Mecila’s Information Infrastructure

Institutional Workshop
Mecila’s Information Infrastructure

12th – 14th September 2022

A special information infrastructure provides all members of Mecila with the necessary research literature and relevant information sources, as independently of time and place as possible. This information infrastructure is coordinated by the IAI together with the Daniel Cosió Villegas Library (Colmex), the library of the Institute of Brazilian Studies (USP) and the Professor Guillermo Obiols Library (Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación/IdIHCS, UNLP) in Argentina.

The IAI provides all Mecila researchers with access to all its holdings. If they have specific literature needs that go beyond the library’s holdings, the IAI acquires the corresponding media with its own funds, if possible in electronic form, and makes it accessible to Mecila’s researchers via the Online Catalog of the IAI library or the discovery system IberoSearch.

The copyright-free publications digitised by the IAI are generally freely available via the IAI’s Digital Collections. Publications that are not yet copyright-free in a licensable electronic version are also made accessible to Mecila’s investigators.

Mecila’s partner institutions exchange physical publications whenever possible. The Institute of Brazilian Studies provides a library reading room where Mecila scholars can work with these materials whenever they conduct research at the Centre’s hub in São Paulo. This will also be possible at Mecila’s nodes in Berlin, La Plata, and
Mexico City.

The IAI has an electronic reading room for Mecila, which grants limited access to copyrighted publications in accordance with German copyright law. Active Mecila investigators can access publications of high relevance for the entire project in the form of scanned image files in the electronic reading room.
For more information, please contact: mecila.library@iai.spk-berlin.de

Monday, 12th September 2022
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch Break

Lessons Learned 
14.00 – 18.00 Potentials and Challenges of the International Cooperation in Mecila’s Information Infrastructure 
Moderator: Valentín Ortiz Reyes, El Colegio de México

16.00 – 16.30 Coffee Break

Tuesday, 13th September 2022
Mecila as a Laboratory for an Articulated International Digital Information Infrastructure
9.00 – 13.00 Articulating Information Infrastructure and Research Data Management: Tools, Platforms and Legal Framework
Moderator | Moderadora: Milagros Pacco, Universität zu Köln

10.30 – 11.00 Coffee Break | Pausa de café

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch Break | Pausa de almuerzo

14.00 – 17.00 Mecila, Calas and the Other Merian Centers: Potentials and Future Ways to Collaboratively Provide and Guard Information and Research Results
Moderator | Moderador: Christoph Müller, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut

18.00 – 20.00 Public Lecture | Medialisation in Science: From Idealism to Virtualism

Ana María Cetto
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Throughout history, diverse currents have played out in the field of the theory of knowledge, with the confrontation between realism and idealism occupying a prominent place. The starting point for this conference is the development of quantum physics that emerged a hundred years ago, under the influence of idealism prevailing in an era of crisis in which the media acquired perverse power. The idealist current went beyond the frontiers of science, reaching other spheres of thought and giving rise to an extended subjectivism that persists until today and has taken new turns. The production and circulation of knowledge, values and ideas, is now immersed in an unequally distributed digital mediality, which seeks to dominate the objective world and replace it with “realities” manufactured at convenience.

Wednesday, 14th September 2022
Joint Day of Institutional Workshop and Thematic Workshop
9.00 – 9.30 Welcome Addresses
Barbara Göbel, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut
Christoph Müller, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut
Gloria Chicote, IdIHCS/Conicet, Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Susanne Klengel, Freie Universität Berlin

9.30 – 13.00 Group Visits
Materialities, Differences, Inequalities: The Collections of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut as a Convivial Context

14.00 – 17.30 Decolonizing Information Infrastructure?
Moderator | Moderadora: Barbara Potthast, Universität zu Köln

14.00 – 15.30 Medialities of Conviviality in Heinrich Brüning’s Sound Collection: The Humboldt Forum and Identity and Heritage Politics on Peru’s Northern Coast 
Gisela Cánepa Koch, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

Digitization for Democratization of Knowledge and Decolonization of Cultural Heritage? International Projects related to Latin America and the Caribbean
Christoph Müller, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut
Discussant | Comentarista: Silvia Spitta, Dartmouth College

16.00 – 17.30 Latin American Migrant Food Practices as Cultural Heritage? Decolonizing Knowledge Infrastructures in the Context of Digital Transformation
Stephanie Schütze, Freie Universität Berlin

Contested Objects: Collection Management between Cultural Heritage, Open Science and Multiperspectivism
Barbara Göbel, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut
Discussant | Comentarista: Ana María Cetto, UNAM

18.00 – 20.00 Public Lecture | The Encounter of Knowledges: Epistemic Dialogues in Unequal Contexts

Margarita Valdovinos
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

The universal interest in material culture has always offered a place for the encounter of knowledges from different cultures. But how do these knowledges circulate in complex social contexts? How have our practices of knowledge impacted the knowledges of others and vice versa? Margarita Valdovinos addresses these questions on the bases of her research in Berlin and among the Náayeri of Northwest Mexico.

Full program for download.

Simón Bolívar Hall
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut
Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Potsdamer Straße 37
D-10785 Berlin