Challenging the archive and museum collection. Practices and materializations

Curatorial, research, and educational projects involving museum collections of 20th and 21st century art have responded to the demand to decolonize the museum and expand it to include significant global perspectives, micro-histories, and actors. This is documented by museum research projects such as Global Art and the Museum at the ZKM Karlsruhe, museum global. Microhistories of an Ex-centric Modernity at the K20 Düsseldorf, and the conference on the radically democratic museum in 2024 at the Dortmunder U – the latter with the aim of challenging the archive through counter-publics, different knowledge and radical mediation. In which way materializations and practices play an essential role within this focus, can be understood by critically examining photographic archives, such as Tina M. Campt's investigation of the role of vernacular image production for the African American diasporic community in the production of counter-images. Another approach is Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s and David Campany’s dialogue to identify indeterminacy as an alternative photographic practice. With readings in small groups and projects on the Cologne Photoszene, Artists meets Archive, a visit to the collection presentation Aufbruch und Befreiung: Internationale Kunst von 1960 bis 2000 at the K 20 Düsseldorf and other exhibition excursions, we will work on our own questions, micro-histories and perspectives in the seminar.

Literature:

David Campany & Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Indeterminacy. Thoughts on Time, the image, and Race(ism), Discourse 006, London 2022.

Tima M. Campt, Image matters: archive, photography, and the African diaspora in Europe, Durham/London 2012.

Tina M. Campt, Listening to images, Durham NC 2017. Aïcha Diallo, „Who Is in the Archive?“, in: Sverre Bauer/Figge/Großmann/Lukatsch (Hg.), Künste dekolonisieren. Ästhetische Praktiken des Lernens und Verlernens, Bielefeld 2023, S. 211¬–218.

Birgit Mersmann, „Decolonial Insurgency for Art Systemic Change: Dissenting Art Museums in New York“, in: Bublatzky/Dogramaci/Pinther/Schieren (Hg.), Entangled Histories of Art and Migration, Bristol/Chicago 2024, S. 304¬–319.

Nora Sternfeld, Das radikaldemokratische Museum, Berlin 2018.