Open Call: anatomia publica – Open Stage for Scientific, Aesthetic, and Social Research Practices
September – December 2025
TA T – Tieranatomisches Theater, Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Deadline to apply: 20. July 2025
TA T’s new mediation program invites Berlin-based individuals, collectives, and knowledge communities to apply with projects in a research stage. The program fosters interdisciplinary dialogues and collaborations between scientific, artistic, and social research practices (with & beyond our academic environment).
In sharing the research process through the lens of historical dissection, the program opens new possibilities for the future of public engagement with research and knowledge production. Blurring the boundaries between production and presentation, anatomia publica rethinks how knowledge can be shared, critiqued, and transformed in public spaces in the moment of its unfolding.
#focusgroup #residency #incubator
APPLICANT'S PROFILE/S
We are looking for applicants with interdisciplinary research practices:
• Researchers from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities
• Artists, curators, knowledge producers working on scientific and social topics through interdisciplinary approaches
• Civic initiatives, connecting scientific and creative spheres
• Activists, using research and knowledge for social, political, or ecological change
PROGRAM CALENDAR
The program runs from September to December 2025. Participants will choose a two-month window during this period for their research stay. The 7 appointments will be scheduled approximately 1 per week during the two-month period, providing consistent feedback, networking opportunities and guidance throughout the program.
Please select your preferred two-month period:
• September – October
• October – November
• November – December
PROGRAM SUPPORT
Participants will have access to a variety of resources and support services, including:
• Meeting Rooms: Each participant will have access to a room at TA T for the duration of their two-month research stay. We share our spaces for meetings and knowledge exchange. Basic technical equipment (monitor, projector, speakers) will be provided. The use of this space must comply with our “care instructions” as our building is a protected monument (link to PDF).
• Shared Infrastructure: Access to TA T's exhibition and performance spaces, designed to support research and publicly accessible projects. A shared community kitchen is available, shared with all researchers, Inherit. Heritage in Transformation Fellows, and the TA T team.
• Research Fee: €2,000.00. Paid upon completion of the program.
• Knowledge Exchange: One knowledge exchange session with a member of the Humboldt research community or someone from one of the university's collections who shares a mutual research interest. If the participant is employed at Humboldt University, the fee will be used to subsidize collaboration with a practitioner, collective, or research community from the creative or civically engaged field to promote the same dynamic of knowledge exchange through reciprocal research interests.
• Consulting and Mentoring: Four consulting sessions with the TA T team, offering feedback on research methods, production, and public engagement.
• Public Event Production: Production support for organizing one co-designed public encounter/event with the TA T team. This event will activate the TA T spaces and present your research to a wider audience.
• Dissemination and Public Relations: The TA T team will assist with communication, public relations, and the dissemination of your event, integrating it into our institutional calendar, including events like Berlin Art Week and Berlin Science Week.
• Possibility for Co-Funding & Co-Production Funds: The opportunity to use the institutional connection to TA T as a multiplier for obtaining additional funding or sponsorships for the development of your project/work within anatomia publica. A letter of support can be issued for application processes.
Commitment
Active participation in the 7 scheduled appointments, which will take place approximately once a week during the two-month stay.
Listening & Feedback Circle for the Research Community in Berlin
Between September and December 2025, anatomia publica will organize a Listening & Feedback Circle parallel program, introducing an artistic method designed for transdisciplinary research communities to “listen to how we listen”. The circle will be moderated by artist, researcher, and radical pedagogue Siegmar Zacharias and is open to the participants as well as seven other Berlin-based research agents. The circle is structured in three sessions and focuses on practicing constructive critique as a cultural technique, with care at the center, exploring how feedback can be offered as a community service.
Engaging with the Institution’s History, situating knowledge
(Context as method)
anatomia publica is a mediation program curated by TA T - Tieranatomisches Theater, a research institution of the Center for Culture Techniques at Humboldt University Berlin, focused on the production, dissemination, and processing of knowledge.
The new programmatic focus of anatomia publica enters into a site-specific dialogue with the constructive imagination of the historic building that houses our institution: a “knowledge architecture” (Wissenstheater), blurring the boundaries between performance and everyday life. At the center of the building was an elevator that led from the preparation room to the anatomy theater, enabling a spectacular staging of the anatomy lecture. Supported by a spatial arrangement that highlights perspective, framing, and gaze, this former academy building for veterinary medicine and current monument was designed for a hybrid community of spectators and practitioners.
