Neu Horizonte-Eine Erkundung der Wissenschaftsgeschichte durch München

In the organizer's words:

New horizons

An exploration of the history of science through Munich

Director, video, music: Bülent Kullukcu & Karnik Gregorian

Production: Gallery Kullukcu & Gregorian

Performer:Otone Sato

-Performance start and dates

Kultur im Trafo - Nymphenburger Str. 171a - 80634 Munich

May 22, May 23 and May 25, 2025 - each at 7 pm.

The performance exploration ends at Promenadeplatz. An MVV ticket is required for the tour.

"New Horizons" is a journey through the most important developments and inventions of the past 3,000 years up to the present day and at the same time a journey through Munich. For here, too, we find the common narratives of Eurocentric scientific history and stories of men of genius. On our exploration, we meet experts who shed light on the historical structures of male dominance and colonial influence in the natural sciences and open up the space for a new, global perspective.

The history of science retold. The European history of science is often told as a continuous success story - starting from Ancient Greece with its great thinkers such as Euclid, Plato or Aristotle, through men like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Albert Einstein to the present day, the narrative of Europe's intellectual and scientific superiority dominates.

However, thisnarrativeignores the essential role of cultural exchange and obscures the fact that scientific progress has always been a collaborative, global endeavor. "New Horizons" confronts this reductionist narrative and shows that the development of modern science was based on a diverse, often exploitative network of knowledge and people.

Science - a history of global exchange The performance exploration will make stops at prominent locations in Munich - including Königsplatz, Südfriedhof, the Old Botanical Garden and Promenadeplatz. At each of these stations, an expert will shed light on a specific aspect of the history of science, highlighting the historical and social implications of the respective narratives.

Munich as a stage: performance exploration at historical locations The city itself will thus become a stage for critical reflection on science, power structures and global knowledge networks. The focus is on the often invisible connections between scientific development, social power structures and the colonial past.

Decolonize Munich: Rethinking and discussing science. The project shows that scientific progress has not come about in isolation, but through exchange and exploitation. It also takes a look at the present: which narratives shape our knowledge today? Which voices are heard and which are ignored?

Social discourse and new narratives Neue Horizonte makes it clear that these questions are not abstract or past - they affect us all, including in Munich. Through performative explorations in the urban space, "Neue Horizonte" also addresses the local dimension of this debate - because colonial structures and scientific narratives still shape our social self-image today.

With the experts:

-Lilia Diamantopoulou is Professor of Modern Greek Studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She was previously a university assistant at the Institute for Byzantine and Neo-Greek Studies at the University of Vienna (2012-2018). She is also head of the project "Falsification, Deception, Mystification in Modern Greek Literature", which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the "Kleine Fächer - Große Potenziale" program.

-Simon Goeke is a historian and curator for migration history at the Munich City Museum. He publishes in particular on the history of migrant struggles and anti-racist museum and educational work. He is a member of the Council for Migration, the Critical Migration and Border Regimes Research Network and part of the collective that designed mapping.postkolonial.net, an interactive archive for the history of colonialism in Munich.

Modupe Laja is a cultural scientist and is involved in cultural politics in Afro-diasporic, African and black contexts. Part of her work is the self-organization, community-building and empowerment of Afro-diasporic/Black initiatives and associations. This includes her involvement in the black feminist movement as part of the ISD (Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland) and co-founder of ADEFRA (Schwarze Frauen in Deutschland) since the mid-1980s. In 2012, she founded Afrojugend München together with young black people. She is a founding member of various civil society organizations, community leader and educational policy spokesperson on decolonial issues and writes and curates educational and exhibition formats on feminism and black representation in Germany.

This project is funded by the Munich Department of Culture