Category Archives: Event

„BINDING BODIES. Perspectives on Bound Feet“

17. December 2020 HZK

Starting in 2021, the Tieranatomisches Theater will launch the three-year research and exhibition project “Binding Bodies. Perspectives on Bound Feet” in cooperation with MARKK – Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg and the Kunstuniversität Linz.

This is made possible by generous funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation (project description Binding Bodies), the Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung and the Alfred Töpfer Stiftung.

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

X-ray of the lotus foot of a 32-year-old woman, taken through the shoe, 1905 © Charité, Centrum für Anatomie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Photography: Barbara Herrenkind

Event, Exhibition

Digital opening of the Humboldt Forum

16. December 2020 HZK

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:

Recording of the opening event (YouTube)
Insights into the Humboldt Laboratory from the 28th minute.

360 degree tour of the Humboldt Forum (Website Humboldt Forum)

Tour with the Berlin comedian Stefan Danziger (YouTube)

Colloquium, Event

Invitation HZK Colloquium on 14. December 2020, 2 pm, online

1. December 2020 HZK

The next colloquium of the HZK will take place on 14 December 2020 at 2 pm and all interested parties are cordially invited!
The event will be held digitally.
Access data for the videoconference can be obtained on request by e-mail from oliver.zauzig@hu-berlin.de.

In her lecture, Katrin Glinka will present a working status from her dissertation “Structures of Similarity – Representation and Reference in Digital Collections”.
Her work follows the hypothesis that a mere change of media (from analog systems for collection exploration and representation to software) does not lead to a transformation of the cultural technique of collecting.
Katrin Glinka illustrates this with an analysis of the structures and processes of analog and digital collection techniques and their effects on the prevailing understanding of objects in museums and the forms of representation associated with them.
Katrin Glinka – Culture & Digitisation

Event

»The Analog in the Digital Age« Save the Date of 11 November 2020 for the 1st MoA Annual Conference Happening Online

2. November 2020 HZK

Challenging times call for new formats: The Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material« cordially invites you to its first virtual Annual Conference »The Analog in the Digital Age«.

Please join us on November 11th 2020 from 9:30 AM CET onwards in discovering a variety of individually accessible virtual knowledge rooms in surprising designs and a 360° environment. Lectures from the natural sciences, the humanities and design disciplines will be presented in video format and supplemented by digital meeting opportunities in the form of live Q&As and wrap-ups.

The conference takes up the Cluster’s central vision to rediscover the analog within activities of images, spaces and materials in the age of the digital. Biology and technology, mind and material, nature and culture intertwine in a new way. »Matters of Activity« aims to create a basis for a new culture of materials: In six projects, more than 40 disciplines systematically investigate design strategies for active materials and structures that adapt to specific requirements and environments. Inspired by nature and traditional cultural techniques, objects and materials are rethought as active, changeable and recyclable building materials.

The preliminary conference agenda:

Further information on the program, schedule and access to the virtual conference rooms will be published on the MoA website soon: https://www.matters-of-activity.de/annualconference

We are very much looking forward to experiencing and trying out this new format together!

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schäffner
Prof. Dr. Horst Bredekamp
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Peter Fratzl
Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis

»The Analog in the Digital Age« MoA Annual Conference, 11 November 2020
(From Top to Button, Left to Right): Bacterial Curtain. Copyright: Bastian Beyer and Iva Rešetar; Visualization of the cellular network inside a compact bone. Copyright: Andreas Roschger & Richard Weinkamer, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces; Medallion commemorating Lorenzo de’ Medici: Felt hat and two daggers, after 1537. Copyright: Arthor’s Archive; E. Coli Colony Biofilm. Copyright: Michelle Mantel for »Matters of Activity«; Crochet Model of a Hyperbolic Planes. Copyright: Regine Hengge; Wax Mulages, Copyright: Michelle Mantel for »Matters of Activity«

Colloquium, Event

Invitation HZK Colloquium on 30. November 2020, 2 pm, online

22. October 2020 HZK

The next colloquium of the HZK will take place on 30 November 2020 at 2 pm and all interested parties are cordially invited!
The event will be held digitally.
Access data for the videoconference can be obtained on request by e-mail from oliver.zauzig@hu-berlin.de.

Christian Kassung is going to present his latest publication “Fleisch. Die Geschichte einer Industrialisierung” about cultural techniques of industrial pork production from breeding, keeping, slaughtering to distribution and preparation.

Event, Opening

Exhibition opening: OLIVER THIE. Die Wahrheit über den Ursprung der Welt

30. September 2020 HZK

Tieranatomisches Theater der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Campus Nord, Philippstraße 13, Haus 3
Opening 01.10.2020, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Special exhibition

October 2nd, 2020 – December 30st, 2020 (every Tuesday till Sat., 2 to 6 p.m.)

The Berlin artist Oliver Thie preserves the shadows of rocks and reveals their long history.
For over two hundred years, the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin stores a collection of unimposing gray basalt specimens. They are evidence of a heated controversy about the origins of the earth known as the basalt dispute, which took place in the 18th century. Oliver Thie has explored these objects in an interdisciplinary dialogue with scientists from the Humboldt-Universität and the Museum für Naturkunde.

