Participate in 'Homes | Heimat’ by contributing your family's historical photos and post/colonial narratives, and help us articulate ‘home.’ If you are interested please get back to us before June 15th at kultur@uni-muenster.de.

Communities are often metaphorized as social fabrics wherein individual biographies come together like threads to form a larger picture – a tapestry. Threads, that when plucked, hum their own narratives and come together to form ‘home.’ Yet, home is neither fixed, nor necessarily physical. Rather, it traverses the same geographies that we do. Thus, we ask, what images does ‘home’ invoke – fond memories, family albums, and even perhaps, common legacies of colonisation?

With recent calls for “Münster Postcolonial,” the imperial history of the city and the University have emerged in clearer focus. Yet, more comprehensive is the perspective of Post/colonial studies, which has, for long, concerned itself with processes of documentation, the concept of racialization and lived history. But what about "living" histories today? Particularly, how do we link the imperial past of a space with personal testimonies of colonisation that international students bring to Münster; and how do these stories re-articulate our notions of belonging, of our homeland? Guided by these far-reaching questions, we present our initiative "Homes | Heimat: Postcolonialism, Narratives, Photography".

We extend an invitation to the students, staff and members of the University of Münster to participate in this initiative. Your involvement would entail engaging in an interview centered around the "oldest" images from your family archives. Through this conversation, we wish to learn about family history, your inherited and shared experiences of post/colonization and your understanding of home. The interviews will be conducted in English by Yash Gupta, an international student of colour from India.

The results are to be presented at the end of the 2024 summer semester in an artistic installation accompanied by discursive events. If you are interested in participating in this project, please contact us at kultur@uni-muenster.de.