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Interview on nachtkritik.de: Christopher Balme on the Crisis Discourse in Theatre

Christopher Balme reflects on the changing role of theatre institutions in times of perceived crisis in a recent interview marking the publication of the final volume of the DFG research unit Krisengefüge der Künste, which he led from 2018 to 2025.

Drawing on seven years of collaborative research, Balme argues that “crisis” should be understood less as decline than as a driver of institutional transformation. The project shows how theatres increasingly legitimize themselves not only through artistic excellence but also through their social role — addressing diversity, fostering public debate, and engaging urban communities.

Despite ongoing discussions about a loss of relevance and growing financial pressure, the research highlights the resilience and continued public acceptance of German theatre institutions.

The full interview is available on nachtkritik.de.

26 March 2026

Online Seminar Series: Iraqi Theatre in Context

On the 23rd anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, this online seminar series revisits the country’s recent history by focusing on its cultural richness and resilience. Rather than commemorating the event through mourning, the series highlights Iraq’s capacity to continually reinvent itself through the arts, with a particular focus on theatre.

Organized by gd:c Fellow Hadeel Abdelhameed and Antonio Pacifico (Jean Moulin University Lyon 3), the series brings together scholars and practitioners to reflect on the development of Iraqi theatre as an emerging academic field. Despite its rich history, Iraqi theatre has often been overlooked in Arabic studies, and its connections to other cultural forms such as literature and visual arts remain underexplored.

The seminar series is part of the project “(Re)constructing the Field of Iraqi Theatre Studies,” launched in September 2025 at the 35th Deutscher Orientalistentag.

Dates: 31 March, 21 April, and 13 May

Time: 2:00 p.m. / 6:00 p.m. CET (depending on the session)

Program:

Iraqi Theatre In Context_Program.pdf Final Feb 28th

11 March 2026

In Voices News, Voices Startseite

New Publication

The edited volume Nomadic Camera: Photography, Displacement and Dis:connectivities has been published. It emerged from the ‘Nomadic Camera’ workshop on 14–15 June 2023 at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The book brings together contributions from history, media studies, art, art history, and ethnology. Edited by Burcu Dogramaci, Winfried Gerling, Jens Jäger, and Birgit Mersmann, the volume explores the “nomadic camera” as a mobile medium in the context of migration, flight, and displacement. The contributions examine technical, medial, and aesthetic practices, narratives of movement, as well as questions of archiving, circulation, and memory – opening new perspectives on photography as a medium of mobility. Many alumni of the research centre contributed to the volume, which was funded by the Open Access Monograph Fund of the State of Brandenburg.

Download:
– https://lup.be/book/nomadic-camera/

9 March 2026

In Voices Startseite

Exploring the uncanny: a zine

Zines as cultural infrastructure. A workshop at the 2024 global dis:connect summer school

