Habitus.

October 23, 2024 - Opening: Leda Bourgogne - The Professors Body Kunstraum

As bell hooks famously observed in her 1993 essay “Eros, Eroticism, and the Pedagogical Process”, the professor’s body is marked by both “repression and denial”. Caught up in the long-exhausted Cartesian split between body and mind, teaching in higher education appears to be a predominantly cerebral affair. In such an environment, the language for articulating and intervening in what the professorial body is, remains critically underdeveloped, particularly where it intersects with histories of race and gender.

The public program at Kunstraum will focus on the professorial body as a site of both disciplinary power and radical pedagogical emancipation. As hooks insists, there is a latent transgressiveness to higher university education that demands a critical analysis of both power and pleasure. Such an analysis must begin with the ongoing failure of many universities to address the countless examples of sexual harassment and violence experienced by women-identifying and non-binary/gender non-conforming students. The continuing difficulty of hooks’ appeal, however, becomes clearer when considering the intense discussions in feminist theory and academia about student-teacher relations in cases such as Jane Gallop, author of Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment, or more recently Avital Ronell, the NYU professor accused of sexual harassment by a former queer student. Echoing Amia Srinivasan’s recent call for a “sexual ethics of pedagogy”, The Professor’s Body seeks to identify the legal, social and institutional conditions necessary to differentiate discrimination from transgression.

October 9-11, 2024 - Recalling Avant-Garde Moments, Reconnecting Avant-Garde Scenes International Conference Dedicated to the Centenary of the H2so4

Conference

Historical avant-garde contains forgotten moments and scenes that still need to be rediscovered or reconnected with other, central or peripheral scenes of the European avant-garde. Avant-garde moments would not occur in different national cultures without the strong desire to connected with the wider web of aesthetic searches and experimentation, happening in various European cultural loci. However, due to historical changes, some moments/scenes were disconnected from the web, staying unrecalled for decades. 

One such forgotten moment was that of the Tbilisi modernism/avant-garde (1917-1918) and the Futurist group H2SO4 (1920s), which has been erased from the Georgian cultural memory by the Soviet power while the country was disconnected from European cultural context. In the post-Soviet decades, Georgia had to reclaim this legacy. The present centenary of the Futurist group and journal H2SO4 (1924) is a good reason for discussing different, though often comparable avant-garde cultural experiences.

Understanding Avant-Garde as a constellation of different moments we will examine the specificity of each locality in their transcultural entanglement. To reconstruct these scenes, the conference will elaborate on networks, relationships, groups, and collaborations, on their coming together, forming, evaporating, and diverging again. What is the transformational power of Avant-Garde alliances, past and present, within the artistic and the societal field? How have ways and forms of life been shaped throughout the Avant-Gardes? What are the gendered social and spatial structures, in which groups test and create forms of community through their artistic practices? The aim here will be to render visible realities of those groups and alliances that have not yet been acknowledged, due to geographical, institutional and/or political conditions.

The conference was organised by the Institute of Comparative Literature and the Centre for Advanced Studies, Ilia State University, in cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy and Art History, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.

The Plenary Lectures/Talks:

Günter Berghaus, University of Bristol 
International Futurism and Its Cross-Fertilizations in the Historical Avant-garde

Artist Talk: Beate Söntgen, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, with Anuk Beluga & Mari Kalabegashvili

Gia Jokhadze, Ilia State University  
Mandelstamiana: The Fragments from the Cultural History of Russia and Georgia
Lecture / Book Presentation

See the Programme for the detailed information.

June 26, 2024 - Reading Session: What do we talk about when we talk about … Moishe Postone

With Frank Engster, Helle Panke e.V., Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Berlin (German)

What do we talk about when we talk about …  is an irregular series of close reading sessions, responding to the acceleration and polarization of public discourse around the escalations of violence in Israel and Palestine. The format seeks to return to a core competency of critical study, reading, listening and discussing texts, sharpening terms and developing concepts. The sessions will be facilitated by guests, who already have published texts about one of the aspects of this vast field and long conflict. The sessions are open to all university members who share the goal of deepening their knowledge in the middle of a heated debate. Condition of participation is to read the text or book chapter which we will provide in advance. 

June 25, 2024 - On the Madness of Dr. Hubert Dana Goodale: Animal Agriculture, Experimental Endocrinology, and the Industrial Ecology of Sex in Early 20th Century America – Gabriel N. Rosenberg

This talk explored the early career of the prolific poultry geneticist, Dr. Hubert Dana Goodale, and, in particular, experiments that he conducted in the 1910s in which he grafted hen ovaries into the bodies of castrated juvenile roosters to experimentally induce changes in the birds' secondary sex characteristics. Although these experiments were an important model for later human endocrinological inquiry, Goodale actually aimed to solve a notorious problem for commercial egg farmers: how to better detect and more quickly cull the half of all chicks that did not profitably contribute to egg production, the so-called “male chick problem.” Goodale’s experiments challenge how contemporary scholars narrate histories of sex, science, and agriculture, revealing an underlying transformation of an interspecies ecology of flesh that rippled through human and animal bodies alike across the 20th century.

Gabriel N. Rosenberg is an Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and History at Duke University and a Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. He is the author of The 4-H Harvest: Sexuality and the State in Rural American (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) and the co-author of Feed the People!: Democratizing Food Politics in a Warming World (Basic Books, Forthcoming). He is currently writing a history of livestock breeding’s entanglement with human race science, Purebred: Making Meat and Eugenics in Modern America, and, with his colleagues at the MPI-WG, editing a volume on animal mobilities in the history of science. His scholarship has appeared in journals such as the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, GLQ: The Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly and he writes frequently on food politics for popular publications such as The New Republic, Vox.com, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. He has held fellowships at Yale University, the American Philosophical Society, the National Humanities Center, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Die Veranstaltung wird zusammen vom Center for Critical Studies (CCS), dem Netzwerk Geschlechts- und Diversitätsforschung sowie dem DFG-Graduiertenkolleg Kulturen der Kritik ausgerichtet.

Sprache: Englisch

Organisation: Ben Trott, IPK (ben.trott@leuphana.de)

June 25, 2024 - Trans Liminalities: Histories from Weimar and Nazi Germany – Zavier Nunn

Focusing on trans women’s subjectivities, this talk explored the micro and macro registers of how everyday trans life was experienced, policed, and cut short across the Weimar and Nazi regimes, sometimes in surprising – but always uneven – ways.

Zavier Nunn is a Mellon Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. He was previously Postdoctoral Associated in “Histories of the Transgender Present” in the Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Department at Duke University. His first monography, Liminal Lives: Trans Feminine Histories from Weimar and Nazi Germany is under review at Duke University Press. He is currently working on a history of legal sex change and trans masculine lives under Nazism, as well as historicising ‘trans’ adjacent to fields of knowledge production in modern Europe. Across his research, Nunn uses micro-historical methods to unpick how macro systems are stitched together. He is published in Past & Present, Gender & History, and German History.

This event was hosted by the Center for Critical Studies (CCS), the Gender and Diversity Research Network, and the Cultures of Critique DFG research training group.

Language: English

Organisation: Ben Trott, IPK (ben.trott@leuphana.de) 

June 19, 2024 - Zones of Resplendence Carolina | Mendonça & Lara Ferrari

Performance

Zones of Resplendence explored forms of manifestation for a potential feminized army. Carolina Mendonça and Lara Ferrari investigate whether you can fight a war with vulnerability, expanding the perspective on violence. By using the body in different ways, they prepare themselves for a possible confrontation. Will this sci-fi dance performance give rise to a new kind of army?

Their bodies are resplendent, holding both senses of the word: extremely radiant and what appears in the aftermath of an explosion. By means of a form that rehearses an embodied political sensibility, they engage with resplendence as a tactic to investigate and address a different language for violence.

This performance was part of the performance series INSIDE WOUNDS.

Further information can be found on the website of the Kunstraum.

June 12, 2024 - (her) Delights I Mavi Veloso - Kunstraum

Performance

Drawing inspiration from Claudia Wonder and her Jardim das Delicias, the performance (her) Delights presents a series of dreams, sexual anxieties, voice & body experimentation, a constellation of technologies and (trans)witchcrafts. Challenging the binaries male and female, the body becomes a spectacle and receptacle for trans femme empowerment.

This performance was part of the performance series INSIDE WOUNDS

Further information can be found on the website of the Kunstraum.

June 7, 2024 – Workshop: Beyond Jefferson's Futures. Developing Ideas for Leuphana Un iversity’s Library Foyer

“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past”. – Really?

This quote by Thomas Jefferson is written in the foyer of the library of Leuphana University. It is part of an artwork by Christian Philipp Müller, "Branding the Campus" (1996-98), for which the University of Virginia, designed by Jefferson, was the starting point to think about the “ideal” university. Thomas Jefferson was not only one of the "founding fathers" of the USA, he was also a slave owner - a fact that raises the question of how we deal with the quote from today's perspective. On day 1 of the workshop researchers – Verena Adamik, Sarah Kreiseler, Jenna Owens, Hannah Spahn, Ruth Stamm – and student groups gave insights into multiple histories: Thomas Jefferson’s idea of Enlightenment, campus architectures, archives and silent narratives, North German linen production within the Atlantic slave trade and other topics. On the second day we will develop proposals on how to deal with the quote in the foyer. It started with a presentation by the poet and researcher Yvette Christiansëreflecting on “Why poetry?” could be an entry into the discussion.

PROGRAM

June 7

10:00-11:00

Introduction & “Branding the Campus”: Susanne Leeb (Professor for Contemporary Art, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)

11:00-12:00

Transforming Jefferson's Enlightenment:Hannah Spahn (Visiting Professor for American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin)

12:00-12:30

History of Leuphana University: Kenny Lühmann, Julia Knapmeyer, Philine Held, Lilli Ritter, Annika Weiß (Students of the seminar Institutional Critique)

Liberal Education at Leuphana: Mika Steffan & Vanessa Spors (Students of the seminar Institutional Critique)

12:30-13:30
Break

13:30-14:30

Slavery at Monticello: Recovering Historically Silenced Narratives: Jenna Owens (Oral Historian, Monticello, Virginia)

14:30-15:00

Campus Architectures: Anna Blecker, Finia Dorenberg, Emil Weber (Students of the seminar Institutional Critique)

Architectures of Libraries: Charlotte Dansberg, Rasmus Gaida, Stina Fisahn (Students of the seminar Institutional Critique)

15:00-16:00

Black Futures in Jim Crow USA: Verena Adamik (Lecturer and Researcher of American Studies, Universität Potsdam)

16:00-16:30

Break

16:30-17:30

Linen Trade and Slavery. Tracing Transcultural Entanglements in the Lüneburg Region: Sarah Kreiseler (Director of Rundlingsmuseum Wendland, Lübeln) and Ruth Stamm (Research Assistant, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)

June 8

10:00-11:00

Why Poetry?Yvette Christiansë (Poet and Professor for Africana Studies, Barnard College, New York, Public Fellow at LIAS in Culture and Society, Lüneburg)

11:00-12:00
Summaries and constitution of working groups

12:00-18:00
Working groups and plenary discussions

June 5, 2024 – Tomorrow, we talk, with and by Young-Actress-in-the-Actor-Category2 and Young-Vampire-Branko-Black-Rose - Tanja Šljivar & Zuzana Žabková

Performance

About consent we wait for, that we crave, and which gives us temporary safeness. Consent that none of us is sure, we ever gave or asked for. Consent to cancellation. Consent which we will not talk about again tomorrow.

This performance is part of the performance series INSIDE WOUNDS

June 5, 2024 – Reading Session: What do we talk about when we talk about … IHRA and Jerusalem Declaration

With Peter Ullrich, Center for Research on Antisemitism, TU Berlin (German)

What do we talk about when we talk about …  is an irregular series of close reading sessions, responding to the acceleration and polarization of public discourse around the escalations of violence in Israel and Palestine. The format seeks to return to a core competency of critical study, reading, listening and discussing texts, sharpening terms and developing concepts. The sessions will be facilitated by guests, who already have published texts about one of the aspects of this vast field and long conflict. The sessions are open to all university members who share the goal of deepening their knowledge in the middle of a heated debate. Condition of participation is to read the text or book chapter which we will provide in advance. Please register for each session at kunstraum@leuphana.de. Texts will be sent out after registration. All sessions take place at Kunstraum.

May 22, 2024 – Reading Session: What do we talk about when we talk about ... Never Again

With Omer Bartov, Holocaust Scholar and Professor for European History and German Studies, Brown University (English; Omer Bartov will join us via Zoom).

January 17, 2023 – Quantity, Quality, Trust: Dilemmas and Strategies of Museum Documentation in the Age of AI – Lynn Rother, Fabio Mariani and Max Koss

Lecture 

As the digital transformation in the cultural heritage domain unfolds, the responsibility of
museums to document and be transparent no longer applies only to human users but also
to artificial users. For instance, to facilitate the return of objects to their rightful owners,
museums should publish information about the ownership history of their collections
(i.e., the provenance) not only as text but also as data that is machine-readable and
compliant with FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability).
Institutions face a dilemma in digitizing their collection information. Although museums
have already recorded much of the information to be converted into data, it is in the form
of free text and is insufficiently structured. While rerecording this information by hand in a
standard, machine-readable format would require a significant investment of resources and
time, fully automating the data-structuring process would call into question the quality of
the data produced, with the risk of perpetuating historical biases and omissions.
Focusing on museum provenance information, this paper illustrates how the use of AI
models for natural language processing tasks can help institutions automatically structure
provenance texts as linked open data. Finally, considering not only quantitative but also
qualitative needs, the paper describes how expert users can critically intervene in data
production through a human-in-the-loop approach.

The lecture will take place as part of the online conference "The Art Museum in the Digital Age - 2024". More information and registration on the conference website.

January 12, 2023 – Provenance loves Wiki

Conference

Die Provenienzforschung widmet sich der Geschichte der Herkunft (Provenienz) von Kunstwerken und Kulturgütern von ihrer Entstehung bis heute. In der Praxis hat sie besondere Relevanz gewonnen durch die notwendigen Aufarbeitungen von Raubkunst, Beutekunst und politisch bedingter Beschlagnahme durch die Nationalsozialisten und auch in anderen Kontexten. In diesem Zusammenhang kam es in der jüngeren Vergangenheit unter anderem zur Restitution von Raubkunst sowie den Rückgaben von Kulturgut kolonialer Herkunft. Die personellen und finanziellen Ressourcen für die notwendige Aufarbeitung an Museen und in der Wissenschaft sind allerdings sehr begrenzt und der Aufwand sowie die schiere Menge an Kunstwerken ist enorm. Bei der Provenienzforschung entstehen sehr große Mengen von Daten, die zu bearbeiten sind.

Im Rahmen einer Online-Veranstaltung und Paneldiskussion der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kunstwissenschaften + Wikipedia zum Thema „Digitale Provenienzforschung“ wurde der Wunsch und Bedarf signalisiert, dass es zu einer engeren Zusammenarbeit zwischen Provenienzwissenschaftler*innen, Mitgliedern der AG kuwiki und Freiwilligen kommen sollte. Vor allem die Möglichkeiten, die Wikibase und Wikidata in diesem Zusammenhang eröffnen, standen dabei im Fokus. In bisherigen Gesprächen wurden verschiedene Möglichkeiten diskutiert, wie Wikipedia und vor allem Wikidata als Tools für die Erfassung, Verwaltung, Bearbeitung und Darstellung von Provenienzen von Kunstwerken genutzt und in die aktive Provenienzforschung eingebunden werden können. Auch das Potenzial von Freiwilligen zur Unterstützung (Citizen Science) und das Potenzial durch offene und freie Datenbestände (Open Data) wurde diskutiert. Um diese Diskussion zu vertiefen und mögliche Zusammenarbeiten zu eruieren und zu starten, wurde ein Treffen zwischen Kunstwissenschaftler*innen, Provenienzforscher*innen und in den entsprechenden Themenbereichen der Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons und Wikidata aktiven Freiwilligen vorgeschlagen und beschlossen.

Auf dem Treffen Provenance loves Wiki, 12.–14. Januar 2024, in Berlin wurden sowohl grundsätzliche Fragen zu den Möglichkeiten der Wikimedia-Projekte und die Optionen der Zusammenarbeit ausgelotet als auch praktische Probleme, die bei der Nutzung von Wikidata im Verwalten von Provenienzdaten bereits aufgetaucht sind, sowie Bedarfe der Wissenschaftler*innen und Freiwilligen in diesem Bereich diskutiert und Lösungen gesucht.

Programm

Roundtable und Empfang

Veranstaltungsort: Technische Universität Berlin, Architekturgebäude/Institut für Kunstwissenschaft und Historische Urbanistik, Hörsaal A053, Straße des 17. Juni 150/152, 10623 Berlin & online
Veranstaltungszeitraum: Freitag, 12. Januar 2024, Beginn: 18.15 Uhr, Dauer: 90 min
Teilnehmer:innen: Larissa Borck, Meike Hopp, Tobias Matzner, Lynn Rother, Bénédicte Savoy, Moderation: Lambert Heller

Internationaler Workshop

Arbeitstreffen zum Einsatz von Wikipedia und Wikidata/Wikibase in der Provenienzforschung sowie Problemen und Herausforderungen bei der Darstellung von Provenienzdaten in Wikidata
Veranstaltungsort: Wikimedia Deutschland in Berlin
Veranstaltungszeitraum: Samstag, 13. Januar 2024, 10–12.30, 13.30-17.30 Uhr, Sonntag, 14. Januar 2024, 10–12.30, 13.30-t.b.d.
mit: Magnus Manske, Multichill

Wikipedia Einführungskurs

Veranstaltungsort: WikiBär in Berlin
Veranstaltungszeitraum: Samstag, 13. Januar 2024, 14-17 Uhr

Sowohl die öffentliche Abendveranstaltung wie auch das Arbeitstreffen werden auf Englisch stattfinden, um auch internationalen Gästen die Teilnahme zu ermöglichen. Der Workshop im WikiBär findet auf Deutsch statt.

