Introducing Artistic Provenance Research (and how to interview the dead)
Lecture by Tal Adler as part of the IBK lecture series, organized by the Media Lab, Friedemann Derschmidt.
The Who is ID8470? video installation at the After Nature exhibition of the Humboldt Labor inside the Humboldt Forum. Photo: Tal Adler, 2022
In the talk, Tal Adler will discuss Artistic Provenance Research – a new term he developed through the 'Who is ID8470?' project that was based at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) in the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Questioning the ethics of displaying human remains, and the politics of provenance research in Germany, the talk will ask whether artistic interventions, research and collaborations can create new ways to produce knowledge.
Tal Adler is an artist working at the Humboldt University, Berlin, as coordinator for artistic research at inherit (Heritage in Transformation), a Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study directed by Eva Ehninger and Sharon Macdonald. His projects engage with the politics of history and memory, of aesthetics and display, of state and institution, of nature and science, and of ethnocracy, theocracy and diplomacy. Throughout these projects, first in Israel/Palestine and later in Europe, he has been developing methods of collaborative artistic research to engage with difficult pasts and conflicted communities. He has studied at the Musrara School of Art (Jerusalem), Sam Spiegel Film and Television School (Jerusalem), Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (Jerusalem) and the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien.