Wissen/Schaffen

An Exhibition by Claire Lambe

and Susan Ossman

with text by Katarzyna Puzon

 Wissen/Schaffen

Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, June 2017

Text by Katarzyna Puzon, Claire Lambe, and Susan Ossman

Photographs by Caudia Egholm-Castrone and Claire Lambe

Catalogue Design by Yvonne Polk Ocasio

Copyright Claire Lambe, Susan Ossman, and Katarzyna Puzon 2018

 Introductions

The Wissen/Schaffen exhibition in June 2017 presented the fruit of

our year-long stay at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Wiko), where
scholars from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, writers
and artists gather in a yearly cycle. Both of us were welcomed to the
Institute for Advanced Study as partners of Fellows for the 2016-
17 academic year. Although we were not obliged to participate in
activities or present our work, we were given full access to all aspects
of the Wiko’s daily life. We attended the weekly colloquia, used the
library, and enjoyed the ritual Thursday dinners and informal parties.
As insider/outsiders, our situation was ideal for exploring the many
ways that art can be made from participant observation. Indeed, in
an academic world dominated by texts and conversations, rendering
the results of our research on knowledge production as art offered
particularly rich opportunities for broad critical reflection on the
relationship of “Wissen” (knowledge) to “Schaffen” (creation, shaping).
Using charcoal and paint, spices and paper clips, we engaged with
a range of social, affective, and intellectual aspects of the life of
scholarship that are difficult to express in words. The opportunity to
develop an exhibition in the working space of a haut-lieu of academic
production heightened this critical potential.

We probed, teased, and transformed a purposely neutral, tasteful

environment, calculated to produce scholarship and polite conversation
by strategically filling it with content and color. Some works were
site-specific; others were selected to contribute to developing the
exhibition as a dialogue with the institute’s book-lined walls and the
broad windows of multiple salons. Wiko’s campus is in Berlin’s leafy
Grunewald neighborhood, with its lakes and stately homes and the
infamous train station from which many Jews were sent to
c o n c e n t r a t i o n c a m p s . The exhibition referenced this environment

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and history. Its concept and title developed in a world transfigured
by the election of Donald Trump, in a city deeply engaged by Angela
Merkel’s assurance that Germany could “manage” the migrant
crises (“Wir schaffen das”). Even as scientific reasoning and research
institutions were being threatened across the Atlantic, we observed
the orderly displacement of scholars from around the world to Wiko
in Berlin. While living as temporary residents in the comfort of the
institute, we could not ignore the simultaneous arrival in Berlin of
thousands of refugees from the Middle East.

Texts by Katarzyna Puzon and our own texts regarding our work guide
the catalogue to the exhibition. The catalogue explores our work with
respect to our examination of the relationship of knowledge to making
and creation. Puzon engages with individual works, the exhibition, and
our short texts about the processes of research and production that
led to their making. We added some thoughts about the making and
meaning of individual pieces.

Claire Lambe and Susan Ossman

Wissen/Schaffen embodies the idea of creating knowledge – a process

encompassing multiple activities not limited to reading, talking, and
writing. Although some might translate “Wissen Schaffen” as producing
knowledge, creating knowledge or even knowledge-making evokes
much more accurately the raison d’être of the Wissen/Schaffen Exhibition.
This catalogue reflects the multifaceted nature of the endeavor
undertaken on a yearly basis by international scholars and writers at
the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, popularly known among academics as
Wiko. During their ten-month stay in Berlin’s Grunewald neighborhood,
Claire Lambe and Susan Ossman followed that endeavor in an ethnographic
manner. Through their art, they introduce us to the multilayered
character of scholars’ efforts, as well as the artists’ engagement with
the materiality of the place and its history, both of the neighborhood
and the city of Berlin. The insights into the “behind the scenes” of

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 the academic life of Wiko Fellows, including the building and its
surroundings, show the overlap between research and art, knowledge
and creation. In both research and art, the process of creation starts
much earlier than we might be able to grasp it consciously.

