Projects with students
While studying for a BA or MA degree in Cultural Studies in Lüneburg, you will not only traverse disciplinary boundaries but also explore new methods and experience a range of teaching formats. Projects and events are realised here which go beyond the usual participation in seminars and lectures. In addition to regular excursions, students are at the centre of project oriented seminars, playing an active role in initiating and developing them. Below we present a small selection of teaching formats and projects in which students have played a central and active role.
Kunstraum.p2p is a new format at Kunstraum that aims to support independent and collaborative study by students. "Kunstraum peer to peer" provides space and resources for groups of students to develop a project together and to work on issues independently, beyond or within the framework of a seminar. The project can be an exhibition, the activation or mediation of existing artworks, or other formats such as (artistic) workshops, screenings, performances, concerts. All interested groups are invited to propose their ideas in response to an open call that we will send out every six months. Projects will then be selected by Prof. Susanne Leeb and Christopher Weickenmeier. The projects should have a conceptual focus and be feasible. The groups are responsible for the conception, curation, planning, production and mediation of the project, and this should be reflected in the development of the proposal. The Kunstraum student assistant Litha Sabelfeld coordinates the groups.
Among the projects realized in the winter semester 2024/25:
Dis/b/orderly with Sudabe Yunesi, Robert Bostantzis Diamantopoulos und Georg Juranek.
Dis/b/orderly formulated 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).
This exhibition was curated and organized by Sophie McCuen-Koytek (M.A. Critical Studies).
Non-human rave with Daria Melnikova
“Non-human rave” draws out the sonic and musical potential of human and non-human improvisation. Using a musical instrument designed to read electrical impulses, Daria Melnikova connects the electrodes to fruits, vegetables and mushrooms. As the objects change, the style of the music changes with them, allowing visitors to tune in to different non-human harmonies.
This exhibition was curated and organized by Litha Sabelfeld (M.A. Cultural Studies: Culture and Organization).
As part of the master's seminar Study Tour Biennale di Venezia, led by Beate Söntgen, students from Leuphana University had the opportunity to undertake an excursion to Venice. In cooperation with a seminar at Venice International University, led by Massimiliano Nuccio, they visited the 2024 Art Biennale for three days, which was themed Foreigners Everywhere.
Foreigners Everywhere is also the title of a group of sculptures by the Italian collective Claire Fontaine, which in turn borrowed the name from a Turin-based group that rebelled against racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s. Curator Adriano Pedrosa describes foreignness as an omnipresent experience that is based on inequalities and simultaneously produces them, whether in terms of nationality, ethnicity, gender, wealth, or freedom. In the main exhibition, the Biennale brought together works that expressed these experiences.
Students gained insight into modern and contemporary art in its transcultural, intertwined history. The focus lay on different concepts of modernity in relation to artistic production. Analysis of artistic works in their specific form, materiality, and mediality, and in their historical and geographical contexts, was practised. Furthermore, using the example of the Venice Biennale, students developed an understanding of the role and functions of large-scale exhibitions and their effects on the artistic field and the place where they take place.
Karen Michelsen Castañón and Gabriel Rosell-Santillán led an artistic practice session with students from the bachelor’s seminar Materiality and the Practice of Contemporary Art. During the session, which was based on short films, the participants shared food, knitted, and collectively read oral history poems in German, English, Spanish, and Nahuatl.
Led by Sebastián Eduardo Dávila, the seminar explores concepts and art practices, drawing on texts from art history, cultural studies, and philosophy that emphasise the power of materiality against the characterisation of materials as passive and charged with meaning and value only through the creative intervention of the artist. Instead of focusing on "completed" works of art, the seminar participants discussed processes as well as human and non-human actors, ideas, and materials in art practices.
The practical session contributed to this discussion with an artistic approach to the materiality of textiles and the practice of film shooting and editing. Students explored various ways of engaging with these media, gaining insight into collective artistic processes. In short art critiques, they related this experience to the texts discussed in the seminar.