By combining the recording techniques of historical instruments with shadow projections, Oliver Thie developed his very own artistic method for capturing shadow images. In a kind of “a drawing excavation,” as Thie puts it, the shadows of the stones are worked out of paper covered with soot. Like black skins, the preserved silhouettes now float in front of the wall and can be viewed in full light. An individuality emerges from the shadows that would otherwise remain hidden in the unimposing stones.

Accompanying the exhibition, two lectures by Claudia Blümle (Oct 14) and Angela Strauß (t.b.a.) will take place in the historical auditorium of the Tieranatomisches Theater – and streamed via Zoom. Information and registration at
https://tieranatomisches-theater.de/oliver-thie-oeffnungszeiten-und-termine/

Curated by Felix Sattler

Colloquium, Event

Invitation HZK Colloquium on 28. September 2020, 2 pm, online

11. September 2020 HZK

The next colloquium of the HZK will take place on 28 September 2020 at 2 pm and all interested parties are cordially invited!
The event will be held digitally.
The access data for the video conference can be obtained on request by e-mail from oliver.zauzig@hu-berlin.de.

Sarah Wagner will present the virtual research environment of the project “The Window on Nature and Art – A Historical-Critical Re-appraisal of the Brandenburg-Prussian Chamber of Art”. The aim of the project is the research and documentation of the historical collection holdings and the publication of the results. After a short introduction to the project and to the software WissKI, on which the research environment is based, its mode of operation and previous contents are presented.

Colloquium, Event

Invitation HZK Colloquium on 07 September 2020, 2 pm, online

28. August 2020 HZK

The next colloquium of the HZK will take place on September 7, 2020 at 2 pm and all interested parties are cordially invited!
The event will be held virtually.
You will receive the access data for the videoconference by mail on request: oliver.zauzig@hu-berlin.de

The topic of this session is the research center The Technical Image. Katja Müller-Helle will introduce the project in general and then give a lecture on the topic “Technical Image Censorship”. In the following, Paul Brakmann and Lea Hilsemer will speak from their doctoral projects on the changed reception situation in exhibition spaces by cell phone cameras and the connection between photography and historical imagination.

Note on the next appointment:
September 28, 2020 at 2 pm
Sarah Wagner will present the digital research environment WissKi (scientific communication infrastructure) as part of the research project “Window on Nature and Art“.

Event, Exhibition

Return to Sender: Utopias and the Limits of Circulating Images

28. July 2020 HZK

Symposium Live-Stream
via https://www.co-berlin.org/

31.8.-1.9.2020

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.

Opening

Exhibition opening: Trading and treating animals

6. February 2020 HZK

Tieranatomisches Theater der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Campus Nord, Philippstraße 13, Haus 3
Opening 06.02.2020, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Special exhibition

February 7th, 2019 – December 30st, 2020 (every Tuesday till Sat., 2 to 6 p.m.)

30 years after the fall of the Wall, interest in a differentiated view of GDR science is growing. Research projects were guided by political or geo-strategic interests, but they also provided important insights and marked the beginning of cooperation that continues to this day. The exhibition Trading and treating animals focuses on the exchange of scientific knowledge, technology transfer and trade relations between the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between the late 1960s and 1980s. Bilateral economic agreements included the veterinary (parasitological) treatment of sheep diseases on the one hand and the establishment of the leather and textile processing industry in Mongolia on the other. The GDR was Mongolia’s most important trading partner in Europe and purchased leather and wool products mainly from MPR. The close cooperation between German scientists and local veterinarians in applied research on livestock diseases has established itself institutionally. Cooperation between the Freie Universität Berlin (FU) and the Mongolian University of Life Sciences, the Mongolian State University of Agriculture and the Institute of Veterinary Medicine in Ulaanbaatar still exists today.

The exhibition covers the range from veterinary medicine to technical, industrial and economic history. Exhibits from the fields of veterinary medicine, biology and veterinary technology are shown together with Mongolian industrial products such as carpets and clothing from the 1970s and 1980s. The display refers to the history of close scientific and economic cooperation.

The occasion for the exhibition is the 90th birthday of Prof. Dr. Theodor Hiepe, a scientist who played a major role in the research and development of treatment methods for sheep diseases. In 1960 he was appointed professor of the Department of Parasitology and Director of the Institute of Parasitology and Vet. med. Zoology of the Veterinary Faculty of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU). From 1993 until his retirement in 1995 he was Professor of Parasitology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Prof. Dr. Hiepe was the initiator, patron and head of the ectoparasite control program. Under his leadership, the ectoparasite control research laboratory was established in Mongolia in 1970.

The exhibition was curated by Katharina Otto and Felix Sattler. Scientific advisory board: Prof. Dr. Theodor Hiepe (Prof. em., HU), Prof. Dr. med. vet. Peter-Henning Clausen (FU), Prof. Dr. Kai Matuschewski (HU), Dr. Adnan Al Halbouni (FU). With generous support of the Embassy of Mongolia in the Federal Republic of Germany.