To ensure the well-being and health of our guests, the number of visitors will be limited and prior registration is required. Most events are also livestreamed. You will find the exact modalities of each event on the dedicated event page. Kindly observe our COVID-19-Visitor Guidelines prior to your visit.

About Events

The ICI Berlin is an independent, non-profit research centre. To accompany its ongoing research, it organizes public events on a wide range of topics and in different formats including lectures, performances, conferences, art events, and readings. It welcomes diverse audiences living in or passing through Berlin.

The ICI Core Project draws input from and is reflected in an accompanying lecture series. Other conferences and symposia represent collaborative initiatives of fellows and staff. Many more events are the product of cooperations with partner institutions and other research projects.

Indications for Visitors

All events are open to the public and are usually free of charge. For semi-public workshops prior registration might be requested. Reservations are not possible, the ICI Berlin asks for your understanding that doors will close if the room gets overcrowded. The Institute’s facilities are wheelchair-friendly but their navigation might require some assistance; please contact Event Management ahead of your visit.

ICI events are frequently recorded and made available within the ICI Edition later on; the audience’s consent is presumed; individual recordings are not allowed. Video documentation not available on the ICI website might be part of ICI Library holdings and can be found through its catalogue.

Lecture Series

Parallel to its ongoing research colloquium, the ICI Berlin organizes public events on a wide range of topics. Its core project draws input from and is reflected in an accompanying lecture series.

Models
Lecture Series 2023-24

A model can be an object of admiration, a miniature or a prototype, an abstracted phenomenon or applied theory, a literary text — practically anything from a human body on a catwalk to a mathematical description of a system. It can elicit desire, provide understanding, guide action or thought. Despite the polysemy of the term, models across disciplines and fields share a fundamental characteristic: their effect depends on a specific relational quality. A model is always a model of or for something else, and the relation is reductive insofar as it is selective and considers only certain aspects of both object and model.

Critical discussions of models often revolve around their restrictive function. And yet models are less prescriptive and more ambiguous than codified rules or norms. What is the critical purchase of models and how does their generative potential relate to their constitutive reduction? What are the stakes in decreasing or increasing, altering or proliferating the reductiveness of models? How can one work with and on models in a creative, productive manner without disavowing power asymmetries and their exclusionary or limiting effects?