Breaking and Making Models

Christoph F. E. Holzhey is the founding director of the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, which he has led since 2007. He holds PhDs in theoretical physics (1993) and German literature (2001). He has run several projects at the ICI Berlin and has (co-)edited several volumes, including Tension/ Spannung (2010), Multistable Figures (2014), De/Constituting Wholes (2017), Re- (2019), Weathering (2020), ERRANS (2022), and The Case for Reduction (2022).

Marietta Kesting is a media and cultural theorist, currently working as research coordinator at the ICI Berlin and as leader of the FWF-funded project 'Future Dreaming in the Arts' in Vienna. From 2016 to 2022 she held a junior professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, and from 2022 to 2024 she taught at the University of Potsdam. She most recently co-edited the volumes Human after Man (with Susanne Witzgall, German in print 2022, English as e-book 2024) and Landschaft, Wetter, Kraut und Kritter (FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur, 75, 2025, with Kerstin Brandes).

Claudia Peppel is in charge of academic coordination and communication at the ICI Berlin. She studied Italian and French literature at the Freie Universität Berlin and at La Sapienza in Rome and holds a PhD in philosophy from Technische Universität Darmstadt. Her publications focus on literary and cultural studies, as well as aesthetics, art history, and visual culture. She has taught at Berlin University of the Arts and has curated exhibitions of contemporary art. In 2019, she co-edited the volume Die Kunst des Wartens (with Brigitte Kölle), on the topic of waiting in the arts.