Nikolai Brandes

Punk, feminism, skateboarding, environmentalism, graffiti, queer culture: anyone who wanted to stay informed about social controversies, events and news from the underground scenes in the 1980s or 1990s could hardly do without zines. In many parts of the world, zines — DIY magazines produced by independent collectives on photocopiers and mimeographs — were a central communications medium in dissident scenes. They enabled dialogue on issues that were rarely covered in the mainstream media, received no public funding or were actively excluded from culture and its infrastructures, such as television, museums and movie theatres. The circulation of zines connected people with similar interests across cities and national borders. Zines helped to overcome political, spatial and social isolation.[1] When Moscow-based Dasha Sotnikova proposed holding a zine workshop at our 2024 global dis:connect summer school, we organisers were instantly intrigued. Our intention was to approach cultural infrastructures broadly and ask that they react to geopolitical disentanglements and exclusions in global flows of capital and cultural trends. We were interested in transformations of existing cultural platforms and the emergence of new infrastructures. Zines immediately appealed to us as an exciting subject.[3] Dasha's point of departure is her own experience in Russia. One might immediately think of the history of samizdat literature; that is, small-scale, grassroots publications used in the Soviet Union to circulate banned and deviant texts, including translations from abroad. Yes, Dasha is indeed interested in these historical references.[4] Still, the current global revival of zines is more than just an aesthetic phenomenon that satisfies a demand for analogue, collective work with genuine, tactile results. Zines continue to break down barriers and give space to subversive, unwanted, surprising voices. In her introductory presentation, Dasha showed what zine-making means for Russia's cultural underground, for communication with imprisoned dissidents and for exchange with nonconformists throughout the country. Our homemade zine was therefore about more than just creating an appealing product, a collective work process or experimenting with free-form text. Rather, the workshop was itself an exercise in building independent infrastructures with the simplest of means. (The shopping list Dasha sent me before the workshop included paper, black pens, needle and thread.) We not only learned about the Russian present, but also prepared ourselves for the not-so-unthinkable changes in our own environment. The directives from Bavarian authorities and universities to use gendered language and avoid more recent, inclusive terms in official publications and correspondence indicate how fragile freedom of speech can be, even in Germany. Here we share excerpts from the zine we compiled on the last day of our summer school under Dasha's guidance. We would like to thank all participants who agreed to publish their contributions and contributed to the process. Special thanks go to Tamara Zhukova, Olya Chermashentseva and Alisa Yamshchikova, who contributed to this zine from Moscow. We would also like to alert readers to the fact that some contributions touch on violence and rape. Please use discretion as to what’s right for you. [1] On zines as explicitly transnational media, see, for example, Babara Dynda, 'Queering Sexual and Gender Citizenship in (Anarcho-)Feminist Zines in Post-Socialist Poland', Journal of History 57, no. 3 (2022). [2] My fellow organisers included Christopher Balme, Hanni Geiger, Nic Leonhardt and Tom Menger. For more on this event, see https://www.globaldisconnect.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CFP_gdc_summer_school_2024.pdf. [3] Some starting points for thinking about zines as infrastructure can be found in Maggie Matich, Elizabeth Parsons and Rachel Ashman, 'Zine Infrastructures as Forms of Organizing within Feminist Social Movements', Gender, Work & Organization 31, no. 3 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12970. [4] For more on the continuity of alternative print media in Russian-speaking countries, see A.S. Metelkov, 'Alternative Book Publishing in Russia: from a Lubok to a Zine', Book. Reading. Media 2, no. 4 (2024) https://doi.org/10.20913/BRM-2-4-1.

Bibliography

Dynda, Babara. 'Queering Sexual and Gender Citizenship in (Anarcho-)Feminist Zines in Post-Socialist Poland'. Journal of History 57, no. 3 (2022): 385-419. Matich, Maggie, Elizabeth Parsons and Rachel Ashman. 'Zine Infrastructures as Forms of Organizing within Feminist Social Movements'. Gender, Work & Organization 31, no. 3 (2022): 1049-71. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12970. Metelkov, A.S. 'Alternative Book Publishing in Russia: from a Lubok to a Zine'. [In Russian]. Book. Reading. Media 2, no. 4 (2024): 255-66. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.20913/BRM-2-4-1.

From alienation to solidarity: communes and zines as new forms underground of cultural infrastructure

Dasha Sotnikova

THE RIGHT TO SPEAK The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine was (and remains) a mind-changing tragedy for many in the Russian opposition, including independent publishers and artists. As literature has always been a valuable cultural medium for Russophone culture, it could not help but respond to the invasion with the tools at its disposal. At the time, the literary agenda was fully dedicated to covering the tragedy, and no cultural or symbolic space remained in the underground artistic community for their artworks that tried to reflect on events sensitively. More importantly, after the initial affective artistic expressions and subsequent repression had transpired, the Russophone literary community had to reckon with their right to create their art in Russian — the official language of aggressor state. After continuous silence, we realized that, as artists, we can’t keep silent as long as we’re still alive, so we recalled the experience of dissident artists who managed to preserve underground culture even under past Soviet totalitarianism. (IR)RELEVANT INSPIRATION In the history of uncensored Soviet-era poetry, some underground cultural societies have united creators from very different fields. An outstanding example is the Moscow Conceptualist artistic movement founded by Ilya Kabakov, Viktor Pivovarov and Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov. They experimented with postmodern combinations of pop-art, performance and visual poetry, problematising Soviet realism and the meaning of art itself. Beyond Conceptualist literature, samizdat was a unique cultural medium and alternative mode of expression for underground authors, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn; Boris Pasternak; Mikhail Aizenberg; Elena Shvarts; Chuvashian poet Gennadii Aigi; the progenitors of barracks poetry, which revealed the horror of Soviet poverty, Yan Satunovsky, Igor Kholin, Genrikh Sapgir and dozens of others. Their texts would never be officially published in the Soviet Union, although their multicultural heritage significantly shaped modern Russophone art. With these impressive forbears in mind, we began to imagine ways of preserving underground culture. However, the current political situation differs much from that in the Soviet Union in two key respects. First is the escalation of Russian fascism, for which we too are responsible. Second, how cultural infrastructure works in Russia has changed greatly.

Anarchist poetry against imperialist narratives

In response to the first challenge, we sought to critically rethink the influence of so-called ‘classical’ Russian literature, its core figures and narratives. Government agencies have carefully curated this canon, gradually amplifying the imperialistic propaganda. The results of our critical reflection needed to be presented in new literary texts and literary critique. We address the second challenge of cultural infrastructure by creating new underground venues and forms of textual representation. Currently, as the right and possibility of preserving Russophone underground culture is seriously imperilled, poetry connected to anarchist currents is a cultural space where independent minds can still continue the tradition of dissident art, reflect on their personal responsibility for the ongoing violence of the Russian government and support its victims. And here, as in the gd:c summer school, I wish to share the ideas and findings of my friends — artists whose bravery I admire and who inspire me to struggle for peace and freedom.

Literary strategies to address xenophobia

One of the main trends of modern uncensored and unconventional Russophone poetry is a desire for intermediality and multilingualism. And it is more than a literary fad. The scariest consequence of the authoritarian regime suffered by ordinary residents is (self-)isolation, which (artificially) feeds xenophobia and exacerbates isolation. The only way to overcome it is to find the Other in oneself and to break the artificial boundary between friend and foe. That is why young poets and artists from Russia and Belarus, despite political persecution, work collectively and combine cinematic, poetic and artistic elements to overcome the isolation of a particular cultural field. In such conditions, the lack of cultural infrastructure is especially acute.

Where do we exist?

Safe spaces for mutually enriching dialogue among professional creators, investigators and people interested in modern culture; problematising governmental policy; and searching cooperatively for ways to express political opinions are vitally important functions of non-governmental cultural infrastructure, especially in authoritarian regimes. Although activism under the oppression of arbitrary state violence seems almost impossible, artistic practice remains one mode of struggle for personal identity and against those for whom any identity seems to be dangerous. After the war began, a few free and safe places remained for creators to maintain dialogue with poets and artists inside and outside Russia and to organise underground anti-war charity events and conferences. The venues were diverse: independent bookshops, theatres, cultural centres, libraries, galleries, pubs, university lecture halls. But now most of them are closed or under governmental control. However, the poetic flow has produced its own forms of free expression.

Artist communes

One format consists of performances followed by conceptual video artworks in the modern communes. They are produced by young people who continue to oppose the regime through art practices. Such performances mostly aim to raise money for political prisoners and refugees. In such structures, poetic and political values are often united, meaning solidarity, cooperation, horizontal connections and overcoming anthropocentrism. K is one such structure.[1] It is an independent cooperative that unites manufacturers, leftist thinkers and artists who refuse to collaborate with the government, and cooperative marketplaces. Their primary aim is to connect autonomous professionals to underground societies. All members take important decisions about the manufacturing process collectively and voluntarily choose their roles in it. Their principal aim is to attract donations to support non-commercial initiatives, such as venues for underground art festivals, activist projects, human rights organisations and crisis centres. Beyond this, they also try to preserve the independent underground initiatives that do still exist in modern Russia. In addition to their active manufacturing process, K’s residents contribute to the development of underground cultural processes, including writing and filmmaking. Apart from providing a free platform for cultural events, including poetry readings, book launches, performances and so on, they have set up a publishing house that prints modern leftist and anarchist zines as well as poetry books and cinema journals. Its founders claim that samizdat as a form of cultural infrastructure is valuable and necessary in authoritarian regimes; it is also the medium with the greatest artistic freedom and independence. It inspires artistic experiments and innovations with its bravery. For example, European black-metal and dungeon-synth fanzines as well as American libertarian science fiction and anarchist samizdat fascinate with their unique designs and unexpected content.

