In News

Works by artist fellow Luísa Telles enter the permanent collection of Museum Fünf Kontinente

We are delighted to announce that sculptures by Luísa Telles, artist fellow at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, have entered the permanent collection of the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich.

Founded in 1868, the Museum Fünf Kontinente is one of Germany’s oldest museums and among Europe’s leading institutions dedicated to global cultures.

Inspired by the gourd, an object that has travelled across continents for millennia, Telles’ porcelain vessels reflect on migration and displacement, tracing movements and forms carried across time and geography. Developed in collaboration with artist Pedro Oliveira, the work’s sound installation brings together voices inspired by Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Édouard Glissant. It explores how the grain of the voice can materialise their concepts while keeping them in movement – beyond and despite borders.

At global dis:connect, Luísa Telles’ artistic research engages with questions of borders, mobility and dis:connectivity, bringing artistic perspectives into dialogue with the Centre’s interdisciplinary research on globalisation.         Continue Reading

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Burcu Dogramaci on Photography and Migration in the LMU Newsroom

How do photographs shape our understanding of migration? In a new interview published by the LMU Newsroom, Burcu Dogramaci discusses the role of photography in shaping public perceptions of flight, displacement and migration. She highlights the importance of critically examining visual narratives and the contexts in which images are produced and circulated.

The interview also features Nomadic Camera: Photography, Displacement and Dis:connectivities, a new volume co-edited by Burcu Dogramaci. The book grew out of the Nomadic Camera workshop held at global dis:connect in 2023 and brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on photography as a medium of mobility, memory and migration.

Read the full interview on the LMU Newsroom.         Continue Reading

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Call For Paper: Subcultures of Exile

International Yearbook of the Society for Exile Studies, 2027 Edited by Burcu Dogramaci, Anna Sophia Messner, Helene Roth   The term subculture was introduced by the American sociologist Milton Gordon in the mid-1940s ‘as a concept […] composed of a combination of factorable social situations such as class status, ethnic background, regional and rural or urban residence, and religious affiliation, but forming in their combination a functioning unity which has an integrated impact on the participating individual’. (Gordon 1947). In this context, the term refers to a subculture or counterculture within a specific social or ethnic group, with its own norms and values, that emerges in a cultural sphere and/or a society (Brasch 2024). At the same time, subculture also highlights the contradictory nature of the underground, as the term has also been used pejoratively in external descriptions since the 1920s as, for example, in reference to politically left-wing and youth movements (Schwendter 1971). Aware of the different meanings of subculture, this book aims to examine the creative potential and associated creative practices in Vilém Flusser’s sense as well as the intermedial and interdisciplinary alliances of subcultures in exile (Flusser 1984). Gordon’s concept of subculture emerged shortly after the flight and migration in the 1930s and 1940s in response to dictatorial oppression and war. Many of those fleeing Nazi persecution, for example, had to settle into a new life in their places of refuge. They often faced great difficulty in pursuing their professions; they frequently had to build new networks, create alternative spaces and spheres of activity outside established structures and institutions, and experiment with unconventional artistic practices and techniques. While in exile in Paris, the physician Charlotte Wolff, who had fled Berlin, took up palm reading and published her 1936 book Studies in Hand Reading, featuring handprints of Surrealist artists and writers. While in exile in New York, the exiled dancer Valeska Gert opened her Beggar Bar, a makeshift basement cabaret where the staff performed. The Villa Air-Bel in the French port city of Marseille served as a hideout and transit hub for artists persecuted by the Nazi regime. While there, they reflected on the time spent waiting to continue their journeys to their places of exile through shared artistic and creative activities, using the limited resources available. Based on these observations and examples, the 2027 Yearbook of Exile Studies will, for the first time, explore the concepts of subculture (as counterculture) and exile in conjunction. Juliane Rebentisch characterises subcultures as ‘secret histories that […] rarely and discontinuously—namely due to the nature and exclusionary rules of the institutions responsible for avant-garde historiography (e.g., art history)—become “historically significant” in the official sense’ (Rebentisch 2006). Experiences of exile, which are constituted by discontinuities, invisibility and ruptures, also share characteristics with subcultures. The ‘secret histories’ identified by Rebentisch open new possibilities for perceiving the intersections between subculture and the underground. Examples include the Swing Boys or Swing Girls, who became politicised in Nazi Germany through their love of American swing music and dance, leading them to be submitted to surveillance. While not every subcultural practice has the potential for resistance, some such (artistic) practices and political resistance emerge together in situations of exile. The artistic and literary leaflets with which Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore opposed the German occupiers during their exile on Jersey are but one example. The 2027 Yearbook will feature historical and contemporary case studies that explore subculture and exile from diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives, alongside explicitly theoretical contributions. In addition to the 1930s and 1940s, we are also interested in case studies from the more recent past and present. For example, since the 1970s, exiles and migrants have used graffiti to gain visibility in marginalised social spaces. Through tagging, graffiti artists inscribe themselves onto public spaces as a form of self-empowerment. Groups such as the 36 Boys — youths of Turkish and Kurdish descent in the Kreuzberg district in Berlin — gave rise to hybrid subcultures that developed their own rules and codes. The following topics are of particular interest: - Subculture as a creative, aesthetic and resistant practice in exile and in migrant societies (culture, art, queerness, gender, feminism, politics, etc.) - Visibility, counterculture and resistance in relation to established, mainstream media and spaces - Places, spaces, networks and contact zones of subcultures in exile / in migrant societies - Transnational and transcultural processes within subcultures, such as creativity, mobility, appropriations, rejections, reflections on cultural difference and engagements with the foreign and the Other - Various terms and concepts — such as scene, movement, subculture, mainstream, underground, counterculture, counter-spaces, resistance, mobility, migration, network, and contact zone— to be contextualised with exile.     Please submit abstracts (approx. 300 words) and a brief CV as a single PDF file by 15 July 2026 to Dr. Helene Roth (helene.roth@lmu.de). Selection will take place at the end of July. The full papers (approx. 30,000 characters) must be submitted by 1 December 2026.             Continue Reading

