Glossary

Abstract

The glossary On Institutions is a trace of the conference “Testing Institutions” which took place from November 14-16, 2014 at the Kulturcampus “Domäne Marienburg” of the Stiftung University Hildesheim/Germany. Organized by the Junge Akademie and the Institute for Media, Theatre and Popular Culture at University Hildesheim the conference discussed the challenges and possibilities, perspectives and methods to talk about and investigate (primarily cultural) institutions. Contributors were speakers from academic disciplines such as sociology of culture, art history, theatre studies, philosophy and anthropology as well as curators and artists from the fields of theatre, performance and visual arts.During the conference an extensive glossary was compiled that includes those terms that seemed to be the most relevant ones for the participants regarding the concepts of and processes within institutions. The co-authored glossary edited by Pirkko Husemann hardly contains any of the notions that are frequently used in sociological or art historical discourse about institutions and their critique (such as acknowledgement, expectation, orientation, habit, power, definition). Instead it consists of notions that hint at a performative and processual turn in the debate. A small, random selection of entries that is directly related to some of the speaker's lectures was chosen in order to be published: Affect, authorisation, historiography, hospitality, infrastructure, narration, reflexivity, rhythm, subvention.These entries deal with the modality, conditions and critique of institutions and they vary in perspective and style according to the respective author. Their heterogeneity shows that the endeavour to exchange about concepts of ‘institution’ and processes of institutionalization was partly an act of translation between perspectives (art/theory) and methods (inductive/deductive). But it proved to bridge the gap between hardly interrelated discourses and thus led to new ideas and collaborations, particularly between sociology, arts and curating.