Hopeful Research in Hopeless Times

Theoretical and Conceptual Perspectives on an Ethnography of Planning and Curation

Abstract

Introductory article of the volume “Curating as Relation - Ethnographic Explorations in the Humboldt Labor”. This article examines the complex institutional interdependencies and responsibilities in the Humboldt Labor within the larger formation of the Berlin Humboldt Forum as well as the resulting challenges of curation and exhibition mediation in the field of tension between scientific, political and aesthetic demands. Here, we propose a reparative reading in search of connections and a relational analysis for the understanding of curatorial everyday and exhibition spaces. In this context, the effects of external events such as the temporal intervention of the COVID-19 pandemic on museum operations, on our own research and the social framework conditions are also reflected upon. The students' ethnographic research traces the current entangled sense of hope and hopelessness, focusing on the question of alternative futures and solidary societies from the perspective of curators, mediators and participating researchers at the Humboldt Labor. As part of the Master's programme at the Institute for European Ethnology at HU Berlin, learning ethnography itself as a creative medium and as a method of knowledge production is emphasized.