Centre for Advanced Study
“Access to cultural goods in the digital transformation”

The digital transformation has fundamentally changed the possibilities and conditions of access to cultural goods — i.e. to works of art, but also to the holdings of archives, collections and museums and to such “subjects” as the results of scientific research — and will continue to require new forms and practices of production, reproduction and reception of such goods in the future.

The Centre for Advanced Study Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change (KFG 33), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) explores — especially with art as an example — both the new forms of access to cultural goods and the new forms of access restriction and access control made possible by digitalisation. In doing so, it also takes into account the fact that the digital transformation ties the production and reception of many cultural goods to technological preconditions that can be characterised as second-order access conditions.

| Events
© Banz & Bowinkel: „Palo Alto“

Lecture: “The Sculptural in the (Post-)Digital Age”

The Centre for Advanced Study invites everyone who is interested to the

Guest Lecture “The Sculptural in the (Post-)Digital Age”
by Prof. Dr. Ursula Ströbele (Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig)
on Monday, 13 May 2024,
von 16.15 bis 18.30 Uhr
in Room 201, Philosophikum, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster (wheelchair accessible).
Attendance is free of charge. No registration is required.

Digital technologies have expanded the field of sculpture since the 1950s. However, art history has so far paid little attention to sculptural works that were conceived and “materialized” with the help of computer programs. Ursula Ströbele will explain how the sculptural can be rethought in relation to our technological present and its historical predecessors and what implications an “aesthetics of the digital” entails.

| Events
© Li Hou-Han

Lecture: „Physical Loss and Digital Reclamation – The Curatorial Concept of the China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale“

The Centre for Advanced Study cordially invites everyone interested to the

Guest Lecture “Physical Loss and Digital Reclamation – The Curatorial Concept of the China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale”
by Dr. Jiang Jun (Tongji University, Shanghai)
on Monday, 6 May 2024,
from 4:15 pm to 6:30 pm
in Room 201, Philosophikum, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster ( wheelchair accessible).
Admission is free.
If you would like to attend, please send an email to kfg.zugang@uni-muenster.de.

At the China Pavilion of the 60th Biennale di Venezia, digital access is provided to ancient Chinese paintings which would otherwise be lost for the public. In his lecture for the Centre for Advanced Study “Access to Cultural Goods in Digital Change”, Dr. Jiang Jun will report on the curatorial concept of the Pavilion. 

| Events
© doomu – stock.adobe.com

Workshop “Protecting and accessing cultural goods in wartime”

From 4 to 6 April 2024, the Centre for Advanced Study hosted the workshop “Protecting and accessing cultural goods in wartime – Case Studies and Lessons from Armenia and Ukraine”. War not only threatens the lives and physical integrity of people; cultural goods are also at risk of damage and total loss during war. Protecting them in the event of war is an important task for every community, and digitalisation enables new forms and modes of preserving cultural goods or their blueprints that give people access to them in times of war and even more so afterwards. Based on examples and experiences from Armenia and Ukraine, the workshop discussed practical questions and ethical aspects of the protection of cultural goods during war.

| Exhibitions & Videos
© Universität Münster | Stefan Klatt

“Where the plastics live”: Video about the exhibition online

In the winter semester 2023/24 the study project “Kunststoffalltage” of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology presented its results with an exhibition. Plastic artefacts were presented as “roommates” of student daily life: Objects such as remote controls and toothbrush mugs were used to interpret the everyday dimensions of plastic use. The project was directed by Prof. Dr. Lioba Keller-Drescher, Professor for European Ethnology and in-house fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study. This video provides an insight into the exhibition.

Further information on the exhibition can be found on the homepage of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology.