A project led by Axel Bauni and Caitlin Hulcup at UdK Berlin and Stefano Evangelista and Philip Bullock at Oxford draws musical inspiration from the history and cultural identity of Berlin, focusing on two key moments in the city’s evolving cultural history: the Weimar Republic and the Jewish Enlightenment. It explores the relationship between urban space, creativity, national identity, and cosmopolitanism, and pays particular attention to questions of gender and sexuality. Building on work surrounding the historical experience of British Writers in Berlin, an exhibition of five song recitals and two Song Connection films will be presented at the Berlin-Oxford LiedFest between 19 and 21 November 2021.

Have a look: Start | LiedFest Berlin – Oxford

Joining forces to bridge the fields of graphic design, medical history, and health communication, Constanze Hein, graphic design lecturer at UdK Berlin, and Sally Frampton, medical historian at Oxford, will set out to find visual forms of communicating about vaccines. Their project will inspire a new course for Visual Communications students at UdK. The project aims to generate new interdisciplinary research and resources, including a student led website, printed material, and academic outputs. It will engage with an audience of students, educators and the general public to create a discussion around vaccination and communication.

Have a look: https://communicating-vaccination.udk-berlin.de/

See a brief report of Communicating Vaccination.

Presentation of the project
Communicating Vaccination
On March 17th, 19:30h 
at Hopscotch Reading Room, 
Kurfürstenstraße 14/Haus B, 10785 Berlin
or online through Webex.
This collaborative project between the Universität der Künste Berlin and the University of Oxford revolves around the interplay between design, communication and vaccination. Visual culture always been important in disseminating opinions and information on vaccination. And, since the mid-twentieth century, graphic design has played a central role in public health campaigns promoting vaccines.
In the winter semester 2021/22 we created a course for Visual Communication students at UdK so they could explore this topic. Students were enabled to conduct their own research on vaccination and through this, create an artistic work. 
The event will launch the website
https://communicating-vaccination.udk-berlin.de/
and online exhibition "Pieks! Sip! Jab!“.
There will be a presentation by the initiators and
students as well as a critique by Siddharta Lokanandi.
Participant students: Marcus Bücken, Imry Gefen, Rachel Haase, Mario Kreuzer, Joël van Rooij, Alisa Verzhbitskaya
A project by: Constanze Hein, graphic design lecturer at UdK Berlin, and Dr Sally Frampton, Humanities and Healthcare Fellow, University of Oxford.
Collaborators: Lucienne Roberts, London-based designer and Dr Franziska Kohlt, York-based researcher in Science Communication, the History of Science & Literature
Critique by: Siddharta Lokanandi, Hopscotch Reading Room
Funded by: Oxford – UdK Berlin Partnership in Arts and Humanities – Spaces, Bridges, Encounters

 

Chelsea Haith (Oxford) and Wenzel Mehnert (UdK Berlin) will continue a project begun during 2020 on the Sound of Contagion. It comprises forms of music, a short story, podcast episodes and algorithm outputs in response to the Covid pandemic. The project will take the existing collaboration further with a series of workshops for graduate students in Berlin, exploring, with the use of AI (artificial intelligence), questions of authorship, applied humanities and the possibilities and limitations of interdisciplinary methodologies.

https://www.soundofcontagion.com/

Conference at Technical University Braunschweig

See a brief report of Sound of Contagion

The Boundary Project explores how living "within planetary boundaries" could be taught and learnt at the intersection between human and more-than-human scales. 

Bringing together an international network of educators and researchers from the Arts, the Sciences and the Humanities, the project is strolling between disciplines, seeking to identify and formulate the knowledge forms helping individuals and communities to achieve sustainable living.

Which novel ways of teaching, learning and researching can help us approach the question of resilience from new perspectives? Which epistemic environments and (counter)institutional set-ups do we need to do so? With each participant deconstructing and "upcycling" their personal utopia through critical and creative dialogues, our temporary community set out to confront its disciplinary limits and research concrete alternatives.

These may involve aesthetic and embodied practices (such as performance, cooking, foraging, reading, or sewing) as much as evidence-based natural sciences and engineering.

The Boundary Project is a collaborative project between Pascale Girardin (Oxford University), Katja Lehmann (UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology), Timothée Ingen-Housz (UdK Berlin), Anna Gleizer (OUCE), and Ricarda Moll (UdK Berlin).

Report of Boundary Project 

Daria Martin, Oxford, and Kathrin Peters, Berlin: We investigate whether and how the colonial and migration histories of UK and Germany have been inscribed in the two art schools. To do so, we turn to the Library of the Ruskin School of Art and the Archive of the University of the Arts Berlin. We are interested in the representation of BPoC, Black Art and postmigrant perspective in the library and the archive of both art schools – or the fact that they are not represented. How can an omission be located in the archive? How do the sites and findings differ? The projects will involve students from both institutions. In on-site workshops in Berlin and Oxford we explore the archives to lay ground for an artistic and experimental research project into the past and present of our art schools.

Visit the project-workshop „Traversing the Archive“ on 26th October 2022. For more Information check: https://visuellekultur.udk-berlin.de/forschung/workshop-traversing-the-archive

Report of The Library and The Archive (2022, Daria Martin and Kathrin Peters)

David Lowis, Johanna Kirschbauer, and Maren Hartmann (UdK Berlin) and Rachael Kiddey and Derya Özkul (Oxford) will be looking at mobile media practices in the asylum application process. With the increased prevalence and importance of digital access and the internet in everyday life, including in many if not most interactions with authorities, displaced people are facing particular difficulties when it comes to claiming asylum. Often, the only internet enabled device they can access is a mobile phone, with application processes often not tailored to mobile devices.  This project will aim to better understand the mobile and digital practices of displaced people, particularly relating to the asylum application process. The initial research will be undertaken with Berlin based organizations that provide support for asylum seekers and displaced people more broadly. 

Have a look: MOMAP Project – MOWO-Projekt (homeless.media)

Prof. Nina Fischer, Lilli Kuschel (UdK Berlin), Prof. Nayanika Mathur, and Dr Amanda Power (Oxford) will develop further a project that was begun during the 2020 interactions between Oxford and UdK Berlin, which will seek to explore “more-than-human” perspectives, moving away from anthropocentric worldviews rooted in traditional notions of the human as a generic masculine heterosexual being. The project will focus on a multidisciplinary approach to re-understanding current problems such as climate change and mass extinction, exploring the shifts in vision of the past, present and future of a planet in crisis from the perspective of animals and plants, and how it might be possible to represent these perspectives, through artistic means, to a broader audience.

Have a look: Live-Video, Website and report

Charles Spence (Oxford) and Maciej Chmara (UdK Berlin) will be examining the role of the humble loaf of bread in many different aspects of our lives, from its centrality in terms of our subsistence and sustenance to its cultural values. This will be approached through an analysis of the production and consumption of a loaf of sourdough bread, and will encompass many sensory aspects such as smell, touch, sight, sound and taste, with the aim of producing a walk-in installation for the public, both in Berlin and in the UK. The project will aim to combine a multisensory design approach with a new view of physical objects and the perception of space and object together with the role of kitchen design, cuisine and gastronomy, and the influence of cultural technique of cooking on our lives.

More Information: speculatious.com

Report (in german)