Time and space play out in all the works through the multifarious
dimensions of form and content. Substances such as coffee and tea
serve as the sustenance of both creation processes and their results,
which are often far from being final. This incompleteness unfolds
in time linked to the past, the present, and the future, as illustrated
by Lambe’s Jackets for Books not Written. The way in which the artists
used the space and displayed their works corresponded to its layout
and capacity. Several objects, for instance, proved to be too heavy and
could not be hung on the panels of the wall. Tables and bookcases
were incorporated into the exhibition. And windows, in particular,
served multiple functions, playing with the idea of the insider/
outsider, as Ossman’s Bibliography astutely exemplifies. The practice
of blurring the lines and overcoming dichotomies references the
artists’ other works too.

Lambe’s and Ossman’s “deep hanging out,” as Clifford Geertz famously

named an anthropological method of participant observation, concluded
with an exhibition, rendering the results of their project in drawings,
paintings, and installations. This catalogue complements those efforts
and adds to their sustenance. My thoughts on select pieces offer a
reading into their relationship with the site and/or embeddedness
in the creation of knowledge, as well as the artists’ participation in
that process. In this catalogue, I reflect upon some of the works I find
most compelling in relation to the theme, their relevance in today’s
world, and the relationship between (anthropological) research and
art practice more broadly.

Katarzyna Puzon

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5
 Environments

Since its founding in 1981, Wiko has welcomed hundreds of international

Fellows. Ossman’s Seeped in History, Knowledge, Place invites viewers
on a sensorial journey into the past of the institute and its surroundings.
The work is composed literally and figuratively of the traces of Fellows’
visits. Time and space, history and geography, are interwoven in its
knowledge production/creation. Hanging in front of the two massive
windows in Wiko’s large colloquium room, three silk bags house three
sequences referring to time, memory, and space. The bags contain
ink-stained tea leaves one can touch, thus plunging us into the
memories of the site. The tactile exploration of Wiko and its history
is not organized in a linear manner, making this experience intersubjective
and dialogical, as is often how memory works. This jibes with an
understanding of history proposed by Siegfried Kracauer, a cultural
critic and film theorist exiled from his native Germany in the 1930s.
Kracauer saw history in terms of a specific “area of reality” that does
not necessarily need to follow chronological time. This, in turn, resonates
with Ossman’s and Lambe’s other pieces that critically address temporal
linearity, and the theme of time generally as one prevalent in the
Wissen/Schaffen Exhibition.

KP

6
Seeped in History, Knowledge, Place 2017.
Tulle, paper, ink, thread. 3 pieces 12 x 24
inches/60 x 80 cm. (Pages 7-9)

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8
These “teabags” reference how we absorb the memories of our environments,
often unconsciously. The ink-stained velum “leaves” in the first bag are
printed with historical archives. “Memory” focuses on the institute. It contains
the names of every Fellow in residence since Wiko was founded in 1981.
The third bag is filled with evidence of the natural and built environment
of the Grunewald neighborhood. The bags look fragile, but they are meant
to be touched, read, and rearranged.

SO

9
 Unbekannt: Destination Series:
Reiseziel Unbekannt

Berlin is, for many, a city of displacement. In the past, it has estranged
citizens, exporting many to places of horror and, as the monument at
Gleis 17 in Grunewald tells us, sometimes to the unknown – “Unbekannt.”
In the present, the city offers thousands of strangers – Unbekannte –
refuge from places of horror. At Wiko, a very different form of
displacement happens that illustrates another side of Berlin; a side
for which the city was reputed long before the World Wars: the hosting
of scholars, often strangers to Germany, in the pursuit of knowledge. It
is these dichotomies I explore in the work I undertook during my year
in Berlin, in a set of large drawings in graphite and smaller works in
ink, and digitally in jackets for books “not yet written” – titles solicited
from Wiko Fellows of works that they might one day write if time or
another lifetime allowed.

The center of my work in the exhibition at Wiko was a triptych of large

drawings entitled, Reiseziel Unbekannt (Destination Unknown), which
was initially inspired by the Gleis 17 monument to the Holocaust at
the Grunewald train station. There, the original platform has been
replaced by one made of large bronze plates. Each plate details, in
high relief, the deportation that occurred on a particular date,
including the number of people and the destination. The destinations
are Theresianstadt, Lodz, and Auschwitz. But there are three plates
with unknown – “unbekannt” destinations. For me, these are the most
heartbreaking plates, signifying those souls lost in the mists – disappeared
without even the comfort, cold as that comfort is, of us knowing
where they ended up. It brought to mind other disappearances, the
thousands who boarded ships in my native Ireland for the New World
during the Great Hunger, the so-called famine, in the mid-1800s.
Often the ships were recently retired from the African slave trade.

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Many didn’t survive the voyage, as their African predecessors hadn’t,
and the carriers were dubbed “Coffin Ships.” Now, we are witnesses
to another forced diaspora, one in the process of being created with
hundreds of thousands fleeing their homelands in search of shelter
abroad, traveling into unknowable futures, to destinations unknown.
There is a parallel with the past that we cannot ignore. Although their
fate is more assured than those of the people commemorated by Gleis
17, nevertheless many do not reach sanctuary. Many fleeing the carnage
of Syria have not survived the voyage over the Aegean Sea to Greece.
Germany is one of a few countries that has opened its arms in fulsome
welcome to refugees and, in doing so, has somewhat atoned for its
own terrible history. These were the thoughts going through my mind
as I worked on these drawings.

CL

Unbekannt 4 2016.
Graphite on paper. 24 x 36 inches/70 x 91.5 cm.

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 Lambe’s Reiseziel Unbekannt triptych is concerned with displacement
and the unknowns inscribed in that experience. Entering the colloquium
room, one saw three large drawings hanging on the wall next to the
door. The artist’s use of erasable graphite on paper adds to the tenor of
disappearance and the way in which it registers, making her work very
relevant in the current sociopolitical context. Starting with the significance
of the Grunewald neighborhood, more specifically the monument
dedicated to the infamous Gleis 17 from which Berlin Jews were deported
to extermination camps, the piece conjures images of the missing. It
denotes lost lives, missing information, and unknown destinations. Lambe
connects this with the experience of those forced to leave Ireland during
the Great Hunger. Her motivations behind dealing with the questions of
disappearance and displacement were informed by the current so-called
“refugee crisis” and Berlin’s difficult past. Addressing the timely subject
of dispossession and forced migration, she looks retrospectively at the
memory of the neighborhood, the history of her native Ireland, and the
displacement of Syrian people fleeing their homeland due to the ongoing
war. The drawings bring to the fore the experience of being exiled from
and exiled to, tackling the phenomenon of exile as something visible,
yet always in the process of disappearing.

KP

12
Unbekannt 1 (Destination Series),Detail 2017.
Graphite on paper. 84 x 40 inches/213 x 100 cm.
(Left, Detail Above)

13
 Unbekannt 2 (Destination Series), 2017. Unbekannt 3 (Destination Series), 2017.
Graphite on paper. 84 x 40 inches/213 x 100 cm. Graphite on paper. 84 x 40 inches/213 x 100 cm.

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Unbekannt 2 (Destination Series), Detail 2017.
Graphite on paper. 84 x 40 inches/213 x 100 cm.

Unbekannt 3 (Destination Series), Detail 2017.

Graphite on paper. 84 x 40 inches/213 x 100 cm.

15
 In this installation I paid particular attention to the ornate mansion
where many of Wiko Fellows reside. From our apartments in the Villa
Walter, we looked out on public lakes and gardens. Spear-bearing
guardians on the villa’s patio appeared ready to protect us from
intruders. The grand stairway to our apartments was lined with friezes
of Roman deities. Spring petals or swans appeared like temporary
brushstrokes on this canvas that savantly mingled natural and cultural
references to create a sense of calm luxury and classical culture
reminiscent of a bygone era. I made the site-specific piece as a curtain
for the central window in the institute’s main building to bring together
the disparate, yet layered elements that compose the sensorial
experience of life at Wiko according to a certain conception of an
ideal research environment.

SO

Guardian Spirits 2017.

Embroidered organza, drawings, photographs,
paper, staples.120 x 100 inches/305 x 254 cm.

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References

Bibliography 2017.
Velum, ink, tape, cornstarch,
PVC tube1.5 mile x 5 inch-
es/1.6 kilometer x 12.7cm.
List of books ordered from
the Wiko library by Fel-
lows from late August 2016
through February 2017.

