Doctoral Fellow in Research Area 4: "Literary Currencies"

April–September 2025

Transnational Filmmaking in Germany: Practices, Routes, Archives

Carlos Kong's project at the Cluster of Excellence Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective revolves around conceiving and screening a four-part film and discussion series entitled "Transnational Filmmaking in Germany: Practices, Routes, Archives", jointly curated by Kong and Dr. Till Kadritzke at Sinema Transtopia in Berlin. The focus of the programme lies on how German film history has been marked by transnational entanglements, and will feature film screenings and talks by invited experts on topics such as Turkish film productions in West Germany, filmmakers in exile, international students at West and East German film schools, and postmigrant perspectives on transnational migration histories. The series will reflect the combined interests of Till Kadritzke's postdoctoral research on film, racism and migration in 1970s and 1980s West Germany and Carlos Kong's doctoral dissertation on postmigrant archival practices, migrant-situated knowledge and Turkish German migration histories in contemporary art and film.

Carlos Kong is a joint-PhD candidate in Art History at Princeton University and in Film Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, where he is completing his dissertation, Migrant-Situated Knowledge in the Arts of Postmigration: Turkish German Archives in Contemporary Art and Film. His research primarily focuses on global contemporary art and film (especially in Germany and Turkey), Turkish German histories, postmigrant cultural practices, as well as interdisciplinary and transnational approaches across visual art, film, literature and migration. He received a BA in Comparative Literature from Cornell University, an MA in History of Art from The Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London) and pursued additional studies in Heidelberg and Istanbul. His work has been supported by Fulbright, DAAD and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. He has contributed to various edited volumes, art and film magazines, artist monographs, and curatorial and discursive programmes, and he is co-editor of The Public Review, a digital publication for art criticism.