As part of the Making Differences project, I have been working on an artistic-research collaboration with the Humboldt Laboratory at the Humboldt Forum. An art installation in the exhibition of the Humboldt Laboratory asks visitors and professional communities to consider the ethical and political implications of exhibiting human remains in public settings like museums and university collections. Who is ID 8470? was developed throughout the year leading to the opening of the Humboldt Laboratory’s exhibition. It is based on the understanding that artistic-research can generate knowledge-making processes through the entire spectrum of the artistic production. The research-based artwork in this sense is not only seen as an end-product on display. It consists of research and artistic production processes, and relationships with a network of institutions and individuals that participate and contribute to these processes.

Between 2016 and 2019, I was part of the TRACES project (Transmitting Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts: From Intervention to Co-Production) in which I worked on developing long-term creative co-productions between artists, researchers and institutions for creating sustainable, meaningful and creative ways to disseminate contentious cultural heritages to broad publics. I coordinated the work of the different ‘Creative Co-production‘ teams (CCPs) of TRACES and supported the research lead by Sharon Macdonald on those CCPs that work closely with difficult collections. Together with Suzana Milevska I researched the artistic and participatory approaches of the CCPs.

In addition, I was member of a CCP that engaged with collections of human skulls kept by museums, universities and other public institutions in Europe. Our exhibition Dead Images was installed in Edinburgh and Berlin in 2018. The four main videos that were part of the exhibition are available here.