The exhibition in the Humboldt Forum deals with the interactions between climate change and biodiversity loss as well as the global crises of democratic principles of order. It draws on a wide array of voices from scientific research in order to address the effects of man-made changes to the global environment. The title of the exhibition refers in equal measure to both the destruction of species and ecosystems and the idea of “learning from nature”. The exhibition on the first floor of the Humboldt Forum encompasses a 150-square-metre foyer and a main hall of 600 square metres.
Admission to the Humboldt Lab is free. Time slots can be booked via the Humboldt Forum from 13th July.
Lexichaos
From Understanding Misunderstanding to Misunderstanding the Understandable
Voices and alphabetic characters, wall panels, towers, and bells: over the course of ten days, Lexichaos takes over the Pierre Boulez Saal—this is the title of an expansive sound installation by American artist Stephan von Huene (1932–2000). The confusion of languages—god’s measure to scatter the peoples in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel—was written into von Huene’s biography, who was raised in California, the son of German parents, and lived in Hamburg from 1980 to his death. His installation, originally created in 1990 and today housed in the Helmholtz Center of Cultural Techniques at Berlin’s Humboldt University, reveals a very current issue: the verbal communication between people of different national and cultural backgrounds. Von Huene’s work treats language not only in terms of its symbols and sounds—it is also open to a metaphorical interpretation. In the artist’s own words: “Between languages, there is not only the meaning of words, the translation, there are entire worldviews.”
25 March – 6 April 2021
Barenboim-Said-Akademie, Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33D, 10117 Berlin Event-Website
Digital launch of the book-as-exhibition zwischen körpern
On 19.03.2021 the Kleine Humboldt Galerie celebrates the launch and vernissage of zwischen körpern, the book-as-exhibition!
Via a livestream, visitors can immerse themselves in video works from 2 pm onwards, take part in guided tours by curators and graphic designers of the exhibition and publication, join a conversation with the Berliner K. Verlag, and much more.
Program
15.00 h / Q&A with the K. publishing house
16.00 h / Guided tours by curators
16.45 h / Video stream of Carolina Caycedo
17.15 h / Video stream by Marco Buetikofer and Lotte Meret
17.30 h / Video stream by Kirstin Burckhardt
18.00 h / Video stream of Theresa Schubert
18.30 h / Cocktails 🍸
19.00 h / Pub Quiz
20.30 h / Sin Maldita A/V Performance
Exhibition zwischen körpern
An exhibition in the format of a book – from March 19, 2021 to April 30, 2021.
zwischen körpern negotiates the physical body as the starting and ending point into which society inscribes itself. Various mechanisms of control are examined, which affect diverse bodies in very different ways. The focus is on the impact and experienceability of control on and of the body: bodies are consciously or unconsciously modeled and also controlled by historical and social circumstances.
The body is understood as a venue for political struggles, which is why emancipation strategies and self-empowerment processes take on a central role. To what extent are the carnal and new technologies interwoven and what role do intimacy and social constraints play? Eleven contemporary positions investigate these complex dynamics by means of sculpture, spatial installation, video, photography, and performance. As with the selection of artworks, corporeality is reflected and critically questioned from a decolonial and intersectional-feminist perspective.
Publication zwischen körpern / among bodies
How our bodies see, are seen, and behave with and among other bodies, is inevitably political. To move the body is also always to insist on meaning — just as meaning is always in movement.
The book-as-exhibition presents ten contemporary art positions that each explore the complex and intimate dynamics that expose our bodies to new technologies, social pressures, and desires for liberation. As curatorial experiment within the micro-architecture of the book, the project initiates singular relays from sculpture, installation, video, photography, and performance to paper that enable parallel engagements with decolonial and intersectional feminist perspectives.
Book concept by Kleine Humboldt Galerie
Curatorial-editorial team: Franziska Dommers, Lotta Feibicke, Nikolas Geier, Eileen Kesseler, Patricia Kühn, Anna Latzko, Monique Machicao y Priemer Ferrufino, Sarah Marcinkowski, Katharina Ripea, Evelyn Sutter, Nicole Wittmann, and Yuanwen Zhong.
