• 🎉🎉 Deutscher Verlagspreis 2025

    — K. Verlag has once again been named a 2025 national publishing prize awardee 🎉🎉

    I am over the moon today as K. Verlag has been named a recipient of this year’s Deutscher Verlagspreis! A heartfelt thank you to the jury for this recognition of K. Verlag’s publishing practice—and to all the brilliant people who are part of our journey: the artists, authors, editors, and curators who shape each project with care and courage; the designers, text editors, and translators who bring thought into form; our distributors and the committed community of booksellers and librarians across the globe; and, above all, our readers. Your ongoing engagement and support mean the world to us!!

  • VEIL OF NATURE — Rethinking the Conservation of the Living

    — a symposium conceived by Justine Blau at the Luxembourg Museum of Natural History

    On the occasion of the release of Justine Blau’s recent publication “Veil of Nature—Processing Process” (K. Verlag, 2024), the artist has conceived a transdisciplinary symposium in collaboration with the Muséum d’Histoire naturelle de Luxembourg. As the book explores the possible resurrection of an extinct plant from Charles Darwin’s herbarium, this one-day event convenes a diverse group of national and international speakers to reflect on conservation in times of crisis. Together, they will engage with questions of ecological breakdown, approaches to preservation, and the myriad ways in which the natural world matters and is perceived.
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    As co-editors of “Veil of Nature,” Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin are pleased to contribute to this symposium with a presentation titled “Curating and/or Symbiogenesis.” This contribution builds on our long-term work not only as as editors and thinkers, but as Co-Principal Investigators of the exhibition-led inquiry “Reassembling the Natural” (RN). We look forward to revisiting and sharing a research trajectory that critically engages with the colonial, material, and epistemic infrastructures of natural history—its museums, its collections, its classificatory regimes, and racializing ways of seeing. If natural history museums once served to naturalize extractivism and ecocidal worldviews—dismembering multispecies worlds, converting kin into data, and transforming Indigenous territories into “natural” resources—RN asks how such institutions might now be reimagined. Our approach explores how the dismantling of dominant museological frameworks can open towards practices of ecological reparation and more-than-human care and affiliation. In this shared space of inquiry, curatorial work becomes an act of symbiogenesis: not simply a mode of displaying an image of nature, but a process of co-emergence and transformative relation.
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    We look forward to this exchange!
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  • “Prendendo Tempo” in Southern Italy

    — a month-long writing retreat at the Museum of Loss and Renewal in Collemacchia

    Taking time at the Museum of Loss and Renewal in Collemacchia has offered a rare period of spaciousness—for reading, writing, and daydreaming in thought. While working on the proposal for my academic monograph—which confronts difficult questions around ecological collapse, inherited violences of colonial extraction, and the limits of representation—I’ve also allowed myself the enjoyment of smaller, freer exercises, often sparked by the residency’s substantial art library (certainly including books like Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” Luce Irigaray’s “Sharing the World,” and Henri Bergson’s “Matter and Memory”). I’ve been swimming long-distance in the quarry lake whenever possible—so different from the always-too-soon walls of a pool—and more than once climbed a dry stone wall to lure three beautiful work horses with plantation apples, stroking their velvety ears while getting bitten by flies. One afternoon, lying on the edge of a ravine, I watched a line of rain clouds drift just above the hills. Inverting my perception, the sky became a sea—which, of course, it is. And when the mountain air turns sweet with ruderal figs claiming abandoned terraces, it’s easy to be flushed with a spectropoetic knowledge of being-within. I’m deeply grateful for this chance to slow down from what so often feels like unrelenting turmoil and acceleration. Drawing from Thomas Nail’s “marine materialism,” and John Akomfrah’s “submarine materialism” (in “Vertigo Sea”) these are oceanic feelings: of the heartmind needing to be “elsewhere”—not as a place, but a state of attunement; less an escape than a sustained presence to the interconnections between spaces, scales, and durations.

  • Refiguring Nature in a Datafied World: Debating the Politics and Materiality of Environmental Data

    — moderating a roundtable discussion for Michaela Büsse’s audiovisual installation ”Blazing Heath/Heideglühen“ at ZKU Berlin

    The roundtable “Refiguring Nature in a Datafied World: Debating the Politics and Materiality of Environmental Data” explores how data shapes our understanding of nature, informs environmental decision-making, and reflects broader socio-political dynamics. From sensor networks to satellite imagery, data plays an increasingly central role in how we engage with ecological change, but it also raises critical questions about visibility, power, and interpretation.
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    Participants will discuss the material and political dimensions of environmental data: How is it produced? Who controls it? And what kinds of narratives about nature does it generate? With contributions from Birgit Schneider (University of Potsdam), Alexander Vorbrugg (mLAB / University of Bern), Sandra Jasper (FAU Erlangen), and Michaela Büsse (TU Dresden / Matters of Activity). Moderated by Anna-Sophie Springer (HBK Braunschweig).
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    Image: Exhibition view of “Blazing Heath/Heideglühen” by Michaela Büsse at ZK/U, matter Festival 2025. Photo: Michael Pfisterer

  • Sommerakademie CURARE — Curatorial Intensive at K. Verlag

    On July 17, the fellows of the Sommerakademie CURARE 2025, organized by the Kulturamt Mitte under the directorship of Olga Schubert, visited the cultural theorist, curator, and publisher Anna-Sophie Springer at the K. Verlag publishing atelier for a workshop session. The day formed part of the academy’s program of curatorial training and discussion around institutional infrastructures at the intersections of ecology, memory politics, and critical knowledge production.
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    Other contributions to the summer academy were invited from Antonia Alampi (spore), Ibou Diop (Stadtmuseum), Paz Guevara (HKW), and Kito Nedo (freelance art critic).
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    Anna-Sophie’s situated contribution focused on her curatorial-publishing practice, presenting insights from intercalations, Processing Process, as well as the long-term research curatorial initiative Reassembling the Natural, which re-reads natural history collections as epistemic archives of colonial and extractive violence.

  • Mahmoud Al-Shaer, I Am Still Alive: Dispatches from Gaza

    — co-edited with Olga Schubert, K. Verlag, 2025

    For the past year and a half, I’ve been receiving dispatches from the Palestinian poet and culture worker Mahmoud Al-Shaer’s solidarity campaign—sometimes frequent, sometimes sparse, depending on the situation in Gaza. As Al-Shaer writes, having been born and raised in Rafah, he has faced oppression from many sides throughout his life—and the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023 have shattered his dreams. Each message asks, in its own way: what does cultural work mean in the face of destruction? What power does language still hold in the midst of grief and violence? And what does it mean to read—not from a safe distance, but as someone implicated? At some point, it becomes clear: being moved isn’t enough. Reading alone is not enough. Mahmoud’s writing calls us to respond.
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    As a publisher, I decided to edit, print, and distribute Mahmoud’s writing as a book to ensure his voice continues to be heard. If he can keep writing amidst catastrophe, the very least we can do is help carry those words forward. The publication ”I Am Still Alive: Dispatches from Gaza” stands in solidarity with Mahmoud’s voice and vision. With the destruction of his project space and publishing platform, Gallery 28 and 28 Magazine in Rafah, the book offers extends resources, care, and commitment in lieu of what has been lost—and in support of what might still be possible. As Mahmoud writes, “to rebuild together.” Upholding the principles of a shared vulnerability and demanding an end to the erosion of international law is not a matter of partisanship—it is the basis for any livable future.

  • Scrupulous Abundance: On Slippery Intelligence & Planetary Agency

    — a new essay in “intercalations 5: Decapitated Economies”

    In this exciting new essay, I build on previous work into plantation ecologies and land-use transformation in Southeast Asia, shifting the focus from terrestrial forest ecologies to the phototrophic agents at the base of life—from cyanobacteria to holopelagic Sargassum. Diving into the surplus logics of photosynthetic life, I explore how these ancient oxygen-producers shape planetary processes that capitalism often overlooks, redirects, or commodifies. Understanding algae and seaweed as living agents of multiscalar coevolution, I trace their roles in oceanic thinking, economies of abundance, and planetary governance beyond the human. But this is not just an essay about algae. It’s an experiment in scalar perception, using science as a tool to think otherwise—through oceanic looseness, deep evolutionary time, and what I call “slippery intelligence.” In conversation with feminist, decolonial, and Indigenous thought, I follow algae for their power to reorganize thought, unsettle extractive logics, and nurture a more attentive relationship to planetary breath, energy, and repair. At a moment when “knowing” often means domination, the text considers a luminous alternative: that to perceive is already to participate.

  • World Book Day

    — “These endless—and endlessly necessary—fantasies of the library” as part of AStA’s Choice Ringvorlesung at HBK Braunschweig

    This year, the International Day of the Book coincides with something personally meaningful: I will be giving my performative lecture “These endless—and endlessly necessary—fantasies of the library” as part of the AStA’s Choice Ringvorlesung at HBK Braunschweig this afternoon.

    As described further below, the lecture revisits and reanimates the visual essay “Reading Rooms Reading Machines” (intercalations 1: Fantasies of the Library), ten years after its publication. Through a blend of historical vignettes, speculative fragments, and reflections on digital and decolonial ecologies, the library emerges not only as a site of memory, resistance, and transformation—but also as a polyphonic resonant space for thinking otherwise.

  • These Endless—and Endlessly Necessary—Fantasies of the Library

    — a performance lecture at the “It’s a Book” art book fair Leipzig on the occasion of the 10-year anniversary of “Fantasies of the Library”

    On 29 March 2025, I presented a performative reading titled “These Endless—and Endlessly Necessary—Fantasies of the Library” as part of this year’s “It’s a Book” symposium at the Academy of Fine Arts (HGB) in Leipzig. The event marked the tenth anniversary of “Fantasies of the Library,” the first volume in the “intercalations: paginated exhibitions” series I co-edit, and offered an opportunity to publicly revisit this work—an invitation extended by Sabine Schmid and Prof. Marcus Dressen, who highlighted their own generative engagement with my visual essay “Reading Rooms Reading Machines.”
    I thus took the lecture as a chance to return to these pages—not to repeat them, but to open new passages. Developing it as performance lecture was a way to re-enter the work through the voice, activating the essay as something that breathes, branches, and remembers otherwise. It was, once more, an experiment in structure and form as I decided to expand the book’s conceptual threads to confront the silences, gaps, and genocidal-ecocidal regimes that also shape the fantasies of the library: Who is speaking? What remains invisible? What forms of listening are needed to inhabit the unseen, the uncatalogued, the unread?
    Reading aloud offered a way of giving resonance to words, modulating air in space—a sonic body of vibration and intimacy. Paired with a collaged palimpsest of visual sequences, the lecture aimed to open a reflective, vulnerable atmosphere: moving through vignettes, speculative references, and conceptual motifs around the library as an entangled site of knowledge, memory, violence, and resistance.
    A little daring—and deeply joyful to try something new! I’m already continuing the work—and that’s the best part: this generous invitation opened up a path I’ve been wanting to explore for a while.
    With sharp rhythm and real depth, the whole symposium brought together brilliant contributions by Katrin Mayer, Maria L. Felixmüller, Philipp Neumann, and Raimar Oestreich. Thank you!

  • Algae, Atmosphere, and Adaptation

    — an interdisciplinary study trip with MA Transformation Design to the Venetian Lagoon

    In November, I traveled to Venice with twenty-one Transformation Design MA students from HBK Braunschweig for a one-week field study exploring algae and seaweed as catalysts for ecological imagination. The lagoon served as a living case study to examine shifting coastlines, climate adaptation, and more-than-human futures. In dialogue with scientists, designers, artists, and activists, we investigated the cultural and atmospheric roles of marine organisms—once overlooked, now vital in the fight for climate justice. The excursion was part of my studio course “Imaginationen des Lebendigen,” which centered algae as a medium of speculative design and socio-ecological transformation.

  • New Publication: “Palimpsests of Imperial Desire” in Dark Botany

    — peer-reviewed essay published in “Dark Botany: The Herbarium Tales,” Open Humanities Press, 2024

    My essay “Palimpsests of Imperial Desire” has just been published in the peer-reviewed volume “Dark Botany: The Herbarium Tales,” edited by Sigi Jöttkandt, Prudence Gibson et al. (Open Humanities Press, 2024). The text draws from my PhD research and critically revisits my work with herbarium and agrobotany collections at the Indonesian Institute of Science and the Herbarium Hamburgense, developed through “Reassembling the Natural.”
    Built from two excerpted sections of my thesis, the essay examines extractivist imaginaries and archival absence, foregrounding both a forgotten set of Dutch-colonial glass plate negatives documenting plantation transformation in Java, and a curatorial collaboration with the Herbarium Hamburgense’s head of collections Matthias Schultz. Our resulting installation addressed the intertwined scientific and economic agendas of German botanical collectors working in the Global South during the imperial era.
    “Palimpsest of Imperial Desire” appears alongside contributions that challenge dominant botanical epistemologies and expand the field of critical plant studies.
    *****
    With contributions by Giovanni Aloi, Matthew Beach, Tamryn Bennett, Edward Colless, Prudence Gibson, Ryan Gordon, Lisa Gorton, Sigi Jöttkandt, Nick Koenig, Verena Kuni, Anna M. Lawrence, Vanessa Lemm, Rebecca Mayo, Aunty Deirdre Martin, Arina Melkozernova, Elaine Miller, Jacob Morris, Anna Perdibon, Anna Madeleine Raupach, Georgina Reid, Heather Rogers, Betty Russ, Erica Seccombe, Marie Sierra, Christina Stadlbauer, Anna-Sophie Springer, Bart Vandeput, Juliann Vitullo, Anna Westbrook, and Maya Martin-Westheimer.

  • Publishing Worlds: From the Book of Nature to Paginated Ecologies

    — a week-long invitation to work with students at HKB Bern in Switzerland

    This special Carte Blanche invitation offered the opportunity to design an intensive study week focused on rhizomatic and ecocritical approaches to vegetal materialities in and on paper. Together with participants from the HKB MFA program and other Swiss art schools— as well as my invited guests, K. Verlag designer Katharina Tauer and Vida Rucli from the Robida Collective—we explored material entanglements and conceptual networks within (book-)artistic research and its ecological conditions—through lectures, readings, screenings, and excursions, for instance to Herbarium Bernense, the city’s stunning botanical dry collection. A truly generative week of shared thinking, sensing, and reimagining the politics of publishing and the agencies of plants. Thank you to Caroline Bourrit for the flawless organization!

  • New Publications at the 2024 Biennale Arte in Venice

    — launching “Robert Zhao Renhui: Seeing Forest, Vol. 1 of 2” at the Singapore Pavilion of this year’s Venice Biennale

    I’m excited to share the release of “Robert Zhao Renhui: Seeing Forest,” the official publication accompanying the artist‘s exhibition for the Singapore Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. Curated by Haeju Kim and commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum, “Seeing Forest” offers a deep, sensorial exploration of multispecies entanglements within Singapore’s secondary forests.
    As co-editor of the book, together with Etienne Turpin, it was a pleasure to shape this richly layered volume featuring essays by Jeffrey Kastner, Marcus Yee, and Yong Ding Li, alongside an expansive reader with contributions from Matthew Gandy, Jamaica Kincaid, Max Ernst, Farish A. Noor, and many others.
    “Robert Zhao Renhui: Seeing Forest, Vol. 1 of 2” is available in both print and open-access formats at the links below.
    *****
    P.S. Our publishing atelier also produced to “The pleasures we choose,” the book for the Finland Pavilion—another beautiful project at this year’s Biennale.

  • Keep Calm and Become a Doctor

    — PhD thesis defended at Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture, University of London

    I’m thrilled to share that I successfully defended my practice-led doctoral thesis, “Species of Accumulation and the Necromass of Natural History,” at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London.
    It was an inspiring conversation with my two brilliant external examiners: Dr. Lindsay Bremner (Professor of Architecture and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange in the School of Architecture + Cities at the University of Westminster) and Dr. Ros Gray (Reader in Fine Art, Critical Studies and Programme Director of the MA Art & Ecology at Goldsmiths).
    Deep thanks to both of them—and to my supervisor Prof. Susan Schuppli—for the rigor, care, and generosity of their engagement.
    *****
    Keywords: Environmental humanities; Postcolonial ecologies; Decolonial museum praxis; Environmental justice; Decolonizing nature; Critical natural history; Necroaesthetics; Ecofeminism; Ecopoetics; Ecological collapse; Natureculture; Anthropocene; Plantationocene; Capitalist ruins; Alfred Russel Wallace; Lynn Margulis; Evolutionary theory; Symbiogenesis; Multispecies ethnography; Intersectional exhibition making; Experimental collaboration; Intersectionality in curatorial practice; Interdisciplinary writing; Narrative experimentation; Planetary architecture

  • Inter folia, aves

    — New Spanish-language monograph published by Greylock Editorial Barcelona

    I’m pleased to announce the release of “Inter folia, aves,” now published in Spanish. This monographic essay, originally released in English as part of “intercalations 6: These Birds of Temptation,” explores the ways scientific, artistic, curatorial, and editorial practices shape our understanding of birds—and how these practices are embedded in longer histories of representation, classification, and colonization.
    Translated by Blanca Gago, the Spanish edition extends the reach of this work as a paginated exhibition, offering new audiences a reflection on the bird book as both a site of entangled knowledge production and a colonial format. The essay proposes an epistemological shift toward forms of interrelation and reciprocity—toward seeing the world not as static facts, but as constellated, metabolic circumstances and layered temporalities.
    This perspective—attuned to impact, affect, and becoming—grounds an ecologically and decolonially informed curatorial and publishing practice.

  • Starting a professorship at HBK Braunschweig

    — Anna-Sophie will be teaching first and second year in the M.A. Transformation Design

    In October, I’ll begin a new professorship in Transformation Design at the Institute for Design Research, University of the Arts, Braunschweig. I’m looking forward to meeting new colleagues, students, and collaborators—for an adventure in the classroom and beyond! Below is the official course description (more information under “Teaching” in the menu at the top):
    “The transformation towards greater sustainability, global justice and a ’good life’ is the central social issue of our time. Design in particular must rise to this challenge and use innovative products, services, and systems to help develop suitable alternatives to seemingly no-alternative development. But, transformation design doesn’t just want to offer new solutions to problems. It wants to stimulate social debates and rethink things and circumstances. In other words: Transformation Design consistently understands design from the perspective of human, social, and cultural needs and attempts to make a sustainable contribution to the future viability of society without neglecting the economic [and as I would emphasize, ecological] framework. The Master’s program in Transformation Design at HBK Braunschweig teaches project-based skills to reflect, initiate, and help shape change processes. Questions of sustainability and future viability of society play a central role and are viewed from a design method and theory perspective. At the same time, design itself is being reinvented as processes, connections, and interactions with other disciplines, institutions, and civil society are taken into account in the design process.”

  • Ph.D. Thesis submitted

    — and viva completed in March 2024

    Today, I officially submitted my practice-led PhD thesis at Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture—marking a significant milestone in my academic journey. Entitled “Species of Accumulation and the Necromass of Natural History,” the thesis revisits the diverse interventions of “Reassembling the Natural,” the curatorial research initiative I co-founded and have cultivated over the past decade. My research interrogates natural history collections as critical planetary architectures of coloniality and ecocidal investment—structures that, far from being relics, continue to shape today’s finance-driven schemes of so-called “green” and “sustainability” capitalism.
    *****
    This work would not have been possible without the incredible support and inspiration of so many. My heartfelt thanks go to my supervisor Susan Schuppli for her brilliant guidance, and to Ros Gray and Lindsay Bremner for their generous insights as thesis examiners. A special acknowledgment is owed to my long-time collaborator and life companion, Etienne Turpin, whose unwavering support and intellectual (and personal) partnership have been crucial throughout this endeavor. Together, we initiated “Reassembling the Natural” and the “intercalations: paginated exhibitions” series, inter alia, which laid the fertile ground for this research.
    ******
    This thesis is as much a product of theoretical engagement as it is a reflection of countless encounters with people, landscapes, and nonhuman species. The teachings and generosity of activists, scientists, curators, and artists—especially in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Amazonia—have profoundly shaped the ethical, political, and philosophical commitments that inform this work. For this, I am deeply grateful.

  • K. Verlag receives Deutscher Verlagspreis

    — German Publishing Award

    K. Verlag has been awarded the 2023 German Publishing Prize! Thank you Claudia Roth, the jury, and the whole team in Bonn for this incredible news!! Our thanks also goes to all of the fantastic people in our orbit: all the amazing artists, authors, editors, and curators, as well as designers, text editors, and translators with whom we have developed publications that aim to make some kind of difference in the world; our distributors and the many faithful colleagues in the field of bookshops and libraries all over the world; and, of course, to our dear readers—so many of you who are following K.’s program actively and who support us with your interest and engagement! 



  • The Library as Idea & Space

    — essay in Katie Holten’s artistic anthology “The Language of Trees”

    I’m delighted to share that I have a short piece included in “The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape,” edited by Katie Holten and published by Tin House. This stunning volume invites readers to engage with the natural world through new and ancient forms of storytelling—translated, quite literally, into the shapes and signs of a tree alphabet developed by Katie.
    The inclusion of my text builds on a conversation Katie and I began nearly a decade ago. While she was first publishing her first edition, “About Trees,” with Broken Dimanche Press, I was coediting “The Word for World is Still Forest”—and we decided to collaborate. We exchanged contributions across both volumes, and I used her open-access tree typeface to literally “translate” the institutional foreword by Haus der Kulturen der Welt of our book into a forest of glyphs.
    The “Language of Trees” continues this shared practice of rewilding literature. Alongside my little text, you’ll find an extraordinary lineup of contributors Katie has gathered, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Amitav Ghosh, Zadie Smith, Ada Limón, Robert Macfarlane, Radiohead, Elizabeth Kolbert, Plato, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and many more. Wow!

  • New Project Launched: Processing Process

    — Ana Hupe’s “Footnotes to Triangular Cartography’ kicks off K. Verlag‘s new series of artists’ monographs

    Co-initiated by Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin, ”Processing Process” is a new series by K. Verlag unfolding at the intersection of artist monograph, aesthetic manifesto, and solo exhibition. The series celebrates artists whose research-based practices open singular paths through cultural, historical, ecological, and speculative terrain.
    Each volume unpacks processual and site-sensitive methodologies while reflecting on how these intersect with different communities, landscapes, and media. Committed to the book-as-exhibition, the series is a platform for genre-defying creations that expand publishing as an artistic and epistemic practice.
    The first volume in the series is Ana Hupe’s ”Footnotes to Triangular Cartography,” a poetic and critical investigation into archives, Afro-diasporic knowledge, and the ghostly legacies of colonial Brazil.

  • Publishing as Repair: Ecologies of Encounter

    —a symposium celebrating the launch of “Climate: Our Right to Breathe,” co-published by L’Internationale and K. Verlag

    What role can publishing play in times when public space for culture is under threat? This symposium explores art writing, editing, and distribution as acts of care, resistance, and collective imagination. Rather than treating books merely as containers, we ask how publishing—across printed, digital, and hybrid forms—can shape non-violent, interdisciplinary spaces of encounter. Organized around the idea of ecologies, the conversation considers publishing as a relational and reparative practice, unfolding across communities, institutions, and platforms.
    *****
    With: Yvette Mutumba, Sinziana Ravini & Fredrik Svensk, Martí Manen, Paul O’Neill, Eva Weinmayr, Maryam Fanni, Jonatan Habib-Enqvist, Sezgin Boynik, Milena Khomchenko, and Anna-Sophie Springer. Organized on the occasion of the release of the book “Climate: Our Right to Breathe,” edited by Hiuwai Chu, Meagan Down, Nkule Mabaso, Pablo Martínez, and Corina Oprea, and co-published by L’internationale Online and K. Verlag.

  • Books as Micro-Spaces for Research

    — lecture at the Singapore International Festival of Photography

    How can editorial and design processes be developed synthetically—insisting on the mutuality of content and form—to concurrently rethink and reshape our political, ecological, and theoretical commitments?
    In this talk, I’ll share aspects of my collaborative, multidimensional practice as Co-Founder and Publisher of the Berlin-based publishing atelier K. Verlag. Since 2011, my work has been dedicated to exploring the book as a mutable micro-space for exhibition-making and curatorial-editorial inquiry. I’ll reflect on how complex research can be translated into publications whose conceptual rigor and experimental design create radical aesthetic and discursive interventions.