This piece suggests the incredible volume of work done by Fellows at

the institute. The mile-long list of sources they requested from the
library over the first six months of the academic year was twisted in a
loose double-helix form, then hung across a large window in the common
reading room. From a distance, the translucent voile suggests the sinuous,
slow tempo of the research process. Close up, reading the very, very
long and diverse entries one after another, the visual tempo rises to
a breakneck pace. Are references windows to the world or thought
veils? Or both? Working with the sources of scholarship led me to think
about how they direct our thoughts to clarify, hide, or obscure the way
we conceive our work in the world.

SO
17
 Index Cards 2016-17.
Acrylic on canvas, wooden box. 25 canvases
5 x 7 inch/13 x 18 cm.

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Laid out on a table in one of the rooms that served as part of the
exhibition space, Ossman’s Index Cards is composed of objects that
refer to the practice of recording and storing information. The word
index denotes “something that points to” and this is what the piece
intended to do. The Cards encouraged tactile engagement and
resuscitated a way of organizing knowledge that is no longer popular.
They tackle a variety of subjects that illustrate aspects of academic
life, both at Wiko and beyond. Scholarly work is also physical and
may cause ailments, as one card points out. It shows a scholar sitting
and addresses the potential side effects of remaining in this position
for a long time, such as knee stiffness, eye strain, poor blood
circulation, sciatica, and scholar’s elbow. Swans are a recurring
theme in the exhibition due to their presence in the area and nearby
lakes. One card reads “Swans von Koenigsallee/See,” thereby alluding to
Grunewald’s main street, and another asks: “When does it (he) (she)
go when the lake is frozen?” The interplay of form and content evokes
memories, responses, and questions that concern experiences,
observations, and emotions.

KP

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 Formats for both research and artmaking have been revolutionized in
recent years. Many Wiko Fellows developed their first research projects
in a pre-computer age. Like them, I recall using index cards to keep
track of references and research findings. Analysis and writing meant
literally spreading the stuff of knowledge out on the desk or across
the room. With the introduction of the computer, this tactile aspect
of thought arrangement disappeared. Over the same period, the visual
arts have tended to adopt more conceptual approaches to their
curriculum and practice: figure drawing courses are no longer obligatory;
some consider painting an “old school” medium. Thus, I use canvases to
record my lecture and field notes on life at Wiko to reflect on these
shifts in practices and my own practice as an artist-scholar. The
“cards” depict particular lectures by Fellows and aspects of Wiko life.
They are meant to be handled, inspected close-up and rearranged,
calling up memories and generating conversation among the public.

SO

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Sustenance

It took little research to discover that without coffee, there would

likely be little scholarship. The Wiko staff understand this, and
espresso drinks of various kinds are available in each building at all
times. To work with this fundamental research ingredient I mixed
liquid coffee and grounds with glue or acrylic gel medium. At first
I worked on paper, but then decided to make a background using
the Fellows’ research projects. Their proposals, graphs of the effects
of caffeine on brainwaves, and the words for coffee in the many
mother tongues of the researchers on different kinds of paper shape
the sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque background. Like
thoughts of different kinds, the swirling paper layers are joined by
coffee drawings for “espresso” and “cappuccino.”

Meals are a high point of the Wiko experience. Food spread on the
buffet for breakfast or lunch, or served by waiters at the weekly
sit-down lunch and dinner stood out dramatically against the white
table cloths and walls of the dining room. I used cutlery to paint
“Fork, Knife, Spoon” with egg tempera composed of kitchen oil, spices,
and condiments after thinking about the movements that are ignored
when people are engaged in a meal-time conversations. The marks
of forks on this “tablecloth” suggest the act of eating, or how several
lines of conversation cross the table, loosened up with a splash of red wine.

SO

21
 Morning Coffee 2016.
Coffee, glue and gold leaf on paper.25.5 x
39.4 inches/65 x 100 cm

22
Cappuccino 2017.
2017. Velum, tissue paper, drawing paper, cof-
fee, ink, acrylic gel, glue. 39 inches/100 cm.

23
 Espresso 2016.
Velum, paper, coffee, ink, acrylic, glue, gold leaf.
35.4 inches/90 cm.

Fork, Knife, Spoon 2017.

Egg tempera with spices and herbs on canvas. 72
x 65 inches/183 x 165 cm.