With artworks by Kirstin Burckhardt, Marco Buetikofer, Carolina Caycedo, Stine Deja, Lotte Meret Effinger, Ester Fleckner, Yngve Holen, Luisa Krautien, Michael Liani, Theresa Schubert, and Zuzana Svatik; additional texts by Michaela Dudley, Felix Sattler, and others; and a glossary of terms by the curators.
Design: K. Verlag with Ginny Rose Davis and Megan Ricca
German & English
Wendebuch / turning book
196 pages
20 x 29.7 cm
Black/white with purple Pantone spot color & full-color image section
Softcover, Swiss binding
ISBN 978-3-947858-22-4 https://k-verlag.org/books/zwischen-korpern-among-bodies
An exhibition is always a polyphony of things, works and media. At least as important as these are the diverse relationships they can enter into with each other. The digital dependency of the Humboldt Labor will repeatedly present new relationships of this kind. To begin with, however, the exhibition will be completed interactively in the form of a point-and-click adventure. Those who succeed in getting the exhibits to the right location can expect an unusual and exciting virtual tour of the Humboldt Labor.
From 2021 to 2023, an interdisciplinary team will conduct research at the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik / Tieranatomisches Theater, MARKK and the Kunstuniversität Linz in cooperation with other international scientists and artists. The project will conclude with exhibitions that will be shown at MARKK Hamburg (2022) and the Tieranatomisches Theater (2023), among others.
Numerous ethnographic and anatomical collections in Europe contain preparations, casts, X-ray images and photos of so-called “lotus feet”, the bound feet of women in China. The research and exhibition project BINDING BODIES takes these collections as the starting point for research into the discourse history of female body modifications. Already Hans Virchow (1852-1940) and his colleagues draw comparisons to lace dancing, high heels and corsets in their publications. The project attempts an “entangled history” of female body deformations between Europe and China. It examines the complex interactions of self-perceptions and perceptions of others, reconstructs exemplary object biographies and contextualises them against the background of colonial, gender, social and scientific history. Thus, the project is also part of the current controversy about the handling of ethnographic objects and especially human remains in scientific collections.
Curators: Prof. Dr. Jasmin Mersmann (project leader), Dr. Evke Rulffes, Felix Sattler Project Management Organisation: Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Partners: Museum am Rothenbaum. Cultures and Arts of the World (MARKK), Prof. Dr Barbara Plankensteiner, Dr Susanne Knödel, Gabriel Schimmeroth
The construction work has been completed and the Humboldt Forum will be offering first glimpses of the building and the future cultural programme from 16.12.2020.
Due to the pandemic, a personal visit to the opening exhibition „After Nature“ in the Humboldt Labor is not yet possible.
First digital insights of the Humboldt Forum are available here:
A joint event organized by C/O Berlin and the research center Das Technische Bild at the Institute of Art and Image History of the Humboldt University/Hermann von Helmholtz Center for Cultural Technology to mark the 20th anniversary of both institutions
Concept: Felix Hoffmann/Katja Müller-Helle/Kathrin Schönegg
At the latest since the first picture postcards of the 1880s, picture motifs have been used for the transmission of news, stamped, framed with framing writing and infiltrated into the distribution channels of the postal service. But the greater the promise of personalized picture greetings became, the more sensitive the institutions reacted to their containment. Even during the First World War, field postcards with caricatures, abusive or salacious depictions came under the scrutiny of the Prussian censorship authority in Berlin, which had been established specifically for this purpose. The beginnings of circulating images, their potentials and their limits are to be traced in this symposium up to the social media: Today, digital image circulation creates utopias of participation and dissemination on the part of the user, which are contained by practices of algorithmic image deletion and regulatory mechanisms. Despite image censorship and curated content, the platforms’ rhetoric is based on the myth of net neutrality. Accordingly, the question of the mass divisibility of images is to be examined in a double perspective of potential and regulation, of freedom and censorship in a historical perspective.
With Friedrich Balke, Estelle Blaschke, Matthias Bruhn, Eva Ehninger, Felix Hoffmann, Christian Kassung, Roland Meyer, Katja Müller-Helle, Margarete Pratschke, Simon Rothöler, Kerstin Schankweiler, Kathrin Schönegg, Friedrich Tietjen und Wolfgang Ullrich.
