The Nomadic Curriculum – A Manual Series
Series Editors: Stefan Aue, Lama El Khatib
Haus der Kulturen der Welt / archive books
4 books, in English
ISBN: 978-3-948212-95-7
Series Price: 36 €
The concept and the practice of the Nomadic Curriculum relates transdisciplinary methodologies of knowledge production with situated archival contexts. On the theoretical level, it produces tools to analyze hegemonic relations of archival knowledge and institutional structures. Practically, it facilitates the development of alternative frameworks for collective research and sharing in and around archival institutions. The nomadic approach has the potential to relate holdings from different archival contexts and to connect the narrations that are usually limited by the boundaries of an institutional frame.
It is particularly the research beyond these peripheries and the constructive rendering of future alternatives of archival thinking that drives The Nomadic Curriculum – A Manual Series. The conceptof this series in three episodes was developed and practiced within the Whole Life Academy –an experimental research initiative within the framework of the long-term program The Whole Life. An Archive Project (2018-2022). Each volume is developing the approach of the Nomadic Curriculum further from a particular perspective and context: How can the Nomadic Curriculum be expanded into other existing and potential pedagogical settings? What can it propose in terms of a how-to for archival research? What are the contexts and contents of collective research and practice that form the foundation of such a curriculum?
Awkward Archives. Ethnographic Drafts for a Modular Curriculum (Volume 1)
Edited by Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius
Haus der Kulturen der Welt / archive books
In English
ISBN: 978-3-948212-92-9
Price: 12 €
Available at bookstores, mail order buying / postal shopping via the Webshop
Awkward Archives proposes a manual for academic teaching and learning contexts. An ethnographic research approach is confronted with the demands of archival research as both disciplines challenge their inner logics and epistemologies. Through fieldwork and ethnographic tools and methods, both analogue and digital, the editors take various contemporary archival sites in Berlin as case studies to elaborate on controversial concepts in Western thought. Presenting as such a modular curriculum on archives in their awkwardness—with the tensions, discomfort and antagonisms they pose.
With case studies on Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Hahne-Niehoff Archive and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, among others.
Archives on Show. Revoicing, Shapeshifting, Displacing – A Curatorial Glossary (Volume 2)
Edited by Beatrice von Bismarck
Haus der Kulturen der Welt / archive books
In English
ISBN: 978-3-948212-91-6
Price: 12 €
Available at bookstores, mail order buying / postal shopping via the Webshop
Archives on Show unfolds a curatorial approach in dialogue with questions on the archival. Bringing together a variety of approaches and positions, it looks into curatorial practices that take up the archive in its contemporary relevance against its social and political potentialities. The book itself can be read as a curatorial exercise, forming constellations of texts, images and keywords in a printed exhibition format.
With contributions by Iman Issa, Kayfa ta, Marion von Osten and Françoise Vergès, among others.
Howdunnit (Volume 3)
Edited by Kayfa ta (Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis)
Haus der Kulturen der Welt / archive books
In English
Howdunnit takes the literary as a space from which to think, practice, oppose, produce, unfold and contest archives. Within the narrative form of the “detective story,” an archival approach can develop between documentary and fiction. Through investigative methods, Howdunnit offers a series of stories that bring the subjectivities of those who encounter archives to the forefront.
The first two books of this ongoing series are written by Iman Mersal and Merle Kröger.
Archives & Crimes
by Iman Mersal
ISBN: 978-3-948212-93-3
Price: 6 €
Available at bookstores, mail order buying / postal shopping via the Webshop
To enter a collective archive is to carry an anonymous corpse on your shoulders. You are not investigating how this corpse met its death but rather are trying to fill in the gaps that render it anonymous. The corpse is the researcher’s urgent, mysterious, or even inconsistent question that issues from the here and now but which lacks the language required to speak it.
Panorama
by Merle Kröger
ISBN: 978-3-948212-94-0
Price: 6 €
Available at bookstores, mail order buying / postal shopping via the Webshop
Navina Sundaram is sitting in the editing room in Hamburg. She has managed to reduce the complexity of the Kemal Altun case to the required 2 minutes and 40 seconds for the political magazine. The phone rings. I imagine she is displeased about the disturbance. It’s the day of the broadcast; the report still needs to be approved. It rings again. She answers. Peter Boultwood is on the phone and says, “Did you hear? Kemal jumped out of the window in the courtroom. He’s dead.”
