Twenty years after unification, Berlin continues to promote the (re)building of the city through ... more Twenty years after unification, Berlin continues to promote the (re)building of the city through marketing practices, including tours, white models, viewing platforms, and buildings wrapped with plastic facades to depict future urban scenes for residents and visitors to imagine. Although these strategies of making the city under construction, renovation, deconstruction, and reconstruction into a spectacle were most clearly evident during the first 15 years of Berlin’s post- unification construction boom, urban landscapes continue to be used as temporal frames to situate the city in a future to come. In 2006 and 2007, for example, viewing platforms invited visitors to look at the scene of the “environmental deconstruction” of the Palast der Republik as planners, to view a site from an elevated platform and imagine how the future Humboldt Center might replace this former GDR parliamentary building. Elsewhere in the city, artists Folke Kobberling and Martin Kaltwasser excavated three plots in a series of adjacent empty lots in central Berlin in 2007 and erected viewing platforms that led down into those sites. Their artistic excavation- installation, Turn It One More Time (2006–2008), unearthed building foundations, coal furnaces, cellars, even toilets—remnants of earlier urban inhabitants. In describing their work, the artists noted that viewing platforms erected on the western side of the Berlin Wall after 1961 “allowed citizens to see beyond the division. Now, rather than leading upwards, the excavations led downwards and offered a new view into the history of a place.” Kobberling and Kaltwasser also observed how the “view” of the city from their platforms encouraged visitors to encounter the urban natural environment. The artists listed on a large billboard at the site the diverse array of plants in the overgrown fields they excavated according to their biological species. For the artists,
This chapter examines the Hannah Arendt Denkraum (2006) exhibition in Berlin that was displayed i... more This chapter examines the Hannah Arendt Denkraum (2006) exhibition in Berlin that was displayed in former Jewish Girls School, which at the time was an ‘empty’ building located in former East Berlin. Through the exhibition, this building – which was violently made into a ruin under National Socialism – was again reanimated as a historical place of Jewish life and culture in Berlin. While legal restitution by the Jewish Claims Conference prevented the building from being quickly redeveloped following reunification, creative practices and later renovation resulted in ‘dignity restoration’ (Atuahene, 2014). As a form of repair, dignity restoration enhances spatial justice in ways that are often ignored by urban managers who prioritise economic development. The chapter discusses how the exhibition reclaimed a historical place from a ruin of spatial injustice in the wounded city of Berlin by calling attention to the loss of Jewish life and political thought in the city.
Heather Merrill’s An Alliance of Women: Immigration and the Politics of Race (University of Minne... more Heather Merrill’s An Alliance of Women: Immigration and the Politics of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) was the subject of a provocative, inspiring, and sometimes contentious ‘Author Meets Critics’ session at the 2007 AAG meeting in San Francisco. This was the second in a series of sessions sponsored by the Qualitative Research Specialty Group that highlighted the first books of authors who advance the field of qualitative research in innovative ways. The panelists in the session—Patricia Ehrkamp, Linda McDowell, Katherine McKittrick, Heidi Nast, and Alison Mountz—acknowledged in quite distinct ways how Heather’s research raised difficult questions regarding the agendas, politics and practices of transnational feminisms in (postcolonial) Europe. As there was not enough time to discuss the remarkably diverse set of responses and insights raised by the author, panelists and audience, we decided to continue this conversation through the pages of this review forum
Memorial Museums seeks to interpret critically ‘the emerging but under-explored field of memorial... more Memorial Museums seeks to interpret critically ‘the emerging but under-explored field of memorial museums’ (p. 22) and to provide an international survey and evaluation of historic site museums that document, commemorate, and represent events of human atrocity. Such a study has been long overdue. However, Memorial Museums, which could have made a significant contribution to this ‘global institutional development’ (p. 8), provides neither a systematic examination of the history and types of memorial museums that now exist, nor a theoretically sophisticated study. Instead, this random collection of superficially described examples must be judged a missed opportunity