Michelsen and Rosell-Santillán work on collective textile and film practices with a strong connection to specific contexts, such as their participation in Indigenous resistance practices in Guatemala and Mexico. Their collective work is characterised by an interest in transformations in terms of media, language, and materials, but also in the impossibility of completely translating different cultural contexts. It was this aspect that invited the participants of the practice session to explore their own approaches to situated art practices.
The tour took place as part of the bachelor’s seminar No Word for Art in Our Language? On the Relation Between Indigeneity and Contemporary Art, led by Sebastián Eduardo Dávila. In the seminar, students examined the tension between Indigeneity on the one hand and the "Western" art sphere and temporality on the other, focusing on concrete examples from art theory and artistic and curatorial practices.
Claudia Andujar's work, which centres on the Yanomami region in the Brazilian Amazon, offered the participants the opportunity to reflect on a complex, multi-layered practice of translation, appropriation, and alliance between art and politics.
After fleeing Europe during National Socialism, Claudia Andujar initially devoted herself to photojournalism in the 1970s. She later experimented with different material and media possibilities of photography to visually convey the Yanomami's world of dreams and visions.
During the tour and subsequent discussion with curator Viktor Hois, ethical and political questions were discussed alongside artistic aspects, such as the appropriation of cosmovisions and the potential of photography to support political struggles, like those for Indigenous territorial autonomy. The participants prepared by reading a text by Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa, with whom Andujar has collaborated on common political aims.
In the winter semester 2023/2024, students explored the avant-garde theatre maker Asja Lācis in a seminar led by Mimmi Woisnitza and Konstanze Schmitt. The aim was to make Lācis visible in the German-speaking sphere as an important mediator of the avant-gardes in Latvia, Soviet Russia, and Germany, moving her out of the shadow of male protagonists as she is known here above all as a collaborator of Bertolt Brecht and lover of Walter Benjamin. The focus was on the revolutionary amateur theatre practice she developed, which involved collaborative and non-hierarchical forms of participatory play development and stage design: The enquiry is not about the individual actor, but about her relational way of working with structures of relationships in which and from which she developed her theatrical processes.
The participants in the seminar attempted to visualise Lācis' activist and artistic practice in its specific historical context and to make it tangible in her performative practice. What relevance do these approaches have today?
Based on Lācis' manifesto “The New Forms in Theatre Art” (1921), we approached Asja Lācis’ practice, particularly the proletarian children's theatre, the revolutionary underground workers' theatre, and the travelling collective theatre, through reading and performative research. To this end, we explored the traditions of workers' theatre, Agitprop and Proletkult, Meyerhold's biomechanics, Sergei Tretyakov's biography of the thing and Brecht's street scene.
The aim was to explore this field through joint reading and performative research. During two block events (Friday/Saturday), the programme focused on theoretical analysis on the one hand and the development of individual performative-intervening approaches on the other. Based on Lācis' methods, concrete project ideas were developed in groups or individually, drawn from personal and social concerns. These were realised or documented and subsequently presented and discussed within the group.
In the spirit of performative research, theoretical questions, such as the shift from a psychologising, anthropocentric view of protagonists/heroes to a relational view of things/products/worlds and their modes of reference, or the modes of representation and media or performative forms of expression, were negotiated and deepened through collective, somatic and experience-based engagement with the participants’ project designs.
Konstanze Schmitt is a freelance director and visual artist based in Berlin. She is a fellow of the Berlin funding programme Artistic Research 2024/25. Since 2022, Konstanze Schmitt and Mimmi Woisnitza have been collaborating on the scientific-artistic project Offene Beziehungen: Asja Lācis between the avant-gardes.
Mimmi Woisnitza is a research associate at the IPK and is pursuing a post-doctoral project on Asja Lācis as part of the CRC 1512 Intervening Arts (Berlin/Lüneburg).
Although the avant-garde attitude was initially seen as a counter-movement to established academic norms of art production and adopted a critical perspective on socio-political conditions, it was structurally integrated into a colonialist worldview. Whether Picasso's fascination with African masks, Gauguin's Polynesian excursions, or Nolde, who functionally integrated the expression of exoticism and primitivism into the collective project of German colonialism, Germany's entanglement with colonialism remains relevant today. This context sheds light on contemporary racist power relations, which must be considered in the reception of primitivism.
