Beyond Restitution: Heritage, (Dis)Possession and the Politics of Knowledge (BEYONDREST)
Beyond Restitution: Heritage, (Dis)Possession and the Politics of Knowledge (BEYONDREST)
On the backdrop of ongoing debates to decolonialize museums, Beyond Restitution asks if the return of looted art can indeed be regarded as a closure of historical wounds. The project probes the focus on restitution that inadvertently casts dispossessed art in terms of contested property. Instead, it explores what kind of loss dispossessed art engenders, and how this loss has shaped the knowledge production on heritage. It focuses on the interlocution between Western Europe, the Near and Middle East, and North Africa, mapping relationships between people and “things” that have largely been left out of current restitution debates. The project starts in the mid-19th century, which witnessed the rise of the museum in its modern form as well as the violence unleashed by imperial and colonial projects and dispossession. Innumerable objects made their way into international collections, categorized mostly as “Islamic art,” or as the “universal heritage of humankind” that nonetheless symbolically and proprietarily belongs to the “West.” Beyond Restitution conceptualizes restitution not as an endpoint to mend loss and dispossession but as a starting point to transform the ways in which we make knowledge on art and heritage. The interdisciplinary research group is employing a wide methodologically matrix, including ethnographic interviews, visual analysis of exhibitions, archival research, and examinations of the laws governing cultural assets to capture the proprietary stakes in the interplay of epistemic remembering and forgetting. The research also extends to contemporary artistic approaches to dispossessed heritage as alternate paths of knowledge making in a field that has to contend with the impasses that arise when centering on what is absent rather than what is present, on what is lost, rather than found. Beyond Restitution argues that the dispossession of art is not merely a problematic of colonialism or empire, that is of the past, but an ongoing process that is constitutive for the governance of heritage in its national and transnational formations. It is a precondition for the ways in which art and other “cultural assets” circulate.
This five-year project is funded by the European Union (European Research Council (ERC), Project No. 101045661), hosted by the Forum Transregionale Studien (Forum), and related to EUME. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Çiçek İlengiz
Postdoctoral Researcher
+49 (0)30 89001 441
cicek.ilengiz(at)trafo-berlin.de
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Zoya Masoud
Postdoctoral Researcher
+49 (0)30 89001 428
zoya.masoud(at)trafo-berlin.de
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Loes Hendriks
Student Assistant
February 2023 - March 2025
BEYONDREST Events
BEYONDREST Events
Conversation Series "Restitution and its Vantage Points: Beyond the Preservation Paradigm"
Description of the Conversation Series
04 Dec 2024, 3 pm | Displacing to Preserve: (Dis)Possession and the Politics of Heritage in Egypt - film screening of Areej – Scent of Revolution by Viola Shafik, followed by a conversation with Banu Karaca and Çiçek İlengiz. This event is also part of the Berliner Seminar and takes place at Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin.
28 Nov 2024, 1.30 pm | Online Film Screening of Khabur (Xabûr), followed by a discussion with the director Nafis Fathollahzadeh, moderated by Çiçek İlengiz (BEYONDREST), in cooperation with Allegra Lab. Registration and Zoomlink → here.
24 Oct 2024, 2.30 pm | Panel Discussion The Legal Aspects of Heritage Preservation and Restitution with Stephan Dömpke (Founding Chairmean and Executive Director at Wold Heritage Watch), Anisha Patel (PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law at Europa-University Viadrina and Governing Council member at Law for Palestine), and Sophie Schönberger (Professor of Public Law, Art and Cultural Law, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf), moderated by Banu Karaca (BEYONDREST) and Çiçek İlengiz (BEYONDREST).
13 June 2024, 5 pm | Sebastian Willert (Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture - Simon Dubnow): Relics of the Past in Conflict. Violence, War, and Monument Preservation in the Ottoman Realm, Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin.
15 May 2024, 5 pm | Ammar Azzouz (British Academy Research Fellow / University of Oxford): Erased City: Imagining a Future Without Ruins?, Chair: Anne-Marie McManus (SYRASP), Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. The event is also part of the MECAM Workshop Cities in the Arab Imagination: Fiction, Reality, and Futurescapes.
25 Apr 2024, 5 pm | Online Film Screening of Scenes of Extraction, followed by a discussion with the artist Sanaz Sohrabi and Alia Mossallam (EUME Fellow).
25 Jan 2024, 6 pm | Elyse Semerdjian (Clark University): Bone Memories: The Armenian Genocide and the Radical Possibility of Solidarity, Chair: Veronika Zablotsky (Freie Universität Berlin), Café Arakil, Berlin.
14 Dec 2023, 5 pm | Regina F. Bendix (Universität Göttingen): Cardboard Boxes: The (In)Visivility of Human Remains and their Mobilizing Potential, Chair: Çiçek İlengiz (BEYONDREST), Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin.
25 Oct 2023, 5 pm | Çiçek İlengiz (BEYONDREST): Inheriting Anatolia: Representation, Knowledge Production and Imagination, Chair: Filiz Tütüncü Çağlar (EUME Fellow 2020-24 / Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin), Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. The event is also part of the EUME Berliner Seminar winter term 2023/24.
18 Oct 2023, 5 pm | Pascale Ghazaleh (American University in Cairo): Archives, Heritage and Discontent: Who Owns Egypt's Past?, Chair: Banu Karaca (PI BEYONDREST), Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. The event is also part of the EUME Berliner Seminar winter term 2023/24.