187 boxes formed the core of the seminar “Archiving Workshop of Cultures: (Post)Migrant Histories in Berlin Arts”. The materials left behind by the Werkstatt der Kulturen (WdK) are collected in these.
From 1993 to 2019, the WdK was the only state-funded institution in the city dedicated to the presentation of art and culture by and with migrant and minoritized communities. Under the direction of Juana Awad, curator and artistic fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study ‘inherit. heritage in transformation’, and Dr. Habiba Insaf, researcher and head of the ‘inherit’ research strand ‘decentring the west’, the seminar was designed for students of the B.A. Art and Visual History and the B.A. and M.A. Ethnography. The seminar dealt theoretically and practically with the archiving process around the WdK materials.
Trang Trần, a board member of the Migration Council Berlin, attended the seminar at the Centre for Cultural Techniques (ZfK) and emphasized in her exchange with the students the urgency of the archival work. During the conversation, it became clear that looking after the materials of the WdK was long overdue. After the closure of the WdK in 2019, the Migration Council stored the materials provisionally in the basement of its own premises, as no other institution wanted to declare itself responsible for the materials.¹ Despite being aware that this solution could only be a temporary one – the basement had become damp due to water damage, putting the materials at risk of mold – the Migration Council did not have the necessary resources to properly care for the remaining materials. Awad, who had been studying the WdK’s archive materials intensively since 2003 as part of her doctoral research, had to discard around one third of the initial 300 boxes during the initial inventory and repackaging process.
The 31 seminar students participated in the extended inventory process, processing a total of 130 boxes of WdK materials. The first task was to catalog the boxes and folders, create an overview of contents and free all old folders from rusted paper clips. As well as acquiring hands-on archiving experience, the students gained valuable insight into the boxes throughout the process. This direct experience of handling the materials formed the basis of the main seminar task: selecting a thematic focus and writing an academic piece in dialogue with the materials. The focal points chosen differed vastly. For example, some students examined the CD from the ‘1884’ music project, which commemorated the Berlin Conference of 1884, while others conducted in-depth research on the international press coverage of the ‘Şimdi Now Festival’.
Another practical element of the seminar involved a visit to the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum’s permanent exhibition, ‘Collecting Anti-Racist Struggles’. Designed as an open archive, the exhibition is intended to grow steadily through contributions from visitors. It opened up the space for a content-related discussion of what the future of the WdK archive could possibly look like.
These questions may be answered by findings from the community sessions ‘COMMUNITY MACHT ARCHIV‘², which translates to community ‘makes’³ archive, to which Awad invited civil society actors who may have been active in the WdK themselves over the years. However, the texts created during the seminar also make a key contribution to increasing the visibility of the WdK materials and opening up the archive, thereby ensuring that the cultural and artistic work of the WdK and all contributors lives on. The texts are expected to be available on the website www.werkstatt-der-kulturen.de from November 2025 onwards, once the editing process is complete.
The seminar was funded by the ‘Teaching and Learning with Society’ program for transdisciplinary teaching, which is a seed funding program by the HU office for ‘Knowledge Exchange with Society’, located at the Centre for Cultural Techniques (ZfK). The text was written by Marlene Lüdorff, who attended the seminar as part of her ethnography master’s degree. She also supports the work of the Centre for Cultural Techniques in her role as student research assistant.
