Archive for 2006

Mission: Impossible III – Mission failed because of mediocrity.

Monday, May 15th, 2006

To my regret I haven’t been to the cinema often lately. Not enough time and a certain scarcity of funds, I guess. One movie that I saw was Mission: Impossible III, the night it started. I cannot say that the cinema was filled with excited and anxious people, quite to the contrary. I also cannot say that Tom Cruise put on a great act. Neither can I say that the story was gripping. The effects? Neither as stunning nor as exciting as the ones we could see in the second Mission:Impossible movie. I can say though that I was not bored to death. Hence me writing this review. Being still alive and all. But I better not watch this movie again, and you should save your action movie funds for something else, perhaps the upcoming X-Men: The Last Stand?

IMDb entry | Trailers

Fußball-WM und Soziologie.

Sunday, May 7th, 2006

Auf www.stadiumworlds.de gibt es Informationen zur spannenden, von Sybille Frank und Silke Steets organisierten Ringvorlesung unter dem Titel stadionwelten. Wer Mittwochs in der Umgebung von Darmstadt ist, sollte den Abend im großen Hörsaal des Residenzschlosses verbringen – Ohren spitzen und Augen schärfen. (Freunde der Schriftsetzung können eine schöne ſs Ligatur genießen.)

How would you like your arrival in Berlin to be?

Thursday, May 4th, 2006

Think about it…
My arrival two days ago was perfect. Entering the plane in Oslo in cold and cloudy weather, rising above the clouds to fly while the sun is sinking down. Then, landing in Berlin. Evening sky, warm breeze. Not a lot of people around. Walking to my platform at Schönefeld station, I was asked by a somewhat drunk mid-forties working style man: Wo jehtsn ſzur S-Bahn hier? And I gave the correct, easily-followed answer. Good deed.
After waiting for fifteen minutes enjoying the pleasant weather, the S-Bahn arrived and transported me graciously and rockingly down to Alexanderplatz, where I changed to the U-Bahn line 2. Leaving the U-Bahn at Senefelder Platz, I wandered over to Kleopatra, bought myself a decent Döner Kebab for € 2.30, and walked over to my apartment, passing people who sit outside of cafés and bars. Entering my apartment, letting down the book-heavy traveling backpack, opening the balcony door and sinking down into the comfortable camping chair, watching people pass by below, munching away at the Döner, and sighing happily from time to time.
That’s how I like my arrivals in Berlin.

Umzüge, Umzüge, Umzüge.

Monday, April 24th, 2006

Besonders in der Aneinanderreihung ein unterhaltsames Wort. Weniger allerdings in der praktischen Ausführung. Selbst bis in Ausland verfolgen sie einen – gestern erst hier in Oslo beim Umzug geholfen. Und – Überraschung – mal wieder ganz nach Art des letzten oder besser nahezu einzigen Helfers in der Not. Wenn man schon sonst keinen Sport macht. Zumal das Wetter ganz famos war und Kerstin und ich nur schubweise (immer zur Anlieferung neuer Kartons) schuften mussten. Zwischendurch Zeit für Balkonien und poofen auffem Sofa.
Gut ist, dass hier ein normaler, wenn auch später Frühling durch die Lüfte flattert. Daheim scheint der Übergang ja mehr so vom Winter direkt in den Sommer zu gehen.
Gut ist auch, dass es sich derzeit ganz angenehm schreibt und ich zuversichtlich bin, meinen Einzelbeitrag für den von Lars und mir herausgegebenen Band noch hier in Oslo fertig zu stellen. Vielleicht schaffe ich es danach dann ja auch wieder, etwas fleißiger zu bloggen…

Simultaneous publication.

Wednesday, April 19th, 2006

Welcome to the world of parallel publication. These days our new book is being printed and sent out to distributors. You can read many things on Negotiating Urban Conflicts : Interaction, Space and Control. Thanks to transcript Verlag – I am really looking forward to having the thing in my hands. You should too: go to your library and tell them to order it (or buy it yourself if your account allows spending about thirty Euros for a book you might not desperately need…)
At the same time, the website that accompanies my article goes online. Since it was not possible / too expensive to put a CD or DVD into the book I had to rely on other means to make the video and sound sequences that I analyze in the article accessible. I’m excited about this parallel publication in two media and we’ll see how it works out. The major backdraw is that I can’t publish the whole article online, since Transcript wants to sell the book. Too bad. I did not invest much time into the negotiation, but I will try to improve how this is negotiated with future publications. However, I fear this will be difficult, especially since I do not have the status of a Bruno Latour, who publishes most of his printed work online too. Kudos for being an example, M. Latour!
Regarding the multimedia content on the new website: it is possible to embed multimedia objects in a way that makes them display in most browsers. Usually, that would mean breaking web standards. It is also possible to use a trick or two to keep to standards and still display the content in most browsers. This was the way I chose for several years. But my patience has run dry and now I am using straightforward, standard-compliant code with neither tricks nor bells and whistles. The result is that Internet Explorer for Windows is not really doing very well with the page – surprise, surprise. The solution? Browse Happy.

