Deutsches Haus at NYU presents “A Question of Taste. Colonial Aesthetics, Political Affects, and Taste Tanks” a public lecture and conversation with Ulrike Bergermann, DAAD Visiting Scholar and Professor of Media Studies at the University of Art in Braunschweig, and Katrin Köppert, Assistant Professor for Art History and Popular Cultures at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts.

Taste has a history, or rather many – personal, embodied histories as well as philosophical and colonial histories. A new understanding of taste emerged in the aesthetics of the enlightenment, while colonialism and enslavement provided new experiences of taste and 'having taste'. Following on from this, and with a glance to the euro-american story of cocoa, we might think of a need to not only “decolonize the mind” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o) but also the senses. With the help of the queerfeminist concept of “Feel Tanks” and current theories of collectivity, taste, and affect, I discuss the idea of “Taste Tanks” for a disruption of the sensible.