The Brazilian artist and author Nuno Ramos and the scholar Peter W. Schulze will reflect upon the ongoing appeal of Marcel Mauss’s Essai sur le don, drawing on theories of the gift and, inspired by them, intend to establish a performative practice of the gift through dialogue between the humanities and the arts. In their interdisciplinary project, the collaboration between artists and researchers is itself understood as an exchange of gifts producing a “mélange” (to use a key concept of Mauss’s theory), a mutual inspiration beyond the traditional divide of theory/criticism and literary/artistic creation. This approach enables a perspective that “follows the actors” of the gift exchange instead of splitting art and scholarship into two separate realms, in which the latter can be nothing more than a critical meta-discourse with respect to artistic practice. 

Currently, the Brazilian artist and writer Nuno Ramos is Senior Fellow at the Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies. At the Auerbach Institute, Ramo develops his project on “Gift, Counter-Gift: An Experimental Dialogue Between the Humanities and the Arts” in cooperation with Peter W. Schulze, Director of the Portugiesisch-Brasilianisches Institut (PBI) at UzK. 

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