Back to Berlin and balcony.

Sunday, April 9th, 2006

Yup, the regularity of seasons. What a nice thing. Especially now that it becomes possible again to stir your hot chocolate on the balcony while peeking at the first sprouts that penetrate the outer shell of branches and soil.

It’s good to be home again after a prolonged period of traveling. The first week was consumed by working my way through the piles of physical and electronic mail, washing, organizing, filling a new book shelf, registering as being unemployed beginning April 15th, and writing my first job application in more than three years. We’ll see how things develop…

In America’s heartland.

Friday, March 17th, 2006

Sorry for not posting for two weeks – I am currently in the United States. The conference that I attended was very good, my presentation went fine, I think, and now I am sitting in Soma, a café in Bloomington, Indiana, trying to write an application to get funding that would allow me to participate in the Crossroads 2006 conference in Istanbul. My scholarship might end soon (just one more month to go, actually), but I do not intend to end my scholarly activities. To the contrary! We won’t let ourselves get grinded down in the academic wo do not have any jobs – either you get depressed, get a one Euro job, or work until you get sick machine. Loitering for the right to loiter!

Mapping website visitors.

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006

world map showing website visitor locationsSiteMeter has started offering a view of recent website visitors a few months ago. A nice feature, which I sometimes check out. Today’s map is good enough to be shown. The criteria for good enough is: representative enough. Since only the last 100 visits are shown using a free SiteMeter account, it is difficult to capture the the breadth of the global distribution. The rarer visitors come from specific locations (Latin America and Australia are both pretty rare for me), the easier they fall out of the ‘last 100 visitors’ statistics.
In this map you see two things that are typical: visitors from the Islamic world (parts of Africa, the Middle East but most of them from Malaysia) who come to read my comparison of Ibn Khaldūn and Comte, and a substantial amount of visitors from North America. European visitors are mostly from Germany, but also from Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Scandinavia, the Baltic States and the other European countries.

Schockschwerenot.

Sunday, February 26th, 2006

Die Vorfreude steigt jeden Tag: bald geht es in die USA. Um in dieses Land gelassen zu werden, benötigt man einen Reisepass (von üblen Dingen wie dem Abnehmen von Fingerabdrücken und Irisscans wollen wir hier gar nicht erst reden). Ich bin natürlich schon seit längerem im Besitz eines solchen, habe ich doch für mein Auslandsjahr in Bloomington besorgen müssen. Reisepässe sind zehn Jahre gültig und ich war 1999 bis 2000 in Bloomington. Alles gut.
Alles gut? Nein! Wie mir wenige Minuten vor unserem Aufbruch nach Oslo in der letzten Woche auffiel, als ich der Unterhaltung halber einen Blick in meinen Reisepass (zur Einreise nach Norwegen braucht man nur einen Personalausweis) gewurfte, ist mir das Blut in den Adern gefroren. Der Ausweis ist im Frühling 2004 abgelaufen. Und es ist nach 18 Uhr. Ich fliege gleich nach Oslo. Da bleibe knapp zwei Wochen, fliege dann zurück nach Berlin um Wäsche zu Waschen und umzupacken und dann nach Chicago weiter zu düsen. Wo soll ich da einen Reisepass herzaubern? Schon etwas zittrig habe ich Olli um ein schnelles Hochfahren seines iBooks gebeten, um noch auf den letzten Drücker zu prüfen, ob ich in Berlin bleiben und dort alle Hebel in Gang setzen muss, um doch noch die lang ersehnte Reise antreten zu können, oder ob sich auch was in Oslo machen läßt. Einige Webseitenlektüren später entstand der Eindruck, dass es eine Chance gäbe, die Sache in Olso zu regeln. Also Riskio. Also Abflug.
Ein paar Tage später – Wochenende und Schlumpfigkeit meinerseits haben die Sache noch weiter verzögert – komme ich rennend drei Minuten nach Ende der offiziellen Öffnungszeiten bei der Deutschen Botschaft in Olso an und werde nach einigem Bitten und Flehen noch hineingelassen. Mit fürchterlich schlechten Automaten-Gangsterbildern ausgestattet. (Habe hier in Oslo keinen Scanner zur Hand, die Bilder werden zur allgemeinen Unterhaltung also später nachgereicht.) Die Auflagen zu Passbildern wurden verschärft, weshalb ich den schäbigen Fotoautomaten zweimal mit Kronen füttern musste. Aber die Mühe hat sich gelohnt. Ein paar Warteminuten und unschuldige Augenaufschläge später wird mein ganzer Krams (Passbilder, der abgelaufene Reisepass und eine in Berlin noch schnell eingesteckte Kopie der Abstammungsurkunde) mit gefälligem Gemurmel angenommen. Es müssen nur noch die Berliner Behörden um Bevollmächtigung ersucht werden. Uiuiui. Das wird an diesem Tag nix mehr, ich solle morgen doch vorbeikommen (möglichst etwas früher…). Das tue ich. Morgens, keine Wartenden im Konsularbereich der Botschaft und die Angestellten sind freundlich, ich nur milde konfus. Nach der Zahlung von 526 Norwegischen Kronen bin ich um einen Vorläufigen Reisepass reicher und um unwägbare Mengen von Seelenlast ärmer. Gute Güte. Aber ich muss sagen: Tipptopp, so nette Menschen in der Botschaft. Da fühlt man sich doch mal als Staatsbürger gut aufgehoben. Ausserdem rult es ja wohl, als Aussteller “Deutsche Botschaft Oslo” in seinem Pass stehen zu haben. Das war’s dann doch wert, nicht wahr?

