The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding the Collaborative Research Center “Intervening Arts” for a second term, which begins on July 1, 2026. The CRC was established in 2022 and investigates the potential of the arts to intervene in social, political, and cultural processes. Various working groups and subprojects are investigating how artistic practices can actively intervene in and transform different social and cultural fields. The public spheres of the arts are currently undergoing rapid change, and questions regarding intervention—as well as the resilience of artistic practices and institutions—have become increasingly important and urgent.

“In the second phase, we would like to focus in particular on the infrastructures of the arts,” explains the CRC’s spokesperson, art historian Prof. Dr. Karin Gludovatz. “Infrastructures play a decisive role in determining which interventions are possible and can be effective.”

“In particular, we would like to continue our research in dialogue with artists, as we successfully tested in the laboratory formats during the first funding period,” adds theater scholar Prof. Dr. Matthias Warstat, deputy spokesperson for the CRC. “In the new funding period, we aim to tailor these formats even more specifically to the respective themes and working methods and to seek out diverse new institutional partners and audiences.”

The CRC is particularly pleased about the new subprojects from the departments of English, General and Comparative Literature, Art History, and Latin American History, which bring important new thematic perspectives and, not least, strengthen the CRC’s global outlook. Together with the ongoing projects, they complement the disciplinary diversity of the researchers who will be investigating questions related to the intervening arts over the next 3.5 years.

The CRC is based at Freie Universität Berlin; other participating institutions include the Berlin University of the Arts, the Europa University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Leuphana University Lüneburg, and the Staatliche Museen Berlin specifically the Museum für Asiatische Kunst/Ethnologisches Museum.