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What ist 99 Questions?

99 Questions is a research-led program platform that builds on practices of acquiring, sustaining, and sharing knowledge within a complex epistemic network that transcends national borders and natural boundaries. Engaged in scholarship beyond (museum) collections, 99 Questions is research and practice at the same time. The project concerns itself with situated knowledge and narratives, posing critical questions on hegemonies within the museum complex.

99 Questions is an attempt to understand the museum as a decentralized structure and transform it into a vibrant space for exchange. There is no concrete center and therefore no periphery – with its unique geographic characteristics, every place contributes equally to a pluralistic narrative. The project is based upon a methodology revolving around and developed during gatherings defined as “research nodes” or “knots.” We understand the research nodes as a series of interconnected points that create a larger, stable whole, drawing on the meaning the metaphor of the nodes (or knots) holds across different languages and cultures. In the course and context of this series of ‘events of knowledge,’ curation is employed as a dynamic process that promotes world-building, highlights the plurality of cosmologies, and fosters collaborative learning. The exchanges pinpoint local specific issues and questions which interweave in the grand scheme of the 99 Questions project to create meaningful spaces for collectively gaining and sharing knowledge, where gathering beyond the hierarchization of knowledge, remembrance, and ideas becomes possible.

99 Questions is dedicated to exploring multi-perspective future-making and speculative dimensions. By creating imaginative spaces and instigating reflections on divergent futures, it seeks to nurture transformative and creative thinking in curatorial practice.

Through the engagements and research nodes, 99 Questions strives to foster a dynamic dialogue among artists, communities, museum staff, and researchers, thus facilitating shifts in how curation, collections, representation, language, epistemologies, and community participation are understood and navigated. We aim at amplifying the voices of the local communities we are collaborating with, allowing their narratives to take center stage. Instead of forcing upon translocated artefacts and information a static and predefined taxonomy, the museum is understood as a place for learning from different knowledge systems, practices, and cosmologies, aiming to counter the epistemical extractivism and normativization historically practiced in ethnological an academic research.

The cyclic program of the 99 Question Nodes encompasses diverse formats, including public dialogues, gatherings, installations, performances, workshops, and residencies. These formats are not isolated but function as a dynamic ecosystem of relationships, bridging different territories and cosmologies. The 99 Questions Magazine and the 99 Questions Podcast are a collection of creative encounters with the topics discussed during the nodes, while also taking the shape of a node in and of themselves – a digital node that is, a connecting point in a web of transnational and transcultural exchange.  The articles and artistic writings will be published in different languages, so as to give space to the works’ specific poetic and political dimensions. The 99 Questions Gathering, a polyphonic event held at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, plays a pivotal role in knitting together and enabling further nodes of exchange among the research nodes, participants, and museum visitors.

Based at the Humboldt Forum, 99 Questions holds the responsibility to engage with the debates round the building of the Berliner Schloss, as well as the collections therein. The Humboldt Forum houses museums and academic institutions that partially developed out of ethnographic practices and originate from the custodianship of collections comprising cultural belongings of global and local relevance that emerged during the European colonial project.

Sounds interesting? Then mark your calendars for October 25th to November 3rd, 2024 and join our 10-day event, when the 99 Questions Gathering unfolds at the Humboldt Forum, offering a diverse program of artist talks, installations, film screenings, performance, and weaving sessions!

If you want to join our newsletter, have questions or comments, or want to know more, you can contact us via 99questions (at) humboldtforum.org

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