  • The New Forest

    — Instructing a one-week joint Masterclass with artist Robert Zhao Renhui during Singapore International Photography Festival 2022

    “The New Forest” is a five-year collaboration between the Institute of Critical Zoologists (ICZ) and the Singapore International Photography Festival, unfolding through a series of masterclasses and culminating in an exhibition or publication. Now in its second year, the masterclass invites artists to embark on long-term projects that critically reexamine humankind’s relationship with nature.
    Participants will work alongside ICZ Founder Robert Zhao and invited guest instructor Anna-Sophie Springer—researcher, editor, and director of the Berlin-based publishing atelier K. Verlag. This year’s thematic focus centers on the “art of noticing” within everyday environments, particularly in unexpected sites beyond parks, nature reserves, or zoos.
    Robert and Anna-Sophie will support participants in developing personal projects that reconsider ecological perspectives and possibilities, while also introducing curatorial and editorial strategies for expanding such inquiries. Topics of discussion include the consequences of the presumed separation between culture and nature, and the persistent privileging of humans over other species.
    The program is suitable for artists working in (but not limited to) lens-based media, especially those interested in the entanglements of nature with history, science, and society.

  • No Surface Matter: On Publishing as Relay

    — double lecture for PLATFORM P in Seoul/Korea

    PLATFORM P is a center established by Mapo-gu, one of the 25 autonomous districts in Seoul, in July 2020 with the aim to support small presses and creators in the publishing field. The center has rental spaces for creators and libraries and cultural spaces for the public and supports various experimentations and training programs. Launched last year, the international exchange program is a quarterly event where we invite globally renowned publishing experts, including publishers, editors, and book designers, via ZOOM to meet and form ties with creators in Korea. In our first international exchange program scheduled in June, PLATFORM P has invited Anna-Sophie Springer, to speak about her curatorial-editorial practice. Her two presentations will be introduced and moderated by Seungjoo Lee, publisher of Manilbooks, who recently produced and published the Korean translation of Springer's co-edited book Fantasies of the Library. [The event will be in English with Korean live interpretation.]

  • This Berlin Murmuration

    A celebratory launch of These Birds of Temptation — intercalations 06
    co-published by K. Verlag & Haus der Kulturen der Welt
    hosted by Zabriskie Buchladen

    ... with performances, readings, music, and other avifaunal excitements composed by contributors to the publication, including Anna-Sophie Springer, Etienne Turpin, David Rothenberg, Barbara Marcel alongside other special guests ...

    [the event is free & all are welcome]

  • Goldrausch Fellowship for Women Artists studio visit at K. Verlag

    — atelier talk by Anna-Sophie Springer for the current Goldrausch cohort

    The Goldrausch project for women artists promotes the careers of outstanding, emerging women artists. The offices and headquarters of this independent professional training and one-year postgraduate programme for female visual artists is just next door to the K. Verlag atelier on the Fahrbereitschaft compound. It was a pleasure to welcome Goldrausch for the second time and meet the 2022 cohort to share some insights of my own personal development and career and talk about publications and curatorial-editorial methodologies.

  • Design Thinking and Research Translation

    — Practice Mentor MA Forensic Architecture & Research Architecture Goldsmiths, University of London

    How do we build a synthetic editorial-design process that insists on the mutuality of content and form, allowing us to concurrently rethink and reshape contemporary political, ecological, and theoretical ambitions and expectations? In this workshop, Anna-Sophie Springer will share aspects of her collaborative and multidimensional practice as co-founder and publisher of the Berlin-based publishing atelier K. Verlag Since 2011, she has been committed to working with the book as a space of exhibition. During our meeting, we will discuss ways of relaying complex research into publications whose conceptual rigor and experimental design create radical aesthetic and discursive interventions.

  • The Explorers' Legacy

    — Practice Mentor, MA Environmental Architecture, Royal College of Art, London

    The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, London is one of the oldest and largest institutions of colonial science in the world. During this daylong excursion led and organized by Christina Leigh Geros and Anna-Sophie Springer, students will be introduced to the complex history of the site and its infrastructures. "While," as one panel in the palm house states, "motivations for plant hunters have changed over the years, from collecting status symbols to economic botany to conservation," we will aim to think beyond these proud frameworks and confront the role of logistics, extraction, industrialization, appropriation, denaturalization, and exoticization at play in the constructs of nature-as-commodity and the gaze-as-spectacle that is this garden.

  • Between the Field and the Page – Books as Practice

    — Practice Mentor, MA Environmental Architecture, Royal College of Art, London

    How do we build a synthetic editorial-design process that insists on the mutuality of content and form, allowing us to concurrently rethink and reshape contemporary political, ecological, and theoretical ambitions and expectations? In this workshop, Anna-Sophie Springer will share aspects of her collaborative and multidimensional practice as co-founder and publisher of the Berlin-based publishing atelier K. Verlag Since 2011, she has been committed to working with the book as a space of exhibition. During our meeting, we will discuss ways of relaying complex research into publications whose conceptual rigor and experimental design create radical aesthetic and discursive interventions.

  • How Long Will This Be Going On?

    — lecture in the Relative Time/Little Time Speaker Series convened by Bik Van der Pol and Mosaic, the interdisciplinary journal

    Join us for a series of digital lectures via Zoom on what we have called relative time/little time. The lectures concentrate on the different granularity of current time relative to the period beginning in 1989, which marked a decisive acceleration of economy, growth, extraction, globalism, movement, population, transportation, etc., and ending in 2020, when over a few weeks the world came to a halt under the influence of the pandemic that spread as rapidly and widely as people, commodities, and capital once moved. With lectures by Frédéric Neyrat, Erin Manning, Jonas Staal, Dominic Pettman, Paul Huebener, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Andrea Robbins & Max Becher, Arthur Anyaduba, Melanie Braith, Sean Matharoo & Melanie Unrau, as well as Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin.

  • These Birds of Temptation

    — intercalations 6 is hot off the press !

    THE BOOKS MADE IT !!! 📘📖 Paper shortages and general turmoil have delayed this beauty of a book to flutter out into the world. After sending it to print in mid-November 😱it was finally delivered 🕊🕊🕊 When we first began to plan this volume back in 2013, we hadn’t expected that it would become a collection so deeply concerned with extinction. Looking at it now, in 2022, this of course makes utmost sense. The diverse contributions in “These Birds of Temptation” interrogate the role of art and poetry in times of ecological collapse and offer reflections on how birds matter in our making sense of worlds and the earth. Birds, then, are not treated as passive objects but are considered as multi-dimensional beings with inherited and unfolding “life ways,” a concept from environmental philosopher and fellow bird friend, Thom van Dooren.

  • Un-/Learning Archives in the Age of the Sixth Extinction

    — The Whole Life Academy: Archives & Imaginaries Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin

    Closed workshop convened by Steve Rowell & Priyanka Basu with individual sessions by scholars, researchers, and curators, Sandra Jasper, Anna-Sophie Springer, and Florian Wüst: It is complex to think of landscapes as and with the concept of archives, as we set out to do when conceiving of the workshop “Un-/Learning Archives in the Age of the Sixth Extinction” for the Whole Life Academy Berlin. We were combining our interests as an art historian working on archival practices of contemporary artists and filmmakers and an artist who deals with landscape and makes use of archival concepts and forms in proposing a workshop on archives as related to overlapping sites of nature/culture, climate change, deep time, and the built environment.

  • Goldrausch Fellowship for Women Artists studio visit at K. Verlag

    — atelier talk by Anna-Sophie Springer for the current Goldrausch cohort

    The Goldrausch project for women artists promotes the careers of outstanding, emerging women artists. The offices and headquarters of this independent professional training and one-year postgraduate programme for female visual artists is just next door to the K. Verlag atelier on the Fahrbereitschaft compound. It was a pleasure to welcome director Hannah Kruse and the 2021 cohort to share some insights of my own personal development and career and talk about publications and curatorial-editorial methodologies. Don't miss the upcoming group exhibition "Mutual Matters – Goldrausch 2021," 20 November to 5 December 2021 at Fahrbereitschaft, Große Halle, Herzbergstraße 40–43 in 10365 Berlin-Lichtenberg. If you go: drop a line and come say hi at K. as well!

  • 도서관 환상들: Fantasies of the Library – The Korean Edition

    — published by Manil Books in Seoul

    책을 선택하고 연결하면서 뜻밖의 교류가 일어나고, 무한한 도서학적 상상의 세계가 열린다. 지식의 견고한 조직체로 여겨지는 도서관을 어떻게 새로운 연결·배치가 일어나는 공간으로 재구성할 수 있을지 말한다. 큐레이토리얼 사고와 실천의 핵심이 선택하고 연결 짓는 행위라고 한다면, 도서관은 무한히 탐험 가능한 큐레이토리얼 영역이다. As books are selected and connected, unexpected exchanges occur, and an infinite world of bibliological imagination opens up. This book by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin is about the library as both a form of knowledge organization by categories anda space where new connections and arrangements occur. If the core of curatorial thinking and practice is the act of selecting and connecting, the library is a curatorial realm that can be explored indefinitely.

  • Publishing as Relay

    — an essay-conversation for the book "Art Writing in Crisis" between Anna-Sophie Springer & Caleb Waldorf

    This new book includes a long discussion between Anna-Sophie Springer and artist and Triple Canopy co-founder Caleb Waldorf about their respective experiences in small-scale independent publishing. It was created between summer of 2019 and 2020, which means that the experience of the global pandemic changed the perspectives to a certain extent mid-way through. In summer 2021, the effects of the pandemic on publishing as practice can be felt even more strongly because so many bookshops worldwide were closed and cultural production experienced a kind of digital overload—which made book distribution very difficult. So, this new book is timely! The description by the editors reads as follows: "Fires burn around the world. Systemic discrimination persists, precarity is increasing, and the modern democratic project faces challenges from all sides. Art writing helps us to understand art which in turn helps us to understand such crises. But art writing itself is in crisis. Newspapers and magazines offer fewer channels than ever for independent art criticism, persistent institutional biases exclude the positions of many, and a proliferation of platforms presents opportunities and challenges in equal measure. This volume presents contributions from a broad range of authors who address the social and political dimensions of art and art writing in the contemporary context, and the ways in which new writing and publishing practices promote critical engagement among readerships as never before." With contributions by: Contributions by Taylor Renee Aldridge & Jessica Lynne, Kalia Brooks Nelson, Maddee Clark, Justin Clemens, Ben Eltham, Fayen d’Evie & Lizzie Boon, Dan Fox, Maria Fusco, Sarah Gory, Boris Groys, Paul James & Brad Haylock, Flavin Judd, Sara Kaaman, Jessica Gysel & Katja Mater, Bella Li & Justin Clemens, Freek Lomme, Rachel Marsden, Nikos Papastergiadis & Hou Hanru, Megan Patty, Barry Schwabsky, Anna-Sophie Springer & Caleb Waldorf, and Astrid Vorstermans.

  • Planetary Imaginaries in Print

    — MFA seminar lecture at ZHDK on invitation by Knowbotiq Research

    On invitation of Profs. Yvonne Wilhelm and Christian Huebler, Anna-Sophie Springer will share some recent projects by K. Verlag that convey the publishing atelier's research approach and conceptual methodologies with regards to ecological thinking and resistant publishing cultures.

  • Interconnection and Multidimensionality

    — a conversation by Vida Rucli with Anna-Sophie Springer in Robida 7 "Forests"

    This year began with a seemingly never-ending pandemic lockdown, but I was also blessed with the ongoing correspondence with Vida Rucli, a founding editor of the magazine Robida. We exchanged a lot of thoughts about forests and exhibition making as she asked many questions about my collaborative work, especially with regards to producing the "intercalations" series and the exhibition cycle "Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest." The new publication of the collective that Vida is a part of grew to 336 pages and contains pieces by dozens of contributors; they are published in their respective languages. Below you can access a pdf of our conversation. Enjoy!

