Category Archives: Event

Event, News, Symposium

Symposium: Refigured Museums. Interdisciplinary Perspectives for Spatial Research in Museums.

Dear colleagues,

We would like to draw your attention to the symposium of our research project “Museum Space Knowledge” of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, that we are organising in cooperation with the CRC 1265 Re-Figuration of Space of the Technische Universität of Berlin.

Symposium: Refigured Museums. Interdisciplinary Perspectives for Spatial Research in Museums

Date: Thursday, 3rd of March 2022, 9.30-17.30 and Friday, 4th of March 2022, 9.30-13.30

Location: Online, Zoom link will be sent via email (see attachment for registration)

Which spaces are constituted in and with museums? How is the co-production of knowledge spatialized within the museal institution? And how can museums be designed in the future to make these knowledge processes more accessible and diverse?
In our interdisciplinary and international conference, we would like to bring together researchers from the fields of sociology, anthropology, art history, architecture, and art who are dedicated to the question of museal space.

For further information, please see the booklet attached (PDF).

We would be very grateful if you could spread this invitation through your network.

Thank you very much and best regards
Sarah Etz, Séverine Marguin and Henrike Rabe

The research project „Museum Space Knowledge“ is funded by the Joachim Herz Stiftung.

Joachim_Herz_Stiftung_Logo

 

Colloquium, Event, News

Invitation HZK-CARMAH COLLOQUIUM on 07 February 2022 – Polish Folk Art and the Holocaust

The next colloquium will take place on 07 February 2022 at 2 pm and all interested parties are cordially invited! The event will be held virtually. Access data for the video conference will be provided on request by email to oliver.zauzig@hu-berlin.de.

Polish Folk Art and the Holocaust: Perpetrator-Victim-Bystander Memory Transactions in the Polish-German Context

The recent turn in Holocaust studies towards the “dispersed” Holocaust that took place outside of the death camps, in full view of local “bystander” populations, requires new sources of data. While oral history has brought important insights into the field, vernacular visual sources have yet to be considered. Holocaust-themed folk art from Poland constitutes an important and as-yet-unexamined source that offers a unique perspective on postwar memorial processes. Created throughout the postwar decades, carvings and paintings of Holocaust scenes by Polish vernacular artists, who remembered pre-war Jews and witnessed the atrocities against them, have been largely forgotten in the holdings of Polish ethnographic museums or reside in private (mostly German) collections, without ever having been systematically examined as a source of knowledge about post-traumatic memory processes.

The project focuses on such vernacular representations of the Shoah, and their impacts and instrumentalizations in East, West, and reunited Germany from 1945 until today, examining their role in Polish and German memory cultures.

The lecture will be held in English.

Colloquium, Event

Invitation HZK-CARMAH Colloquium on 10 January 2022 – BUA-Project “Digital Network Collections”

The next colloquium will take place on 10 January 2022 at 2 pm and all interested parties are cordially invited! The event will be held virtually. Access data for the video conference will be provided on request by email to oliver.zauzig@hu-berlin.de.

BUA-Project “Digital Network Collections”

University collections are a valuable resource for research, teaching, and outreach. The basis for their use, however, is digital indexing and better visibility, especially in the direction of a multidisciplinary target group. There is still a great need for development in this area. The location of Berlin, with its university collections in the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) and diverse relationships with museums and research institutions in the city, offers a particularly fruitful context.

The project “Digital Network Collections” deals with the conceptual planning of a digital network of Berlin’s university collections in the BUA in order to create a common interdisciplinary basis that enables the research and digital evidence of objects. Conceptual work and concrete use cases are combined: Modular components are tested in practical case studies, e.g. for the preparation of legacy data and finding aids, the referencing of subject data or the virtual presentation of holdings.

The lecture will be held in German.

Colloquium, Event

INVITATION HZK-CARMAH COLLOQUIUM ON 6 December 2021, 2 P.M., Online. “Mindscape.” Insights into a project between politics, research and cultural production

The next colloquium will take place on 6 December 2021 at 2 pm and all interested parties are cordially invited! The event will be held virtually. Access data for the video conference will be provided on request by email to oliver.zauzig@hu-berlin.de.