Twenty years after unification, Berlin continues to promote the (re)building of the city through ... more Twenty years after unification, Berlin continues to promote the (re)building of the city through marketing practices, including tours, white models, viewing platforms, and buildings wrapped with plastic facades to depict future urban scenes for residents and visitors to imagine. Although these strategies of making the city under construction, renovation, deconstruction, and reconstruction into a spectacle were most clearly evident during the first 15 years of Berlin’s post- unification construction boom, urban landscapes continue to be used as temporal frames to situate the city in a future to come. In 2006 and 2007, for example, viewing platforms invited visitors to look at the scene of the “environmental deconstruction” of the Palast der Republik as planners, to view a site from an elevated platform and imagine how the future Humboldt Center might replace this former GDR parliamentary building. Elsewhere in the city, artists Folke Kobberling and Martin Kaltwasser excavated three plots in a series of adjacent empty lots in central Berlin in 2007 and erected viewing platforms that led down into those sites. Their artistic excavation- installation, Turn It One More Time (2006–2008), unearthed building foundations, coal furnaces, cellars, even toilets—remnants of earlier urban inhabitants. In describing their work, the artists noted that viewing platforms erected on the western side of the Berlin Wall after 1961 “allowed citizens to see beyond the division. Now, rather than leading upwards, the excavations led downwards and offered a new view into the history of a place.” Kobberling and Kaltwasser also observed how the “view” of the city from their platforms encouraged visitors to encounter the urban natural environment. The artists listed on a large billboard at the site the diverse array of plants in the overgrown fields they excavated according to their biological species. For the artists,
This chapter examines the Hannah Arendt Denkraum (2006) exhibition in Berlin that was displayed i... more This chapter examines the Hannah Arendt Denkraum (2006) exhibition in Berlin that was displayed in former Jewish Girls School, which at the time was an ‘empty’ building located in former East Berlin. Through the exhibition, this building – which was violently made into a ruin under National Socialism – was again reanimated as a historical place of Jewish life and culture in Berlin. While legal restitution by the Jewish Claims Conference prevented the building from being quickly redeveloped following reunification, creative practices and later renovation resulted in ‘dignity restoration’ (Atuahene, 2014). As a form of repair, dignity restoration enhances spatial justice in ways that are often ignored by urban managers who prioritise economic development. The chapter discusses how the exhibition reclaimed a historical place from a ruin of spatial injustice in the wounded city of Berlin by calling attention to the loss of Jewish life and political thought in the city.
Heather Merrill’s An Alliance of Women: Immigration and the Politics of Race (University of Minne... more Heather Merrill’s An Alliance of Women: Immigration and the Politics of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) was the subject of a provocative, inspiring, and sometimes contentious ‘Author Meets Critics’ session at the 2007 AAG meeting in San Francisco. This was the second in a series of sessions sponsored by the Qualitative Research Specialty Group that highlighted the first books of authors who advance the field of qualitative research in innovative ways. The panelists in the session—Patricia Ehrkamp, Linda McDowell, Katherine McKittrick, Heidi Nast, and Alison Mountz—acknowledged in quite distinct ways how Heather’s research raised difficult questions regarding the agendas, politics and practices of transnational feminisms in (postcolonial) Europe. As there was not enough time to discuss the remarkably diverse set of responses and insights raised by the author, panelists and audience, we decided to continue this conversation through the pages of this review forum
Memorial Museums seeks to interpret critically ‘the emerging but under-explored field of memorial... more Memorial Museums seeks to interpret critically ‘the emerging but under-explored field of memorial museums’ (p. 22) and to provide an international survey and evaluation of historic site museums that document, commemorate, and represent events of human atrocity. Such a study has been long overdue. However, Memorial Museums, which could have made a significant contribution to this ‘global institutional development’ (p. 8), provides neither a systematic examination of the history and types of memorial museums that now exist, nor a theoretically sophisticated study. Instead, this random collection of superficially described examples must be judged a missed opportunity
The Red Stables Summer School Jun-Aug 2012, Dec 2012
'In this short essay, I outline three reasons to invest in shared artistic labour: its collaborat... more 'In this short essay, I outline three reasons to invest in shared artistic labour: its collaborative discovery in multiple fields, its creative practices of social and ecological sustainability, and its educational outreach to a range of publics.' Karen Till, Field Findings, 2012, p. 23.
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