Less gold, more snow.

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006

That would be the Norway-motto for these days. The press laments the unexpectedly low number of gold medals won by Norwegian athletes in the Olympic Games so far. (About fourteen gold medals were expected, two have been won until day eleven.)
There is a recompensation though: Norway, or at least the Oslo region, has more snow than it had for many years. Everything is puffy and white and glistening. We already did two nordic skiing tours. The fist went on for almost three hours (we went from Sognsvann to Hammeren and even a bit further) and caused considerably sore muscles for the female participant of the trip. Yesterday, we were on our first night tour: we departed at 20:25 h and came back two hours later. Although we went uphill almost all of the time and although we raced back downhill later on, we only had one or two falls each and it seems as if the muscles don’t complain as much as they did three days before. Skiing at night is a fun experience, but one should not expect it to be a lonely experience: the electrically lighted cross-country ski run was still well-used – not as many people as there were last Saturday, but still a lot.

The Proposition – whose side am I on?

Friday, February 17th, 2006

It’s a Downunder. Whazzat? A western that’s located in Australia. It has Aborigines instead of indians, spears instead of arrows, insecurity instead of heroes. The Proposition is an grand movie, with a storyline that made choosing a side not an easy task. The action is pretty violent. I feel quite relieved that I live in a relatively peaceful time and place. Nonetheless, the action, the violence and cruelty is an integral part of the story, therefore I do not feel uncomfortable about it – it does not seem to be an end in itself, making it bearable to me. The actors are all excellent. The music, written along with the script by Nick Cave, is great, varying between lovely and sinister. The one thing that did not convince me was the strong insistence on the role of beauty and poetry. For my taste there were a few sunsets and recitations too many. Nonetheless, you should definitely watch this movie as soon as it will be released. The director, John Hillcoat, seemed to be a nice guy – after the showing of this movie at the Berlinale we passed him in the crowd that left the theater, congratulating him on this film. I missed the opportunity to congratulate him (and the absent Nick Cave) on one specific thing though: that the one powerful and wealthy person who was without kindness and sans beauty was the one that survived practically unscathed.
IMDb entry | Trailer

Feines Design.

Thursday, February 16th, 2006

Christine Kitta, die bereits die Webseiten von Florian und Herbert Schui gestaltet hat und auch einen Teil des Designs für die Konferenz Technisierung / Ästhetisierung unseres Graduiertenkollegs übernommen hat, stellt nun auch ihre eigenen Seiten ins Netz. Wer also Gestaltungsaufgaben oder Illustrationen für Gedrucktes oder das Internet braucht werfe doch mal einen Blick auf Tinis Website: www.christinekitta.de.

The movie time of the year.

Saturday, February 11th, 2006

Olli is carrying around his new bag, when I’m in a café I tend to look at the other guests more closely, scanning for movie celebrities, the radio program features my favorite cinema guru, Knut Elstermann, more often; short: it’s Berlinale time!
I personally am too phlegmatic to get up early, queue, check out programs and schedule and so forth, so I have to rely and good friends who ask me to accompany them when they have a spare ticket. Luckily, they exist and thanks to Berit I saw my first Berlinale 2006 movie yesterday.
It was Women Liang or You and Me, the opening movie of the adolescent movie feature/ competition 14plus. An excellent movie about a girl who moves to the city to study and rents a small shed-like room from an old woman. Those two, the young women and the old landlady are similar in character: stubborn, haughty, loyal, direct – they are fascinating women, full characters and seeing them clash and care was a great experience. The actresses are very impressive. A slow movie with a very tender and personal camera. Definitely to be recommended.