Initiated and funded by the UK Wellcome Trust, Mindscapes is a cultural project that aims to support a transformation in how we understand, address and talk about mental health. Margareta von Oswald will present Mindscapes and open it up for discussion.

For more information, visit the Mindscapes project website.

The lecture will be held in English.

Colloquium, Event

Invitation HZK-CARMAH-Kolloquium on November 08., 2021, 2 p.m., Online

The next colloquium of the HZK will take place on 08 November 2021 at 2 pm and all interested parties are cordially invited! The event will be held virtually. Access data for the video conference will be provided on request by email to oliver.zauzig@hu-berlin.de.

From now on, the colloquium is a joint event of the Helmholtz Zentrum für Kulturtechnik (HZK) and the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH).

Sarah Wagner will present her dissertation, recently submitted to the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, in which she examined the Kunst- und Wunderkammer in museum exhibition practice. The starting point was the boom of such exhibitions around the year 2000, which gave rise to the question of why cabinets of art and curiosities are resurgent in such large numbers, in what way they differ from one another and ultimately what still connects these exhibitions to the historical type of collection.
Information on Sarah Wagner: https://www.kunstgeschichte.phil.fau.de/person/15380/#collapse_1

The lecture will be held in German.

Event, News

Exhibition Opening »Stretching Materialities«

Tieranatomisches Theater der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Campus Nord, Philippstraße 13, Haus 3
Opening – Thursday, 16 September 2021, 6–8:30 pm.

6 pm Welcome and reception in front of the Tieranatomisches Theater

Welcome addresses by:

  • Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schäffner (Director of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«)
  • Prof. Dr. Sharon Macdonald (Director of the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik)
  • Felix Sattler (Lead & Curator of the Tieranatomisches Theaters)
  • Prof. Dr. Claudia Blümle und Clemens Winkler (Project Leader of »Object Space Agency«) together with the Curators Team of »Object Space Agency« and Guests

Afterwards, the exhibition can be explored in different time slots until 8:30 pm.

The exhibition will be open from Friday 17 September 2021 until the end of January 2022, Mon–Fri, 2–6 pm. Detailed information on the exhibition and events such as interactive tours and workshops can be found on the website:
stretching.matters-of-activity.de/.

Please note that as a prerequisite for a visit you have to be either tested, vaccinated or recovered. No pre-registration is required, registration will take place on site.

Discussion, Event

Sorting machines. The reinvention of the border in the 21st century

Dissolution of borders – this is the great narrative of globalisation: borders are becoming more permeable, cross-border mobility is becoming a universal experience, states are less and less able to effectively control their own borders. Steffen Mau shows in his new book “Sorting Machines. Die Neuerfindung der Grenze im 21. Jahrhundert” (Edition Mercator, CH Beck 2021), that this view is deceptive: in many places there has been a new fortification, the construction of new deterrent walls and militarised border crossings. Borders are also becoming increasingly selective and – supported by digitalisation – upgraded to smart borders, and border control has expanded spatially on a massive scale. Borders are still powerful sorting machines and today fulfil their filtering function more effectively than ever – moreover, as a global and highly diversified enterprise. Nowhere is the Janus face of globalisation more evident than at the borders of the 21st century.

Sociologist Steffen Mau (Humboldt Universität Berlin) will discuss the theses of his book with migration researcher Naika Foroutan (Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research – BIM) and philosopher Stefan Gosepath (Freie Universität Berlin). The event will be moderated by journalist Christiane Hoffmann (Der Spiegel).

An event of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in cooperation with the publisher C.H. Beck, the Cluster of Excellence Contestations of the Liberal Script – SCRIPTS and the Stiftung Mercator.

26.08.2021, 19:00 to 20:30
Humboldt Labor im Humboldt Forum
Schloßplatz
10178 Berlin

Admission free, registration required – free tickets from approx. 14 days before the event via the Humboldt Forum website.

Photo: Steffen Mau (c) HU/Matthias Heyde

Concert, Event

Helmholtz Voocaal – Chamber Opera

Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag: HELMHOLTZ VOOCAAL

Chamber Opera, 26 August – 1 September 2021. Premiere: 26 August 2021, 8 p.m.

An apparative and installative chamber opera in 3 acts and rooms of the TA T on the occasion of the 200th birthday of Hermann von Helmholtz.

31 August 2021 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hermann von Helmholtz, a trained military surgeon, amateur musician, anatomist, physiologist, experimental and theoretical physicist and philosopher. As early as 1862, in his publication titled “On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music“, Helmholtz not only attempts to re-found the aesthetics of music on a scientific-physiological and physical-acoustic basis. He also develops the apparatuses himself that make his theory comprehensible to the senses for him and others. And he challenges his readers to reproduce his acoustic experiments.

Salon Helmholtz: Stimme und Stimmung

How do we hear? How are the tones of musical instruments, the voicings of the latter and their timbres related to the sensations of consonance and dissonance? – How do music and mathematics correspond? – How does scientific knowledge connect with music and philisophy? These were the questions addressed by Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), one of the last universal scholars of the 19th century, whose statue today adorns the courtyard of the Humboldt-Universität, among other places. In his research, he combined natural science, philosophy and music theory. To this end, he experimented with the piano and the voice and developed apparatuses that not only put his theory into words and writing. It should also become experimentally comprehensible for him and others – understanding as hearing and experiencing. His wife Anna’s Berlin Salon provided him (and other “superstars“ of science of the time) with an esteemed stage. On the occasion of Helmholtz’s 200th birthday, this format is being revived at a special location, the landmarked Object Laboratory of the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik.
The salon complements the performances of HELMHOLTZ VOOCAAL and offers a look behind the scenes as well as a practical-theoretical dialogue between art and science. The work of Helmholtz will be discussed by Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag together with renowned scientists (27.8.: Prof. Dr. Julia Kursell, 28.8., Dr. Christopher Li, 31.8, Prof. Dr. Viktoria Tkaczyk) on and with historical as well as newly created instruments. Moderation: Felix Sattler (Curator Tieranatomisches Theater). Duration: approx. 75min.

Further information and registration: https://tieranatomisches-theater.de/project/kammeroper-26-august-1-september-2021-premiere-26-08-2021-20-uhrjan-peter-e-r-sonntag-helmholtz-voocaal/

Photo: Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag: Helmholtz Voocaal. © N-Solab

Colloquium, Event

Invitation HZK Colloquium on September 10., 2021, 2 p.m. , online

The next colloquium of the HZK will take place on September 6, 2021 at 2 pm and all interested parties are cordially invited!
The event will be held virtually.
Access data for the videoconference is available upon request by email to oliver.zauzig@hu-berlin.de.

“News on the giraffe’s long neck: collection- and image-based research in the field of comparative zoology”.

Professor of comparative zoology and head of the Zoological Teaching Collection at Humboldt Universität John Nyakatura will present the integrative approach in comparative zoology and functional morphology using the example of a recently published study on the evolution of the fascinatingly long necks of giraffes. Various imaging techniques as well as modelling approaches adopted from engineering sciences are used. However, the basis for this research is the “archives of biodiversity” in the form of the large scientific collections, but also the countless smaller, often university collections in an increasingly networked world.

Information on the Zoological Teaching Collection in the Scientific Collections Portal: https://portal.wissenschaftliche-sammlungen.de/SciCollection/1323

Exhibition, News

Virchow in the temple of trichinae Temporary exhibition, August 14, 2021 – June 30, 2022

In 1864, Rudolf Virchow published his “Darstellung der Lehre von den Trichinen, mit Rücksicht auf die dadurch geboen Vorsichtsmaßregeln, für Laien und Aerzte” (Berlin: Reimer, 1864). It is already clear from the title that Virchow was not simply presenting a scientific publication of research results. Rather, it is to be regarded as a handbook containing information and concrete instructions for policy-makers and society – including manufacturers and consumers of meat products.

In the same year, the Berlin company Schmidt & Haensch developed a microscope for the examination of meat for trichinae according to Virchow’s specifications. Starting from the trichina microscope as an epistemic object, the exhibition weaves threads to different themes and performers: The introduction of meat inspection, the trichinae controversy, colonial collecting, medicine as social science, etc.

The illustrator Jan Steins illustrates themes and figures on a magnetic wall, on which, depending on the constellation, these are sometimes in the center, sometimes at the edge. By physically shifting and exchanging the individual elements – in the context of a monthly round of talks – new focal points of meaning and relationships between the individual actors emerge.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)