GRK 2661:  Connecting – Excluding. Cultural Dynamics Beyond Globalized Networks

• Subject Area: Art History, Music, Theatre and Media Studies ; Literary Studies ; Social and Cultural Anthropology, Non-European Cultures, Jewish Studies and Religious Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 433851688

The Research Training Group focuses on practices of connection and exclusion. Connectivityis considered as an essential prerequisite for participation in globalized networks.As a consequence thereof, the RTG is concerned with the “other side” of connectingoperations in the networks of media, society, economy, politics, law, science, artand culture. In particular, it addresses the exclusions that accompany the establishedpractices of connectivity in globalized networks. These are the deviating structures thatcan be demonstrated with regard to the practices of local particularization beyond theideal of global standardization and networking, which is decisive for different concepts ofmodernity. Thus, the references of the research profile stretch beyond national and culturalborders and predefined historical periods. For this purpose, the RTG assemblesmedia studies, science of art and cultural sciences, philologies, cultural anthropologyand additionally cross-cultural disciplines and artistic and design practice. It brings togetherexpertise for European, East and Southeast Asian, North and South Americanand Sub-Saharan African and Arab research fields of the last two centuries. At the sametime, diverging cultural concepts and terminological constructions are being questionedregarding the local practices of connecting and excluding (oneself). In order to do this, anew transdisciplinary methodology that focuses on processual action and dialogue willbe developed to examine the interplay between participation and dissidence. In comparisonof historical processes of change and different global, regional and local spaces,this leads to questions of power, participation, self-determination and heteronomy as wellas the fragmented perception and symbolic narrativization of the world.Thus, the RTG deals with key issues of the global present, which is resolving andemerging in local practices and their operations, while at the same time questioning thebinary constellations of their established – disciplinary – explanatory models. The content-related discussion is inseparably intertwined with the qualification goal of a dialogicalapproach based on pluralism and processuality. The self-reflective cooperation of theparticipating students and graduates from different cultural and disciplinary backgroundguarantees the transdisciplinary orientation of the research training group and gives reasonto expect outstanding research results for the participating disciplines.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Universität zu Köln
• Participating Institution: Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln; Technische Hochschule Köln
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Stefan Kramer
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Peter Bexte; Professorin Dr. Carolin Höfler; Professorin Dr. Fatima Kastner; Professorin Dr. Sandra Kurfürst; Professorin Dr. Nina Möntmann; Professorin Dr. Gesine Müller; Professor Dr. Wolfram Nitsch; Professor Dr. Stephan Packard; Professor Dr. Nicolas Pethes; Professor Dr. Martin Zillinger