Annual Focuses
With its annual focuses, the Ibero-American Institute (IAI) takes up central Ibero-American topics and developments, exploring them from different angles and in various formats.
Berlin – The Capital of Science
The year 2010 is a jubilee year for Science in Berlin. Not only will the Ibero-American Institute (IAI) be celebrating its 80th birthday, one of its most important cooperation partners, the Latin America Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University Berlin), will become 40 in the same year. And moreover, the Berlin-Brandenburg Latin America research network will celebrate its first ten years of existence. These jubilees, so important to regional research, occur at the same time as other festivities celebrating the foundation of the city’s oldest scientific institutions – the Staatsbibliothek zu Belrin, the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Humboldt Universität Berlin and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Max Planck Society). The IAI will itself hold a series of events focusing on the topic of “Berlin – The 2010 Capital of Science".
The two Germany and Latin America
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the IAI dedicates one of its annual focuses to the relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Latin America and the German Democratic Republic and Latin America. In this context, the political, social, scientific and cultural dimensions of these relations will be described and compared to one another. Special emphasis will be put on the mutual perceptions of the two Germany and the subcontinent.
Heading towards the bicentenary
Bolivia and Ecuador (2009), Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Columbia (2010) and El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela (2011) are celebrating their two hundred years of independence. The IAI takes this anniversary as an opportunity for the second annual focus “Heading towards the bicentenary”, which started in the second half of 2009 and will last until 2011. Within the framework of international symposia, series of films, lectures and exhibitions, the IAI looks from different perspectives at the processes of independences in Latin America and analyses their relevance for the present-day relations between Europe and Latin America. Likewise, discussions about national identities or continental integration and the consequences that result from these discussions will be analysed.
The tropics are one of the 2008 focuses. In cooperation with the Goethe Institut (Goethe Institute), the IAI is organizing the academic and cultural program supporting the exhibition “Die Tropen – Ansichten von der Mitte der Weltkugel” (“The Tropics – Views from the Center of the Globe”). The show, scheduled to open at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in September 2008, establishes links between pre-modern works from the tropics and contemporary art. Parallel to the exhibition, the IAI will examine the legend of the tropics from different angles. Selected topics: the cinema and urban literature of the tropics, the tropics as a site of knowledge production, soy bean cultivation and the tropics.
As part of this focus in 2008, the IAI will examine the content, forms and styles of cultural memory from a comparative perspective.
One focus in 2007 examined the importance of cultural heritage as a constitutive element for social identity and intercultural dialog.