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Janette Helm

Janette Helm
Image Credit: Miriam Klingl

Doctoral Researcher R

Pronouns: she/her

Academic Education

    Since 02/2024              Universität Zürich,                                                                                                                                                                                 PhD in Empirical Cultural Studies,                                                                                                                                                 Project for dissertation: "Intervening Arts, Contentious Collaborations:
                                               Negotiation Processes between Academia, Arts, and Publics"

    10/2015 – 09/2018     Goethe-Universität/Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main                                                                                                           Curatorial Studies – Theory-History-Criticism, M. A.,                                                                                                             Thesis: New Museology und „Source Communities“. Diskurse von                                                                                 Chancen und Herausforderungen bei kollaborativen Museumsprojekten

     08/2014 – 01/2015     Universität Stockholm, Schweden                                                                                                                                                  Social Anthropology   

     10/2012 – 09/2015     Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen                                                                                                                                            Empirical Cultural Studies, English and American Studies, B. A.,                                                                                     Thesis: The Museum Selfie as the Emergence                                                                                                                           of a Cultural Practice – Opportunity or Threat?

Professional Experience

     Since 01/2023              Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin                                                                                                                                                      Doctoral Researcher at Collaborative Research Centre 1512                                                                                              “Intervening Arts”

     11/2020 – 12/2022     Linden-Museum Stuttgart                                                                                                                                                                  Research Assistant and Project Manager „LindenLAB“                               

     11/2018 – 11/2020      Landesmuseum Württemberg/Museum der Alltagskultur, Stuttgart                                                                              Position as a Research Trainee                               

     09/2016 – 05/2017     Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt am Main                                                                                                                                          Freelance Work in Ethnographic Collection                                                   

     11/2015 – 11/2016     Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main                                                                                                                                                Student Assistant                                                                                             

      02/2015 – 07/2015    Stadtmuseum, Stuttgart                                                                                                                                                                      Freelance Work in Cultural Mediation („Stadtlabor“)

    Winter Semester 2023/2024            Radical Futures? Museums, collectives and public(s) as                                                                                                      places of intervention, together with Hana Ćurak and Sarah Etz

Project for dissertation "Intervening Arts, Contentious Collaborations: Negotiation Processes between Academia, Arts, and Publics"

The Collaborative Research Centre 1512 "Intervening Arts" is characterized by an (inter-) disciplinary and material-rich examination of intervening art practices and art forms. In the individual projects, the researchers work together with artists and cultural institutions or try out aesthetic-experimental formats themselves as part of their research.

In my dissertation, I analyze the connections between academia, arts and public spheres as a multi-layered network of relationships that is constituted by the Collaborative Research Centre and its research partners. This network of relationships is characterized by various conditions, such as inter- or trans-institutional cooperations with partners, (state) funding opportunities for artistic projects, but also by the growing imperative of effect of the sciences in public areas.

I examine the collaborative formats and research of the Collaborative Research Centre, which unfold in sensory and media practices with their meaning in relational material-symbolic arrangements and economies. In this context, various artistic and research practices of the Collaborative Research Centre and the associated networks of relationships interact multidirectionally. They are part of larger socio-political contexts that are power-laden and asymmetrical. For example, the economic conditions and institutional requirements of artistic and academic work are conflictual. The resulting tensions between academia, arts and the public sphere are evident in various places and are also reflected in the laboratory formats and collaborations of the research network itself.

At the same time, artistic and research practices are to be understood as part of an aesthetic practice in which actors can create differences, affiliations and meanings, but also undermine them. By intervening in social contexts within the Collaborative Research Centre, the arts and artistic methods themselves (inter)act in social, political and cultural public spheres or create them. In my dissertation, I examine the resulting relationships between academia, arts and public spheres and their effects as specific logics of intervention. I understand them as practices of making oneself understood between different actors, which are sometimes influenced by certain policies.

 

Publications     

    2026          "Experimentell(e) Öffentlichkeiten herstellen – Kuratorische Praktiken                                                                        zwischen Wissenschaften und Künsten." In: Gegen/Öffentlichkeiten.                                                                            Ästhetiken, Materialitäten und Praktiken des künstlerischen Intervenierens,
                   
    edited by Birgit Eusterschulte et al. Diaphanes (forthcoming)

    2025          Helm, Janette, Sophie Mak-Schram, Lena Pozdnyakova, Luise Willer. "What is the                                                (Art)Work of Care? Close-Reading the Artistic Labour of Institutional Transformation
                        in the Work of Marina Naprushkina and Caroline Woolard."                                                                                              https://doi.org/10.37522/aaav.118.2025.311                        

    2024          Review: Büchel, Julia: "Repräsentation – Partizipation – Zugänglichkeit.                                                                    Theorie und Praxis gesellschaftlicher Einbindung in Museen und Ausstellungen.“
                        In: Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft (1/24). 

    2023          "Das Linden-Museum befragt die Stuttgarter Stadtgesellschaft. Vorstellungen und                                                Zukunftsperspektiven für ein ethnologisches Museum.“ In: Standbein Spielbein –                                                Vom kritischen Vermitteln und Verlernen im Museum (1/23), pp. 93-101.

                        "LindenLAB 8 − Was bleibt?! Erkenntnisse für die Zukunft des Linden-Museums.“ In:                                            LindenLAB. Partizipation, Provenienz, Präsentation. Projektdokumentation 2019-2023,                                    pp. 154-159.

                        "Was bleibt. Eine Auswahl an Ergebnissen aus unserer Befragung zum                                                                        Linden-Museum 2021.“ URL: https://www.lindenmuseum-befragung2021.de/                                                        (last access on 28/02/2024).

     2022          "Kennen Sie das Linden-Museum?“ In: neues museum. Die österreichische                                                            Museumszeitschrift 1(22), pp. 20-25.

     2021          Review: Sarr, Felwine und Bénédicte Savoy: "Zurückgeben. Über die Restitution                                                   afrikanischer Kulturgüter.“ In: Zeitschrift für Volkskunde (1/21), pp. 123-125.           

     2020          "Mülltrennung ist Einstellungssache. Müllwerker*innen als Akteur*innen im                                                            Klimawandel.“ In: Kuckuck. Notizen zur Alltagskultur (2/20),pp. 44-47. 

Talks

     06/22/2024      Workshop at the conference Assemble! organized by Performance Studies                                                              International #29 in London, hosted by The Royal Central School of Speech
                                  and Drama, titled: “Assembling as Institutional Possibility”
                                  (in collaboration with Luise Willer)

     05/10/2024      Lecture at the conference The Art–Labour Relationship in Contemporary Art in                                                      Central and Eastern Europe, 1991–present, hosted by Institute of Art Research                                                      and the Vilnius Academy of Arts,
                                  titled: "Critical Reflections on Artists as Organisers: Marina Naprushkina’s Neue                                                    Nachbarschaft and Caroline Woolard’s Institutional Possibility"
                                  (in collaboration Lena Pozdnyakova und Luise Willer)

     08/10/2020     Lecture at the conference An ethnology lab on the workings of Covid-19                                                                   on museums, hosted by the SIEF working group Museums & Material Culture,                                                         COMCOL and the Reinwardt Academy,                                                                                                                                         titeled: „Back to normality? Everyday life defies Corona”