Weitere Informationen auf der Webseite der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kunstwissenschaften + Wikipedia/Provenance loves Wiki

December 19, 2023 – Material Performance - Olympia Bukkakis mit Dagat Mera

Performance

Drag queen and choreographer Olympia Bukkakis presented a version of “Material Performance”. In this piece Olympia worked with, against, for, and under 10 meters of red fabric. This time she was joined by artist and janitor Dagat Mera in a performative exploration of labour conditions, queer aesthetics and the search for leftist, materialist art.

A workshop with Olympia Bukkakis was held the following day, Wednesday 20 December. Both events took place in English.

They were organised by the Center for Critical Studies (CCS) in cooperation with the Kunstraum and the Gender and Diversity Research Network.

Queen of the Heavens and of the Earth, Empress of Despair, and Architect of Your Eternal Suffering, Olympia Bukkakis is a drag queen, choreographer, moderator, and writer living and working in Berlin. Since graduating from the SODA masters at the HZT she has premiered a number of new works including, Gender Euphoria (2019), Work on Progress(2019), Under Pressures (2019), A Touch of the Other (2020), Too Much (2021), and replay (2023). Her practice is situated within, and inspired by, the tensions and intersections between queer nightlife and contemporary dance and performance. Website: www.olympiabukkakis.com

Dagat Mera moved from Mainz to Hamburg after graduating from high school in 2021 and is active there both artistically and politically. His focus is storytelling through visual and time-based media. In addition, he gave various creative workshops and workshops on political education. Since 2022 he studies at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HfBK).

December 12, 2023 CCS – Colloquium - Mimmi Woisnitza and Anna Kipke

The Center for Critical Studies research colloquium takes place three times a semester, with CCS members invited to present their research in progress.

In this session, Mimmi Woisnitza presented the following paper: “Zur Porosität historischer Darstellung: Asja Lācis’ Revolutionäre Theaterpraxis 1917-1937". Furthermore Anna Kipke presented a project with the title "Krise, Intervention, Heilung. Über (Lebensformen in) künstlerischen Praktiken des Therapeutischen".

The Center for Critical Studies colloquium is organised by Heiko Stubenrauch and Liza Mattutat.

This meeting of the colloquium will take place in German/English.

Website:

https://www.leuphana.de/en/research-centers/center-for-critical-studies/colloquium.html

December 6, 2023 –  Podiumsdiskussion: Vom Unrechtskontext zur Kooperation? Über den Umgang mit dem kolonialen Erbe

Panel discussion

Karl Braun war von 1904 bis 1920 leitender Botaniker am Amani Institut im damaligen Deutsch-Ostafrika, dem heutigen Tansania. Als er Afrika verließ, hatte er 2670 Kilogramm an Objekten im Gepäck, die er zusammengetragen hatte: Alltagsgegenstände, Waffen, Instrumente und Textilien. Kurz vor seinem Tod schenkte er die umfassende Sammlung der Stadt Stade. Diese fast 600 Objekte erzählen nicht nur von präkolonialen Kulturen, sondern auch von ihren Erwerbskontexten und den Machtasymmetrien eines kolonialen Wissenstransfers. Der Direktor der Museen Stade, Dr. Sebastian Möllers, war überzeugt: Braun hat sich die Objekte durch Ankauf und Schenkungen angeeignet – „in einem kolonialen Unrechtskontext“. Wie soll heute damit umgegangen werden? Zu diesem Zweck realisierte Möllers eine Kooperation mit dem National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) .
Darüber diskutierte er mit seiner Kollegin, der Direktorin des Museums Lüneburg, Prof. Dr. Heike Düselder, der Kunsthistorikerin von der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Prof. Dr. Susanne Leeb, sowie mit Dyoniz Kindata aus Tansania. Er forscht an der Leuphana über die Presse in Tansania und postkoloniale Studien.

Die Veranstaltung warTeil der Diskursreihe Ethik im Gespräch.

Weitere Informationen zur Veranstaltung finden Sie auf dem Plakat zur Reihe Ethik im Gespräch.

November 22, 2023 – Bread and Rose Perfume: politics of abundance and pleasure against precarity – Wilson Sherwin

Lecture

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, at the peak of the Vietnam war, poor Black welfare recipients across the United States organized to demand not only access to the welfare provisions to which they were already entitled, but the expansion of those benefits beyond simple needs. Examining unfinished project of the welfare rights movement and its remarkable antiwork politics, provides insights into how capaciously defined needs and desires may help usher us beyond capitalism and towards alternative social and economic arrangements.

Born and raised in New York City, Wilson Sherwin, PhD (she, her) has worked as an electrician, a nanny, a translator, and a documentary film producer. She is currently a sociologist who writes and teaches about social movements, political economy, and public policy. Wilson is a research fellow at Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society. 

A cooperation between Center for Critical Studies, Kunstraum and the Gender and Diversity Network

November 16, 2023  – The Digital Revolution as Counter-Revolution

Workshop

Far from its initial promise, the so-called digital revolution has given way to reactionary politics. So far, it has served extractive and cognitive capitalist accumulation, combining exploitation and appropriation, leading to the acceleration of the restructuring of representational government mechanisms. At this moment we are faced with the virtual and present entangled into a hybrid reality, when intricate mediation systems are mistaken for direct contact, histories and realities intertwine. Taking its cue from both the realities of the really-existing digital world, and its relation to image-making, as well as from the archaeology of the digital, the workshop explored the actuality of the digital, where derivatives, algorithms, meta-data, AI, and the likes - all non-visual entities, unattainable by the human eye - provide the perfect example to what Frederic Jameson has called a crisis of representation. With these, power becomes unattainable to the human eye, leading to new forms of aestheticization of politics.

