Crossmopollinate

We are Crossmopollinate. Our name is a portamento of the words cosmopolitan and cross-pollinate. We are a collective initiated in the Transcultural Studies department of Heidelberg University. Although we come from multiple backgrounds, such as anthropology, architecture, art history, cartography, geography, literature studies, urban planning, and so on, one thing that brought us together was our approach to transculturality. We firmly believe that the transcultural lens could be implemented to create a collaborative platform between students, researchers, artists, and cultural practitioners. We strive to bridge the gap between transcultural theory and practice, employing a two-pronged approach in order to achieve this goal. Through Interval, the collective’s magazine, we aim to integrate the transcultural model into discussions about art, politics, economy, and society beyond the confines of academia. Interval seeks to demystify the theoretical aspects of Transcultural Studies by creating multimedia content, including calls for papers, podcasts, video essays and more. We hold the belief in the capacity of such diverse narrative practices to promote the horizontalization of the often hierarchical domain of knowledge production. Through Crossmopollinate, the collective’s research lab, we aim to bring together expertise from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, geography, mathematics, art, and natural sciences. We wish to realise the conjunction between separated realities through new modes of critical thinking and problem-solving. Additionally, we aim to facilitate community-based workshops, research, and public art projects related to urban inhabitation, and citizenship. Our approach rests upon a mode of collaborative knowledge production.