Ariella Aïsha Azoulay: Unlearning Together at the Thresholds of Museums (ENG)

Further information on the lecture will follow shortly.In this lecture, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay invites the audience to stay at the threshold of the museum in order to recognize the impossibility of decolonising museums without decolonising the world. Azoulay weaves the plunder of objects stolen from Jews in Europe – and their partial restitution within the broader picture of European plunder, in the aim of undoing the exceptionalization of the Jews as fashioned by Europe and providing a different understanding of plundered objets as communal remains. 

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is a scholar, author, curator and filmmaker. She is Professor of Modern Culture and Media (Department of Comparative Literature, Brown University). She researches the theory of photography and visual culture.
Her publications include: Potential History – Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019); Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012); The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008); Aïm Deüelle Lüski and Horizontal Photography, Leuven University Press and Cornell University Press, 2013; From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950, (Pluto Press, 2011); co-authored with Adi Ophir. The One State Condition: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and the River. Stanford University Press, 2012.
Film essays (selection): Un-documented: Undoing Imperial Plunder (2019); Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47-48 (2012); I Also Dwell Among Your Own People: Conversations with Azmi Bishara (2004) & The Food Chain (2004).
Numerous exhibition participations (selection): The Natural History of Rape (Berlin Binnale, 2022), Errata (Tapiès Foundation, 2019, HKW, Berlin, 2020), Enough! The Natural Violence of New World Order, (F/Stop photography festival, Leipzig, 2016), Act of State 1967-2007, (Centre Pompidou, 2016, Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa Fotografico, 2020); Enough! The Natural Violence of the New World Order (F/Stop Festival, Leipzig, 2016); “The Natural History of Rape” (Pembroke Hall, Brown University, 2015); The Body Politic [in Really Useful Knowledge, curated by What, How & for Whom / WHW], Reina Sofia, Madrid; When The Body Politic Ceases To Be An Idea, Exhibition Room – Manifesta Journal Around Curatorial Practices No 16 Potential History (2012, Stuk / Artefact, Louven), Untaken Photographs (2010, Igor Zabel Award, The Moderna galerija, Lubliana; Zochrot, Tel Aviv), Architecture of Destruction (Zochrot, Tel Aviv), Everything Could Be Seen (Um El Fahem Gallery of Art).