  • ponds among ponds: an exhibition of threshold behavior & nested life

    — curated by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin at ICA Shanghai

    "Viruses teach us that we humans are really little more than a multi-species ecosystems among multi-species ecosystems—ponds among ponds." — Tobias Rees, 2020
    ...................................
    The exhibition "ponds among ponds" reconsiders the relationship between organisms and their various endo- and exo-somatic ecologies, while proposing an alternative approach to natural history. Instead of beginning from the assumption that the organism is the basic unit of evolution, what if we consider the multi-scalar, nested ecologies of life as symbiotic webs that challenge linear ideas of competition and survival of the fittest? "ponds among ponds" is the final iteration of the international exhibition-led inquiry "Reassembling the Natural" (2013–21)—into the role of natural history in a time of climate crisis and biodiversity collapse.
    ...................................
    "ponds among ponds" and its related events are presented as the final season of "The (Invisible) Garden," a two-year artistic research program that inquires into the garden as a method that shapes our understanding of Nature and our relationships to other species. From Fall 2019 through Spring 2021, the Institute of Contemporary Art at NYU Shanghai presents artists, thinkers, and practitioners, through exhibitions and events, to consider the garden and ask how might we denature Nature?
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    "ponds among ponds" features works by:
    ...................................
    Agency
    Anne Duk Hee Jordan
    with Pauline Doutreluingne
    John Feldman
    with Lynn Margulis
    Mao Chenyu
    Maximilian Prüfer
    Monika Lin
    with Zaanheh Project
    ...................................
    The exhibition was curated by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin, and was organized by ICA director & curator Michelle Yeonho Hyun with Zhu Sicong, who were assisted by Chen Yijiao, Wang Yuxin, Chen Yindi, and Qin Xiaoyan.

  • What do Libraries Mean to You?

    — MIT Press features "Fantasies of the Library" for National Library Week

    "For many of us in publishing, libraries are a special place of reverence. They are where we fell in love with a particular topic and field, or with the methodical process of research, or perhaps simply with reading in general. Undoubtedly, libraries are crucial tentpoles of our local communities, offering spaces to meet and learn and explore. For National Library Week, we asked several of our authors to share what libraries mean to them; the answers by Gabriella Giannachi, Sofia Y. Leung, Nanda Bonde Thylstrup, and others just might have you reaching for your own library card."
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    Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin shared this:
    ..............................................
    "After publishing Fantasies of the Library, we were lucky enough to rescue an incredible library from the natural history museum collections at Martin Luther Universität in Halle–Wittenberg (they amalgamated their collections and were about to throw all the old shelves away), move it to Berlin, and spend over a year refurbishing and rearranging our salvaged GDR verlagsatelier library. In this process, the K. Verlag studio has become something of a Reading Room/Reading Machine of its own—a sprawling library in an overgrown greenhouse garden—and it is a properly Borgesian fantasy to work together making books inside this wooden sculpture housing a vertiginous collection of over 13,000 volumes. 'Fantasies,' as Sophie wrote in Fantasies, 'are neither a product of fancy nor of spontaneity, but result from the passionate and careful treatment of the library as a curatorial space.' Indeed."

  • K. Verlag @ Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair

    — 400 international art publishers gather at pmvabf.org

    K. Verlag is participating for the first time in the Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair!

    After such a very strange year I am truly excited to present K. Verlag at the Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair. Opening on 24 Feb, Printed Matter, the legendary New York space for artist books, will launch its first Virtual Art Book Fair, presenting more than 400 exhibitors from over 40 countries. Held shortly after the 15th anniversary of the inaugural NY Art Book Fair, this online Fair gathers PM’s NY and LA Art Book Fair communities and expands the Fair's reach to welcome more exhibitors and visitors than ever before.

    Over the course of four days, PMVABF will be a gathering place for visitors to learn about and purchase books from all around the world. K. Verlag's "virtual book" was designed and built in collaboration with two formidable young designers, Ginny Rose Davies and Megan Ricca from London, who recently completed a joint internship with K. Verlag. In addition to presenting six (!) new titles we will offer a great selection of prerecorded multimedia content, such as artist films by Joel Tauber and Dora García, and sound pieces by Allen Weiss, Kleine Humboldt Galerie, and others. We've also prepared a free program of daily live events, including book talks, a workshop, Q & As, and music, featuring Anette Baldauf, Ruth Estévez, Sílvia das Fadas, Dora García, Hanna Mattes, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, David Rothenberg, Paulo Tavares, and others.

    The past year has been challenging for the field of independent and artists’ publishing. I am grateful and excited for Printed Matter to take the chance to bring this worldwide community together to uplift the important work of both new and longstanding exhibitors. Join us all for one of the largest international gatherings yet in celebration of artists' books and art related publishing. Even though it’s online we are absolutely looking forward to seeing you!

  • Is' mir Regal

    — a lovely portrait of my publishing atelier K. Verlag in today's Tagesspiegel by Robert Klages

  • Co-opting Natural History

    — an online lecture about "Reassembling the Natural" organized by fieldstations.net

    In this invitation by the German Architecture Center DAZ in Berlin, we will look back at previous projects of the “Reassembling the Natural” cycle and share some considerations motivating our current research; here, we are interested in how the relationship between organisms proposes alternative approaches to depicting natural history. Instead of beginning from the assumption that the speciated organism is the basic unit of evolution, what if we consider nested ecologies of life as symbiotic kin that challenge ideas of competition and fitness? Following our readings of Lynn Margulis, Ed Young, Scott Gilbert, and David Quammen, among others, we ask, how can novel spatial strategies and interventions in the standard display technologies of the Natural History Museum contribute to de-naturalizing its presentation of human supremacy?

    Curated and moderated by Lidia Gasperoni, Matthias Böttger, and Christophe Barlieb of fieldstations.net. The association promotes research about the Anthropocene – the new geological age in which human activity has become one of the most dominant influences upon the transformational processes of the earth.

    The event, in cooperation with the Department of Architectural Theory at the Institute for Architecture at the TU Berlin, is part of the DAZ series “We need to talk!”.

  • Club Donna

    — invited guest lecture at Peter Behrens School of Art, Hochschule Düsseldorf

    Club Donna is about a renewed relationship with land, matter, "nature" and localities against the backdrop of the new climate condition. Participants and organizers (Sophie Dars & Carlo Menon, Accattone magazine) explore the work of contemporary artists, photographers, architects, botanists and landscape designers. At the same time, in practice, they borrow from them the tools to investigate our own environment—built and unbuilt, domestic and public, imaginary and actual. Looking forward to being today's guest!

  • Earthseeds #4

    — Joining curator Maria McLintock in a conversation with students from the MA Environmental Architecture, moderated by Mingxin Li, Yutong Wu, and Christina Leigh Geros

    Spanning three days, "Earthseeds" is an online exhibition and event series celebrating the work of the cohorts graduating the MA City Design and MA Environmental Architecture at the RCA's School of Architecture. Led by the student community from both graduating cohorts, "Earthseeds" features talks, conversations, performances and group discussions, focusing on issues of care, the environment, technology, climate, and social justice. The title, "Earthseed," is in reference to Octavia Butler’s book "Parable of the Sower." To sow, to care, to adapt, to persist in the face of adversity and to change: a story that speaks to the uniqueness of this year and to our students’ capacity for adaptation and creativity even in the most difficult circumstances.

  • The UnNatural History Museum: Unbuilding the Museum Typology

    — invitation for Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin as guest critics at the AA, London

    After months of not being able to travel and/or visit the institutions where a lot of our exhibition-led research takes place I look forward to engage with the cohort of students led by tutors Lily Jencks & Jessica Reynolds. In collective and individual projects, the studio class has been exploring the role of the natural history museum in the context of current ecological emergencies. Due to the pandemic constraints, which have prevented the students to be together in London, each one instead engaged with a museum that is local to them in their home country. After identifying a specific local ecological and/or curatorial problem each designed a proposal for an intervention that rethinks the museum's structure, role, and purpose. I look forward to learning about their ideas and strategies, and to contribute to their reflections via experiences gathered through "Reassembling the Natural"!

    The UnNatural History Museum: Unbuilding the Museum Typology, a year-long experimental studio led by tutors Lily Jencks & Jessica Reynolds at the Architectural Association 2020–21

  • Love with Obstacles (Amor Rojo)

    — a virtual book talk

    To mark the release of Dora García’s publication, "Love with Obstacles (Amor Rojo)," the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Massachusetts is hosting a virtual book launch and conversation exploring the rich legacy of Alexandra Kollantai. Kollontai (St. Petersburg, 1872–Moscow, 1952) was an October revolutionary, social activist, feminist, and intellectual who was a key agitator for the sexual and social emancipation of women. Moderated by Senior Curator-at-Large Ruth Estévez, Dora García will be joined by Rina Ortiz (a Mexican scholar of Kollontai and contributing writer to the book) and Anna-Sophie Springer (the books editor and director of its publisher, K. Verlag), and by Shoniqua Roach (Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies & Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University). Tune in for a lively discussion on Kollantai’s contributions towards protecting women’s rights, the importance of fiction and private correspondence in the construction of political thought, and how Kollantai’s ideas on radical social change continue to inspire and mobilize a new generation of feminist thinkers and activists. The conversation will be hosted online via Zoom Webinar. Please RSVP to receive login credentials!

  • K. Verlag Open Studio

    — with "silvopasture works" videoart screening & K. Verlag book table

    After 2.5 years of a council ban to host public events at our studio compound, Fahrbereitschaft, our landlord finally got this permission again. To celebrate this good news the ASSET studio and K. Verlag publishing aterlier is participating in the Open Studios. Come by and peruse the K. Verlag book table or watch a re-run of my recently curated video program "silvopasture works" (see below) on Friday, 2 Oct, 6–9 pm. Hope to see you on Friday to kick off the days of the Open House weekend!

  • Musa × paradisiaca L. by Martina Pozzan

    — photographic display at The Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga

    In Fall 2020, the exhibition "Naturecolony" (curated by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin) was planned to take place at The Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga. A new instantiation of our "Reassembling the Natural" project, this interdisciplinary exhibition was focusing on histories of colonial transactions in the Western hemisphere and had been in the works for two years—when it was abruptly called off in May due to the extended campus closures during the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic. Luckily, one position—by Martina Pozzan—which was already produced to be displayed in the outdoor area of the university campus, emerged as a solo installation. With her research project "Musa × paradisiaca L." Pozzan explores the messy space between natural and artificial dimensions of botanical collecting. In vitro propagation methods, seed banks, and both cryogenic and living collections operate at the intersection of technoscientific research and the market-driven commodification of life itself. The photographic series displayed focuses on techniques of biological multiplication in the service of capital accumulation.

  • Hortus Politicus

    — a Master's seminar and public talk in the "Ways of World-Making" lecture series at Design Academy Eindhoven

    This session with the MA students from DAE was originally going to happen in-person in February. It was my first professional engagement which got rerouted into an online seminar due to the Sars-COV-2 pandemic. Within the new circumstances of physical distancing and the highlighted perversities of supply chain capitalism, my talk "Herbarium Politicum" felt more timely than expected: with a virus currently reminding us of biological connectedness and shared (albeit asymmetrical) vulnerabilities, many urbanites not reliant on subsistence agriculture have recently taken up planting vegetables and/or gardening—whether as a welcome pastime while sheltered at home or as more conscious method towards a decelerated awareness for life's becoming. The role of gardens as spaces of care and survival (i.e. for political prisoners or the enslaved) suddenly took on an uncanny, quotidian resonance—albeit their singular and incomparable histories steeped in systemic violence and inequality. I want to thank Tim Roerig for the kind invitation and perfect organization as well as all attendants for their participation and feedback.

  • Deutscher Verlagspreis 2020

    K. Verlag is one of this year's recipients of the Deutscher Verlagspreis 2020 (German Publishing Prize) by the Federal Ministry of Culture. We are most grateful for this fantastic recognition. This is the best. Congratulations to all the other bookmakers, too!

  • Herbarium Politicum

    — a talk by Anna-Sophie Springer on the occasion of Uriel Orlow's exhibition at Kunsthalle Mainz

    Uriel Orlow’s moving exhibition “Conversing with Leaves” at Kunsthalle Mainz gathers four of his major installations from the last years into one institution. In his recent work “Theatrum Botanicum” (2015–18), Uriel tells the story of the garden planted by Nelson Mandela and his fellow inmates in Robben Island Prison, South Africa. My presentation “Herbarium Politicum” connects these lifelines with the letters and herbarium sheets of Rosa Luxemburg—for whom pressing flowers and plants into neat albums was a means for staying grounded and connected to the world during her years as political prisoner. Expanding from Uriel’s meticulous practice, I will also introduce a series of related projects by other artists and activists—many times both—whose work with seeds, gardens, and forests is inherently political—and often literally a question of life and death. Via the insights of writers such as Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Banu Subramaniam, and Sophie Chao we will reflect on the importance of reciprocity, kinship, belonging, and care—in order to understand even better what is so radical about “plant love” in the face of insect decline, uncontrollable forest fires, and decades-old agrarian anxieties. [Photo: “Squirrel's Revenge” (2017), Uriel Orlow. © Uriel Orlow & VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019]

  • Hanna Mattes, "The Lunar System" out now with K. Verlag

    — readings from "The Lunar System," and sounds from outer space,
 with Hanna Mattes and Anna-Sophie Springer

    What could be better than concluding the year with a new publication embracing Love and Cosmic Forces?

