Completed projects
The research project analyzed the interventionist character of "assemblies" in contemporary art. Examining film screenings, projects in public space, and participatory exhibition formats, it posed the question as to how far protocols of communicative action can be reconfigured through such practices. From such a vantage point, the dispositifs of film spectatorship which seek to transform relations among viewers was reconsidered as modes of assembly that form temporary communities (SP 1). In the Global South it seemed this aspect is all the more pertinent, as is made clear by interventionist practices aimed at fostering democratic dialogue under the repressive conditions of military dictatorships in Latin America (SP 2). Negotiations of consensus and dissensus also provided recourse to formats of assembly such as tribunals, court hearings, talk shows, and conferences in contemporary art that seek to intervene into social orders and conventions by way of performative restagings (SP 3). As a whole, the project developed a notion of intervention which proposes that artistic forms of assembly based on the alternative (re-)partitioning of space and time hold the potential to forge connections with other social forces in the political space of appearance.
Head of Project
Prof. Dr. Eric H.C. de Bruyn (SP 1)
Doctoral Researcher
João Gabriel Rizek (SP 2)
Luise Marie Willer (SP 3)
Student Assistant
Annika Böttcher (2024-2025)
Louison Jenkins (2025-2026)
Tobias Rosen (2022-2023)
This research project examined interventions in artistic practices (literature, graffiti, theatre) in Brazil and Argentina since the 1920s. As the term intervention is also associated with the actions taken by military dictatorships in Latin America, the project aimed to re-situate the term “intervention” in a postcolonial context.
The research project was divided into three project units: Subproject (SP) 2 examined the practices of graffiti in Brazil’s public sphere. SP 3 took an intersectional approach to female writing as modes of artistic intervention in Latin America. SP 1 situated these perspectives within a wider historical context.
Head of Project
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Mariana Maia Simoni (SP 1)
Prof. Dr. Susanne Zepp-Zwirner (SP 1)
Doctoral Researcher
Maëlle Karl (SP 2)
Kaimé Valencia Guerrero (SP 3)
Student Assistant
Using examples from the history of a divided Germany after 1945, this research project investigated political and social constellations and discursive patterns of intervention in the visual arts and how they have changed in a historical context. What kind of resonance does society expect from the arts and what kind of resonance do the arts and artists want to generate? How and for what motives do certain artists refuse to engage in generating such resonance, and how are they received? In which public spheres does this resonance generation take place? These questions regarding the interventionist nature and potential public impact of artistic work were addressed in three subprojects with a focus on the actors involved.
SP 1 examined, through selected case studies, the modes, effectiveness, and self-perceptions of artistic intervention in politics since the 1970s, focusing on the Federal Republic of Germany and other Western societies. SP 2 explored participation and exclusion on the art and commission markets from the perspective of a divided Germany. SP 3 examined political and aesthetic resistance to the politicization of the visual arts that began at the end of the 1950s, focusing on West German art associations.
Head of Project
Prof. Dr. Paul Nolte (SP 1)
Doctoral Researcher
Norma Ladewig (SP 2)
Theresa Angenlahr (SP 3)
Marla Heid (SP 2, until June 21, 2024)
Student Assistant
This research project examined literary and journalistic writing interventions linked to demands for social transformation. It takes German-language 20th century literature as its subject matter, while reflecting upon and revising the artistic repertoire of forms. As a result of changes in the industrial working environment that led to a fundamental reflection on the social space of literature in the Weimar Republic (or its situatedness), literature between 1930 and 1970 followed on from the historical literary avant-garde, with the additional elaboration of new dynamics of intervention. In a transitive sense, these interventions sought to actively reshape the working environment and to fundamentally transform the conditions of literary production and reception via critiques of existing and alternatively proposed models. At the same time, the aesthetically traditional repertoire of forms in literature experienced a transformation in the intransitive sense insofar as previous forms of representation were revised, with a shift towards collective practices and procedures focussing on documentation. This sub-project analyzed concepts of proletarian revolutionary literature in the final phase of the Weimar Republic (SP 1), writing interventions in GDR literature prescribed by cultural policy (SP 2) and forms of documentary writing in the context of the 1968 movement in the post-war Federal Republic (SP 3).
Head of Project
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Brokoff (SP 2)
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. Andree Michaelis-König (SP 1, 2023-2024)
Dr. Andrea Schütte (SP 1)
Doctoral Researcher
Djordje Kandic (SP 3, 2025-2026)
Henning Podulski (SP 3, 2022-2025)
Jana Maria Weiß (2022)
Student Assistant
This anthropological research project examined academic, artistic and other museum exhibition spaces from the perspective of everyday culture. It focussed on the question as to how futures are both designed and enabled as well as renounced and rejected in curatorial practice. Interventions were conceptualized in terms of their temporal effects. They were understood as cultural practices that influence established temporal structures and that show the ability to transform these. The project sought to examine most recent formats of participation, curation, and arts-based education both as an expression of diverse collaborative formats as well as in their normative – and indeed potentially exclusionary and thus problematic – modes of action. The three subprojects of this project took the lifeworlds of various cultural and curatorial practices into consideration that also had project-related overlaps in the wider Berlin exhibition landscape. SP 1: Interventional Temporalities: Normative and Explorative Futures of the Kochi-Muziris-Biennale; SP 2: Experimental Futures: The MfN/HU Science Campus as Future Workshop; and SP 3: Collectiveness and Radical Futures: Shared Curatorship as Intervention.
Head of Project
Prof. Dr. Silvy Chakkalakal (SP 1)
Doctoral Researcher
Sarah Elisa Etz (SP 2)
Hana Ćurak (SP 3)
Student Assistant
The Collaborative Research Center is characterized by its (inter)disciplinary and materially rich investigation of interventionist art practices and art forms. The sub-projects frequently collaborate with artists and cultural institutions or even test their own aesthetic-experimental formats as part of their research.
The sub-project Reflection examined the cultural logics and effects of collaborative practices within CRC 1512 in their disciplinary and public contexts, as well as, not least, within the interdisciplinary dynamics of a research network whose partners often belong to the art world. Analyzing the interrelationships between academia, art, and the public is essential in this process. The work of the Reflection sub-project will be continued in the second funding period within the sub-project Public Spheres and Humanities Communication.