Past events
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Drum sounds and gestures, tapeworm words and a hundred ways of saying ‘I’: How people express themselves is surprisingly diverse. Soon, however, many of the approximately 7,000 languages will no longer be spoken. This means that access to the culture and knowledge of the speakers is disappearing, because each language is a unique perspective on the world. In the WeSearch series, academics present languages of Indigenous groups and cultural communities from which exhibits in the Humboldt Forum originate.

Every language is a unique perspective on the world. For Wilhelm von Humboldt, languages are ‘worldviews’. How people express themselves is surprisingly diverse: for example, there are gestures and drum languages, run-on words or a hundred ways of saying “I”.

However, more and more of the approximately 7,000 languages in the world today are disappearing, as fewer and fewer languages are being passed on to the next generation. This means that important access to their cultures and to their knowledge, which is embedded in the language, is disappearing. Not only is our view of the diversity of human languages narrowing, but also that of the diversity of human culture and forms of knowledge. In order to preserve this intangible cultural heritage, academics and language communities are working to document as many languages as possible.

In the series WeSearch: WorldLanguages – LanguageWorlds, experts present some of these languages. They are spoken by Indigenous communities in regions of the world from which exhibits and cultural belongings in the Humboldt Forum originate. Linguists, ethnologists and anthropologists will discuss how language, knowledge and material culture are connected using six case studies.

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upcoming Events

previous events

The curators

The series WeSearch: WorldLanguages – LanguageWorlds is a collaboration between the Humboldt Forum Foundation and the Endangered Languages Archive and Endangered Languages Documentation Programme, supported by Ethnological Museum and Museum of Asian Art Berlin.

Endangered Languages Archive
International Decade of Indigenous Languages

WESEARCH – REMEMBER – TELL (2023)

Remembering and narrating are dynamic processes that influence each other. How do we narrate memories or how do we remember by telling stories? How does the act of narrating change memories, and how do memories and narratives change with each repetition? What is forgotten in the process? The second season of WeSearch is dedicated to these questions.

Anyone who needs to remember lots of things – whether grocery or vocabulary – can use certain tricks. There is the loci method, for instance, also called the memory palace: here, you imagine a building and assign memories to individual rooms and the objects they contain. If you want to access them, you wander through the individual rooms in your imagination, recalling the objects and the information connected with them.

Real buildings are often used as memory palaces and, as the term “palace” suggests, particularly large buildings so as to store much information. The Humboldt Forum, for example, would make for a very good memory palace. However, it already is one in a literal sense: not only does it stand in one of the oldest parts of the capital, which is closely connected to Berlin and German history; with its collections, exhibitions and events, it stores memories, keeps them alive and updates them. Good reasons, then, for this year’s MitWissenschaft series to address the topic of memory.

 

Memory and forgetting, specific memories and the forms that remembering takes are constantly changing, triggering debates: who remembers what, how and what do we remember, what do we forget und what should be snatched from oblivion?

More to the point, this edition of WeSearch is concerned with the connections between memory and narrative. Like the memory palace, narrative is a form of archiving information. It allows complex memories to be stored and passed on. The Australian “songlines” – topic of the exhibition Songlines. Tracking the Seven Sisters at the Humboldt Forum in 2022 – are an excellent example for this. However, for all of us remembering takes the form of stories. Narratives also serve the purpose of making things present, allowing us to conjure up fragments of the past in the present. In this process memories are adapted to suit the present, so that they are always changing. Remembering and narrating are dynamic processes that influence each other.

But how do we narrate memories or how do we remember by telling stories? How does the act of narrating change memories, and how do memories and narratives change with each repetition? What is forgotten in the process? How does memory work in the first place and how do technological innovations influence our ability to remember: do they expand or weaken it? How individual and collective, how private and political are our memories?

In 2023, WeSearch will explore these questions in four events between March and June with the participation of renowned scientists and academics. Each individual event is dedicated to a specific topic and can be attended independently of the others. Taken together, however, they provide an overview of the current state of discussion in the field of memory research across the disciplines.

The series was curated by Tobias Becker and Uta Kornmeier. Philosopher and journalist Catherine Newmark will hosting the series. She is, among other things, editor and presenter of the philosophy magazine Sein und Streit at Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

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The Berlin clusters of excellence

From alternative antiquities to past times yet to come, from active matters to firing synapses: scientists share their cutting-edge research with the audience.

Science is simultaneously both a window through which we view the world, and an engine of change for that world. The Humboldt Forum brings society and science together. This series of presentations aims to be a continuation of the Kosmos Lectures given by Alexander von Humboldt in the 1820s, where he considered the world from a global scientific perspective. He vividly conveyed to a wide audience how nature and culture are intertwined and all phenomena are interrelated.

Our WeSearch series follows this tradition with monthly, easy-to-understand presentations. Prominent scientists from a wide variety of fields will present their ideas, their questions and their methods for discussion, in what promises to be a vibrant, understandable and entertaining series. There may, however, be a certain amount of ‘gentle overload’ from time to time; this event series aims to make science as simple as possible – but without oversimplifying.

The first season was dedicated to the seven Berlin clusters of excellence that have contributed to the concept and content of the Humboldt Lab’s After Nature exhibition. Both young and established scientists spoke about the interrelationships between natural, social and aesthetic systems, sharing their work with both their physical and digital audiences.

The WeSearch series is curated by Uta Kornmeier in collaboration with the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

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