 If you are in Berlin, please join me and my fantastic friend Hanna Mattes on Sunday for the release of "The Lunar System"—her new book of poetry and photography—featuring images taken during a total solar eclipse as well as from sites in Chile’s Atacama Desert. We'll have some snacks and drinks there and just look forward to spending some time in this beautiful place together. Hope you can make it!

  • "Best Book Design" award for K. Verlag

    — Ontario Association of Art Galleries selects "The Work of Wind: Land" (2018)

    The K. publication "The Work of Wind: Land,” co-edited last year by Chrisine Shaw & Etienne Turpin—and designed in collaboration with Katharina Tauer—has won this year’s “Best Book Design Award” in the Canadian OAAG competition of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries!
    ............................................................
    The publication is part of the curatorial initiative The WORK OF WIND: AIR, LAND, SEA, developed in 2018–21 by Christine Shaw, Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Continuing K.’s curatorial approach to publishing by inviting the reader-as-exhibition-viewer to navigate a broad multidisciplinary field of inquiry and experimentation, the book aims to foster a deeper public awareness of the complex entanglements of ecologies of excess, environmental legacies of colonialism, the financialization of weather, contemporary catastrophism, politics of sustainability, climate justice, and hopeful resilience.
    ............................................................
    Huge congratulations to everyone! I am especially proud because this is the second national design award K. Verlag has received this year together with designer Katharina Tauer!

  • Nina Canell, Robin Wakins, and Anna-Sophie Springer with K. Verlag

    — exhibition at Progetto, Lecce, Italia

    During our collaborative residency hosted by Progetto in Lecce, Nina, Robin, and Anna-Sophie shared five-hundred hours together exploring the town and the surrounding Salento region. This experience culminates in the launch of the "Vegetable Teratology Colouring Book," by Nina Canell & Robin Watkins, and published by K. Verlag. We are presenting this publication in a two-fold launch: a veggie market stand and an exhibition. The first intervention takes place on the evening of the organic farmer's market at Le Maniffature Knos, a local cultural center; at Progetto itself, the "Vegetable Teratology Colouring Book" is the centerpiece of a shelf structure set up from found materials holding our material archive gathered throughout the residency and a selection of publications from K. Verlag's program.
    ...................................................................
    In the light-flooded rooms of the palazzo housing Progetto, this multifarious structure created by Anna-Sophie Springer and Robin Watkins is merely one part of the exhibition opening on 19 October. In other rooms of the space we present a series of sculptural assemblages by Nina Canell. These were made on-site with found objects and primary materials such as clay and stone. Often using location-specific conditions, Nina's installations respond to heat or moisture, calling for presence to replace form in sculpture. In the context of our joint residency—focusing on the deviation and contour of things as they come together or fall apart—Nina's assemblages echo themes raised by the "Vegetable Teratology Colouring Book" as they also emphasize material agency and sculptural process.
    ...................................................................
    With extra special thanks to Jamie Sneider (Progetto), Enrico Tramecere (Terraje Ceramiche), and Cesare Papaleo.

  • Collaborative residency with Nina Canell & Robin Watkins at Progetto in Lecce (Salento, Southern Italy)

    For much of this year, I've been daydreaming about an "escape" to Southern Italy at the end of summer and was planning to go to Matera in Basilicata to see Armin Linke's exhibition. Such joy then when Nina Canell and Robin Watkins invited me to embark on a joint artist residency at Progetto in Lecce (Puglia). We spent three weeks meeting and talking to local artisans, organic agriculturists, and food activists—as well as exploring the many fantastic beaches and our endless indulgence in food and wine. At the end our time there, we launched a new publication, the "Vegetable Teratology Colouring Book," co-edited by Robin & Nina and published by K. Verlag.

  • A FOREST (BOOK) FOR THE WORLD

    — a two-day seminar with MA students at Institut Kunst Basel

    While forest fires have been raging in Amazonia, Indonesia, the Arctic, and many other regions worldwide, my two-day seminar will focus on the archetypal role of plants for life on earth. We will discuss the concept of the Forest philosophically and biologically as a concept for multiplicity, diversity, and reciprocity. Unpacking the meaning of the "Anthropocene" as a species concept with limited ability to capture the capitalist-extractivist dynamics that have produced the current ecological crisis, we will explore alternative terminologies centering specifically on human-plant relations—including the "Plantationocene" as suggested by Donna Haraway, Jason Moore, and Anna Tsing, and the "Planthroposcene" as suggested by Natasha Myers and colleagues. Throughout the seminar, we will counterpoint our theoretical work with examinations of curatorial, editorial, artistic, and writerly methodologies dealing with our subject matter in a manner of lived, ethico-aesthetic practices. Thank you to Margrit Ritzmann for the wonderful invitation! (The photo shows a pack of Birch Leaf Tea I brought back from Finland the week before and which we were drinking together throughout the seminar.)

  • K. Verlag at Editions Showroom of art berlin art fair

    This September, K. Verlag is among the 12 invited publishers presenting their work in the Salon of the art berlin in the building of the former Tempelhof airport.

  • "Rehearsing Hospitalities" in Helsinki

    — invitation by Frame Contemporary Art Finland

    Within the curatorial field, the question of hospitality is so crucial. How lovely to receive an invitation to travel to Finland (for the first time) and be a guest of "Rehearsing Hospitalities" put together by the team around Jussi Koitela and Yvonne Billimore at Frame Contemporary Art Finland. Excited to join them for a dense week of events and looking forward to meeting new and old friends!

  • K. Verlag awarded for one of the "25 Most Beautiful Books Made in Germany"

    — with "On Reconciliation / Über Versöhnung," ed. Dora García

    This winter, it was for the first time that I submitted a book to Stiftung Buchkunst Frankfurt's annual competition for the “25 Most Beautiful Books” made in Germany: "On Reconciliation / Über Versöhnung," edited by Dora Garcia, on the love relationship and intellectual friendship of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. In June, the jury selected this book as one of these 25, and today I will celebrate together with other publishers, designers, authors, et al. at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt! Really looking forward to being there—and congrats also, especially, to these three wonderful collaborations: Dora García, Etienne Turpin, and Katharina Tauer!

  • Compensatory Postures: Natural History, Necroaesthetics, and Humiliation

    — essay co-authored with Etienne Turpin in "Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions," edited by Tristan Garcia & Vincent Normand

    In this new co-authored essay, Etienne and I revisit our curatorial methodology of “Reassembling the Natural” by focusing on our fieldwork and collection research about the coloniality of ornithological science, especially regarding the tropical birds of paradise. The text was commissioned by Tristan Garcia & Vincent Normand for their edited publication “Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions.” The book follows the academic workshop series at ECAL Lausanne, where we first presented aspects of our work presented in the essay back in April 2016. The book also includes texts by Etienne Chambaud, Elitze Dulguerova, Anselm Franke, Tristan Garcia, Fabien Giraud & Raphael Siboni, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Yuk Hui, Pierre Huyghe, Jeremy Lecomte, Stéphane Lojkine, Sami Khatib, Rafael Mandressi, Vincent Normand, Peter Osborne, Filipa Ramos, Juliane Rebentisch, Joao Ribas, Pamela Rosenkranz, Lucy Steeds, Olivier Surel, Kim West, and Charles Wolfe. Published by Sternberg Press in August 2019.

  • The Transient Witness

    — a workshop conceived and convened for The Whole Life Academy (HKW)

    Together with Etienne Turpin and artist Assaf Gruber, I am hosting a workshop stream during the workshop week "The Whole Life" organized by the Haus der Kulturen Berlin to take place in various art institutions in Dresden. Our workshop "The Transient Witness" starts with observations around the relocation of Edigio Marzona's extensive collection from his private home in Berlin-Charlottenburg to a purpose-built museum in the capital of Saxony. As part of the program, we will have the chance to visit the Grünes Gewölbe, the Porcelain Collection, and the Mathematics & Physics Salon of the SKD. We look forward to an inspiring week, especially meeting our international participants (Arnika Ahldag, Eva Bentcheva, Gulzat Egemberdieva, Anna Harezlak, Luidmila Kirsanova, and Ayman Nahle) and all of the other people taking part in this gathering!

  • Des-Habitat by Paulo Tavares

    — new K. Verlag publication in English and Portuguese editions

    I am proud to publish Paulo Tavares's contribution to the exhibition "Bauhaus imaginista": "Des-Habitat" is Paulo's graphic-textual intervention into Lina Bo Bardi's magazine "Habitat." The project mobilizes a series of design strategies central also to "Habitat" itself, such as re-appropriation, collage, and displacement. By focusing on the context from which materials were originally taken Paulo shows how, by virtue of its modern visual language, "Habitat" functioned as a framing device to conceal its own coloniality—a suspenseful media history in light of suppression, complicity, and decolonization. The publication was first presented at "Bauhaus imaginista" in São Paulo (2018) and will be launched at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin on 14 March 2019. Texts include an essay by Paulo Tavares and a preface by curator Marion von Osten.

  • Radical terrestrial

    — a week-long Theoriewoche seminar at Institut Kunst, FHNW Basel

    In early March, I'll be returning once again to the BFA students of the Art Institute in Basel. Last time, some in my group found they had learnt quite enough now about the eco crisis... which means that this time I am going to try to focus and bridge more thoroughly the political economic dimension of nature and the ways in which climate breakdown currently drives contemporary politics. On the reading list: Naomi Klein, Bruno Latour, Geoff Mann, and Alexis Shotwell. Looking forward!

  • Prototype for a Museum of Man

    — a workshop for the (Un)-Learning Place: The New Alphabet School, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin

    The seminar “The New Education: Denaturalizing the Cultural Pedagogy of Museum Technologies” explores the traditional belief in human exceptionalism as one of the foundational principles of museum traditions. The goal of this week-long event, conceived by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin with Andreas Döpke for The New Alphabet School at Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, is a collaborative research process for participants to better create and better understand a global-yet-partial taxonomy of the technologies of human exceptionalism in museological culture past and present. The group’s findings will be presented under the title “An Incomplete Museum of Anthroposupremacism” during the Opening Days of the Haus der Kulturen’s new two year cycle “The New Alphabet.” The curriculum event “(Un-)Learning Place” is curated by Boris Buden and Olga von Schubert; it brings convenes 80 international participants in a week-long workshop series led by eight Berlin-based collectives from the scenes of art, culture, and activism with the aim to develop transdisciplinary, decolonial, and anti-hegemonic strategies in relation to data-based knowledge, translation, archives, and embodied infrastructures.

  • Atelier lecture at the École de Recherche Graphique, Brussels

    — class visit to "Pratiques artistiques et complexité scientifique"

    Looking forward to my invitation to the interdisciplinary MA studio class by Giampiero Caiti and Kobe Matthys. I will speak for about two hours about the methodologies and research questions driving the exhibition cycle "Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest," which is finally coming to a close this upcoming Friday, 14 Dec in Halle/Saale. All welcome, I think, but event starts at 9 AM!

  • On Networks & Colliding Voices – On Air with Tomás Saraceno

    — a one-day discursive event at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris

    On invitation Studio Tomás Saraceno, Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin have prepared the one-day discursive event “On Networks & Colliding Voices” with a keynote by Bruno Latour, and talks and performances by d’bi.young anitafrika, Albert-László Barabási, Fernando Ferroni, Vincenzo Napolano, Lisa Randall, Bronislaw Szerszinski, and Estelle Zhong Mengual. The event is moderated by Anna-Sophie & Etienne together with Tomás Saraceno on the occasion of the artist’s current exhibition “ON AIR” at Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

  • ECOLOGY: Sessions on Territory, Urbanism and the Anthropocene

    — invited lecture at ETH Zurich, Design and Architecture Faculty

    "Session on Territory" is a series of public debates on the political economy of architecture and territory. Focusing on how the epoch of the Anthropocene reframes our conceptions of the urban and shapes new ecologies, the seminar’s objective is to unravel contemporary forces at work in the formation of the built and natural environment, and, as importantly to spur debates that challenge the status quo. Every intervention by a guest speaker is followed by a panel discussion with invited respondents. In my session, I will discuss a series of recent research and projects including the exhibition "Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest." The event will be moderated by Dubravka Seculic. Thank you to Marc Angelil for the kind invitation.

  • Species of Exchange: Dickering for Emperor Birds and Macho Ferns

    — invited contribution to the panel "More-Than-Human Imperial Legacies in the Capitalocene" at Max-Planck-Institut Göttingen

    "Scientific expeditions were crucial to projects of colonial expansion and contributed to accruing imperial prestige. The aspiration to dominate nature was intrinsic to imperial demonstrations of power that, as evidence of their superiority, sought to conquer and tame far away landscapes inhabited by exoticized humans and non-humans. The impressive amount of ethnographic objects, plants and animals collected—or rather, amassed and appropriated—over the centuries built the foundation for natural history museums as well as botanical gardens and zoos across Europe. This panel sets to explore how imperial ecological legacies and narratives reverberate in the Capitalocene. Moving beyond imperial (hi)stories that centre on the human experience, we find it crucial to contextualize imperial trajectories in environmental destruction and violence by extending our attention to the increasingly precarious livelihoods of nonhuman actors. The panel stimulates debate on how 'nature' remembers and provides us with rich archives that may enlighten our understanding of how institutions, practices, and ethics that originated under imperialism (e.g. natural history museums, forest management, hunting rights, and animal diplomacy) still figure today." Very excited to spend two days at this workshop at MPI Göttingen organized by Annika Kirbis and colleagues and contribute with a short presentation based on exhibition-related research; more info on program and other participants below.

  • Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest

    — opening of the third part at the Natural History Collections of Martin Luther University, Halle/Saale

    The third iteration of the exhibition is approaching fast! Save the date for the opening of Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald [Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest] in the Natural History Collections of Martin Luther University in Halle/Saale, which will be installed throughout the entire building—that is normally not open to the public in this way. With artworks by Maria Thereza Alves, Ari Bayuaji, Bik Van der Pol, Ursula Biemann, Shannon Lee Castleman/Migrant Ecologies, Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen, Mark Dion, Radjawali Irendra / Akademi Drone Indonesia, Armin Linke with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi, Barbara Marcel, Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vu, PetaBencana.id, SHIMURAbros, Paulo Tavares / autonoma, Robert Zhao Renhui / The Institute of Critical Zoologists

  • The Work of Wind: Land

    — K. Verlag book launch

    As part of a dense program of the contemporary arts festival "The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea," organized by The Blackwood Gallery at University of Toronto/Mississauga, we are launching the first volume in the attendant three-volume book series with a conversation on “this land of forces.” The event is hosted by editors Christine Shaw, Anna-Sophie Springer, and Etienne Turpin. Seven contributors will speak about their work in the book: performance scholar Allen Weiss on the history of art as an itinerant, speculative exhibition; artist duo Pejvak on the border work of Armenian political economic realities; artist Tania Willard on Indigenous land practices born out of a lived connection to the land; and activist Tom Keefer and lawyer Adrienne Telford with D.T. Cochrane on Indigenous solidarity work and the struggle for justice.
    **********************************
    "The Work of Wind: Land." With contributions by Rouzbeh Akhbari & Felix Kalmenson, d’bi.young anitafrika, Amy Balkin, Jesse Birch, D.T. Cochrane, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Anna Feigenbaum, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Ilana Halperin, Tom Keefer, Barbara Marcel, Mimi Onuoha, Tomás Saraceno, Christine Shaw, Juliana Spahr, Adrienne Telford, Etienne Turpin, Allen S. Weiss, Tania Willard, and Eva Wilson. Design by Katharina Tauer.
    **********************************
    Edited by Christine Shaw & Etienne Turpin
    English
    336 pages
    18.5 x 24 cm
    62 Color images
    Hardcover, thread-bound
    ISBN 978-3-9818635-8-1
    28.00 Euros

  • New K. book "On Reconciliation / Über Versöhnung" edited by Dora García

    — Book launch at Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid

    A new K. project was born at the end of June: The bilingual, edited volume and artist's book "On Reconciliation / Über Versöhnung" by Dora García. Developed in the aftermath of Martin Heidegger's posthumously published "Black Notebooks," "On Reconciliation / Über Versöhnung" centers around the letters exchanged between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger from 1925 to 1975 as a departure for a series of essays and conversations aiming to encourage a public debate on a difficult and incredibly timely subject: the question of ethics and intellectual production in the context of personal and/or politically untenable convictions. Dora and I launched the book on the occasion of her solo exhibition "A Second Time Around" at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, where Simon Asencio and Adriano Wilfert Jensen also performed a reading of a selection of the Arendt/Heidegger letters. Find out more about the book via the link below!

  • Exhibition as a Philosophical Problem

    — essay by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin in Graz Architecture Magazine, 2018

    How to present and disseminate [...] knowledge as a way of co-producing it? Exhibition is thus a philosophical problem that travels along with the thematic or conceptual research we do; what, when, and how to exhibit a given set of concerns or ways of working, of various epistemological trajectories or commitments, of intersecting or interfering versions of a given narrative? All of this provokes a persistent rhythm that drives and animates research; not that we only work through exhibition, of course we make books and workshops and lectures too. And, because of that, we are able to be quite precise about the composition of elements of a given work, although there is never an a priori formula for which aspect of research goes into which format of dissemination. We approach exhibitions, like any other philosophical problem, as a way of interfacing with what we don’t yet know how to present, but that we nevertheless feel requires a form for exposition.

  • Goldsmiths Warden's Annual Public Engagement Award 2018

    — Anna-Sophie receives the Commendation award for the Hamburg Zoological Museum edition of "The World as Forest"

    Every year, Pat Loughrey, the Warden of Goldsmiths, University of London, distributes a series of Public Engagement Awards in three main categories. These awards recognize and celebrate the excellent work researchers at all career stages do with members of the public, whether they’re sharing ground-breaking findings with new audiences or collaborating with the public throughout their research.
    ..............................................
    In Spring 2018, Anna-Sophie Springer was selected to receive the “Commendation” in the Postgraduate Researcher category for her work as co-curator of the first round of the exhibition “Verschwindende Vermächtniss:Die Welt als Wald” at the Zoological Museum Hamburg. The Winner in this category is Tom Keene for his project “Database Estate.” The Winner in the Established Researcher category is Prof Jennifer Gabrys for “Deptfort Data Stories.”
    ..............................................
    Quoting Warden Pat Loughrey’s Welcome Address:
    ..............................................
    “An exceptional range of innovative activities and projects were nominated by Goldsmiths staff, showcasing different approaches to engaging the public with research and practice. Our researchers worked with organisations like the BFI, the Labour Party, the Zoological Museum Hamburg and Parliament to engage diverse audiences through film, performance, art and citizen science.
    ..............................................
    There was a real sense that researchers, partners and the public benefited from this work, demonstrating how research in the arts, humanities, social sciences and computing can create positive change in the world. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of the nominees, whose work with the public is a real asset to Goldsmiths and an example to our community, and beyond.”

  • Prop Art

    — Harald Szeemann and the Warenhaus Gebrüder Loeb AG, Bern; an essay by Anna-Sophie Springer

    “One of the most important features of contemporary art making is its being public [Öffentlichsein],” wrote the curator Harald Szeemann in 1969 in a short essay about an exhibition he had organized for the display windows of the department store Warenhaus Gebrüder Loeb AG in Bern, Switzerland. Beginning in the 1950s, Szeemann (1933–2005) spent five decades developing large-scale, highly theatrical group exhibitions whose themes were often based on extensive research. [...] This essay focuses on Szeemann’s work through an unusual set of engagements involving a refashioning of the role of the department store and its window. His long-standing but sparsely addressed relationship with the department store Warenhaus Gebrüder Loeb AG, Bern, Switzerland serves as a prism through which to discuss the idiosyncratic function of spectacle in Szeemann’s seminal thematic exhibitions—first by discussing two group exhibitions staged in the store’s display windows, and then by examining the complex role of an installation Szeemann custom-ordered from Loeb AG’s props workshop when preparing his famous "Bachelor Machines" exhibition. Since 1938, the store’s director, Victor Loeb (1910–1974), an art collector and board member of Kunsthalle Bern, had been an important patron during Szeemann’s progressive years at the institution (1961–69). Their mutual encounter is reflected in the inclusion of artworks by the contemporary avant-garde in Loeb’s collection, whose purchases Szeemann often encouraged. Besides curating two exhibitions in the windows of Loeb’s department store in 1969 and 1971, an even more interesting connection exists to Szeemann’s unique role as commissioning designer of individual pieces. In 1975, Szeemann used the workshops of the Gebrüder Loeb AG to order the fabrication of a three-dimensional rendering of the execution machine from Kafka’s "Penal Colony" for his touring exhibition "Junggesellenmaschinen" [Bachelor Machines]. Fabricated by the facilities that normally built the props for commercial retail displays, this "non-original" artwork makes tangible the tension between art, theatricality, and creative authorship so crucial to Szeemann’s pathbreaking curatorial oeuvre. While the two display window exhibitions serve as case studies for Szeemann’s broad approach to possible exhibition spaces and experimental understanding of the public role of art, the discussion of the so-called "Harrow" in the second part of the essay uniquely illustrates the intricacies and development of his curatorial methodology as an intellectual project.

  • Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald - Teil 2

    Disappearing Evidence: The World as Forest - Part 2

    If you’re in or near Berlin, please join us on 26 April for the opening of the second iteration of "Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald" in the former animal anatomical theater of Berlin’s Humboldt-University, the Tieranatomisches Theater. One-hundred sixty years after the publication of the theory of evolution by natural selection, this ambitious exhibition departs from the expeditions of naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in the 19th century to examine the current destruction of rainforests in Southeast Asia and South America. The artistic positions and curatorial assemblages renounce a romantic image of untouched nature, and instead critically inquire into the legacies resulting from the relentless destruction of highly complex ecosystems. In addition to contemporary art, zoological and botanical objects from the collections of the Humboldt-University and the University of Hamburg can also be seen.
    ****************************************
    With artworks, documents, and positions by
    Maria Thereza Alves
    David Attenborough
    Ari Bayuaji
    Bik Van der Pol
    Shannon Lee Castleman
    Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen
    Mark Dion
    Katie Holten
    Radjawali Irendra / Akademi Drone Indonesia
    Armin Linke with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi
    Barbara Marcel
    Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vu
    PetaBencana.id
    Ed Scholes & Tim Laman
    SHIMURAbros
    autonoma / Paulo Tavares
    Robert Zhao Renhui / The Institute of Critical Zoologists
    ****************************************
    For details on our discursive program "How on Earth?" see below!
    ****************************************

  • HOW ON EARTH?

