Vulnerabilities and Repair

This panel addresses the question of translating the concept of repair across various disciplines. Language is essential when it comes to caring, repairing and healing. Which words are used to communicate our vulnerabilities? How can these be translated in different professional, linguistic and cultural settings? What are the potentials and limits of the concept of repair in our respective work practices? Injonge Karangwa reflects these questions at the intersection of mental health research and cultural production in Rwanda. Ulrike Kluge approaches them from the perspective of transcultural psychiatry in Germany. Dedicated to repair across the boundaries of artistic, academic and curatorial research, the panellists thus discuss this expanded vision, moderated by Margareta von Oswald. 

Kader Attia grew up in Algeria and in Paris’s banlieue. His works explore the perspective that societies have on their histories – especially regarding experiences of deprivation and suppression, violence and loss, and how this affects the evolution of nations and individuals. Attia is curator of the 12th Berlin Biennale in 2022. 

Injonge Karangwa is a global health professional and researcher, a musician and a cultural producer working for the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. She founded the Hamwe Festival and leads a multidisciplinary research project that reflects on the psychological impact of colonisation in the Rwanda of today and its mental health system. 

Ulrike Kluge is a professor for psychological and medical integration and migration research at the Charité in Berlin and head of the department “Migration, Mental and Physical Health and Health Research” at the BIM (Berliner Institut für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung). At Charité, she is in charge of the Intercultural Center for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (ZIPP) as well as the research group Transkulturelle Psychiatrie (together with Andreas Heinz). 

Margareta von Oswald (moderator) is an anthropologist and curator based at CARMAH, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She is Mindscapes’ Curatorial Research Fellow. Recent publications include Across Anthropology: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial (2020), which she edited with Jonas Tinius.