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New Issue of static: Cultural Infrastructures in Africa

How are dominant narratives about Africa produced, archived and challenged? The new special issue Cultural Infrastructures in Africa, edited by Andrea Kifyasi and Gideon Morrison, appears in the gd:c bulletin static and explores these questions through the lens of disconnectivity.

Against persistent Afro-pessimist narratives and long-standing Western representations of the continent, the issue approaches Africa not as disconnected from global processes, but as a space shaped by complex entanglements — marked simultaneously by connection, exclusion, integration, and erasure.

The contributions investigate: • archival silences and colonial knowledge production • museums, restitution, and contested cultural heritage • festivals as alternative cultural archives and sites of postcolonial imagination • contemporary cultural infrastructures and their political, economic, and social challenges

The issue brings together research originating from the workshop Archiving dis cultural heritage(s) in Africa at global dis and highlights how cultural infrastructure structures memory, visibility, and participation in global knowledge production.

Read the digital issue of static here: https://static.ub.uni-muenchen.de/index.php/static Continue Reading

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Burcu Doğramacı co-curates exhibition on migration and material culture in Berlin

On 22 May 2026, the exhibition Tapetenwechsel – Migration und Mobiliar seit 1960 opens at the Museum Ephraim-Palais in Berlin. The exhibition is guest-curated by art historian Burcu Doğramacı, Director of the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect (LMU Munich), together with Manuel Gogos.

Bringing research on migration, visual culture, and material history into the museum space, Tapetenwechsel explores how migration transforms everyday living environments. Through furniture, interiors, archival documents, and personal narratives, the exhibition examines housing as a key site where social belonging, memory, and identity are negotiated.

