In her lecture “The Sculptural in the (Post-)Digital Age” on 13 May 2024, Prof. Dr. Ursula Ströbele discussed if it is still possible to give a definition of the sculptural in times of digital art (and art permeated by the logic of the digital). To this end, she examined traditional dictums from art theory with regard to their validity in relation to artworks based on augmented, virtual or mixed reality technologies. Ströbele also pointed out the institution-critical potential of digital technologies in art – especially with regard to questions of access to artworks.
On 6 May 2024, Dr. Jiang Jun presented the curatorial concept of the China Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in his lecture “Physical Loss and Digital Reclamation – The Curatorial Concept of the China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale”. At the China Pavilion, digital access is provided to ancient Chinese paintings which would otherwise be lost for the public. Dr. Jiang Jun is curator, art critic and postdoctoral fellow at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, and co-curator of the China Pavilion of the 60th Biennale di Venezia.
From 4 to 6 April 2024, the Centre for Advanced Study hosted the workshop “Protecting and accessing cultural goods in wartime – Case Studies and Lessons from Armenia and Ukraine”.War not only threatens the lives and physical integrity of people; cultural goods are also at risk of damage and total loss during war. Protecting them in the event of war is an important task for every community, and digitalisation enables new forms and modes of preserving cultural goods or their blueprints that give people access to them in times of war and even more so afterwards. Based on examples and experiences from Armenia and Ukraine, the workshop discussed practical questions and ethical aspects of the protection of cultural goods during war.
In the winter semester 2023/24 the study project “Kunststoffalltage” of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology presented its results with an exhibition. Plastic artefacts were presented as “roommates” of student daily life: Objects such as remote controls and toothbrush mugs were used to interpret the everyday dimensions of plastic use. The project was directed by Prof. Dr. Lioba Keller-Drescher, Professor for European Ethnology and in-house fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study. This video provides an insight into the exhibition.
Students from the University of Münster learned how access to art is created in museums at the students' day at the Bremen Kunsthalle on 23 January 2024. In tours, lectures and discussions with curators, they gained insights into museum work and were able to find out how an exhibition is created – from the initial idea to the installation of the pictures shortly before the opening. Jule Welling, Adelina Meyer and Felix Bomkamp, who are studying at the Institute of Art History at the University of Münster, talk about their experiences at the students' day in a TV report on SAT.1 (in German).
On 15 January 2024, Prof. Dr. Mariya Rohozha, Professor of Philosophy at Taras Shevchenko University in Kiev, was a guest of the Centre for Advanced Study. Her lecture “Memes in Transformation of the Ukrainian Media Landscape in the Context of War” took place as part of the sub-project “How to Deal with Cultural Goods in War and Post-war Times: An Ethical Analysis. Also a Contribution to the Foundation of an Ethics of Access to Cultural Goods in an International Perspective”.
Prof. Dr. Ruben Apressyan has been a new member of academic staff at the Centre for Advanced Study since 1 January 2024. He is heading the sub-project “How to Deal with Cultural Goods in War and Post-war Times: An Ethical Analysis”. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Centre.
Arslan Sheikh is a Fellow at the Centre fot Advanced Study from 1 January 2024. He is based at the Junaid Zaidi Library, COMSATS University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is currently a PhD student at the Institute for Library and Information Science, Humboldt University, Berlin. His research topic is “Open Science in the Pakistani Perspective”, which is being supervised by Prof. Dr. Eric Steinhauer, who is a Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study.
On 4 December 2023, Prof. Dr. Erhard Schüttpelz gave the Fellow Lecture „Die Öffnung des Museums und das Geheimnis der Sammlungen“ (“The opening of the museum and the secret of the Collections”). In his lecture, Erhard Schüttpelz contested the most famous founding myth of the modern museum which is attributed to the French Revolution, in the course of which the iconoclastic vandalism of the revolutionaries turned into the public display of national cultural assets. The former secret of feudal, monastic and scholarly collections became the public trusteeship of several modern institutions: Museum, academia and the art trade. The lecture aimed to counter this reduction to a single European history and its generalisation through the perspective of a Long Duration („Lange Dauer“), including Christopher Bayly’s characterisation of an archaic globalisation and Mary W. Helms’ theory of a fundamental exoticism of all cultures and the anchoring of its passion for collecting in their respective religious and political centres of power.
Jon Wiggermann, student of art history and philosophy, explains the special features of Oliver Laric’s “Reclining Pan” in the video – and what questions the artwork raises. From 4 to 30 October 2023, Oliver Laric’s sculpture “Reclining Pan” was on display at the Archaeological Museum of Münster University. The exhibition was a cooperation between the Centre for Advanced Study and the museum on the occasion of the conference „Zugang gestalten! Hindernisse überwinden“.
Digitization is accompanied by a loss of control and authority of interpretation for established cultural heritage institutions, but at the same time it also offers new opportunities for participation. How can this opportunity be used and at the same time prevent the spread of “powerful lies”? The lecture “Access and loss of control – The new dependencies in the age of AI” by cultural studies expert Dr. Michael Seemann as part of the “Zugang gestalten!” conference is available as a video here.
From 4 to 30 October 2023, Oliver Laric’s sculpture “Reclining Pan” was on display at the Archaeological Museum of Münster University. The exhibition was a cooperation between the Centre for Advanced Study and the museum on the occasion of the conference „Zugang gestalten! Hindernisse überwinden“. Based on the idea of scanning and digitisation, Oliver Laric measures archaeological finds such as sculptures and reliefs and transfers the 3D data into a digital archive, thus providing the opportunity to participate in the production, dissemination and interpretation of his works.
From 4 to 6 October 2023, the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digtal Change” hosted the conference “Zugang gestalten! Mehr Verantwortung für das kulturelle Erbe”. The 13th edition of the conference series was dedicated to the topic “Hindernisse überwinden (Overcoming Obstacles)”: What prevents the digitization of cultural heritage, what hinders accessibility? More than 50 speakers contributed their expertise both in lectures and in parallel working groups. Director of the conference series is Prof. Dr. Paul Klimpel, who is fellow at the centre in 2023.
Africanist Dr. Katrin Pfeiffer (Hamburg) reported on the project “National Digital Archive of The Gambia – Digital Archive Bakari Kebba Sidibe” of the National Centre for Arts and Culture (NCAC), The Gambia, and the University of Hamburg in her lecture “Cultural Memory and Decolonization: The Digitization of the National Archive in The Gambia” on 14 September. The archive with 5,000 tape and cassette recordings as well as 1,200 transcriptions is a true cultural treasure for The Gambia and unique in Africa. The lecture was a cooperation of the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change” and the association “Afrikanische Perspektiven e. V.”
The art historian Dr. Elisha Masemann (University of Auckland, New Zealand) is a fellow of the WiRe programme (Women in reasearch) at the Centre for Advanced Study from 1 May to 31 July 2023. Her research field is contemporary urban and visual art, with an interest in the intersections of art, architecture, urbanism and socio-cultural theory in the context of today’s rapidly changing cities. In Münster, she will analyse an emerging aspect of this field, the “smart city” by way of artistic praxis