In the winter semester 2023/2024, students in the bachelor's seminar Naive Art, Primitivism and Counter-Primitivism (led by Katharina Tchelidze) critically examined the need for a reception of primitivism in art that is conscious of racism. Central to this was a joint excursion to Brussels. Impressions from the exhibition Avant-garde in Georgia 1900-1936 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles (BOZAR) sparked discussions on topics such as exoticisation, queerness and avant-gardes, cultural politics and colonial continuities. Back in Lüneburg, the students and Katharina Tchelidze organised an event with curator Irine Jorjadze at the Archipelago Lab.
Wie sich erinnern […] Вспоминать by Katja Lell, 10 min, German/Russian with English subtitles
Lamarck by Marian Mayland, 28 min, German with English subtitles
Der Fluss ins Vergessen by Zi Li, 18 min, German/Mandarin with English subtitles
Recounted within families, felt across generations, hidden and rediscovered in material. In the essayistic, documentary, and poetic works of filmmakers Katja Lell, Marian Mayland, and Zi Li, processes of remembering are transformed. On 29 November 2023, three short films by these directors were shown at the Scala Programmkino in Lüneburg. The films explore family (hi)stories that intertwine the intimate with politics and history, offering insights into private worlds while evoking a sense of familiarity in the audience.
The screening was followed by a conversation with filmmakers Katja Lell and Marian Mayland, which shed light on their material and cinematic approaches, as well as the boundaries between the remembered, the recollected, and the imagined. The discussion was moderated by Leon Follert and Marie Lynn Jessen.
The evening was organised by Leon Follert and Marie Lynn Jessen, in both students in the Critical Studies – Arts, Theory, History master's programme, as a collaboration between the Archipelago Lab and the DFG Graduiertenkolleg Kulturen der Kritik.
Using the museum ship PEKING, the flagship of the future German Harbour Museum in Hamburg, as a starting point, students researched the history of the saltpetre trade across various Hamburg-based, national and international archives.
Saltpetre was one of the world's most important raw materials in the 19th and early 20th centuries, used both as fertiliser and in the production of explosives. Mined primarily by indigenous workers in the Chilean Atacama Desert, it formed the basis of a lucrative business model that brought significant wealth to European industrialists, as evidenced in Hamburg by landmarks such as the Chile House.
The seminar Das Unerzählte erzählen: Hamburgs koloniale Archive und der Salpeterhandel (Telling the untold story: Hamburg's Colonial Archives and the Saltpetre Trade), (led by Prof Lynn Rother and Melcher Ruhkopf), was held in collaboration with Ursula Richenberger, Head of Education and Mediation at the German Harbour Museum, during the summer semester of 2023. It offered students the opportunity to familiarise themselves with archival holdings and critically examine the saltpetre trade and Chilean colonial history using archive material and contemporary literature.
Discussions also centred on the role of museum education and its implementation at the Hafenmuseum Hamburg.
As a result of the seminar, participants had the chance to contribute to two exhibition projects:
- White Desert Gold. Chile Saltpetre and Hamburg at MARKK Hamburg, opening 23 May 2024.
- Uncomfortable Memories – On the Trail of Saltpetre in Chile and Germany at the German Port Museum (Schuppen 50A), running from 5 June 2024 - 31 October 2024.
In the early 20th century, it was said that something could either be modern or a museum, but not both. This highlights the tension between works that were once considered progressive, original, and provocative, but which may lose their impact when exhibited decades later. How can a museum dedicated to contemporary art address the aging of its collection?
The Museum Brandhorst in Munich, which only opened in 2009, faces this challenge uniquely. Its collection stems from the private holdings of Anette and Udo Brandhorst, with the core acquired between the 1970s and 1990s in Germany and the US. The museum plans to reinstall its permanent collection in 2023.
