We work in universities and museums – in places of knowledge production that have historically focused on exerting and maintaining power and that can reinforce structural inequalities. Because our team is researching the social role played by museums, questions of colonial and racist continuity, socioeconomic and (digital) political exclusion are central.
This is why, in early 2022, we began working with a critical Advisory Board that comprises activists and initiatives from civil society. The Advisory Board brings together experts on critical digitalization, intersectionality, ableism , classism, decolonization, and institutional critique. The goal of our collaboration with the Advisory Board is to critically discuss the social relevance of our research topics and case studies, and to reflect upon the problematic dimensions of the meaning of “social cohesion.”
Alongside reflecting on the topics of our projects, which can range from discussions about joint exhibition visits to critical feedback, the aim is to question the challenges posed by our collaboration that are shaped by structural inequality and asymmetric privileges between public institutions and smaller initiatives: Who has command of resources and power? How can we avoid tokenism and discrimination? Who speaks and who is heard? How can we create space and frameworks together in order to build relationships and foster dialogue?
Our colleague Dr. Pegah Byroum-Wand has taken a power-critical approach in order to conceptualize, implement, and document our collaboration with the Advisory Board. Advisory Board sessions are led by an external moderator, Nastaran Tajeri-Foumani.
The collaboration with the advisory board will be reflected in the publication “MachtKritikKollaboration - Praxisreflexionen zwischen Aktivismus, Museum und Universiät”, which will be published by Verlag Yılmaz-Günay in fall 2024.
The aim of the power-critical collaboration in the advisory board was to discuss the social relevance of our research and case studies. It is also crucial to reflect on the fact that we work in universities and museums - hierarchical places of knowledge production that historically aim to exercise and maintain power and can reinforce structural inequality.
The publication therefore uses the example of the advisory board collaboration to reflect on relationship building, hierarchies and power dynamics. The book brings together interviews, graphics, mappings and analytical texts from all participants and offers power-critical reflections on collaborative practices for people at the intersection of activism, museums, universities, and political and cultural education.
With this publication, we deliberately do not offer “best practice” and thus quick solutions for the complex topic of power-critical collaborations. Rather, the processes and conditions of transdisciplinary collaboration are examined in interviews, analyses and mappings. The interrelationship between the often individualistic, static understanding of knowledge production in universities or museums and the dynamic knowledge production in activist circles becomes clear.
The process-oriented publication aims to show that there can be no power-critical collaboration if “professional expertise” is located within institutions and “activist experiential knowledge” is located outside of them, thereby devaluing or devaluing it.
You can find regular updates on the contributors, the publication and the publisher on our Instagram channel.