Befreiungsschlag.

Monday, February 6th, 2006

Puha. Endlich habe ich mich durchgerungen, mein E-Mail Konto mit dem Benutzernamen frers bei web.de aufzulösen. Nachdem ich schon seit einigen Monaten nur noch eine Weiterleitung auf mein gmail / googlemail Konto laufen hatte, habe ich nun das Konto ganz gelöscht. Eine Bürde ist von mir genommen. Ungefähr 80% der Spammails, die ich über meine privaten E-Mail Adressen bekomme, gingen an die web.de Adresse. Dazu kommen dann noch die ständigen, nervigen InformationsWerbe-Mails von web.de – alles in allem: kaum zu ertragen. Das Webinterface ist auch penetrant.
Nun wünsche ich Google viel Vernügen beim indizieren meiner E-Mails… Wer das vermeiden will, kann die E-Mails ja verschlüsseln – entweder mit PGP/GPG (mein Schlüssel ist unten in der Seitenleiste verlinkt) oder mit meinem Thawte E-Mail Zertifikat (findet sich in meinen signierten Mails).

Opening, Closing, and Revolving – Studies in Doorology.

Monday, February 6th, 2006

Things are working out very well conference-wise: the abstract I submitted for the panel on Everyday stuff: narrating the social lives of material objects of the annual meeting of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association (CSAA) in Toronto, May 30th – June 2nd, has just been accepted. The abstract:

This contribution will unfold the life of an artifact on the border: the door. Based on field observations and digital video recordings of doors and their use in railway and ferry terminals I want to present the door as an entity that participates in the everyday lives of commuters and travelers, old and young, men and women. The door has many aspects that make it a very peculiar and highly interesting object of study for researchers in the social sciences. One of the most prominent aspects is its inherent duality – it is one of the most basic devices of exclusion and inclusion. It can be inviting and open but it can also shut out the unwelcome or unable. The door establishes a visual and material barrier that has to be taken to access whatever lies on the other side. But the door also is a mundane technological artifact with quite specific properties depending on the way it is designed. Sliding doors make up a very thin barrier while revolving doors cover a large amount of space. Doors may work automatically or be pushed and pulled by the hands, feet and shoulders of the people that walk or roll trough them. The presentation will focus on the way in which the life of different kinds of doors is intertwined with the lives of the people that use them. Some of the stories that will be told are linear narrations that talk about reaching a goal lying far away from the door itself. Other stories will be of a more Kafkaesque nature – they will revolve around doors that confront some people with a weakness they probably do not like to display in public while others pass through seemingly undisturbed, pursuing their everyday lives and ignoring the door as an entity with its own curious life. Telling these stories, the presentation will alternate between talk, the showing of video clips, and still photographs of doors or the people using them. Particular focus will be put on the social reconfigurations that happen in contact with the door.

The only backdraw is the funding. I do not have any money to pay for the flight and the conference fees. To my shock, the four month deadline for the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) conference grants has passed one week ago. Perhaps they will accept a late submission, but probably not. I’ll have to look for other sources, which probably won’t be easy to find…

King Kong – bite me, that was fuzzy.

Tuesday, January 31st, 2006

Yes, many people think the Lord of the Rings parts one to three have been too long. They also think that Peter Jackson’s most recent movie, King Kong, is too long, and they could not refrain from wailing their it’s too long song into my ears, straining my nerves. Preconditioned that way, I only had the courage to watch King Kong on my own, without any company. I must say, the ape and I had a pretty good time. Though I have not really been gripped or moved by Kong’s tragic ending, I have enjoyed the movie tremendously. There were more than a few scenes which were either breathtaking or just plain hilarious. I also enjoyed the acting – Nicole KidmanNaomi Watts is charmingly fragile and agile at the same time; the men are great: goggly Jack Black, the adonis-like Adrien Brody and the germanically blue-eyed Thomas Kretschmann were putting up some nice acts. This movie should be watched on a screen as big as possible.
IMDb entry | Trailer

Holiday chansons made in Berlin.

Monday, January 30th, 2006

If you like good music… go to the Hotelbar on January 31st of the wonderful year 2006. The Early Tapes will be playing. You will be enchanted by the groove of the music, the charme of the lyrics and the handsome line-up! And don’t forget to bring loads of money for merchandising goods.