In the English-language seminar Tracing Brandhorst: Re-Imagining a Collection, students actively engaged in object-based research related to the museum’s collection. The seminar included a visit to Munich, where students held discussions with curators, restorers, and artists. The seminar was led by Prof. Dr. Lynn Rother and Giampaolo Biancioni, who was a curator at the Museum Brandhorst at the time.
In just under eight hours, journalist Claire Parnet interviewed the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, navigating his philosophical reflections alphabetically. This interview, recorded in 1989–1990, was broadcast only after Deleuze’s death in 1995, per his request.
On 23 May 2023, the ArchipelagoLab presented L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze in four blocks, all in a single day, with breaks and a shared lunch. The event invited attendees to “Join us as it suits you or keep up with us in this marathon. We welcome everyone, even if it's just for your favourite letter!”
First Block
9:00am – 11:10am
- A: Animal
- B: "Boire" (Drink)
- C: Culture
- D: Desire
- E: "Enfance" (Childhood)
Second Block
11:30am – 1:10pm
- F: Fidelity
- G: "Gauche" (Left)
- H: History of Philosophy
- I: Idea
- J: Joy
- K: Kant
Third Block
2:10pm – 4:10pm
- L: Literature
- M: Malady
- N: Neurology
- O: Opera
- P: Professor
Fourth Block
4:30pm – 6:10pm
- Q: Question
- R: Resistance
- S: Style
- T: Tennis
- U: "Un" (One)
- V: Voyage
- W: Wittgenstein
- X, Y: Unknown
- Z: Zigzag
The screening was organised by Marie Lynn Jessen and Arthur Siol at ArchipelagoLab. Marie is a student in the master’s programme Critical Studies – Arts, Theory, History”, while Arthur is a cultural studies undergraduate at Leuphana University.
On 28 February 2023, Dejla Haidar, a lecturer in Jineolojî at Kobanê University and Rojava University in Qamislo, visited the ArchipelagoLab during her tour through Germany. This marked a milestone as it was the first time that an educational delegation from the self-governing region of Northern and Eastern Syria, known as Rojava, came to Germany.
The delegation aimed to introduce the innovative liberal democratic approach to education of the new universities in Rojava, particularly focusing on Jineolojî, and to learn about critical approaches at German universities. Discussions also explored possibilities for future cooperation.
Jineolojî examines the history of patriarchy, state, capitalism, and society from a women-centred and life-centred perspective. It seeks solutions to pressing social problems while advocating for gender liberation, democracy, and ecological sustainability.
The event was organised by Marie Lynn Jessen (a student in the master’s programme Critical Studies – Arts, Theory, History at Leuphana University) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Mechthild Exo (University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer).
Few exhibition and museum venues in Germany have sparked as much debate about looted art from colonial contexts as the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. In the winter semester of 2022/23, Leuphana University students collaborated with students from the master’s programme in art history at TU Berlin for a series of research-based seminars and excursions to the often publicly criticised Humboldt Forum.
The focus was on critically examining the exhibition formats of collections from Africa and Oceania. Key questions included: What impressions do the display depots of the Ethnological Museum create for visitors? What knowledge is conveyed, and what remains omitted? To what extent does the lack of engagement with colonial violence perpetuate imperial narratives?
The display depots feature hundreds of artefacts from former colonies in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Yet, many exhibit labels include only a date, a region of origin, and the name of the person who brought the objects to the museum. They omit critical information about the collectors’ backgrounds and the contexts in which the objects were acquired. What was the relationship between the ‘collecting’ protagonists, the museums and the colonial politics of the time?
This research-based examination of the exhibition objects and the associated ‘collectors’ culminated in the creation of a public website, Complicit Collectors. The site provides information about the collectors featured in the exhibitions, including biographies, excerpts from their publications, and insights into their roles as self-declared ‘African researchers’ and ‘collectors’ within colonial systems.
In summer 2023, a discussion between students and curators involved in the exhibition concept addressed broader questions, such as the role of provenance research in exhibition planning and the status of collaboration with researchers from societies of origin.