Program

Thursday 16.11.23

Session 1
15:00-17:00

Susanne Leeb
The Digital Image Research Program

Joshua Simon
The Digital Revolution as Counter-Revolution

Ana Teixeira Pinto
AI in Fiction – A Brief Prehistory
 

Session 2
17:00-19:00

Antonia Majaca
Three Notes: Irrationalism, New Materialism, Techno-vitalism

Daniel Nemenyi
Simulating Counterinsurgencies in the Sixties: The Case of Project CAM
 

Friday 17.11.23

Session 3
10:00-12:00

Noam Yuran
Prurient Puritanism: Sex and Ownership and Capital

Zachary Formwalt
Capture and the Noncapitalist Milieu
 

Session 4
14:00-17:00

Elena Vogman and Olexii Kuchanskyi
Mental Ecologies of War: A Proposition for an Ecosophic Gaze

David Riff
Beyond Ressentiment

Priority Program The Digital Image, Project: Jameson 2.0. Cognitive Mapping in Contemporary Art
https://www.digitalesbild.gwi.uni-muenchen.de/en/elementor-22433/

July 7-8, 2023 – Drafts in Action. Concepts and Practices of Artistic Interventions

Workshop

With Raphael Daibert / Agata Jakubowska / Amelia Jones / Anna Kipke / Iryna Kovalenko / Premesh Lalu / Rachel Mader / Natalia Moussienko / Alia Rayyan / Laura Rogalski / María Laura Rosa / Franka Schäfer / Valeria Schulte-Fischedick / Paula Serafini / Beate Söntgen / Simon Teune / Annette Werberger / Mimmi Woisnitza

The international workshop examined different modulations of artistic-intervening practices using concrete case studies from the 1920s to the present, encompassing objective planning and practice in their respective geographical-historical setting.

When talking about artistic positions that intervene in social crisis structures, the following questions arise: How do interventionist goals relate to the respective forms and practices of (re)presentation? Does practice follow theory, or conversely, does the artistic process shape the objective? Is there an explicit agenda, for instance in the form of a manifesto, or does the interventionist concern manifest itself in the artistic form or in its modes of production or design? How do artistic-interventionist objectives translate into practice and how, conversely, does the respective practice change the aims inscribed in it? Where do practices transgress or rupture the frameworks of their objectives? What role do processes of institutionalization play in this? What influence do different media have and which audiences and publics are called upon, addressed, or generated by which means?

At the same time, the questions above concern the methodological approach to practices of artistic intervention: Which modes of representation and writing can be used to describe the practices in their respective situatedness? How can we extend the analytical tools provided by the individual scholarly disciplines? In the sections manifesto, collectivity, and forms of documentation, we discussed these questions with speakers from different fields of expertise and practice such as art history, curation, sociology, and cultural studies.

The international workshop „Drafts in Action. Concepts and Practices of Artistic Interventions“ is organized by Anna Kipke, Iryna Kovalenko, Laura Rogalski, Beate Söntgen, Simon Teune, Annette Werberger, and Mimmi Woisnitza.

An Event of the Collaborative Research Centre 1512 “Intervening Arts” and the DFG Research Training Group “Cultures of Critique” in Cooperation with the ICI Berlin.

July 7, 2023 – Amelia Jones "Performing Absence as Intervention: The Case of Lee Lozano"

Lecture

The artist has long been understood in conventional Western art history, art criticism, and curatorial practice as the site of active agency, the origin of the meaning and value of the work of art. By the later twentieth century, during a period of social crisis across Europe and North America, however, theorists such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida put pressure on this model. At the same time artists began mobilizing their agency in radically different ways as part of a broad societal challenging of Western hegemony, patriarchal and white dominant models of subjectivity, and structures of power more generally. Jones examined one extreme example of such a mobilization from the 1960s New York art world — the case of American woman artist Lee Lozano, who ostentatiously proclaimed her plan to “drop out” and leave this vibrant scene at the height of her career — to explore how artistic authorship itself could be seen as a key site for the inter- rogation of power in the world. The case of Lozano allows to pose the question: is a performance of withdrawal from art institutions the ultimate intervention in a period of social crisis? Or was she effectively “copping out” just at the moment when many of her colleagues (for example, in New York, feminists such as her friend Lucy Lippard, and the anti-racist protestors participating in the 1970 Art Strike) were publicly agitating on the streets and in the museums for equity and inclusion?

Amelia Jones is Robert A. Day Professor at Roski School of Art & Design, USC. Publications include Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts (2012) and Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories, co-edited with Erin Silver (2016). Her catalogue Queer Communion: Ron Athey (2020) was listed among the “Best Art Books 2020” in the NY Times, and the curated show was listed among Top Ten 2021 exhibitions in Artforum (December 2021). Her book entitled In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance was published in 2021. Her current work addresses the structural racism and neoliberalism of the twenty- first-century art world and university.

Moderated by Christopher Weickenmeier and Mimmi Woisnitza.

The public keynote lecture is part of the international workshop „Drafts in Action. Concepts and Practices of Artistic Interventions“, July 7–8, 2023, organized by Anna Kipke, Iryna Kovalenko, Laura Rogalski, Beate Söntgen, Simon Teune, Annette Werberger, and Mimmi Woisnitza.

An Event of the Collaborative Research Centre 1512 “Intervening Arts” and the DFG-Research Training Group “Cultures of Critique” in Cooperation with the ICI Berlin.

June 23-24, 2023 – art thinking doing art. Artistic Practices in Educational Contexts from 1900 to Today

Conference

Die Tagung"art thinking doing art. Artistic Practices in Educational Contexts from 1900 to Today" eröffnete eine historische wie auch zeitgenössische Untersuchung der Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Kunsterziehung, Kunstproduktion und ideologischen Kontexten. Mit Beiträgen von Wissenschaftlern aus zwölf verschiedenen Ländern nahm dieses Projekt eine einzigartig breite Perspektive auf die Frage der Kunsterziehung ein, indem es den Prozess der "knowledgization" auch epistemologisch in breiteren Diskussionen über die (Inter-)Materialität, (Gegen-)Institutionalität und (Trans-)Disziplinarität künstlerischer Praktiken verortete und anhand empirischer Fallstudien deren historische Dimension in verschiedenen geopolitischen Kontexten für den Zeitraum von ca. 1900 bis heute untersuchte.