Moving through the terminal – Investigations into material practices.

Monday, January 30th, 2006

My proposal for the session on Landscape, Mobility and Practice has been accepted, allowing me to participate in the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) in London. Following is the abstract on which my presentation will be based:

This presentation will accompany people who use railway and ferry terminals, demonstrating how the materiality of these terminals interacts with people’s movements, their bodies and perceptions. The terminal itself is located at an intriguing juncture between travel and rest, between movement and pause. It is both a place of rushing through and of lingering or loitering. Based on ethnographic observations and many hours of video recordings, both subtle details of bodily arrangement and spatial relations on the scale of the terminal as a whole are examined from a phenomenological perspective. How do the practices of people in the terminal reconfigure the socio-spatial constellations that permeate these places? How does the rigidity of walls, rails, gangways and doors participate in the production of localised normalities? These questions will be answered by examining sensual experiences and material practices. Perceiving their environment by sight, hearing, smell and touch, opening doors, managing bodily movements, interacting with machines, displays and people – a wide array of subtle but powerful practices produces the dynamic socio-spatial setting that is the terminal.

I am very happy to finally be visiting London – the city about which I read more than about any other city, but that I never visited in spite of the relative ease of getting there. So many novels, so many remembrances about a place I have never seen with my own eyes…

Sommer vorm Balkon – Charme und Arbeitslosigkeit.

Monday, January 30th, 2006

Der neue Film von Andreas Dresen hatte einen Trailer, der mich nicht gerade vom Hocker gerissen hat. Berlinfilm! hat er gerufen, aber ob das reicht, schien mir nicht so recht klar.
Glücklicherweise hat Sommer vorm Balkon mehr zu bieten gehabt als Berliner Lebensgefühl. Oder vielleicht sollte man es so sagen: er hat verschiedene, schöne und traurige Seiten des Lebensgefühls hier gezeigt und es dabei auch noch vermieden, hippe junge Leute oder die Kreativen als Maßstab für das Leben in Berlin zu präsentieren. Statt dessen haben wir zwei Frauen zu sehen bekommen, die Ihr Leben meistern müssen, denen dies aber nicht leicht fällt, die aber so tapfer sind, wie man es nur sein kann. Die Stimmung des Films zeigt, dass auch die anscheinende Trostlosigkeit des Alltags in oder am Rande der Arbeitslosigkeit noch Menschlichkeit und damit Trost zu bieten hat – wenn diese auch immer wieder erkämpft werden muss. Für mich waren die beiden Frauen nicht unmittelbar sympathisch, im Verlauf des Films sind sie mir aber sehr ans Herz gewachsen. Nicht alle Figuren und Nebenerzählungen sind voll überzeugend, insgesamt aber zeichnet der Film ein wunderschönes, menschliches, tragisches und mich trotzdem persönlich motivierendes Bild vom Leben in der Stadt. Wer sich auf den Alltag von zwei nicht mehr ganz jungen Frauen einlassen mag, sollte sich diesen Film unbedingt anschauen. Ich war bezaubert.

IMDb entry | Trailer

Match Point – Dostoevsky and class mobility.

Sunday, January 15th, 2006

I was a bit anxious when I entered the movie theater. Match Point had been praised by everyone I met or heard, making me fear that it could not live up to the extraordinary expectations raised by all this praise. I was not disappointed. It was a very good movie and it was a movie that was different to other Woody Allen movies that I have seen. However, I did not feel it to be the best Woody Allen since Manhattan or something like that. It was different but not necessarily better that his other movies. I guess that most people find it so much better because it is not a movie that might be perceived as being shallow, being a romantic comedy mixed with a few grains of psychoanalysis and a hearty filling of Manhattan impressions. This movie has a much sterner approach to life. And it has a Dostoevsky-reading anti-hero, Opera, cold-blooded murder and an ambivalent ending. Obviously, this is a movie to be taken serious. Bring in the Oscars.
Ehem. Seems I got into a rant here. Well, you should watch this movie. It is good. It has Dostoevsky in it. Crime and Punishment – the hero feels he commits crimes (I think he does so from the beginning by straightly sneaking his way into High Society) and he seeks punishment that does not come easily. Grand. The women are beautiful. No surprise here. The script is excellent and to the point – perhaps a bit too much to the point: a bit less doodling around the theme of luck and more scenes showing how difficult it would be to make your way into the English establishment as an Irish worker’s child would have been even more to my taste. Excellent acting, however. I am looking forward to Allen’s next movie which will supposedly also play in England.
IMDb entry | Trailer