About
Welcome to the ICI Library! The ICI Library is a reference library to be used on site. We support the scholars of the ICI Berlin in their research by supplying them with the needed literature and bibliographical information. While we develop our collection in close connection with the collective research projects of the ICI Berlin, we use interlibrary loan services to make materials available that are needed by individual researchers.
The ICI Library is registered with the library code ISIL BE–1578 by the ISIL Agency of Germany, is a member of the GBV Common Library Network, the German Library Association (dbv e. V.), and of the Working Community of German Special Libraries (AspB e. V.)
It is a partner of the Specialized Information Service for Comparative Literature (SIS Comparative Literature/FID AVL) and supports the ICI’s publishing venture ICI Berlin Press.
Collection
The ICI Library houses a collection reflecting the multidisciplinary research undertaken at the Institute in general and the work on its core projects in particular, with a focus on research in cultural theory. The library also houses the ICI Edition, a collection of recordings of events organized at the ICI Berlin. All recordings published in the ICI Edition have an entry in the library catalogue, which contains a link to the video hosted on the ICI website. The library also archives the posters and flyers of ICI Events as well as press materials and literature reviews related to the ICI Berlin.
Information
The holdings of the ICI Library are recorded in the local catalogue as well as in the Common Union Catalogue (GVK) of the Common Library Network (GBV), carrying call numbers and location information. Please note, however, that the catalogue does not give information about the status of individual items, since the ICI Library uses an internal lending system not connected to the publically accessible GVK catalogue. Please inquire with library staff if the desired title is presently available.
Unfortunately, we cannot offer regular use of the ICI Library to our guests. You are welcome, however, to visit us and use our holdings on site. Please contact us in advance in order to make an appointment.
Service
The library staff is present and ready to assist you on:
- Tues 10:00 – 18:00
- Wed 10:00 – 18:00
- Thurs 11:00-17:00
- Fri 13:00-18:00
Anna R. Winder Salling (Librarian)
anna.windersalling@ici-berlin.org
Tel: 473 7291-26
Christian Cortés (Assistant Librarian)
christian.cortes@ici-berlin.org
Tel: 473 7291-29
New book by former ICI Fellow Mark Anthony Cayanan - Miracle Fever: Poems
In the early 1990s, a small town in the Philippines became the epicenter of religious controversy when a teenager claimed to be visited by the Virgin Mary. News of these visions, broadcast over national media, would prompt over a million to flock to the town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the teenager and witness inexplicable events: a statue of the Virgin weeping blood, the sun dancing and throbbing into various fantastic colors, or a bevy of doves appearing overhead during Mass. Miracle Fever, chronicling the life of this town, is a poetry sequence revolving around these apparitions. Documentary in its scrutiny and distortion of real-life events, novelistic in its plot trajectory, and lyric in its imagistic intensity, Miracle Fever offers a fabulist model of reality, built through poems delivered in the form of dramaticules, timelines, and photo captions.
New book by former ICI Fellow Ewa Majewska - The Caring Leviathan? : Hiacynt Pink Files, biopolitics, and the queer critical theory
On 15 November 1985, gay men in Poland woke up as the police knocked on their door. The “Hiacynt action” was a series of police and secret services’ surveillance operations targeting gay men, showcasing what Michel Foucault called “biopolitical power”. This book shows the persistence of the “state of exception” (Agamben) for LGBTQIA+ communities; the archive query it depicts demonstrates the continuous use of Hiacynt documents in current Polish police’s operations. The book engages with resistance to the archive and perversions of institutional care for the population, offering a transversal queer critical theory of the state, inspired by Hegel.
New article by former Visiting Fellow Annie Ring - 'Einen Film Drehen' : Technopolitical Turns and the Rendering Operational of Subjectivity in Farocki's Leben–BRD (1990) and Petzold's Barbara (2012)
This article analyses the ‘Gestus’ of turning in films by Harun Farocki and Christian Petzold, in light of a central claim of Andrew Webber’s esteemed theoretical work on film: that film has the power to uncover unconscious processes through which subjects come into being and are made operational for political regimes. The analysis draws on Webber’s critical writings, Farocki’s posthumous notes, and comments by Marx and Benjamin on technologies of turning that both expanded and replaced human capacities. The article thus revisits key historical turns — industrialisation, art history, the ‘Wende’, the digital revolution — while affirming the continuing power of filmmaking and film theory to decode the hidden operations of technological modernity.