Über die gesamte Veranstaltung hinweg waren künstlerische Perspektiven beteiligt. Sie entfalteten einen Interventionsraum, dessen grundlegendes Merkmal darin bestand, explorativ zu sein. Die Intervening Lecture des Raqs Media Collectives, die unauffällig in die wissenschaftliche Vortragsreihe integriert ist, und die ständige Präsenz des Kollektivs in Workshops während der Veranstaltung wirkten einer monoperspektivischen Ausrichtung der Diskussionen von vornherein entgegen.

Key Lectures: Benjamin Buchloh und Tom Holert.

Weitere Vorträge: Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Nicola Foster, Tom Holert, Annette Jael Lehmann, Jeffrey Saletnik, Emily Ruth Capper, Rebecca Sprowl, Noa Sadka. Kurzpräsentationen: Dennis Brzek, Patrick Düblin, Chloë Julius, Louisa Lee, Izabelle Louise, Isabel Nogueira, Delphine Paul, Sarah Poppel, Marie-Christine Schoel, Isabel Seliger, Burak Üzümkesici, Barbara Vujanović, Jake Watts.

Detaillierte Informationen entnehmen Sie dem Programm.

Konzipiert, geplant und organisiert wurde das Projekt von Sandra Neugärtner. Die Durchführung wird von Anna Brus unterstützt. Das Projekt wird gefördert durch den Sonderforschungsbereich 1512 "Intervenierende Künste" (DFG), die Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, die Universität der Künste Berlin und die Universität zu Köln.

June 22, 2023 – Tracing the Unknown: Learning from Provenance Data –  Lynn Rother

Lecture

Recent restitution and decolonization efforts have shown that provenance has emancipated itself from being a subordinate cataloging task in museums and the art market to a self-conscious scientific endeavor with ethical and legal implications. While the minutiae of ownership and socio-economic custody changes are increasingly recorded digitally, they have yet to be analyzed on a large scale as provenance continues to be recorded as unstructured data. Experimenting with AI in structuring museum datasets, the untapped potential of analyzing object histories on a large scale has come within reach. However, the transformation of analog information and its digital offspring into structured data is not without challenges. This lecture will present experimental approaches and findings on the knowns and unknowns in provenance data.

June 13-15, 2023 – Radical Desires and Decolonial Critique

Conference

About 50 years ago, the mass-protest of gays and lesbians against discrimination was at once an assertion of a new collective consciousness, while also creating a radical new subjectivity and a collective sense of identity. They fought for social and legal equality while at the same time refused to be co-opted by bourgeois society as just another civil rights movement. Politics were supposed to be wild, playful, and subjective; experiences and desires were put in the foreground of collective action – aiming at the interconnection between subjective, bodily experiences, radical avant-garde theory and emancipatory politics. Starting with the unboundedness of (sexual) desire they sought to transgress schemes of binarity and wanted to transform society as a whole. 

Guests: Lukas Betzler (Leuphana University Lüneburg) / Hauke Branding (Leuphana University Lüneburg) / Sido Lansari (Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon, France) / Émilie Notéris (Paris) / Todd Shepard (Johns Hopkins University, USA)

Programme and further information: Poster and booklet.

An event hosted by the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique.

June 6, 2023 – Revisiting Les Immatériaux

Research seminar

During the past years, the art historian Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana University, Lüneburg/Germany) and the New Media Department of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou - in the context of its EU-funded project "Beyond Matter" -, have conducted research about the exhibition "Les Immatériaux" (Centre Pompidou, 1985), which, for the first time in decades, makes possible a comprehensive and interdisciplinary re-evaluation of this important historical exhibition.

The research seminar "Revisiting Les Immatériaux" brought together international scholars who discussed the lasting relevance of the exhibition from contemporary perspectives.

The papers presented during this seminar were being considered for inclusion in a major print publication about Les Immatériaux, due to come out in 2024, which will document the exhibition in texts and images, as well as offer reflections on its contemporary significance.

Invited participants:

Erika Balsom: « Une autre scène: Claudine Eizykman and Guy Fihman's Ciné-immatériaux »
[https://www.erikabalsom.com/]

Marie-Ange Brayer: « Dessins d'architecture et maquettes : des artefacts postmodernes? »
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/marie-ange-brayer-4a9a3356/]

Jean-Louis Boissier: « Les Immatériaux à travers leurs mots »
[http://jlggb.net/jlb/]

Corinne Enaudeau: « Les Immatériaux ou "comment exposer dans l'espace l'anachronie du temps ?" »
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinne_Enaudeau]

Sergio Meijide Casas: « Quand le philosophe prend la parole : Lyotard et les entretiens sur Les Immatériaux »
[https://usc-es.academia.edu/SergioMeijide]

Convenors:

Marcella Lista: « Les Immatériaux, questions d'actualité »
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcella_Lista]

Andreas Broeckmann: « The place of Les Immatériaux in the history of exhibitions »
[https://abroeck.in-berlin.de/]

Organised and moderated by Mica Gherghescu (Bibliothèque Kandinsky/MNAM, Centre Pompidou), Marcella Lista (MNAM/CCI, Service Nouveau média), and Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana University).

The seminar coincides with the research done in the context of the project "Beyond Matter – Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality", and precedes a cabinet exhibition in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, dedicated to "Les Immatériaux" (opening on 5 July 2023). Next to archival materials and some original works from the "Les Immatériaux", held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, this exhibition presents the virtual 3D models of the exhibitions "Les Immatériaux" (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1985) and "Iconoclash" (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2002).

June 6, 2023 – Actual Time of Arrival: The Acquisition of Expressionist Art by United States Museums – Max Koss and Fabio Mariani

Lecture

Max Koss and Fabio Mariani participated in the international symposium "Expressionism Revisited: New Research Approaches and Questions" organised by the Brücke Museum in Berlin. On June 3rd, they gave the talk "Actual Time of Arrival: The Acquisition of Expressionist Art by United States Museums".

In their talk, Fabio and Max examined quantitative and computational methods for revisiting traditional art historical narratives about the transfer of Expressionist paintings to the United States of America.

