Announcement: 22.01.2024 – Talk of our Lecturer Marion Struck-Garbe in Frankfurt
22 January 2024, by AAI Webmaster

Photo: "Sapos Yumi Nogat Graun" by Julie Mota, resized
January 22nd, 2024,
4:15 – 5:45 p.m.:
Talk of our Lecturer
Marion Struck-Garbe
at Frobenius-Institut
für Kulturanthropologische Forschung
at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt:
"Piksa Inap Tok – Mit Bildern erzählen:
Zu Kunst und Gesellschaft in Neuguinea"
("Piksa Inap Tok – Talking with Pictures:
On Arts and Society in New Guinea")
New Guinea is the second largest island on our planet and is home to an extremely wide variety of ethnic groups, with around 90 percent of these people still living in remote rural areas. The island has been undergoing rapid change since colonial days; it is now divided into an Indonesian-dominated part and a politically independent part. Everywhere there is environmental degradation and habitat loss, declining biodiversity and pollution from oil, natural gas and open-pit mines whose tailings contaminate rivers, riverside gardens and coastlines. The clearing of forests for palm oil plantations and timber exports has led to a massive decline in forest areas. Extremely poor governance has facilitated this. As a result, various social conflicts have increased significantly.
But these grievances and environmental sins do not go unnoticed. Contemporary art, for example, reflects these social realities. As an ethnologist, Marion Struck-Garbe has worked a lot with indigenous artists and has researched how environmental damage, violence, attributions of witchcraft and – in the area occupied by Indonesia – human rights violations as well as resistance and protest are discussed in their works.