CROSS-CULTURAL

Johanna Di Blasi was born in 1968, and is a cultural journalist, art critic and blogger from Austria. She is a staff member at RefLab, the social media platform of the Reformed Church of Zurich, and an editor for Kunst und Kirche. She has previously worked as an editor in the capital editorial department of the Madsack Media Group (RND) in Berlin. She studied History of Art, German Studies and Theology, in Berlin and Vienna, and has a doctorate in History of Art. Her book, Das Humboldt Lab. Museumsexperimente zwischen postkolonialer Revision und szenografischer Wende, was published by transcript Verlag (=Edition Museum) in 2019.

Noa Ha is a postcolonial urban researcher. She has taught and conducted research at higher education institutions and research centres in Berlin and Dresden. She is currently guest lecturer for the MA in Spatial Strategies at the Weissensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin, and is acting Director of the National Racism and Discrimination Monitor (NaDiRa) at the German Centre for Integration- and Migration Research (DeZIM). Her work focuses on postcolonial urban research, migrant and diaspora remembrance politics, critical integration research and the critique of racism. Her publications have appeared in various anthologies, journals and catalogues; her anthology entitled European Cities: Modernity, Race and Colonialism, which she edited with Giovanni Picker, University of Glasgow, is soon to be published by Manchester University Press, and her article Städtische Episteme dekolonisieren: Europa und die Europäische Stadt nach 1989 als koloniale Ordnung will appear in Geographien der Kolonialität, published by Sybille Bauriedl und Inken Carstensen-Egwuom.

Founders of the Leuchtturm Berlin initiative

Sven Lochmann hails from the Ruhr Valley. He is a creative mind and works as an independent computer scientist and designer. His work is punctuated with numerous cups of coffee, interspersed with yoga sessions and photographic excursions.

Konrad Miller grew up in southern Germany. He is a lawyer and works for international companies in the field of images and IT. He is also perennially curious, and enjoys talking to everyone he possibly can.

Jointly, they are slightly over one hundred years old, and almost four metres tall. A few years after German reunification, they both found themselves in Berlin, enjoying its unique atmosphere and freedoms, when their paths happened to cross. A few years later, studies and work took them both to other cities, and indeed other countries, but Berlin always remained their spiritual home. Three years ago they returned to Berlin, and have spent that time appreciating the tolerance and cosmopolitanism of the city, and rediscovering its various neighbourhoods together.

They come to the Humboldt Forum almost every day. However, the ‘reconstructed’ quote encircling the base of the cupola irritates them both. Immediately after it was unveiled, they launched the Leuchtturm Berlin initiative, calling for a positive contemporary message to be placed as a counterpoint to the historical quote.

Friederike Sittler is Head of Department for Background, Culture and Politics at Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Chair of the Journalistinnenbund e.V. Born in Westphalia, she studied theology, political science and communication science and worked for rbb, including a time as Managing Editor, before joining Deutschlandradio. She is a presenter at Inforadio, a correspondent for ARD-Hauptstadtstudio, and Editor-In-Chief for social and religious affairs on radio, TV and online.

Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper is an art historian, and has held the post of Professor of Monument Conservation and Urban Heritage at the TU Berlin since 2002. From 1988 to 2002, she worked as a monument conservator in Berlin. She has for many years been actively involved in numerous controversial urban debates concerning monuments from, and testaments to GDR history, as well as post-war modernist buildings in East and West: political monuments of the GDR era, the Wall, the Palace of the Republic, the Cultural Forum, large suburban housing estates. Since 2016, Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper has been spokesperson for the DFG Identity and Heritage Research Training Group. Her work focuses on: theory of monument value and cultural heritage, event and memory topographies, the politics of memory, architecture and urban planning in the post-war modernist period; she has also authored numerous publications on the aforementioned topics.

Alfred Hagemann has been Head of Department for History of the Site at the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss since February 2018. He is an art historian, and has previously curated a variety of exhibition projects for the Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Gärten, including the inaugural installation at Schönhausen Palace in 2009 in Berlin-Pankow, the Friederisiko exhibition on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich the Great in 2012 in Potsdam, and Frauensache – Wie Brandenburg Preußen wurde (Women’s Business – How Brandenburg Became Prussia) at the Charlottenburg Palace in 2015.

Laura Goldenbaum is an art historian. After studying art and visual studies and archaeology in Berlin and Rome, she completed her doctorate in Florence and Berlin and has been working as a research assistant for artistic direction at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin since 2016. She is currently working on image anthropology, media history, and aesthetic reception and effect in global art history.

Annette Ueberlein is a freelance art producer from Berlin and works internationally on the conceptual development and implementation of art projects. She creates installations, exhibitions, film and photography in close collaboration with artists such as Tacita Dean, Thomas Demand, Simon Starling, Olafur Eliasson, Sabine Hornig, and Henrik Hakansson.