May 30- June 28, 2023 – DEADTIME (“Maggie’s Solo”) mit Cally Spooner und Will Holder

Exhibition

For the exhibition opening, Cally Spooner, Will Holder and Christopher Weickenmeier will have a public conversation with the students enrolled in the seminar “Assisting and the Arts of Service”.

“Maggie’s Solo” is a 44'16" audio recording of Maggie Segale dancing in “early 2020”. Starting “tomorrow”[30.5.2023], Will and Cally wrote for an hour a day, here, about, alongside and in assistance to “Maggie’s Solo”—a solo as much as a constellation. Once a week, usually Wednesdays, parts of this writing appeared in and around the Kunstraum.

Will Holder is an English typographer based in Brussels. Holder explores the organisation of language around artworks through printed matter, live readings and dialogues with other artists. Particular attention is placed on an oral production of value and meaning around cultural objects, and how live, extra-informational qualities might be analysed, documented and scored. He is editor of F.R.DAVID, a journal concerned with reading and writing in the arts. Together with Alex Waterman, he edited and typeset operatic scores for Yes, But Is It Edible?, the music of Robert Ashley, for two or more voices. In 2015 he received a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists. He is also the founder of the publishing imprint uh books.

Cally Spooner is an artist who exhibits performances that unfold across media — on film, in text, as objects, through sound, and as illustrated in drawings. Recent institutional solo exhibitions have taken place at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium; Parrhesiades, London; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Swiss Institute, New York; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; the New Museum, New York; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Her work has appeared in recent group exhibitions at Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Centre Pompidou-Metz, France; FRONT Cleveland Triennial; BY ART MAT- TERS, Hangzhou; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; MAMbo, Bologna; Serpentine Gallery, London; Kunsthaus Zurich; the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; and REDCAT Gallery, Los Angeles. Spooner is the author of recent and forthcoming monographs published by Lenz Press and the Swiss Institute (2023); Hatje Cantz (2020); Mousse (2018); and Slim Volume/ Cornerhouse (2016). Her novella Collapsing in Parts was published by Mousse in 2012. She is currently a research fellow at Overgaden, Copenhagen, in association with the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Copenhagen (2021–24).

May 21, 2023 – Why Art Criticism?

Book presentation

Im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe K21 Encounters der Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf stellten Julia Voss und Anna Kipke den 2022 bei Hatje Cantz erschienen Band „Why Art Criticism?“ vor.

Der Reader leistet Pionierarbeit, indem er unterschiedlichste kunstkritische Stimmen aus der Gegenwart und aus der Geschichte versammelt und kommentiert. Die Vielfalt der Argumente, der Darstellungsweisen und der Kriterien fordert die Diskussion heraus, wie sich Kunstkritik unter Bedingungen von Globalität verstehen und schreiben lässt.

May 18, 2023 – Unlocking Collection Histories: Provenance Data and Agency - Fabio Mariani

Lecture

As part of the 1-day conference "Museum Analytics," organised by the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College, London, Fabio Mariani presented the lecture "Unlocking Collection Histories: Provenance Data and Agency".

The talk focused on the role of Artificial Intelligence in transforming provenance texts in museums into networked provenance data. In addition, Fabio will use provenance data analyses to shed light on the question of gender-specific agency strategies in the art market.

May 10, 2023 – Maintenance (Art-)Work and the Production of Presencen – Dr. Eva Kuhn

Lecture

As part of the international conference “Cooking Cleaning Caring: Care Work as a Global Issue in Contemporary Art”, Dr. Eva Kuhn, research associate at the professorship for Contemporary Art, hold a lecture on “Maintenance (Art-)Work and the Production of Presence“.

The conference brought together experts from different countries to examine artistic perspectives on topics of care work and its political and social dimensions. The conference will be held as a hybrid event in Bochum from the 10th to the 12th of May.

January 25, 2023 – A Trans Hirschfeld Renaissance w/ Leah Tigers, Dean Erdmann, Maxi Wallenhorst and Raimund Wolfert (Kunstraum)

Talk

The conversation between historian and essayist Leah Tigers, artist Dean Erdmann, and historian Raimund Wolfert, moderated by author Maxi Wallenhorst and curator Christopher Weickenmeier, engaged the recent proliferation of historical, literary, and artistic practices concerning the Institute for Sexual Science. Founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1919 and destroyed by the Nazis in 1933, the institute was the first of its kind, a focus point of sexual politics and queer sociality in the Weimar Republic. In the spirit of an “idiolectic trans history” outlined by Leah Tigers, the conversation probed the necessity for idiosyncratic as well as formalized approaches to the archive. 

dean erdmann is an interdisciplinary artist working moving and still images, sculpture and installation, often using pre-existing archives or creating archives. Their work often considers the politics of place, class and the body.

Leah Tigers is a community trans historian based out of Brooklyn, New York. Her previous writings feature trans asylum and prison experience in New York, queer migration to the western United States or California, where she lived for 6 years, and of course trans experiences in the Weimar Republic, which began partly as a personal interest in her German ancestry. She has also previously published narrative nonfiction in the history of science, which continues to stimulate much of her curiosity about the transgender subject in psychiatry and sexology. Many of her essays can be found at her personal website, www.trickymothernature.com. Currently she teaches Women’s Studies at Rutgers University-Newark in New Jersey and is working with several friends to start up a transgender literary review.

Maxi Wallenhorst is a writer living in Berlin. Next to dance dramaturgy, translation and art writing Maxi works on dissociative poetics in capitalism. Recently, essays appeared in e-flux journal and in Elif Saydam’s Two Cents (Mousse, 2022). In progress: A transvestite romance set in a half-allegorical 20s Berlin.

Raimund Wolfert, born 1963, studied Scandinavian studies, linguistics and library science in Bonn, Oslo (Norway) and Berlin. Degree: Magister Artium. Wolfert lives as a lecturer in adult education and freelance author in Berlin. He is a staff member of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society and editor of the journal “Mitteilungen der Magnus Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft”. Recent publications include „Gegen Einsamkeit und ‚Einsiedelei‘. Die Geschichte der Internationalen Homophilen Welt-Organisation“ (2009), „Nirgendwo daheim. Das bewegte Leben des Bruno Vogel“ (2012), „Die Goldbergs. Zwischen Friedenstempel, Lunapark und Haus der Modeindustrie“ (2015), „Homosexuellenpolitik in der jungen Bundesrepublik. Kurt Hiller, Hans Giese und das Ffter Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee“ (2015), „Botho Laserstein. Anwalt und Publizist für ein neues Sexualstrafrecht“ (2020) and „Charlotte Charlaque. Transfrau, Laienschauspielerin, ‚Königin der Brooklyn Heights Promenade‘“ (2021).

December 12, 2022 - January 28, 2023 –  Unterwerfungen (Kunstraum) – Philipp Gufler 

Exhibition

Kunstraum of the Leuphana University Lüneburg was delighted to announce the opening of Philipp Gufler´s solo exhibition “Unterwerfungen”. Bringing together old and new works and structured by Gufler’s ongoing collaboration with the self-organized Forum Queeres Archiv München, “Unterwerfungen” tracked the various ways in which Gufler stages archival material, resisting the heteronormative capture of a resistant past.

The installation “I Wanna Give You Devotion” consisted of six textile walls, covered with over 130 posters from the archive of the Forum. The tender and temporary architecture houses an “archive of feelings” (Ann Cvetkovich) that registers the affective dimensions of documenting and recording queer cultures. Tethered to a heterotopic idea of the public, these posters communicated and conspired, tracing queer desire and life as well as ongoing struggles. With each presentation, Gufler has asked fellow friends and collaborators to make new posters in response to the Forum collection. At Kunstraum, we presented the newest additions by CHEAP Collective and Sunil Gupta. A publication, produced in collaboration with students from the Leuphana University Lüneburg, was on display and may be picked up free of charge. The publication brought together the students´ individual and collective research into a selection of posters also shown in the installation.

Inside the installation, the 34-minute film Projection on the Crisis (Gauweilereien in Munich) is screened. Juxtaposing archival material from the Forum with artworks by friends and collaborators of Gufler, the video threads together stories of homophobia and queer resistance, with a particular focus on Peter Gauweiler’s homophobic policies at the height of the AIDS crisis in Bavaria. Loosely organized around a timeline, the camera’s almost uninterrupted tracking shot of the documents and artworks furthers the illusion of a progressive linearity, one that is revealed to be as much a function of a historical gaze, as an effect of technological dispositifs. A careful exploration of the synthetic nature of “the fictions of history” (Saidiya Hartman), the film articulates an emancipatory potential of making history.

As part of his ongoing Quilt series, Gufler has collaborated with the artist Eli Hill to produce for the exhibition his newest quilt, dealing with the legacy and memory of the philanthropist Reed Erickson (1917–92). One of the first trans men to undergo gender-confirming surgery in the US, Erickson systematically supported trans health care initiatives and members of the transgender community.

Philipp Gufler is an artist based in Munich and Amsterdam. He spans various media in his practice, including silkscreen prints on fabric and mirrors, artist books, performances, and video installations. Gufler is a member of the Forum Queeres Archiv München since 2013 and has participated in artist residencies at De Ateliers, Amsterdam; Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Maine; and Delfina Foundation, London. Artist books include Projection on the Crisis (2014 / 2021), I Wanna Give You Devotion (2017), Indirect Contact (2017), Quilt #01–#30 (2020), Lana Kaiser (2020), A Shrine to Aphrodite (2023) and Cosy bei Cosy (2023).

December 8, 2022 – Screening with Zoe Leonard, Catherine Saalfield, Philipp Gufler and Liane Klingler (Kunstraum)

A screening of

Zoe Leonard & Catherine Saalfield, Keep your laws off my body, 1990
Philipp Gufler, Lana Kaiser, 2021
Philipp Gufler, Becoming-Rabe, 2015
Liane Klinger & Philipp Gufler, Conversation with Erich Haas, 2016

November 29, 2023 – Argentina’s feminist insurgency and struggles over social reproduction – Liz Mason-Deese

Lecture

Over the past decade, a massive, innovative, and radical feminist movement has emerged in Latin America both in opposition to gender-based violence and in demand of new rights, such as the right to abortion. Questions of social reproduction are central to this feminism that has linked the devaluation of feminized labor to the violence against feminized bodies, connecting economic and financial violence to a myriad of other forms of violence. This talk explored how feminisms in Argentina center issues of social reproduction: both in terms of demands on the state to fund aspects of social reproduction and in practices of self-organization and autonomous forms of social reproduction enacted by movements themselves. From community-run health clinics to soup kitchens and educational programs, these autonomous forms of social reproduction also point to ways of reorganizing the labor of social reproduction, deconfining it from the private household and the family, and making it into a collective responsibility. 

Liz Mason-Deese holds a PhD in Geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a long time researcher, translator, and participant in feminist and workers' movements in Argentina. She is the translator of numerous books about feminist movements and thought around the world, including Feminist International by Veronica Gago, A Feminist Reading of Debt by Veronica Gago and Luci Cavallero, and The Feminist Subversion of the Economy by Amaia Perez Orozco. She is also a member of the Counter-Cartographies Collective and the translation collective Territorio de Ideas.

This event is organised by Ben Trott and hosted by the Gender and Diversity Research Network.

November 17-18, 2023 – What's the Matter with The Form? A pluralistic Dialogue on The Notion of Form

Graduate Conference

The Leuphana Institute of Philosophy and Science of Art (IPK) warmly invited you to the upcoming conference "What's the Matter With the Form? A Pluralistic Dialogue on the Notion of Form". The conference took place at the Leuphana from the 17th (starting at 02:00 pm) to the 18th of November (ending at 05:30 pm).

Experts and Panellists addressed the concept of form from a variety of perspectives: The concept of social form in Marx; the role that the form plays in the modern and contemporary debate in Aesthetic and finally, the critique on the form in the context of cyberfication and digitalisation of reality.

Organising Committee:

Benedetta Milani
S. Simone Spinelli
Dr. Chiara Stefanoni