"Worlds of Raw Materials" Lecture Series | Doreen Mende: Relational Capital? On the Transfer of Value from Raw Materials to Art

Please Note: New Location

Dr. Doreen Mende, Dresden State Art Collections

This lecture is based on the research project “min(d)ing: Relational Capital” at the Dresden State Art Collections. The project aims to scientifically examine historical collections for the provenance of their materials and to contextualize them within global history based on their circulation. The goal is to create an archive of methods that makes the transfer of value from raw material to cultural object legible for the present. Silver, gold, and copper shaped Saxony in the early modern period as part of global circulation networks. Today, lithium is at the center of desires ranging from globalism to sovereignty. However, the cultural value that its allocation might carry remains an open and critical question that the participants will first explore together. Drawing on artistic works by Harun Farocki, Goldin+Senneby, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Su Yu Hsin, and others, this contribution explores forms of transformation from raw material to artifact. Particular emphasis is placed on the infrastructures of exhibition-making and the role of the museum as a technology of modernity. Drawing on Dagmar Schäfer’s concept of an object’s “life cycle,” the project incorporates geological time into the process of gaining insight through museum work. Under discussion is a “geopower” of exhibition-making that fundamentally shapes the relationship between nature and culture. Can what institutions accumulate in this process be interpreted as “capital derived from relationships,” and to whom would it be owed?

Doreen Mende heads the “Research” department at the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD), focusing on provenance research, the natural sciences, and curatorial practice. From 2015 to 2025, she was a Professor at HEAD Genève, where she directed the CCC Research Master’s/PhD Forum and led the “Entangled Internationalism” project (2019–2024, SNF). She remains affiliated with the University of Basel and the Graduate Institute in Geneva as a researcher and will also undertake various research stays in Ghana, Sweden, and Singapore in 2026. Her exhibitions include “The Missed Seminar” (2022/23) with Steve McQueen, “Forensic Architecture: The German Colonial Genocide in Namibia” (2024), and “Candida Höfer: Contexts” (2024). Her publications include “Navigation Beyond Vision” (with Tom Holert, 2022) and “Stannaki Forum” (2024). Mende earned her Ph.D. on the geopolitics of exhibition-making at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2015, she co-founded the Harun Farocki Institute in Berlin.

Käte Hamburger Kolleg Lecture Series: Worlds of Raw Materials | Contours of the Future

The world is in turmoil. International conflicts are increasingly centered on raw materials. In some parts of the world, we are witnessing a massive expansion of renewable energy, while elsewhere there is a growing reliance on oil and gas. These are facets of a massive upheaval whose full scale we have yet to fully grasp: We are at the dawn of a post-fossil-fuel era. This era poses challenges for sectors such as the economy, politics, technological and urban development, mobility, and agriculture. There will be new winners and losers; cultures of rejection will grow stronger, and uncertainty, disillusionment with democracy, and fear of the future will increase. At the same time, ideas and innovations are sprouting. The Käte-Hamburger Kolleg “Raw Material Worlds: Cultures in Transition” at the University of Kassel will examine the full picture of this transformation through lectures by selected experts. We will identify problems and discuss how we can work together to overcome today’s challenges for the world of tomorrow.

In cooperation with: SDG+ Lab, Staatstheater Kassel

Funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space