The cheaper, the freer

However, for samizdat production no publishing house is needed, as long as the authors can manage with the simplest materials and publication facilities. Samizdat zines have become one of the most accessible forms of cultural infrastructure, where diverse cultural, social and political narratives come together. Zines are becoming another venue for artistic dialogue and reflection. One example is Burning, a poetry zine by modern poet, videographer and performer M. The zine is based on a poetic cycle directly connected with current political events in Eastern Europe. The latter addresses the issue of breaking with one’s parents because of radically different political views. One of the author’s touchstone books about this problem is Powers of Horror by Julia Kristeva.^[2] Its key metaphor, which significantly influenced the zine, refers to the milk foam that children in Soviet pioneer camps had to eat with hot milk, although most found it disgusting. Kristeva compares the act of vomiting this foam to emancipation from parental desire, which means obtaining subjectivity. The zine probes childhood as an uncomfortable and unsafe space, despite the kitsch view of childhood as a carefree paradise. All in all, the zine is about catastrophe, in the face of which all the opposition members are equal. That is why the zine aims to transcend the deification of the author, whose putatively privileged vantage point might let them communicate some special truth to the readers. This idea is expressed through the format of zine and its content. The zine consists of six poems and imitates the design of an official document. This design reflects the feeling of being swallowed by violent governmental machine, where a person’s life and death are determined by a signature on senseless paper, such as a draft card. The images, digitally composed and edited, contain simulated mugshots of the authors' friends. The layout was printed on a risograph, which is how the cheapest issues are produced. This technical decision helped to stylise the zine according to the author’s aim of self-elimination. Apart from the great number of artefacts, such as erased faces and torn paper, left by the risograph, the author used the simplest font available: Times New Roman. Finally, the design communicates the eerie feeling that children in Soviet (and modern) Russian kindergartens and schools experience. Samizdat zines are normally limited print runs of 100 copies and distributed through independent bookshops (that is, those that sell uncensored literature) and social networks. Common sensitive topics, the desire to express one's genuine political views and the cheapest publication process unite modern dissident poetry culture with Soviet samizdat culture. These projects and processes are important to me, although there are other valuable issues and performances beyond such manifestations of modern Russian dissident culture. Obviously, local resistance to the repressive policy of the fascist government may not make much difference on a global scale, but it does affect interpersonal relations. Modern underground culture lets us preserve the solidarity that the state’s authoritarian violence seeks to take from us. However, all these intentions are insufficient without transitional resonance, and I'm eager to maintain connections with artists from different cultural backgrounds who share similar aims. Xenophobia and alienation are not national problems, so we need sincerity and courage to face them all together. We believe that the world shifts each time we choose solidarity instead of fear and open dialog instead of violence. [1] The single-letter pseudonyms in this piece are to protect the organisations and individuals involved from persecution. [2] Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).

Bibliography

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Exploring the uncanny

6 March 2026

In Uncategorized, Voices Startseite

gd:c voices part II: virtuous epistemic circles

How does your research shape the focus, and how is it shaped by the focus?

SQ: Temporality is not just an aspect of my research; it is the central object of my inquiry. In my current postdoctoral project I use trees to examine how modern societies have understood, measured and imagined time and history. Trees preserve material traces of past climates and human interventions, and they often outlive the people who study, manage and exploit them. Because they embody multiple temporal scales – biological, environmental and historical – trees reveal much about modern ideas of temporality as a constitutive feature of modernity itself.

Tree rings reflect growth and age (Photo: Susanne Quitmann)

My research focuses on the emergence of dendrochronology — the science of analysing tree-rings — in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States, Germany and Sweden. Rather than writing a disciplinary history of dendrochronology as a scientific field, however, I examine how humans’ interactions with trees shaped thinking about natural, historical and social time. I am especially interested in how scientific practices, environmental knowledge and material encounters with trees cast new temporal frameworks and scales.

Wood samples at the Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Tring Research (LTRR), University of Arizona—the birthplace of dendrochronology (Photograph used with permission of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona)

Engaging with temporalities as a research focus here at gd:c has provided a conceptual framework for approaching this history and linking it to larger questions of globalisation. Time was not a single, shared, homogenous framework; it was produced unevenly through processes of movement, exchange, circulation and rupture. Drawing on both my work on dendrochronology and my earlier research on British child migrants, and in dialogue with my colleagues at gd:c, I am developing the concept of temporal dis:connectivity as a shared analytical framework for the research focus. I hope that this concept will give researchers a shared way of thinking about temporalities along the lines of global dis:connectivity and a lasting, common language to talk about it. At the same time, our research focusses aren’t hermetically sealed. For example, I am interested in laboratories in the history of dendrochronology as sites where temporal knowledge was produced, stabilised and contested. I also welcome the opportunity to further develop the concept of temporal dis:connectivity in relation to cultural infrastructures, where time becomes a resource and where different temporal regimes intersect. AG: As an art and fashion historian, my work reveals how cultural production was structured and sustained through infrastructural frameworks and design strategies. The cultural infrastructure of the fashion system encompasses ateliers and factories for production; magazines, exhibitions, fairs and fashion shows for dissemination; and stores, markets and social media for consumption. In my current research, cultural infrastructure goes beyond spaces and events to include networks of designers and manufacturers. Particularly from the early 20th century, they were organised through various national and international associations, shaped by alliances, dependencies, connections and disconnections. As Yuniya Kawamura has argued in Fashion-ology, designers are key figures in the production of fashion; they personify fashion, and their designs objectify fashion. I would add that the centralisation of fashion production and its associated politics become evident through the designers’ strategies, which include their own infrastructure: the concept, making and presentation of a collection at a specific venue. In addition to these artistic practices, design strategies also involve entrepreneurial ventures to establish their work globally through cultural infrastructure.

US Vogue, March 15, 1953, Photo: © Vogue Archive, Condé Nast (March 15 1953 | Vogue)

Since the early 2000s, designer councils and fashion shows outside the traditional fashion capitals (Paris, New York, London, Milan) have sought to decentralise the global fashion system and disrupt its hierarchical and Eurocentric structures. Fashion weeks in cities like Jakarta and Dakar provide alternative platforms for local designers and textile traditions. I am examining the roots of these national fashion policies, which aimed to strengthen regional economies, enhance prestige for local and indigenous craftsmanship, and export cultural heritage worldwide. Which artistic, commercial and industrial infrastructures helped to promote national design in the 20th century? Which transnational parallels run through the strategies and motivations of different fashion institutes? How and why were these institutions and associations supported by the government? https://youtu.be/TC9gGBwISUw In the postwar period, I am especially interested in fashion (re)presentations at international events such as the Olympic Games and world's fairs. They played an important role in framing how cultures, including dress practices, are aestheticised and made legible to global audiences. Designers mobilized dresses as symbols of (national) identity to inspire their designs, without considering the risk of cultural appropriation when elements are extracted, commodified and detached from their original cultural context. I am focusing on these strategies of global visibility and export alongside the institutional promotion of national fashion through institutes, associations and individual designers.

A German fashion magazine promoting what they called 'Mexican' fashion, inspired by the 1968 Summer Olympics held in Mexico City (Photo: Aliena Guggenberger)

CF: My research has long focused on experimental spaces at the fault line between the planetary and the global. Working at the intersection of architectural and environmental history, I study how built environments and infrastructures — laboratories, observatories and simulation facilities — mediate planetary processes such as seismic wave propagation, atmospheric circulation, oceanic currents, soil formation and the limits of life in extreme environments, rendering them globally legible. Whether examining geophysical observatories around 1900 (see my Planetary Disequilibrium), or, more recently, planetary analogues, I ask how these processes are translated into architectural form, experimental protocol, and infrastructures of knowledge, and what kinds of dis:connections emerge in that translation.

ESA-DLR LUNA - Moon analogue, Cologne, Germany. (above) Rehearsal - simulated moonwalk at the LUNA facilities as preparation for future lunar surface operations. Photo: © ESA/DLR - M. Diegeler. / (below) Virtual reality (VR) model of LUNA’s main hall containing the regolith test bed area with dust chamber visible. Image: © ESA/DLR-F. Saling.

This perspective also shapes my approach to the laboratories of dis:connectivity research focus here at gd:c. Rather than treating laboratories as bounded, local sites, I see them as mediating environments where abstract models of our planet assemble global relations. Laboratories extract signals, samples and processes from particular environments and render them comparable across distance and scale. In doing so, they connect the world through shared standards, models and datasets, while simultaneously disconnecting those abstractions from the social, ecological and political conditions that sustain them.

Concordia Station - planetary analogue, Dome C plateau in Antarctica. Operated jointly by the French Polar Institute IPEV and the Italian Antarctic Programme PNRA. Photo: © ESA/IPEV/PNRA-J. Lacrampe/N. Purvis.

These questions are at the centre of my current research project on planetary analogues. The project examines analogue environments — Antarctic research stations, lunar and Martian simulation facilities, underwater habitats and extreme desert sites — where Earth itself is reconfigured to stand in for other planets or future worlds. I approach these sites as laboratories of dis:connectivity: spaces that make planetary conditions actionable within global scientific, political, and technological regimes by selectively isolating variables, staging rehearsals and projecting futures, while unevenly displacing risk, labour and environmental exposure.

NASA JETT test series, San Francisco Volcanic Field near Flagstaff, Arizona, May 2024. The Joint Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program Test Team develops, integrates, and executes human-in-the-loop tests and analog missions. Drone footage of NASA astronauts Kate Rubins and Andre Doublas. Video: jsc2025m000255 © NASA/JSC.

Thinking through the gd:c research focus has sharpened my view of these analogue sites. Approaching laboratories through dis:connectivity unearths the tension between the planetary and the global. The planetary refers to processes that exceed human scale and control, while the global names the infrastructures and institutions through which those processes are stabilised, managed and governed. Planetary analogues, understood as laboratories, sit precisely in between. They translate planetary uncertainty into global regimes of knowledge and governance, often producing new asymmetries while promising preparedness and resilience.

Digital plants laboratory showcasing global dis:connections. Sonia Sobrino Ralston and Simon Lesina-Debiasi, Run Dry: Digital Infrastructure and Landscape Loss in Mesa, Arizona, 2025, Information Plus Conference at the MIT Media Lab, Cambridge. (Images courtesy of the artists.)

In this reciprocal way, my research shapes the research focus as a shared space of inquiry, always in dialogue with our fellows’ projects, each coming from a different disciplinary and methodological perspective. The research focus likewise continues to sharpen my understanding of laboratories as sites where the planetary and the global rarely align seamlessly, but instead meet through friction, negotiation and experimentation. This is what makes laboratories such fertile ground for research at gd:c. Continue Reading

25 February 2026

In Voices News, Voices Startseite

New Publication: Photo Shops. Global Infrastructures of Photography (FOTOGESCHICHTE 178)

Burcu Dogramaci, Director of global dis:connect, has co-edited the new special issue Fotogeschäfte. Globale Infrastrukturen der Fotografie together with Helene Roth, now published as FOTOGESCHICHTE 178.

The issue explores photo shops as key infrastructures of photography that have so far received little systematic attention in photographic research. Beyond retail spaces, photo shops functioned as hubs of technical innovation, aesthetic exchange, and social interaction—particularly before the digital age. They played a crucial role in shaping photographic practices, mediating knowledge, and facilitating transnational connections, including in contexts of exile and migration.

Bringing together transnational, (post-)colonial, and (post-)imperial perspectives, the contributions expand and challenge established narratives of photography’s history.

📄 Downloads:
– Editorial (sample): https://asw-verlage.de/getmedia.php/_media/202511/14796v0-orig.pdf
– Title information: https://asw-verlage.de/katalog/fotogeschichte_heft_178-2745.html

Congratulations on this important publication!

16 January 2026

In Uncategorized

New publication by former fellow Andrea Azizi Kifyasi

We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book by our former fellow Andrea Azizi Kifyasi (Department of History, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania).

Drawing on extensive archival and oral sources, many previously inaccessible, the book explores major Chinese-funded projects in Tanzania’s health sector. It examines the historical contexts of China’s medical assistance and how these projects contributed to nation-building, promoted South-South medical knowledge exchange, and fostered self-sufficiency within Tanzania. By analyzing these entanglements, the book offers valuable insights into South-South cooperation and the dynamics of development partnerships in the Global South.

You can find the publication here.

We warmly congratulate Andrea on this important contribution to research on international collaboration and the history of medical infrastructure in Africa!

4 December 2025

In Past Events 2025

10 December, Book launch: (Re)made in China

Join us to celebrate and discuss "(Re)made in China. Material (Dis)connections, Art, and Creative Reuse". A volume edited by Anna Grasskamp, University of Oslo.

Time and place: Dec. 10, 2025 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM, The Centre for Advanced Study

Book caver with the text "Anna Grasskamp. (Re)made in china" and a photo of a landscape covered with textile waste.

The reuse and recycling of materials that were made in China has a short history in the daily activities of private households worldwide, but a long history in art, craft, and design. The book "(Re)made in China. Material (Dis)connections, Art, and Creative Reuse" (degruyterbrill.com), edited by Anna Grasskamp, focuses on the practices of artists, craftspeople, and designers, and their re-evaluation of unwanted, pre-used, and discarded materials. The volume presents new research on material culture from China, one of the world’s leading waste-receiving and waste-producing countries, in a global context. The book is published in print and as Open Access ebook that can be downloaded here.

Speakers

Amanda Boetzkes, author of Plastic Capitalism. Contemporary Art and the Drive to Waste, MIT Press, 2019 (online) Finn Arne Jørgensen, author of Recycling, MIT Press, 2019 (in person) Monica Klasing Chen, contributor to (Re)made in China. Material (Dis)connections, Art and Creative Reuse, De Gruyter, 2025 (in person) De-nin Lee, editor of Eco-art History in East and Southeast Asia, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019 (online)

Hosts

Kjetil Fallan, University of Oslo / Centre for Advanced Studies Ingrid Halland, Aarhus University / Centre for Advanced Studies

Contributors to the volume

In the (online) presence of contributors to the volume: Lisa Claypool, University of Alberta Valentina Gamberi, Palacký University Olomouc Marcela Godoy, NYU Shanghai Evelyn Kwok, Hong Kong Simone M. Müller, University of Augsburg Dawn Odell, Lewis & Clark College Pai Yen-tzu, Taipei Mei Mei Rado, Bard Graduate Center Shao-Chien Tseng, National Central University Taiwan Meiqin Wang, California State University, Northridge Followed by comments and questions by the members of theresearch group Material Ecologies of Design based at The Centre for Advanced Study: Elín Margot Ármannsdóttir, Maria Göransdotter, Anders Munch, and Carl Zimring (in person).

Registration

To receive the zoom link for online participation please register here until December 1. Registration for Book Launch (nettskjema)

26 November 2025

In Past Events 2025

9 December, Book launch: The Colonial Way of War

One of our former postdocs, Tom Menger, has just published a new book, and we couldn’t be happier to host the launch party. The book, tantalizingly titled The Colonial Way of War: Violence and Colonial Warfare in the British, German and Dutch Empires, c.1890–1914, is based on his dissertation and was picked up by Cambridge University Press. Tom will be returning to gd:c for the launch party, where he will highlight the dis:connective aspects of the work. The CUP blurb says it best: The violence of colonial wars between 1890 and 1914 is often thought to have been uniquely shaped by the nature of each of the European empires. This book argues instead that these wars' extreme violence was part of a shared 'Colonial Way of War'. Through detailed study of British, German and Dutch colonial wars, Tom Menger reveals the transimperial connectivity of fin-de-siècle colonial violence, including practices of scorched earth and extermination, such as the Herero Genocide (1904-1908). He explores how shared thought and practices arose from exchanges and transfers between actors of different empires, both Europeans and non-Europeans. These transfers can be traced in military manuals and other literature, but most notably in the transimperial mobility of military attachés, regular soldiers, settlers or 'adventurers'. Pioneering in its scope, Menger's work re-thinks the supposed exceptionality of standout cases of colonial violence, and more broadly challenges conceptions we have of imperial connectivity. Tom and all of us at gd:c are very much looking forward to welcoming you there! Link to the book on the publisher website: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/colonial-way-of-war/0F3E02F14036481275F425952E91BD5C. The event starts at 11:30am at Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect (gdc), Maria-Theresia-Strasse 21, 81675 Munich. Continue Reading

24 November 2025

In News, Voices News, Voices Startseite

New issue of static (4.1 | 2025) published

We are pleased to announce the publication of the new issue of static (4.1 | 2025), dedicated to the theme of cultural infrastructure. Its cover features a zine created during last year’s summer school — a reminder of the DIY and often dissident forms of cultural expression that circulate outside commercial or state-controlled channels.

In this issue, we explore cultural infrastructures in many forms: from Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop’s Atlantique as a “filmic zine”, to African schools of architecture, to art historian and gallerist Godula Buchholz and her role in linking South American and German art worlds. Artist fellow Işıl Eğrikavuk closes the issue with a reflection on dormancy as a quiet resistance to academic acceleration.

Read the issue online: 👉 https://static.ub.uni-muenchen.de
For print copies, contact: gdc@lmu.de

19 November 2025