CURE out and about with Markus Messling
WHEN
WHERE
Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Str. 40/41, Raum 408 | 10117 Berlin
LANGUAGE
GERMAN
PROGRAMME
The foot on the head of a pharaoh: the statue of Jean-François Champollion in the Cour d’honneur of the Collège de France has become a source of controversy. Created around 1870 by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi – the sculptor of New York’s Statue of Liberty – the monument’s visual semantics bear an inherent contradiction. Conceived as a heroic monument to the pursuit of knowledge, it also points to a crisis-stricken consciousness of the world.
Reflecting on this statue and its significance, the event will explore Markus Messling’s new book, Kulturtod und Reparation: Der Fall Champollion (Cultural death and reparation: the case of Champollion). Acclaimed for deciphering hieroglyphs and inaugurating a new history of humankind, Champollion encountered members of the Osage Nation in Paris between 1827 and 1829 and witnessed the devastation wrought by colonialism during his time in Egypt. These experiences were closely connected to the European knowledge of the world to which he himself owed his rise to prominence and fame. Grappling with Champollion’s doubts and deeds, Messling examines the social foundations of contemporary Europe.
The reading and discussion will bring together perspectives from literary and cultural studies, art history, and European ethnology. The discussion will focus on the entanglements between the history of knowledge and colonial violence, forms of cultural death, and reparation as a contemporary cultural and social practice.
The event is organised by the Berlin-Brandenburg Office for Everyday Culture in cooperation with the laboratory of the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums, Archives, and Heritage (CARMAH) and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Andreas Rötzer, founder and publisher of Matthes & Seitz Berlin, will deliver a welcome address.
Participants in the discussion:
Andrea Allerkamp is professor of Western European literatures at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). Her research focuses on the critical history of aesthetics, law and literature, and dream criticism. She was a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE) at Saarland University.
Markus Messling is professor of Romance literatures and comparative literary and cultural studies at Saarland University and director of the Käte Hamburger Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE). He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Academia Europaea.
Franziska Solte is acting professor of art and new media at Humboldt University of Berlin. She is the scientific coordinator to the director of the German Centre for Art History in Paris. Her research focuses on the (in)visibility of the transatlantic slave trade in French art and contemporary art.
Jonas Tinius is director of the Berlin-Brandenburg Office for Everyday Culture and coordinator of archives and collections at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University of Berlin. His research focuses on public culture and cultural production, particularly theatre, museums, contemporary art, archives, and curatorial practice.
