Humboldt Lab Dahlem enters the finale: Minister of State for Culture Grütters takes stock - Closing week from 13 to 18 October
Press release from 10/13/2015
Berlin, 7 October 2015 - The Humboldt Lab Dahlem is coming to an end after four years. You can still visit the final exhibition of the project, which was jointly realised by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, at the Dahlem Museums until 18 October. The closing week also offers workshops, guided tours, lectures, concerts and films.
Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters will speak at the finissage on 15 October and take stock. Martin Heller, who shaped the programme as one of the Lab's directors, will present the book "Prinzip Labor. Museum Experiments at the Humboldt Lab Dahlem". The publication looks back on the Lab's 30 or so projects, in which science, art and design have constantly forged new connections. Dahlem curators, international scientists, designers and artists, including Yael Bartana, Theo Eshetu, Konstantin Grcic, Alexandra Pirici, Kirstine Roepstorff, Karin Sander, Simon Starling and Zhao Zhao, were involved in the programme's seven rehearsal stages.
Robert Lippok, electronic musician and artist, will give a concert that evening, incorporating audio material created in the lab. Students of Visual and Media Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin will also present the documentary films they have made over the past year - the result is sensitive portraits of the Lab projects and their participants. The Dahlem Museums will be open until 10 p.m. for the finissage.
On 13 and 14 October, an international workshop will address the question: How can current discussions on climate change impacts, resource extraction and environmental perceptions be addressed in the Humboldt Forum? International experts such as Fiona Cameron, Western Sydney University, Elizabeth Marino, Oregon State University, Paul Ongtooguk, University of Alaska Anchorage and Daniel Sandweiss, University of Main, are taking part. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples, will open the workshop. This will be followed by a film programme with material from the Ethnological Museum's Visual Anthropology Archive.
The finale on 18 October will be dominated by the final exhibition and the last two rehearsal stages 6 and 7. "Principle Laboratory", an exhibition about exhibiting, will once again illustrate the working method of the experimental programme. The projects of rehearsal stages 6 and 7 also impressively demonstrate how collection objects and stories can be made to speak in new ways. On display are a laboratory for young people dedicated to the mediation of German colonialism in museums, an online communication platform on the collection objects from this region developed together with the Universidad Indigena from Tauca (Venezuela) and artistic interventions by Nevin Aladağ, Kader Attia, Sunah Choi and Mathilde ter Heijne. Another exhibition shows the long, eventful journey of selected collection objects from Africa to Berlin and the stage designer Dominic Huber (Rimini Protokoll, among others) invites visitors to a walk-in beauty salon on a journey that focuses on the scent, music, colours, shine and feel of Swahili aesthetics.
The management of the Humboldt Lab and curators from the museums will lead guided tours of the exhibitions throughout the day. Visits to selected depots of the Ethnological Museum are also possible. Between 1 and 4 pm, the Humboldt Lab Cabs (three Chinese bicycle rickshaws) will be offering free shuttles between the Dahlem-Dorf underground station and the Dahlem museums.
More information on the closing week can be found at
www.humboldt-lab.de and blog.humboldt-lab.de.
Project-related communication Humboldt Lab Dahlem:
Achim Klapp, 030 - 25 79 70 16, info(at)achimklapp(dot)de