HKW Residencies

In a residency program developed by the Minor Universality ERC research project and realized together with Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin  and its New Alphabet School, six artists will develop idiosyncratic perspectives on how to narrate, sketch and produce experiences of universality after the critique of Western universalism. Narrating minor universality here means on the one hand, possible ways to investigate the role of narration in the production of shared conceptions of world. On the other, it refers to the fact that minor universality – consciousness of shared humanity experienced from within concrete local contexts – might in itself be based in narrative practices. To speak of the relative force of narration thus does not veer towards a relativistic gesture, but seeks to evoke the relational, the shared possibilities implied in narrative world productions.

The residencies are designed to offer intellectual and social working environments and to facilitate epistemological collaborations between artists’ practices and the research contexts of the New Alphabet School and the ERC Minor Universality project. Each of the two residency cohorts (summer / fall 2021) takes part in the unfolding of research events in Athens, Berlin, Saarbrücken and Tunis with workshops at HKW. Results of the residencies will be presented in a discursive environment and as an installation at HKW during the concluding edition of the New Alphabet School in June 2022. Residents will contribute toward a publication that reflects on the process and experiences of the residency.

The residency programme on the HKW website