Move beyond the classical pillars of the Western canon and discover how artists from the Global South are reshaping the art world today.

In this episode, Lea Hagmann sits down with Elize Mazadiego, Assistant Professor of World Art History at the University of Bern. Elize specializes in non-Western art histories, focusing heavily on experimental Latin American art from the 1950s to the 1980s. Together, they explore how creatives of this era departed from traditional mediums like painting and sculpture to embrace groundbreaking practices in performance, video, and postal art.

Links:

• Elize Mazadiego's profile on the University of Bern website

New episodes of WBKollektion on the first monday of each month!

It’s a blazing hot afternoon in late 2021. Moslem Ghomashlouyan is standing in a crisply air-conditioned sports apparel store in an upscale mall, looking at rows upon rows of Nikes, Adidas, and New Balances. Nothing unusual – except for one detail:
The mall was in Northern Tehran – And Iran has been under strict US-led sanctions for decades.

Martin Ritzmann sat down with the social anthropologist to learn more about the remarkable journey Western brand-name apparel undertake across the Iraqi-Iranian border.

NOTE: This episode was recorded on 27 March, 2026 – 4 weeks after the onset of the 2026 Iran war.

Links:

• Moslem Ghomashlouyan's profile on UniBE

Further Reading:

• Erami, Narges, and Arang Keshavarzian. 2015. “When Ties Don’t Bind: Smuggling Effects, Bazaars and Regulatory Regimes in Postrevolutionary Iran.” Economy and Society 44 (1): 110–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2014.909986

• Yıldız, Emrah. 2024a. “Guaranteed Contraband’: A Cultural Biography of Kaçak Tea in Gaziantep’s Iranian Bazaar.” Journal of Cultural Economy 17 (2): 178–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2024.2323691

• Zinati, Peyman. 2024. “Escaping isn’t for everyone”: Kurdish smugglers’ navigational tactics at checkpoints in Iran. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)

• Bozçalı, Fırat. 2025. Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey’s Kurdish Borderlands. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

New episodes of WBKollektion on the first monday of each month!

Rund 1400 Chöre gibt es heute in der Schweiz – doch wie sah das gemeinsame Singen im 19. Jahrhundert aus? Lea Hagmann spricht mit der Musikwissenschaftlerin Caiti Hauck über ihre Forschung im Projekt CLEFNI. Gemeinsam tauchen sie in die Welt der Schweizer Männerchöre des 19. Jahrhunderts in Bern und Fribourg ein – und besprechen, wie historische Wissenschaft in Form eines Comics lebendig wird.

In der Episode besprochen:

• CLEFNI
• Comic: Drei Schweizer Chorsänger im 19. Jahrhundert
• Julien Cachemaille
• Musiklexikon der Schweiz

  Neue Folgen von WBKollektion erscheinen am ersten Montag des Monats.