Exhibiting ambivalences

Hopeful visions in the Humboldt Labor

Abstract

The negotiation of areas of tension and conflict is a central vision of contemporary exhibition projects in the university context. Knowledge should no longer only be represented, but also questioned and the process of its creation made visible. In this article, I examine the representation of ambivalence as a hopeful vision in the Humboldt Labor, which aims to do justice to the simultaneity of different knowledges and truths. I show how ambivalence becomes visible both through the visions of individuals and as a method of knowing and understanding in the exhibition. The form that ambivalence can take in the Humboldt Labor is also significantly shaped by planning practices. In order to trace these planning practices, I follow translation processes in the exhibition and show that moments of friction and resistance can occur within them. Technologies, architectures and objects become visible as actors that fundamentally shape the vision of ambivalence. Finally, I examine the question of the relationship between criticism and responsibility and the vision of ambivalence. It becomes clear that in the Humboldt Labor different forms of critique come together. In their interplay the possibilities and limits of the imagination of ambivalence are formulated.