    Discursive program accompanying the exhibition Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald at TA T

    Many inherited images of nature are no longer adequate given the realities of mass extinction, anthropogenic climate change, and deforestation. Have current forms of land use transformation, ecological disturbance, and species extermination produced a troubled new natural history? The discursive program "How on Earth?" addresses this and other urgent questions about nature, colonialism, and care in the Anthropocene through a series of lectures, discussions, screenings, and guided tours.
    ****************************************
    24/08 from pulp and paper
    19h30 Publication talks with Dubravka Sekulic, Milica Tomic (GAM, TU Graz), Leah Whitman-Salkin (Harvard Design Magazin), Armin Linke, Doreen Mende, and others [en]
    >>>> detailed program here reassemblingnature.org
    ****************************************
    25/08 thinking with the earth
    During the Long Night of the Museums:
    18h00 Exhibition guided tour [de[
    19h30 Lecture by Hannah Meszaros-Martin (Goldsmiths) [en]
    20h15 Lecture by Kenny Cupers (Universität Basel) [en]
    21h00 Screening of "Thinking Like A Mountain," 2018 [de with en subtitles] followed by a Q&A with the director Alexander Hick and a closing panel with all guests and exhibition curators [en]
    23h00 Exhibition guided tour [de]
    >>>> detailed program here bit.ly/2rQuQzh
    ****************************************
    28/04 inhabiting nature
    15–16h00 Curators’ tours [de/en]
    16–19h00 Artists’ talks by Barbara Marcel, Crystelle Vũ, and others; followed by lectures by Shannon Mattern (New School) and Birgit Schneider (Potsdam University) [en]
    >>>> detailed program here bit.ly/2jdkLrZ
    ****************************************
    09/06 imaging & imagining nature
    During the Long Night of Science:
    19h00 Curators’ tours [de/en] and artist’s talk by Maria Thereza Alves [en]
    23h00 Exhibition guided tour [de]
    ****************************************
    26/06 consuming a planet
    20h00 Lectures by researcher Seth Denizen, Max Haiven (Lakehead University), and Shela Sheikh (Goldsmiths) [en]; followed by a screening of "Europium," 2014 [en with de subtitles] and a panel discussion with the artist/director Lisa Rave [en]
    ****************************************
    03/07 becoming extinct
    19h30 “Provisioning Crows: Ecologies of Hope in the Mariana Islands,” lecture by environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren (University of Sydney); followed by a screening of "Point of No Return," 2015 [en with de subtitles] and a panel discussion with the artist/director Antje Engelmann [en]
    ****************************************
    12/08   replicating nature
    10–19h00 Daytrip excursion with Bik Van Der Pol to the artificial Vesuvio at Schloß Wörlitz and the Naumann Ornithological Collection at Museum Köthen
    ****************************************

  • On the Sociality of Birds – Reflections on Ontological Edge Effects

    — announcing Anna Tsing evening lecture on the occasion of Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald

    During the final week of the exhibition, we have the privilege to host Anna Tsing for an evening lecture inside "The World as Forest" in Hamburg! Inspired by her recent travels to the Raja Ampat islands of West Papua in Indonesia, Prof. Tsing has proposed to share new reflections animated by the birdwatching she did together with foreign ornithologists and locals in "the land of the birds of paradise" as Wallace described the area. In the abstract of her talk she asks, "How might quite different kinds of people appreciate birds? And in what ways do birds appreciate (or refuse the attentions of) people?" Responding to anthropologists' worries whether studying nonhuman socialities might fall in line with Western imperial mindsets, she rejoins that "to ignore nonhumans as social beings blithely ignores Anthropocene destruction, which haunts our species too." Thus exploring "overlapping—but non-identical—forms of curiosity" and various economies at play in these birdwatching constellations, Anna Tsing will discuss the potential of "new forms of collaboration across the humanities, arts, and natural sciences: collaborations we may need to survive the Anthropocene." She suggests that "[t]o recognize the dance of more-than-human sociality requires attention both to varied agendas people have with birds and to those birds have with people." Coincidentally, in February we also just returned from a trip to these islands, with many (very) early morning hikes to special spots under special trees in thick forests. Anna Tsing's lecture "The Sociality of Birds: Reflections on Ontological Edge Effects" promises to be a memorable evening and no doubt a highlight of this first iteration of the exhibition before we will take it to Berlin (opening 26 April). [Photo: Red birds-of-paradise, Waigeo Island, Indonesia. By Yulia Bereshpolova, December 2017.]
    ****************************************
    The event will be held in English with simultaneous German translation.
    Doors of the exhibition open at 17h00.
    ****************************************

  • Under Construction: Natural History Futures

    — a keynote by Anna-Sophie Springer at Timespan Scotland's "Practicing Deep Time" symposium

    Practicing Deep Time is a two-day event focusing on Deep Time in arts and heritage: a one-day multi-disciplinary symposium based at the arts organization Timespan in Helmsdale, Northern Scotland, followed by a “field day,” exploring Deep Time concepts across East Sutherland and Caithness. On Friday, Timespan will host a day of talks and workshops. Here, Anna-Sophie Springer will present a keynote drawing on recent work that aims to create sustained conversations about the future of “natural history” through exhibition-led enquiry bringing together natural history collections and contemporary art. A cross-disciplinary roundtable will consider particular issues associated with the communication and interpretation of Deep Time subjects by asking: What methods can we employ to overcome the perceived unknowability of distant pasts and futures? Other presenters include Gavin McGregor, Nashin Mahtani, and Sam Nightingale; the event program also includes a screening of the film Trace Evidence (2016) by Susan Schuppli.

  • Fantasies of the Library: A Bibliophilic Ecology of Mind

    — keynote lecture at the 21st Leeds Contemporary Artists' Book Fair

    Each edition of the annual Leeds artists book fair takes place under the motto of a specific theme. In 2018, this overarching theme is "The Library." The curatorial program accompanying the book fair at the Tetley Gallery includes exhibitions by Madiha Aijaz and Mahbub Jokhio as well as a new iteration of Nick Thurston's publishing studio "The House that Heals the Soul." Moreover, I was invited to give the keynote lecture on Saturday evening by drawing upon my work in Fantasies of the Library (MIT Press, 2016). Echoing the visual essay "Reading Rooms Reading Machines," I wrote a new performance lecture leading through a selection of “library fantasies” from the real world we'd do well dreaming with in 2018.

  • Françoise Vergès: Politics of Forgetfulness

    — keynote moderated by Anna-Sophie Springer for Transmediale Festival Berlin

    “In discussions of technological progress, what are the affected territories, populations and workforces that tend to be forgotten? The embrace of Western Promethean thinking and the belief that “Man” can invent a solution to any problem always seem to leave certain questions unanswered. When different ongoing forms of exploitation—of both humans and resources—are not addressed, dehistoricization and universalism emerge and conceal racialized politics and economic interests. To discuss the long-standing interconnection of colonialism, racism, and capitalism, Françoise Vergès suggests the reading of a different history, that of the “racial capitalocene,” which can challenge Western approaches of knowing. In her keynote at transmediale 2018, Vergès will examine old and new forms of dispossession and colonization, reconnecting past, present, and future. Turning to intersectional, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist methodologies, she will highlight the need for a new politics of the possible—and a politics of lives that matter.”
    ........................................
    Françoise Vergès’s lecture “Politics of Forgetfulness” will take place in the Auditorium of Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, on 1 February 2018 at 18h00. It will be moderated by Anna-Sophie Springer and accompanied by German live translation

  • Touching Nature

    — a presentation on the occasion of Tejal Shah's exhibition Unbecoming at Kunsthaus Hamburg

    On Friday evening, Anna-Sophie will head from CeNak to Kunsthaus Hamburg where she was invited to respond to Tejal Shah’s current solo exhibition Unbecoming by. If you are free and nearby it would be great to see you there at 19h00!

  • Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald

    Opening at the Zoological Museum of CeNak, University of Hamburg

    It’s been 160 years since Alfred Russel Wallace understood the principles of species evolution in the course of his travels through Amazonia and the Malay Archipelago. From 10 November 2017 to 29 March 2018, the exhibition Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald confronts the destructions of these tropical ecosystems in the context of the Anthropocene and mass extinction. A hybrid between thematic exhibition and art exhibition, this intervention in the Zoological Museum Hamburg at Centrum für Naturkunde (CeNak), University of Hamburg, Verschwindende Vermächtnisse presents 13 contemporary works of art—including 8 new commissions—alongside a selection of rare zoological and botanical objects. We’re pleased to announce the names of the participating artists with whom it was a great honor and pleasure to work over the past year!
    ******************************
    Maria Thereza Alves
    Ursula Biemann
    Bik Van der Pol
    Shannon Lee Castleman
    Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen
    Mark Dion
    Radjawali Irendra / Akademi Drone Indonesia
    Armin Linke with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi
    Barbara Marcel
    Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vu
    Robert Zhao Renhui / The Institute of Critical Zoologists
    SHIMURAbros
    autonoma / Paulo Tavares
    ******************************

  • AHA! Festival 2017 "Autonomy"

    — invitation to discuss Reassembling the Natural at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg

    With an invitation by anthropologist David Chandler, Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin will both be speaking at the AHA! Festival 2017 entitled “Autonomy”

  • "ON COEXISTENCE"

    — essay in Faraway, So Close, the book accompanying the 25th Ljubljana Biennial of Design (BIO 25)

    The book, published by MAO and Motto Books, works to explore ways of changing the goals of design culture. By presenting the seven investigative episodes developed within BIO 25 and their interchange with both local archives and broader paradigms, the project aims to turn away from the urgent need to solve problems, and instead open up new frontiers for observation and experimentation. It seeks to consider our inhabited and habitable world for what it is and what it is becoming, and not simply what we think it should, ideally, be.

  • Open Studio during Berlin Art Week

    Come say hi at the new studio on the FAHRBEREITSCHAFT compound in Lichtenberg! Etienne Turpin, Wolfgang Hückel, Katharina Tauer and I will be there working and happy to have a chat about our various projects happening at the moment!

  • Vdrome Interview with Beatriz Santiago Muñoz

    Set in a former US Navy base in Puerto Rico, Ojos para mis Enemigos [Eyes for my enemies] by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz observes how multiple introduced and indigenous species—plants and crops, but also animals, humans and not—share this terrain and together constitute a new space, offering poetic as well as very concrete scenarios of the anthropocene, its devastation but also modes of recuperation. Vdrome asked me to do a short interview with Beatriz to introduce the work. Have a read/look!

  • Landscape and Memory

    — a review of The Word for World is Still Forest by Jason Groves

    Perfectly timed for our book launch-walk in Berlin’s Tiergarten last night—which was so magical thanks to Sandra Bartoli kindly guiding us to some of the oldest trees—Jason Groves also composed a beautiful reading of intercalations 4 which he published on the Feedback Blog of Open Humanities Press. A scholar of German literature, Jason contributed some excerpts by Walter Benjamin and Franz Hessel about the Tiergarten and even the Amazon on Horseback sculpture where we departed from.

  • take the books outside

    —a launch walk for intercalations 3 & 4 in the Tiergarten

    Please join me and Etienne for a guided tour of the various natures of the Tiergarten—including its oldest trees—with Berlin-based architect Sandra Bartoli. During the tour, visitors will also encounter special guests Richard Pell, director of the Center for Postnatural History; Jason Groves, co-editor of the open access blog Feedback; and, Katharina Tauer, designer of the intercalations: paginated exhibition series. Dress for a walk in the park!

  • Contesting the Necroaesthetics of the Anthropocene

    —invited presentation of Reassembling the Natural at the conference Art/Nature: Contemporary Art in Natural History Museums and Collections, Berlin Museum für Naturkunde

    This international conference by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes pilot project, Art/Nature: Artistic Interventions at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin convenes a series of presentations and panel discussions to reflect on the collaboration between protagonists from the worlds of contemporary art and natural history museums. The conference addresses the expectations, potentials, values, and possible limitations of such interactions and interventions from the perspective of curators, artists, and researchers. Together with Etienne Turpin, I will present our Reassembling the Natural project in the closing session “Difficult Legacies” on 27 June. Other conference speakers include Tal Adler, Claude d’Anthenaise, Bergit Arends, Ariane Berthoin Antal, Yara Castanheira, Tony Clark, Michael John Gorman, Gaby Hartel, Petra Lange-Berndt, Janet Laurence, Susanne Schmitt, Thomas Schnalke, Barbara Stauffer, Frank Steinheimer, Ulrike Stottrop, D’Arcy Wilson, and Laurie Young.

  • Postcards from the Anthropocene

    —chairing Session 5 on June 23rd

    As I am accompanying Etienne for his keynote lecture at this symposium, I feel quite flattered to have been asked to participate a little, too, by chairing a session in the morning of the second day. Presentations are by Marianna Tsionki, Alexandra Halkias, and Mark Peter Wright and deal with rare earths, toxicity, biopolitics, and infrastructure—apparently from a curatorial perspective. Excited to meet these speakers and look forward to other keynotes by Nigel Clark, Mark Dorrian, Jussi Parikka, Joanna Zylinska as well as my Ph.D. supervisor Susan Schuppli.

  • Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago

    intercalations 03

    Following the earlier fourth (!) volume, the third volume of the intercalations: paginated exhibitions series has also arrived from the printer! Reflecting and refracting on the role of colonial science in the tropics, Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago gathers contributions by Akademi Drone Indonesia, George Beccaloni, Iwank Celenk, Lucy Davis, Fred Langford Edwards, Christina Leigh Geros, Matthias Glaubrecht, Geraldine Juárez, Radjawali Irendra, James Russell, Mark von Schlegell, SLAVE PIANOS, Anna-Sophie Springer, Zenzi Suhadi, Paulo Tavares, Rachel Thompson, Etienne Turpin, and Satrio Wicaksono, with design by Katharina Tauer. intercalations is co-published by K. Verlag and Haus der Kulturen der Welt and was made possible by the Schering Stiftung.

