Conference

Art and the City: The City as Global Art Location

Museum for Islamic Art, Berlin

Friday, 29.6.2018, 13-18 Uhr

(The conference languages will be German and English)

Since the beginning of the 21st century, Berlin has become an increasingly popular attraction for international artists, a considerable number of whom come from non-Western countries. Many of them have left their countries because of wars and armed conflicts, or because the working conditions for artists and cultural workers are becoming increasingly difficult. Thus, in recent years, many artists have come from Syria or Turkey, who are now faced with the task of redefining their practice in the face of new public expectations and unknown, institutional structures.

Metropoles such as Berlin have been and are still global art centers, which on the one hand promise a high degree of artistic and intellectual freedom, on the other hand they require an integration into the existing institutional infrastructure. But the required flexibility is more likely to be found in smaller structures (such as project spaces, off-spaces, etc.) than in larger institutions, such as the houses of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

However, global migration is also gradually changing the way in which these institutions see themselves. One example is the Multaka Project, launched in 2015 on the initiative of the Museum of Islamic Art, where refugees and immigrants of Syrian or Iraqi background are trained as museum guides in four museums to provide museum tours to other refugees in their mother tongue develop and perform. There are now 24 guides involved in the project, and guided tours take place twice a week. In addition, debates about the legitimacy of ethnological collections and questions about restitution claims, as triggered by the reorientation of these collections in the Humboldt Forum, lead to a questioning of the enlightened educational mandate of universal museums, which has hitherto been taken for granted.

Starting from the case study Berlin, we want to discuss how cities and their institutions are changing in the course of global migration from a contemporary or historical perspective.

Organisation: Dr. Charlotte Bank, Katrin Nahidi

Program

Friday, June 29, 2018

13-18               MUSEUM FOR ISLAMIC ART

Brugsch-Pascha-Saal Geschwister Scholl Straße 6, Berlin-Mitte
(Transport connection: S-Bahn Friedrichstraße (from main station), Underground (U6) Friedrichstraße NB!)

13:30               Welcome & Introduction

13:45-14:45    Nedal Daghestani (Friends of the Museum for Islamic Art)

Kennan Melhem (Museum for Islamic Art – Multaka project)

Discussion

14:45-16:15    Charlotte Bank (Art-Lab Berlin)
                        Between Inclusion and Marginality: Syrian Artists in Berlin

Burcu Dogramaci (Department for Art History, LMU München)
New Istanbuls – Metropolis, Art and Exile in the 1930s

Buket Altinoba (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie)
Migrant Self-reflections in the early works of Nil Yalter

Discussion

Coffee brake

16:45-18         Künstlerische Projekte mit Geflüchteten:

Mohamed Badarne (Freischaffender Künstler, Berlin)
Osama Hafiry (Freischaffender Künstler, Berlin)
Martina Kopp (Museum für Islamische Kunst): Outreach – aber wohin?
Von der unendlichen Freiheit und ihren Herausforderungen

Final discussion

Dinner

Member's meeting

Working group ART PRODUCTION & ART THEORY IN THE
AGE OF GLOBAL MIGRATION

Saturday, June 30, 2018

9-11:30           ART-LAB BERLIN

Perleberger Straße 60, Berlin-Moabit
(Verkehrsverbindung: Bus M27, 123 Stendaler Straße, U-Bahn: U9 Birkenstraße)

Afternoon        Exhibition visit: "Hello World", Hamburger Bahnhof

Visits of the Berlin Biennale