Anatomical theaters are spaces of knowledge, and with our program, we address a broader medical and cultural practice surrounding anatomical events with the dual function of a lecture and a theatrically staged, ritualized act. In these spaces, anatomists found a place to hold overview events for large audiences and demonstrate the anatomy of the human body in its entirety. In some cases, the focus was placed on the performative aspect of anatomia publica, interpreted as a “social event” and “anatomical spectacle”.
The diversity of audiences for these events is evidenced by the numerous invitations directed to a broad public, including doctors and surgeons, as well as painters, sculptors, butchers, seamstresses, and simply “all lovers of anatomy”. These invitations (originally in Latin) gave anatomical dissection a higher cultural and ethical significance, providing a strong justification for anatomia publica.
In this context, our newly aligned invitation to “all lovers of research” refers to the (fragile) gaps between production time and presentation time, understanding these as fertile ground to unfold streams of knowledge, channel inspiration, and explore the potential for affective exchange, as well as the shared use of materials between scientific and creative knowledge practices.
In line with the tradition of the Anatomical Theater, anatomia publica will focus on the dissection of knowledge—on how research is produced, framed, and presented.
anatomia publica is not merely a platform for presenting finished works, but a space for experimenting with the act and performativity of knowledge itself.
Curatorial approach & Vision
anatomia publica draws on a range of conceptual frameworks that shape its curatorial approach and vision. The program engages with the idea of curating as environmentalism, where the curator acts as a caretaker creating collaborative spaces for knowledge exchange that blur the boundaries between production and performance. It challenges the traditional roles of curators, emphasizing an open and dynamic process that invites collective participation. Additionally, the program is informed by Irit Rogoff’s work on deterritorializing knowledge, advocating for the dismantling of rigid academic structures in favor of more speculative, experimental thinking that engages with urgent contemporary issues. This aligns with the idea of resetting the academy, creating spaces where knowledge can evolve outside of predefined constraints. At the same time, anatomia publica draws on the notion of curatorial activism, focusing on the ethical responsibility of curators to disrupt hierarchies, amplify marginalized voices, and foster multi-vocality within institutions. Finally, the program embraces the concept of research communities, emphasizing the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration and shared modes of thought, where knowledge is co-produced through collective inquiry and curatorial work acts as a method of constructive cultural critique. These interconnected ideas aim to create a space where knowledge is constantly redefined, dissected, and exchanged across boundaries, inviting new perspectives and fostering a Community of Practice (CoP)beyond traditional academic structures.
References
• Ed. Shelley Ruth Buttler & Erica Lehrer (2016): Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions. McGuill-Queen’s University Press
• Annie Coombes: Engaging histories, Envisaging Futures. Vortrag während des Symposiums Exhibiting difficult histories - Humboldt Forum, Berlin 19.04.2024
• Julie Ellison (2013) ‘The New Public Humanists” Cambridge University Press, Vol. 128, No. 2 (March 2013)
• ed. Michael E. Gorman (2010): Trading Zones and Interactional Expertise: Creating New Kinds of Collaboration. MIT Press
• Bell Hooks: “Talking Back.” Discourse 8 (1986): 123–28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44000276
• Maura Reilly (2018): Curatorial Activism, towards an ethics of curating. Thames & Hudson
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: “Righting wrongs”. In Aakash Singh & Silika Mohapatra, Indian political thought: a reader. New York: Routledge (2010)
Concept & curation: Paz Ponce
This program is supported by TA T Team
Felix Sattler: Head curator
Paz Ponce: Curator of Public Programmes & Outreach
Lilli Ebert: Project coordination
Caspar Pichner: Head of Production & scenography
Fanny Welz: Production assistance
Frederike Nolte: Assistance Communication
In Collaboration with Siegmar Zacharias
(Moderator Listening & Feedback Circle Parallelprogram)
Contact
Paz Ponce (she/her)
Curator of Public Programmes & Outreach
Tel: +49 30 2093 12863 (Mo, Mi, Fr; 11:00 - 17:30 Uhr)
E-Mail: paz.ponce@hu-berlin.de
Lilli Ebert (she/her)
Projectoordination
Tel: +49 30 2093 12865
E-Mail: lilli.maxine.ebert@hu-berlin.de
TA T - Tieranatomisches Theater
Zentrum für Kulturtechnik – Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Office: Gerlachbau/Haus 3, Philippstraße 13, 10115 Berlin