  • Graham Grant Awarded to Reassembling the Natural

    With a current rate of extinction estimated at over one hundred species per day, the anthropogenic extermination of non-human forms-of-life on Earth is rightly a cause of serious alarm. Such a rate of extinction is made even more troubling when one considers that with the disappearance of each species, the planet not only loses one of its constituent actors, but also greatly diminishes the processes of planetary evolution, as the potential for species’ adaptability rapidly decreases with each and every loss. Following several years of commissioned field work in the global biodiversity hotspots of Nusantara and Amazonia, as well as extensive archival research in major natural history collections, this edited volume weaves together voices and narratives, from science and documentary, to philosophy and poetry, to ask how the concept of “nature” might be meaningfully reassembled against the backdrop of mass extinction.

  • ON MAKING RESEARCH PUBLIC

    —invited guest lecture in the Ph.D. Seminar at EnsadLAb / Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs, Paris

    This year's Ph.D. seminar at the Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs, Paris, is focused on strategies of “publication.” Here, the main guiding questions are how to make research (in art and design) public? And how can media such as the book, the library, and the exhibition be mobilized as research tools in this process? As guest lecturer in the seminar, I was invited to respond to these questions based on some of my recent projects including Fantasies of the Library, intercalations, and Reassembling the Natural.

  • Speed-Reading Science Fictions

    —some remarks on intercalations 3 & 4

    As a last-minute addition to the speaker's list of the symposium “On Nature, Race, and Gender: The Politics of the Contemporary Debates around Art, Culture, and Research,” I will present a speed-reading through the third and fourth volumes of intercalations. Looking forward to contribute among other presentations by Chus Martinez, Filipa Ramos, Tejal Shah, Trevor Paglen, Ingo Niermann, and Natascha Sadr Haghighian.

  • Fantasies of the Library

    —reviewed by Jussi Parikka in Leonardo On-Line

    [Excerpt] "Fantasies of the Library is a useful book in adding to the recent art and library projects some well–articulated thoughts. It resonates with the writing done recently by such scholars as Shannon Mattern and offers a particularly artistic take on similar concerns. This comes out well in [Springer's] visual essay 'Reading Rooms Reading Machines' that moves from contemporary arts of the book and its forms of organisation to the situations where it is staged and visible, addressable and usable; from practices and technologies of reading to the imaginaries, the forms and materials of organisation knowledge that are the entry point to contemporary discussions of data and organisation. Indeed, as Springer puts it, this all reveals how the book is to be considered 'a situation and a practice,' just like the library itself."

  • The World as Forest

    —a week-long Theoriewoche seminar with Anna-Sophie Springer

    Using the new intercalations publication, The Word for World is Still Forest, as a starting point, my second seminar at Institut Kunst in Basel will combine readings and discussions with excursions behind the scenes of the city's Tropenhaus of the Botanical Gardens, the Museum der Kulturen, and the Natural History Museum. Traversing through the archives of institutions that collect natural and cultural material—books, artworks, artifacts, and scientific specimens—we will reflect on how these institutions organize what is considered knowledge and explore strategies and practices with which we can activate and connect these spaces in ways in which they are not normally viewed by dominant, colonial cultures. The seminar is an introduction to applied critical thinking with a focus on more-than-human entanglements and ecological urgencies of our times.

  • "Volumen: Bände – Räume. Das Buch als Ausstellung"

    —reprint of the German translation of my 2012-essay "Volumes: The Book as Exhibition"

    in the publication "it's a book..." accompanying the Leipzig Independent Publishing Fair 2017 organized by Peter Cornicius, Anne Dietzsch, Michael Dikta, Markus Dreßen, Albrecht Gäbel, and Jenny Schreiter. With my thanks to Inga Seidler.

  • intercalations 03 & 04

    —forthcoming volumes in paginated exhibition series

    In 2017, HKW und K. Verlag continue their collaboration within this six-part publication series with two volumes: "Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago" reflects on the changing role of colonial natural history collections in the current ecological crisis; "The Word for World Is Still Forest" is an homage to the forest as a turbulent, interconnected, multinature. The series is made possible by the Schering Stiftung.

  • "To Look Around Rather Than Ahead: On the PRESENT FUTURE IN THE ART OF TAMÁS KASZÁS AND ANIKÓ LORÁNT"

    —essay by Anna-Sophie Springer

    in Exercises in Autonomy, ed. Joanna Sokolowska. Lodz: Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi, 2017. 164–78 (Polish & English).

  • INDEX FINGERS

    A lovely little review of Fantasties of the Library (MIT Press, 2016), edited by Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin, by Gill Partington in the Times Literary Supplement, 18 January 2017: 33.

  • Curating Environmental Imaginaries

    —a Roundtable at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission organized by Dehlia Hannah, Cynthia Selin, and Angela Pereira

    as part of the workshop "A Year without a Winter: Fictions and Policy." Considering how creative interventions can unlock new ways of thinking about our relationship to the environment and our political agency within it, the workshop interrogates new narratives of climate and climate change emerging in the context of the arts and transdisciplinary scholarship. As an invited speaker in the Roundtable "Curating Environmental Imaginaries," I will introduce some of the core concerns and strategies of "Reassembling the Natural." Also presenting at this Roundtable are Ken Eklund, Jacob Lillemose, and Carolina Sobecka.

  • SHAPESHIFTING FACT & FICTION

    —a week's workshop with Anna-Sophie Springer

    where we will critically interrogate books, exhibitions, archives, and collections, attending to how they record and disseminate knowledge, experimenting along the way with traversals, shape-shifting, fact and fiction.

  • Lab Verde

    —a research trip and workshop on art, nature, and science in the Amazon, Brazil

    that explores contemporary environmental issues of Amazonia as well as its role for the planet's ecological balance with interlocutors from the arts, humanities, biology, ecology, and natural sciences. My journey to Manaus (as well as thereafter to Sao Paulo) is generously funded by a Goethe-Institut Research Travel Grant for Curators.

  • “Anxious Instantiations”

    —essay by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin

    in response to Isabell Lorey & David Lyon’s “Anxious to Secure” keynote session at transmediale 2016 for the “Anxious to Organize” blog

  • "Necroaesthetics: Denaturalising the Collection"

    —essay by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin

    L'internationals Online, No. 3 "Ecologising Museums," July 2016.

  • "Vestiges of 125,660 Specimens of Natural History"

    —photo essay by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin

    Stedelijk Studies, No. 04 "Between the Immersive and the Discursive: Curating Research in 21st-Century Art Museums," July 2016.

  • Libraries : Exhibitions : Libraries

    —a lecture by Anna-Sophie Springer

    as part of the series "Library Residencies"

  • A Taxonomy of Palm Oil

    —an installation by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin

    as part of the exhibition "Emergent Ecologies: NYC Edition"
    curated by Eben Kirksey and others

  • "Reading Fantasies & Other Fantasies of Reading"

    —Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin in conversation with Daisy Nam

  • NECROAESTHETICS —Life and Death of Natural History

    —a lecture & workshop by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin

    as part of the curatorial lab "Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions" organized by Vincent Normand & Tristan Garcia

  • A Palimpsest of Species and Spaces: Curating the Anthropocene

    —a lecture by Anna-Sophie Springer

    as part of the Art, Culture, and Technology program's Spring 2016 Lecture Series, "Agencies & Urgencies"

  • "Inter Folia Aves: Reading Bird Books as Curatorial-Editorial Constellations"

    —essay by Anna-Sophie Springer

    in Publishing as Artistic Practice, edited by A. Gilbert. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016. 134–52.

  • "Filtering the Anthropocene: A Visual Montage as Proxy"

    —essay by Anna-Sophie Springer reflecting on the Anthropocene Curriculum 2014, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin

    Excerpt: "A question we asked was: How can we highlight the visual component as one more voice and available apparatus in the collaborative and multiple process of writing-reading-making our (or any) presentation? The slide sequence, therefore, was composed while listening to other group members as they spent around one hour preparing their contributions based on pseudo-researching and collating found scientific information. Operating as two methodologically compositional poles, the recited (but in this instantiation, here, henceforth scripted) and the visual articulations of our presentation aimed to open up a conceptual field of tension: a transversal space for creative reflection, association, wonder, confusion, and debate—literally, a filter to both enhance and question the processes of knowledge production and their mediation."

  • A TAXONOMY OF PALM OIL

    —an installation by Anna-Sophie Springer & Etienne Turpin

    as part of the exhibition "Emergent Ecologies"
    curated by Eben Kirksey and others

  • Few Straight Lines in A Forest: A Ligneous Constellation

    —a lecture by Anna-Sophie Springer

    in response to Dr Paulo Tavares in the Visual Culture Department's 10th-anniversary lecture series, "Permissions: The Way We Work Now"

  • 12 CONTRIBUTORS, 5 PUBLICATIONS, 5 YEARS

    Eva Weinmayr recommends FANTASIES OF THE LIBRARY:

    "I went over this book again and again: It’s such a rich read about the power of the library, in history or contemporary, institutionalized, private or revolutionary (for example Occupy, Gezi Park). This book makes clear that the library’s power lies not only in being a container of knowledge, but in the experiences and connections it creates amongst its users. Drawing on intriguing examples, the authors discuss the implications of spatial arrangements, the politics of collecting and cataloging, as well as accessibility. Most of all, it brings back to mind a revolutionary function of the library today: “it turns marketable goods into public goods.”

  • Little Birds / Little Machines

    —a workshop for the 2015 SYNAPSE International Curators' Network of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin in collaboration with Sylke Frahnert & Frank Steinheimer

    As part of the 2015 gathering of the SYNAPSE International Curators' Network of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, together with Etienne Turpin I organized the workshop Little Birds / Little Machines, which included a visit to the Ornithological collection of the Museum für Naturkunde for a presentation by ornithologists Sylke Frahnert and Frank Steinheimer on elements of the collection for further development in the annals of minor ornithology (forthcoming in intercalations 06—These Birds of Temptation).

  • Blogging for the SYNAPSE International Curator's Network

    —a writing commission on more-than-human themes in resonance with the HKW's APE CULTURE exhibition

    A SYNAPSE member since 2013, I am very excited that the Haus der Kulturen der Welt has invited me to produce a series of blog texts in the months surrounding the upcoming exhibition APE CULTURE and the 2015 SYNAPSE workshop in July.

  • The Library as Idea and Space

    — contribution in ABOUT TREES by Katie Holten

    When we found out that we were both working on books "about trees," Katie Holten and I decided that we must trade pieces: She published an excerpted chapter from Fantasies of the Library in her amazing anthology About Trees while I included her Tree font in The Word for World is Still Forest.

  • Colonizing the Exhibition Space

    — an interview with Willem de Rooij by Anna-Sophie Springer

    “Colonizing the Exhibition Space,” in Fillip, No. 18, Summer 2013: 34–40.

  • The Subjective Object

    — exhibition book edited by Anna-Sophie Springer for Kulturen des Kuratorischen

    The Subjective Object engages with the controversial site of the ethnographic museum and the role of the archive. In particular, the 1920’s photographic archive of Indigenous tribes from India by the German physical anthropologist and racist theorist Egon von Eickstedt (1892–1965) serves as a case study for an investigation into the role of historical artifacts in light of contemporary political situations. The nine interviews with curators, artists, anthropologists, and social workers provide the core of the book actively discussing the complicated issues around the archive’s function in producing knowledge. An annotated thread of images serves as a critical apparatus addressing the visual history of ethnographic display and classification practices—both in the scientific field as well as the cultural field at large. Questioning the assumption that the archive presents the “fact” of the “Other,” three literary texts counterpoint the inherent fantasies within scientific research. Just as the book begins with an archive—the Eickstedt photos—the book ends with a new archive—photos of the exhibition The Subjective Object—(Re)Appropriating Anthropological Images at the GRASSI Ethnographic Museum of Leipzig—illustrating the project’s desire to not only engage with the history of display but also to propose a future of display strategies and social engagement.

  • The Museum as Archipelago

    — essay in Scapegoat Journal "Excess"

    An older essay on fluid cartographies that I still enjoy very much and which ends with these words: