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„Ganglien“, Bernhard Kathan, 2019

RC Cultures in Contact

This Research Center illuminates cultural contacts and their societal relevance in a global dimension. On the one hand, it is dedicated to media phenomena such as literature, film, music, and photography, which emerge from situations of cultural contact and transfer and engage with these situations. On the other hand, it explores contact phenomena from a theoretical and methodological perspective. In so doing, we focus particularly on the creative potential of cultural contacts, which takes shape in the experience of border crossings, the duplication and multiplication of perspectives, and engagements with ‘old’ experience and new environment. While being aware of the potential conflict inherent in cultural contact, we shift our attention to the creative strategies employed to overcome this conflict. Cultural contacts facilitate a ‘double gaze,’ through which self and other can be viewed simultaneously. The experiences of migrants, members of indigenous minorities, and representatives of countercultures can thereby make the constructed nature of cultures visible and, through their multiple or non-situatedness and their hybridity, can open up new perspectives on cultural contact and transfer.

 Website | Contact: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Birgit Mertz-Baumgartner (Head), Dr. Eva Binder and ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Sieglinde Klettenhammer