Talking Culture is a platform for thought-provoking discussions about the future of Europe, the UK, and the world. Through fascinating interviews with thinkers and doers in the arts and culture sector, this show investigates how creative fields are emerging from the tumultuous present into the future. What role will culture play in a post-Brexit, post-COVID-19, post-colonial world? And how can it contribute to a future that prioritises sustainability, collaboration, diversity, and inclusion? From the Goethe-Institut London, this is a podcast about the critical role and value that arts and culture have in our societies. goethe.de/uk/podcast
Talking Culture is a platform for thought-provoking discussions about the future of Europe, the UK, and the world. Through fascinating interviews with thinkers and doers in the arts and culture sector, this show investigates how creative fields are emerging from the tumultuous present into the future. What role will culture play in a post-Brexit, post-COVID-19, post-colonial world? And how can it contribute to a future that prioritises sustainability, collaboration, diversity, and inclusion? From the Goethe-Institut London, this is a podcast about the critical role and value that arts and culture have in our societies. goethe.de/uk/podcast
Author and curator Dan Hicks, best known for his book The Brutish Museums (2020), takes stock of the debate around the enduring legacies of empire in our museums, universities and society at large. In this episode, he talks about recent events in Europe and North America, from removing statues and un-naming buildings to returning artefacts from colonial museums. As a society how can we make amends for the past? And what are the next steps for upholding antiracism in the future?
In 2013, the German Museums Association (Deutscher Museumsbund) issued guidance on the treatment of human remains in museum collections, in which they introduced a novel concept. The idea of 'Unrechtskontext' (context of injustice) should, they suggested, guide curatorial ethics when assessing the circumstances in which museum collections were acquired. Among considerations here was not just the contexts of the past, but also whether any particular injustice 'continued to have an effect in the present'.
For the Goethe Annual Lecture 2021, Dan Hicks posed the following questions: How should we understand the 'Unrechtskontexte' of colonial legacies today? By the standards of the time - or by the values that we hold today? And how can these legacies be meaningfully dismantled?
