The Humboldt Experiment

A Lecture-Performance

On Slavery

In this edition of The Humboldt Experiment, Brazilian author and performer Uriara Maciel takes center stage in a powerful lecture-performance that revisits Alexander von Humboldt’s writings on slavery in Latin America. Through her voice, the historical and personal converge—bringing to light the lived realities behind colonial archives.

Working in close collaboration with director Mirah Laline and Humboldt scholar Tobias Kraft (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities), Maciel weaves historical analysis with poetic narration, embodying the perspectives of those historically silenced. Her performance explores the enduring impacts of slavery and questions how systems of oppression continue to manifest today.

While Kraft provides critical insight into Humboldt’s nuanced stance on slavery and his paradoxical proximity to slaveholders, it is Maciel’s presence that reframes these narratives—offering a decolonial lens grounded in lived experience, memory, and resistance. Together with performers Txepetite and Thiago Rosa, video artists Kathleen Kunath and Zé de Paiva, and set designer Andreina Vieira dos Santos, she helps give voice to the Afro-Latin American experience often overlooked in European discourse.

Presented in both German and English with simultaneous interpretation, the performance invites audiences to confront historical responsibility and consider how colonial legacies shape present-day inequities.

The Humboldt Experiment is a six-part lecture-performance series presented by the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss in collaboration with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.