Focusing on Germany as an “arrival city” since the 1960s, the exhibition highlights how migrants created homes under conditions of transition and uncertainty, revealing how domestic objects reflect broader political, social, and cultural transformations.

The project exemplifies global dis:connect’s commitment to transferring academic research into public debate and cultural institutions, demonstrating how scholarly perspectives on mobility and global interconnectedness can inform contemporary museum practice.

Exhibition: Tapetenwechsel – Migration und Mobiliar seit 1960
Dates: 22 May 2026 – 3 January 2027
Venue: Museum Ephraim-Palais, Berlin

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From Workshop to Performance: “Touch Me, If You Can”

On 7 May 2026, the lecture performance Touch Me, If You Can by Rebel-IST-hah! will be presented at Theater im KunstQuartier Salzburg, followed by a discussion on Theatre and Illiberalism featuring theatre scholar Viviana Iacob, currently an associated fellow at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect.

The performance is part of the research project Theatre and Illiberalism, which originated in a 2023 workshop organized by Viviana Iacob at global dis:connect.

Since then, the initiative has developed into a transregional collective of scholars and theatre practitioners working on artistic practices in illiberal contexts. The group will meet again in Salzburg (7–9 May 2026) to prepare a first joint publication.

Date & Time: 7 May 2026, 19:30–20:30
Department: Thomas Bernhard Institut
Venue: Theater im KunstQuartier, Paris-Lodron-Straße 2, 5020 Salzburg

More info here.

The event takes place within Practicing Care – Solidarity Network of Mozarteum University, in cooperation with the Thomas Bernhard Institut and the Inter-University Institution Science & Art.

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New Publication: Infrastructures of Art Production and Circulation

Anchored in the research agenda of the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, a new publication explores the transnational art history of production, transport, and logistics, focusing on the often invisible infrastructures that shape how art is made, circulated, and exhibited across the world.

The volume examines the heterogeneous actors, objects, institutions, and historical processes involved in artistic production and circulation. It moves beyond the artwork as an isolated object and instead foregrounds the complex systems that enable artistic practice in a global context. These infrastructures are deeply embedded in political, economic, and ecological conditions, raising pressing questions about mobility, regulation, and sustainability.

Key themes include the role of logistics and transport systems in shaping artistic production, the impact of customs regimes and border politics on the movement of cultural objects, and the increasing importance of ecological considerations in contemporary art worlds. By tracing material flows and institutional networks, the publication opens new perspectives on how global art systems are organized and governed.

In doing so, the volume makes a significant contribution to the growing field of infrastructure studies in art history, offering new analytical tools for understanding the technical, political, and economic conditions that underpin cultural production in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The book is co-edited by Burcu Dogramaci, Director of the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect and Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Ursula Ströbele, Professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig.

Among the contributors is former postdoctoral researcher Gideon Morison, whose chapter “Star Country Exhibitions: Conceptions, Assemblages, and Event Logistics at Selected Postcolonial Pan-African Festivals (1966–1977)” investigates exhibition-making and event logistics in postcolonial Pan-African festivals.

The publication is available as an e-book.
Download it here.

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Book Launch & Conversation: Whose Eyes Am I? Children’s Media in Exile

On World Book Day, Burcu Dogramaci and Helene Roth present recent research on children’s and youth media created in exile after 1933. The discussion explores how exiled authors, artists, and photographers addressed the experiences of displaced children through photo books and illustrated media produced under diverse exile conditions.

Artists including Leo Lionni, Henry Rox, Walter Trier, and Ylla will be discussed, highlighting artistic networks, media practices, and the reception of exile literature for young audiences up to the present day.

The event takes place within the exhibition L IS FOR LOOK at Museum Folkwang in cooperation with Buchhandlung Walther König and Kunstring Folkwang e.V.

Thursday, 23 April 2026 | 6:00–7:00 PM
Reading Room of the exhibition L IS FOR LOOK
Free admission

👉 Event details and registration

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