Category Archives: News

Colloquium, Event, News

Invitation HZK-CARMAH COLLOQUIUM on 25. April 2022 – The Museum as a Choir: Visitor Reactions to the Multivocality at the Humboldt Forum’s ‘Berlin Global’

The next colloquium will take place on 25 April 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.

The Museum as a Choir: Visitor Reactions to the Multivocality at the Humboldt Forum’s ‘Berlin Global’

This talk by Irene Hilden & Andrei Zavadski will provide insights into the research project ‘Realizations and Reception in the Humboldt Forum,’ based at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
With ethnographic audience research at its root, the project explored how visitors engaged with the Humboldt Forum and its exhibitions during the first weeks of the institution’s operation. The talk will focus on some of the findings related to audience experiences of multivocality as employed in the exhibition ‘Berlin Global.’

The lecture will be held in English.

News

HZK stands with Ukraine

The Hermann von Helmholtz Zentrum for Cultural Techniques strongly condemns the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. As we, scholars of the cultural, know all too well, military violence always has long-term and far-reaching consequences that affect human lives way beyond the war zone. We stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Ukraine as well as with all the Ukrainian people, and send our support to those affected by the cynical and cruel decisions of the Russian authorities.

There are several ways to help Ukraine, some of them can be found here: https://uacrisis.org/en/help-ukraine

Philipp Schwartz Initiative for researchers at risk
In view of the crisis in the Ukraine, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is offering the opportunity for universities and research institutions in Germany to submit complete applications for Ukrainian scholars under immediate threat in the current selection round of the Philipp Schwartz Initiative. Nominations of Ukrainian scholars at acute risk may be submitted until 18 March 2022.

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

 

News, Publication

Kältebilder. Ästhetik und Erkenntnis am Gefrierpunkt

Kältebilder. Ästhetik und Erkenntnis am Gefrierpunkt (Ed. Matthias Bruhn)

Bildwelten des Wissens – Band 17
Edited by Katja Müller-Helle, Claudia Blümle, Horst Bredekamp and Matthias Bruhn

As means of preservation, low-temperature technologies have always been of paramount importance to humankind’s culture, but it was not until the industrial age that processes of artificial cooling were developed, which soon became a fundamental element of civilization. Henceforth, it shaped the production and form of knowledge: Frozen motion became a metaphor for slowed recording; modern computing or various imaging techniques required cryogenics. Forms of ice-cold observation, however, are contrasted by losses of visibility due to frost or precipitation, just as the artificial lowering of temperatures continues to fuel climate change precisely through its energy consumption. In every respect, cooling technology is reaching new all-time heights and lows – with extensive consequences for knowledge and perception.

Video-Clip: Kältebilder (YouTube)

ePub – Open Access – Kältebilder. Ästhetik und Erkenntnis am Gefrierpunkt (PDF)

© Bruhn, Matthias. Kältebilder: Ästhetik und Erkenntnis am Gefrierpunkt, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter der Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Lizenz. e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-074761-4 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110747614

Bildwelten_des_Wissens_Band_17_Kaeltebilder_Aesthetik_und_Erkenntnis_am_Gefrierpunkt
News, Publication

Eine Frage der Perspektive. Objekte als Vermittler von Wissenschaft

The book title “Eine Frage der Perspektive” addresses several highly topical issues at the same time: On the one hand, the volume negotiates the gain of knowledge from an object through its mere contemplation; on the other hand, it is precisely the change of perspective on an object that helps to formulate scientific working hypotheses and theories. The volume illustrates how today’s perspectives are taken into account when old objects and their collection contexts are examined under new ethical and moral values. Thus, the classic object topics in this volume are joined by the view of provenance research, artistic object debate, autoethnographic object description, and the question of how broadly the concept of a museum object can be defined at all and how categorization and naming should be done accordingly. The object histories included here, in particular, cut a wide swath from research content to its mediation. This volume brings together eleven contributions by young scholars from the fields of museology, archival studies, ethnology, the history of physics, medicine, theater, human anatomy, mathematics education, geology, paleontology, and the liberal arts. They all focus on the consideration of collection objects from different perspectives. The contributions clearly show that objects can convey science excellently, often more vividly than texts or images can. Object-based knowledge transfer promotes a representational and thus often more easily understandable science. This link from object to research to reflection on research is the strength of this fifth volume of the Young Forum for Collection and Object Research.

Authors:

Frank D. Steinheimer
Waltraud Mudrich 
Sarah Fetzer
Daniel Falk
Michael Stache
Anja Weber
Sophia Gräfe
Julia Bärnighausen 
Henrike Stein
Beate Eismann
Leonie Braam
Hannes Junker
Sara Müller
Johanna Lessing

To the publication:

Junges_Forum_Publikation_Cover
Sound Archive, News

Sound Archive: Relocation to the Humboldt Forum

In 2022, the Sound Archive is to move completely into the Humboldt Forum as the only university collection of the Humboldt Universität. Alongside the Humboldt Labor as a flexible exhibition and event venue, it will thus form the HU’s second pillar in the Humboldt Forum.

The plan is to set up a research center that will provide a variety of access points to the recordings. Of course, the integration of the Sound Archive into teaching is to be continued and the collection will continue to be available for external activities.

The Phonogrammarchiv of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, which is connected to the Sound Archive through the recording activities of the Phonographic Commission in prisoner-of-war camps of the First World War, will also find its new home in the Humboldt Forum. It will thus be much easier in the future to relate the holdings of the Sound Archive and the Ethnological Museum to each other in research, teaching and cultural activities.

No separate public presentation area is planned for the Sound Archive. Rather, it is planned to cooperate with the exhibition of the State of Berlin in the Humboldt Forum as well as with the ethnomusicology exhibition area of the Ethnological Museum.

News, Publication

Active Materials – Central Cluster Anthology Published on 20 December 2021

What are active materials? This book aims to introduce and redefine conceptions of matter by considering materials as entities that ›sense‹ and respond to their environment. By examining the modeling of, the experiments on, and the construction of these materials, and by developing a theory of their structure, their collective activity, and their functionality, this volume identifies and develops a novel scientific approach to active materials. Moreover, essays on the history and philosophy of metallurgy, chemistry, biology, and materials science provide these various approaches to active materials with a historical and cultural context.

The interviews with experts from the natural sciences included in this volume develop new understandings of ›active matter‹ and active materials in relation to a range of research objects and from the perspective of different scientific disciplines, including biology, physics, chemistry, and materials science. These insights are complemented by contributions on the activity of matter and materials from the humanities and the design field.

  • Discusses the mechanisms of active materials and their various conceptualizations in materials science.
  • Redefines conceptions of active materials through interviews with experts from the natural sciences.
  • Contextualizes, historizes, and reflects on different notions of matter/materials and activity through contributions from the humanities.
  • A highly interdisciplinary approach to a cutting-edge research topic, with contributions from both the sciences and the humanities.

Authors:

Peter Fratzl
Karin Krauthausen
Michael Friedman
Wolfgang Schäffner

The Open Access eBook was published on December 20th, 2021, and is available here. The paperback can be ordered on the De Gruyter homepage, too.

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.

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.