Publications (until 2022)

What might the future of archival thinking be like? Four books apply the principle of a nomadic curriculum, for example in a detective story, as an ethnological study of the Berlin Museum of Natural History and with curatorial essays by Iman Issa, Kayfa ta, Marion von Osten and Françoise Vergès.

Laid out by Itamar Gov, Hila Peleg, Eran Schaerf

Acacias by Clarice Lispector, an onion from the Hebrew Bible and poppies by Abraham Sutzkever: This guide book for an indeterminable Jewish identity explores Jewish experience, history and thought by setting up an imaginary landscape of literature.

From activist documentaries to avant-garde experiments from the 1970s to the 1990s: The publication accompanying the exhibition No Master Territories opens perspectives on non-fiction film and video works by and about women.

Tracing Aural Histories via Sonic Transmigrations

How can colonial sound archives be restituted? Artist, composer and musician Satch Hoyt links the recordings to the Afro-diasporic present and traces the history of displacement, migration and resistance along the sound archives. Contributors include Paz Guevara, Louis Chude-Sokei and Fred Moten.

The essays in the publication Proximities sit close to one another, approach one another, overlap. They provide insight into the collective practices of the Whole Life Academy, a project that researches archival positions, infrastructures and materialities. 

Can the properties of pre-modern performance spaces be measured acoustically? The publication A Slightly Curving Place is dedicated to the working methods of acoustic archaeologist Umashankar Manthravadi. Since the 1990s, he has been building ambisonic microphones to make the past audible.

A publication as a structure of resonance, the volume Coming to Know explores common listening as a space of possibility for shared knowledge. It pushes aside the visual techniques of archaeology, the museum, and the colonial project of modernity.

Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary cinema is deeply committed to the social justice of Indigenous Peoples, especially the rights of children. This book reflects on the activist filmmaker’s lifework by bringing together essays, conversations and film stills.

Jean-Luc Godard’s Le livre d’image (2018) collages film and contemporary history. The manuscript, handmade by Godard, gathers the texts of the film. The limited facsimile edition contains numerous illustrations and is numbered by hand.

Originally, the film was called Le grand tableau (noir): The release of the limited facsimile edition of the first version of the script accompanies the exhibition Sentiments, Signes, Passions. On Godard’s film “Le livre d’image”, handmade by Godard and numbered by hand.

What access to the world do images create? How can they serve as tools of knowledge? The volume includes the essay On Image Systems in Human History by archaeologist David Wengrow and a conversation between Erhard Schüttpelz, David Wengrow and Anselm Franke about the autonomy of image systems.

Archives as sites of utopian production: Rather than perpetuating existing power structures in archival work, the volume reflects on knowledge production and seeks alternative options for archival activism.

From a fatal collision in Singapore to the Chinese high-speed rail system: Capitalist Death Drives and Coin Test China High-Speed Rail Videos is a crisis narrative in the self-destructive phase of capitalism set against the backdrop of current global financial mechanisms and the economic rise of China.

Can clothing protect its wearers in the climate war? The volume Clothed Conflicts examines clothing at the intersections of identity and other power politics. What role do fashion, uniforms and corporeal symbolism play?

The transition from the Holocene to Anthropocene transforms geology into a social science. Geology of the Present mines the stratifications of the planet to date and analyze the new geological era. How can the Earth’s archives of the Anthropocene be made legible?

Music notation, radio or TikTok algorithm: Channel Power examines the ways in which music is recorded and disseminated and the power of these channels to define it – especially in the digital age. It has never been truer than now: The channels make the music.

Forgotten photographs from a defunct Lebanese newspaper show images of airplane hijackings from 1968 to 1970. The volume Perhaps This Is Not the Time... invites us to think about the use of images and about their status as representation, projection or evidence.

In colonial contexts, symbols woven into textiles often contained resistant messages. Colonial languages were also often appropriated and recoded through creolization. How might code be written in Creole? Looming Creole is about a poetics of resistance within a matrix of colonial predation.

How do people perceive sounds? How are auditory experiences constructed? Using the means of artistic research, the volume Sound – Space – Sense conveys an idea of how mental space, social practice and immediate auditory experience relate to each other.

Knowledge as collective practice: The volume about The New Alphabet School presents essays that emerged from meetings in New Delhi, Athens, Porto, Rafah, Dakar, Warsaw and Berlin. It provides insights into current methods of practice-based research in the fields of art and activism.

Students challenge the Eurocentric narratives of their Spanish book with their own images in the form of animated films. Talkback Circuits: New Alphabets at School is dedicated to the use of language in the school microcosm. The volume looks at the pages of books and listens in on conversations at recess.

On coral eras and ice core temporalities: Evidence Ensembles collages a variety of perspectives on the material witnesses to planetary change and their mission for the future. What can be learned from the material and immaterial traces of the first geological phase of the Anthropocene?

How must today’s cultural and scientific institutions change to meet the demands of the Anthropocene? The volume The New Institution uses real-life examples to discuss new counter-institutional practices and concepts.