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Exchanges, Fantasies,
Discoveries

The drawings in ink, collectively entitled The Listeners, are works of

observation executed during the weekly colloquia given by Wiko Fellows.
What began as doodles became a full-on project, especially after the
election of Donald Trump in the USA. In a world where listening is
in an increasingly short supply, I was struck by the intense listening
by Fellows and their partners and colleagues at the colloquia and the
speakers’ search for truths, be they scientific, social, or political. Part of
my art practice is portraiture. What I discovered in these studies was that
the backs of people are just as interesting as the fronts; an individual’s
habitual gestures and the idiosyncrasies of hair are fascinating.

Over the course of the nine months of Tuesdays studying the Fellows
from the back of the room, behind them, the exercise took on the
aspect of an anthropological project – first in terms of gesture, and
then in habits and alliances and, as time went on, in changing habits
and changed alliances. Among the Fellows there were quite a few
anthropologists and biologists, including evolutionary biologists,
entomologists, ornithologists, and so on, which added a certain
amount of unintended irony to my project. The watchers became
the watched.

One of my side projects during my year at Wiko was to teach myself

Photoshop. I used this to experiment with compositions, combining
multiple drawings to create facsimiles of the colloquia as they almost
were. In my recreations, there are far more people (often the same
people appear more than once) and the space is enormous. The
speakers have the number of listeners of their dreams.

CL

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 Lambe’s series of drawings entitled Listeners exposes the skill of
listening and the richness of bodily communication that accompanies
it. She immersed herself into this activity by attending Tuesday
colloquia that significantly contribute to making Wiko a “space for
intellectual resonance” (Resonanzraum). Wiko’s attempt to foster
exchanges and share across disciplines creates the opportunity to
address questions of difference. Drawing Fellows during the weekly
seminar, Lambe put herself in the position of an observer and a
different kind of listener – one that is attentive to bodily movements,
gestures, and facial expressions. The shift of the focus from speaking
to listening exemplifies the much-needed ability to be receptive to
new ideas and different ways of dealing with the world academically,
albeit not only and not necessarily the ones with which scholars are
familiar. Lambe’s experiments with facsimiles resulted in the multiplication
of the number of listeners, which attracted a lot of attention during
the exhibition opening, especially from Wiko Fellows who pointed at
themselves and recognized their colleagues, often multiple times.

KP

The Listeners 2017.

Ink on paper. 39 drawings each 8.5 x 12 inches/21.5 x 30 cm.
(Pages 29-31)

26
Listeners #21

Listeners #37

27
 Listeners #21

Listeners #31

28
Listeners #22

Listeners #13

29
 Listeners #9

Fellows Finding Themselves on the Wall (not Shared Before the Exhibition)

30
Discoveries

Thought Blossoms 2017.

Paper, photographs, cardboard, velum, acrylic, ink,
sticky notes, paperclips, staples. 63 x 57 “ /160 x 145 cm.

In the spring of 2017 I asked the researchers what “discoveries” they

had made while living in Berlin. Some people sent me long lists of
their publications. Articles by some of the biologists included bright
images of beautiful tropical birds. Others shared their research
notes, including annotated and corrected scientific formulas, musical
compositions and texts marked up to show processes of study and
creation. A year’s sabbatical at the Wiko led a few scholars to venture
beyond their areas of expertise: the keyboards that form the structure
the installation were inspired by a woman who fulfilled her childhood
dream of learning to play the piano.

SO

31
 Jackets for Books not Written 2017.
12 digital images on photo-paper,
each 7 x 5 inches/18 x 12.5 cm

This project emerged partly out of the limitations of our exhibition

space and partly out of the reason most scholars were there: to write
books. Two rooms of our exhibition space were lined with bookcases
that could not be moved. This led Susan and me to discuss how to
incorporate the bookcases into the exhibition. Susan mounted the
Thought Blossoms installation on the shelves in one room and I made
Jackets for Books to be placed on the bookcases in the other room.

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I solicited titles from the Fellows with the instruction that, while
they could include a subtitle, there should be no other information
about the book. In some cases, people sent me titles for works they
planned to write or, as I later discovered, books they were in the
process of writing (which was not what I intended and, as such,
blurred the lines between a graphic design project and an art project);
others sent me what I wanted: titles for books that were not written,
for example: Katharina Volk’s Classical Therapy, Lena Lavinas’ Dark Heavens
for Pure Joy and Michael Jennions’ The Lord of the Ringbahn. Jennions did
attempt to walk the 1011 kilometers while he was in Berlin.

CL

Lambe’s Jackets for Books not Written is a collection of digital images.

Asking Fellows for the titles of books they had not written, she took
the purpose of their research stay at Wiko as a point of departure.
Most Fellows come with a book project that they seek to develop and
complete over the course of ten months. The artist, however, entered
into a conversation with scholars about their ideas for monographs
that they would not necessarily turn into a book or those that had
not materialized in a written form. One Fellow aimed to walk 1011
kilometers of municipal roads that are located within the Ringbahn
(Berlin’s circular railway line). He proposed The Lord of the Ringbahn
as the title of his volume whose cover, along with the ones of other
scholars’ “not written” works, embellished bookcases in one exhibition
room. Jackets for Books not Written includes authors’ original names,
titles, and cover images by Lambe, whose design reflects the possible
content of monographs, with the intent of enticing prospective
readers. The “outcomes” of these collaborative encounters reveal
the incompleteness of potentiality in scholarly practice, as well as
its multi-layered temporality.

KP

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 Seasons

Seasons, Ossman’s series of paintings, reconciles the academic

calendar and the natural cycle of seasons. This is particularly noticeable
in Grunewald, the most forested area in the western part of the city.
As the seasons shift, the projects of Wiko Fellows metamorphosize.
The interplay between these two cycles does not occur without the
struggles that are part and parcel of any endeavors to Wissen schaffen.
This series evokes Ossman’s other paintings that focus on territory,
environments, and their materiality. The work Spazieren Gehen
crowns this sequence in a telling manner by incorporating “almost
words,” as Ossman shrewdly calls them. The piece reveals hurdles
accompanying the process of creation expected in publications, and
thus has temporal limitations. Seasons features notes of various
kinds, including the ones that come from the books yet to be written or
completed. An invitation to go for a stroll in the final stage of the cycle
offers space to (re)connect with the environs and grapple with the
discoveries and ideas accumulated over the course of ten months, as
well as with the goals not accomplished. In this vein, calendar effects
intersect with seasonality and cyclical time.

KP

In this series of paintings I contemplated the interplay of the cycle

of the natural seasons and those of scholarship. The parallels are
heightened at Wiko, not only because of Berlin’s marked seasonal shifts,
but also because the academic communities it convenes are temporary
and time-bound. I employed traditional oil painting techniques for
most of the pieces in this series, in keeping with the dominant
aesthetics of the Wiko environment that suggested a pre-WWI setting
on the cusp of modernism. Like paintings one might encounter in a
turn-of-the-twentieth-century bourgeois home, the dimensions of my
paintings are modest. Wiko The cycle of scholarship works according

34
to the natural seasons: in the autumn, initial projects change and fall
like autumn leaves. Ideas are challenged and manuscript drafts are
edited and sometimes discarded in the cold of winter. Spring enthusiasms
mingle with disappointment: no one completes everything they set
out to accomplish while in Berlin.

A growing emphasis on quantitative measures of academic “production”

puts pressure on researchers, narrowing the scope of imagination
and thought. Under these circumstances, it might be valuable to
recognize the importance of ideas discarded: were they wrong, or
simply ill-suited to predesigned disciplinary norms or digital formats?
Even published words can “escape” the lines of the page, just as what
is beyond the frame defines an image. Contemplating cast-off fall
projects and crumpled, discarded pages of winter drafts, listening to
researchers talking about the struggle to write, or to write enough,
before their enchanted year was up, I sketched in a kind of “almost
writing.” Floating pages of “almost words” in different scripts drift amid
spring leaves and blossoms, even as they are counted in Spazieren Gehen.

SO

Brouillons d’hiver 2017.

Oil on canvas. 27.5 x 39.4” / 70 x 100 cm.
35
 Fallen Leaves 2016.
Oil on canvas, ink and acrylic on 40 sheets
of A4 velum. 23.6 x 35.4 inches/ 60 x 90 cm.

Spring Between the Lines 2017.

Oil on canvas. 27.5 x 39.3” /70 x 100 cm.

36
 Spazieren Gehen (Taking a Stroll) 2017.
Acrylic, ink and paper on linen. 48 x 84.6
inches/122 x 215 cm.

Spazieren Gehen (Taking a Stroll) Detail

37
 Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin for making

Wissen/Schaffen possible. Special thanks to Carina Pertschi for
working with us to plan and install the exhibition. Many 2016-17
Fellows contributed to Jackets for Books not Written and Thought
Blossoms and the library staff kindly provided Susan with materials
for Bibliography. Visual Anthropology Review kindly granted permission
to reprint revised versions of selected texts from Katarzyna’s review
of the exhibition.

Contributors

Claire Lambe graduated with a BFA in Fine Print from the National
College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland, and earned an MFA in
painting at the City University of New York. In addition to being an
accomplished portraitist, Claire’s work has, for many years, focused
on social and environmental issues. As a long-time educator, she
has been concerned with access to art-making and the accessibility
of art. This led to her setting up a studio in the public library of her
adopted hometown of Woodstock, in upstate New York, where she
painted members of the community over a period of six months in
2015. During a 2016 sojourn in Costa Rica, she made paintings
that commented o n t h e a p p r o p r i a t i o n o f b e a c h f r o n t b y f o r e i g n
d e v e l o p e r s . In her 3D work she has explored the question of
conflicting wishes, both political and environmental.

Lambe has exhibited on both sides of the Atlantic; in 2015, the

Irish Diaspora Initiative awarded her a grant to bring her Woodstock
Library Project to Ireland for exhibition. In addition to making art, she
writes for Roll, a Hudson Valley arts magazine, and she is an instructor
at the Woodstock School of Art.

Claire’s work can be viewed at clairelambe.net.

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Susan Ossman studied history and fine art at UC Berkeley, earned
a DEA in history from the University of Paris VII, then returned to
Berkeley for a Ph.D. in anthropology. Her books include Moving
Matters, Paths of Serial Migration (Stanford, 2013) and Three Faces
of Beauty, Casablanca, Paris Cairo (Duke, 2002). While she has always
made art, often in relation to topics of anthropological fieldwork, it is
only since her 2012 Fabric of Fieldwork Exhibition at the Brunei Gallery
in London that she has developed an ongoing program of exhibition.
Since then, she has shown work in solo and group shows in California,
France, the Netherlands, Romania, and Germany. She has also created
collaborative programs across scholarship and art. On the Line (2013-
2016) shaped an evolving field for generating visual art, performance,
and community engagement. Lifeworks uses anthropological methods
to develop artworks from life stories. The Moving Matters Travelling
Workshop (MMTW) international art/scholarship collective grew out of
her research on serial migration and has created a mobile laboratory
for arts/research experiment.

Susan has been Professor of Anthropology and Global Studies at the

University of California, Riverside since 2007. She previously taught
at Goldsmith’s College, Rice University, Georgetown University, the
American University of Paris, and the CELSA/Sorbonne. She was a
research Fellow and founded and directed the Institut de Recherches
sur le Maghreb Contemporain (Rabat) from 1992-1996.

Susan’s work can be viewed at susanossman.com.

Katarzyna Puzon is an anthropologist and a translator. She is currently a

postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Anthropological
Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) at the Humboldt
University of Berlin. Her main research interests lie at the intersection
of heritage, memory, mobility, and the city, as well as in anthropology as
storytelling. In her ethnographic work on Beirut, she explored

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 how multiple discourses and practices of urban heritage were
mobilized and framed by ongoing changes in the city and engaged
in future-making. Her current research focuses on Berlin, where she
examines the politics and poetics of representation and recognition,
primarily in relation to Islam and heritage-making, as part of the
project Making Differences in Berlin: Transforming Museums and
Heritage in the 21st Century. Katarzyna has authored a number of
publications, including “Memory and Artistic Production in a Post-War
Arab City” (in Post-Conflict Performance, Film and Visual Arts: Cities of
Memory, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and “Saving Beirut: heritage and
the city” (International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2017).

8 June- 8 July, 2017

Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
Wallotstraße 19, 14193 Berlin

Claire Lambe, Susan Ossman, Wissen/Schaffen Poster 2017.

and Katarzyna Puzon

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