Wie hier im Blog bereits erwähnt, bin ich in der vergangenen Woche von der Graduate Studies Group des Georg-Simmel-Zentrums für Metropolenforschung an der Humboldt-Universität Berlin zu einem Vortrag eingeladen worden. Der Vortrag hatte den Titel Phänomenologie, Stadt und das Abwesende. Glücklicherweise hat mit der Aufnahme alles soweit geklappt, so dass ich den Vortrag hier zum Anschauen und herunterladen zur Verfügung stellen kann. (Länge: 36 Minuten. Die Tonqualität ist leider nur mäßig, da ich kein separates Mikrofon dabei hatte.)
Für die nächste Woche hat mich die Graduate Studies Group des Georg-Simmel-Zentrums für Metropolenforschung zu einem Vortrag zum Themenbereich Phänomenologie der schrumpfenden Städte eingeladen. Die von Inga Haese vorbereitete Veranstaltung spricht ein wichtiges, gleichsam auch poetisches Thema an, das ich vorher noch nicht aus phänomenologischer Perspektive betrachtet hatte. Das Leben in schrumpfenden Städten bietet in der Tat eine Vielzahl spannender, das Erleben und Erfahren betreffender Aspekte die der Untersuchung harren. Besonders relevant und aus meiner Perspektive passend erscheint mir das Phänomen der Abwesenheit, zum dem ich in den letzten Monaten viel geforscht und gearbeitet habe. Dementsprechend widme ich mich in meinem Input unter dem Titel Phänomenologie, Stadt und das Abwesende neben grundsätzlichen, die Phänomenologie betreffenden Fragen vor allem der Erfahrung des Abwesenden. Hier mein Vortragsabstract:
Phänomenologisches Forschen folgt Husserls berühmten Aufruf Zurück zu den Sachen selbst. Hier soll der Frage nachgegangen werden, was eine solche Perspektivierung für die Stadtforschung bedeutet und wie dabei insbesondere dem Phänomen der schrumpfenden Städte nachgegangen werden kann. Dazu wird in einem ersten Schritt anhand von Videomaterial gezeigt, wie die Erfahrungsebene bzw. das Wahrnehmen für wissenschaftliche Reflexion greifbar gemacht werden kann. Im sich-bewegen durch den Stadtraum wird dieser in jeweils bestimmter Weise hervorgebracht. Dabei spielen die Körperlichkeit bzw. Leiblichkeit der Wahrnehmenden genauso eine Rolle wie die sozial-räumlich-materielle Konstellationen, durch die man sich bewegt. All diese Faktoren prägen das Wahrnehmen und damit auch das Handeln im Stadtraum – das Perfide daran ist allerdings, dass die Beeinflussung des Wahrnehmens selbst normalerweise nicht wahrgenommen wird und deshalb auch nicht als Gegenstand für eigene Einflussnahme auftaucht. So wird durch die Konfiguration des Wahrnehmens auf subtile Weise eine äußerst wirksame Kontrolle über das Handeln ausgeübt.
Im einem zweiten Schritt sollen diese theoretischen genauso wie methodischen Überlegungen auf das Phänomen der Schrumpfung gewendet werden. Dabei wird die Abwesenheit im Mittelpunkt stehen. Wie wird Abwesendes eigentlich erfahren? Was ist die besondere Qualität des Abwesenden? Häuser die Erdboden gleichgemacht wurden, Geschäfte die leerstehen, Stühle die von niemandem besetzt werden… alle diese Leerstellen müssen gefüllt werden. Aus eben dieser Notwendigkeit des Füllens bezieht das Abwesende seine Kraft: das, was fehlt, wird mit den Erinnerungen und Emotionen derer angefüllt, die es vermissen. Die schrumpfende Stadt wird so zu einem Ort, dessen Fülle sich aus denen speist, die ihn erfahren haben – oder zu einem Ort der einfach nur leer bleibt, weil keine Erinnerungen und Emotionen mit ihm verknüpft sind.
Mehr Informationen zur gesamten Veranstaltung, die viel Raum für Austausch und Diskussion bieten wird, gibt es in der Veranstaltungsankündigung – ich freue mich schon sehr auf die Diskussionen. Besonders charmant finde ich die Tatsache, dass das Georg-Simmel-Zentrum in den ehemaligen Räumlichkeiten meines ehemaligen Arbeitgebers, nämlich des Max-Planck-Instituts für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in der Mohrenstraße angesiedelt ist – das gibt ein wenig Heimatgefühl! Also, kommt Mittwoch den 21. März um 19:00 Uhr zur Mohrenstraße 41!
I like all seasons in their own peculiar ways. During the last years, summer has been Berlin–Germany–home in-between time. Work obligations and monetary restrictions did not allow for real holidays, so that July and August became a mix. A mingling of places: refreshing apartments so that they can be sublet once more without a bad conscience; reading and writing and applying for jobs and wrangling with deadlines; hanging out on balconies; visiting family and seeing friends and trying not to get caught up in obligations too much to not enjoy seeing all of these; enjoying Berlin nights; saying goodbye again to the place that you miss but do not want to miss, because this only makes things harder; riding the bicycle through warm summer fields; trying to keep an eye on expenses; looking out for good deals on necessary and not so necessary stuff; loving to be where you are right now, while trying to be looking forward to where you will be tomorrow, and not being too sad about where you left the day before… Tomorrow, I will let the wind will carry me back to Oslo.
After some nagging by friends here in Berlin, I got my act together, wrapped myself into my at least 20 year old yellow tarpaulin cape and rode my bike through the wet streets of Berlin, entering the Berghain. This location, a former industrial building which shows huge amounts of concrete when you are inside, hosted the yellowlounge event: Patricia Petibon, who presented her debut album Amoureuses.
Everybody looked like we do: hovering around age 3X, not too stylish, not too mundane. A whole factory full of this kind of people. And in the middle of this peculiar crowd: a small stage with a Steinway & Sons piano. After more than an hour of recorded classical music tracks and light installations, the actual show began, split into two parts of about twenty to thirty minutes. I was quite enchanted by the way the soprano Patricia Petitbon presented her work (classical songs, some taken from operas, but mostly short songs written by composers dead and alive – most in French, many in English, and one or two in Italian). Good voice, of course, but also a charming performance that broke with some of the expectations that you might have about classical singing. I can definitely recommend the live performance – even if you have your doubts about people who can sing so loud that you (a) are vexed by the incongruence of bodily size and voice volume and (b) don’t understand what words they are supposed to sing.
Last week, I moved most of my everyday stuff to Oslo, where I will be a guest researcher at the University until the end of this year. The last days I was in Berlin, most of the time cleaning the apartment and packing the rest of my belongings. But I also took the time to participate in the performance festival Abwehr, organized by Svenja Moor and Shahram Entekhabi (officially as a discussant but in truth more as a photographer – which suited me fine). The locations of this festival Wachturm and Kunstfabrik were excellent and I think the whole thing worked out really fine. You can read more about this festival in Stralau-Blog (in German). You can also see more about this festival. In my ipernity album.
Tomorrow, I will buzz off again. This time going to the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society in London. I’ve been there last year and enjoyed it quite a bit. This year, Katie Walsh and I will host a session, to which I am looking forward very much. Except for the fact that we have been put into the last time slot of the conference: Friday 16:50–18:30. I wonder how many people will make it through a whole week of dense and stimulating sessions, beverage-laden evening programmes and then still attend some session late Friday afternoon, when they shcould be heading home to tea and biscuit…
On Saturday, though, I will finally enter port: Oslo. *sigh* And there I will stay with only one interruption until the end of the year. That’s what I call a welcome prospect!
Sollte man in Berlin sein und nicht mitbekommen haben, dass heute Walpurgisnacht ist und morgen der erste Mai: spätestens jetzt sollte der Groschen fallen. Die Rotorblätter des Polizeihubschraubers dröhnen über der Stadt. Dann wollen wir mal sehen…
Goldener Oktober. Heute noch mal auf dem Balkon gefrühstückt. Die Wespen sind immer noch unterwegs, aber schon etwas träge, so dass Olli und ich sowohl Brötchen geniessen als auch ausblühenden Lavendel anblinzeln konnten.
So erholt man sich doch gerne von einer Magen-Darm Infektion.
Hm. Irgendwie passen goldener Oktober, blühender Lavendel und Magen-Darm Infektion nicht so richtig zusammen. Aber wir wollen mal nicht weiter in diese jeweiligen Bilder und ihre Assoziationen einsteigen. Hö.
Kerstin sagt, in Oslo regnet es schon seit zwei Wochen und es sind sechs Grad. Die Arme. *hämisches Grinsen*
So, who’s who? First, there are the people from Darmstadt. They sent me a letter today. If you were listening to the sounds of the rumor mill you might have already guessed what is inside… Yes! It did work out as I hoped. 11 a.m. September 22nd I handed in my Dissertation. Two hours later I had my job interview for a postdoc position in the new post-graduate college Topology of Technology. Today I received the written approval of the college. Yay! Beginning sometime in November or December, I will not be dependent on the totally incompetent and not-so-subtly cruel social workfare system. That, I can tell you, is a relief in itself. However, it is of course much better than that because I really wanted to work exactly in that position: a post-doc in a Graduiertenkolleg, and even better, a post-doc in a Graduiertenkolleg that consists of people that are intellectually brilliant, socially competent and personally likeable. More about all of this in later posts.
But – as the title of this post hints – this is not all the news that I got. The above was, quite easily guessed, the good part. Now comes the bad. Last week, construction work has begun right across on the other side of the street. Yes, that is also right in front of our beloved balcony. Meow. We’ll see how the construction site develops but it appears as if the greatest and most marvellous part of the whole Choriner Straße will be left standing: the huge Cherry tree that astounds everyone when it becomes a world of blossoms in the spring. It would have been a grievous loss indeed. This was the bad.
Now comes the ugly. As usual, it has something to do with our Landlord. The property management firm Kirchner & Freund, which manages the building we live in, is not exactly shining in the bright light of competence. This in itself could be bearable. However, their letters also hint at a certain vice that is fostered by what one may quite righteously call capitalism. Thus they raised the rent by about ten percent a few years ago. We complied grudgingly. This year, they again wanted to raise the rent by roughly nine percent. We did not agree and sent them the necessary objections. They did not accept. (No surprise there.) We agreed to a partial raise by a bit more than one percent and paid the respective sum. To this partial agreement they never replied. Instead, I found a letter in our letterbox yesterday. It was utterly official and sent from the local court. They actually sued us! Sadly this is a joke but the ugly truth. We’ll see how things go. Since all the prior steps had been made in accordance with the Berliner Mieterverein, we will be financially supported by the renter’s association. I already contacted a lawyer and sent all the documents to his office. Ugly business. But better have the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly than ride with the trio of the apocalypse… *starts playing the harmonica*
There was a lot of work to do during the last four months: finishing the editing process of Lars Meier’s and my upcoming book, preparing presentations for three international conferences and one guest lecture, traveling to the places where the conferences were held and actually giving the presentations, feeling tired after getting back from the conferences and taking a few days to get back into working mode, writing a few applications, and, last but not least, dealing with social welworkfare institutions and our extremely bothersome landlord in Berlin. In all of this time, day after day, I knew that I also have to work on my dissertation, that my dissertation is the one thing that really and importantly must be finished as soon as possible. However, I did not write a single page. This Summer was my answer to people asking me about when I think I will be finished. Now, summer has officially begun. As has work on my dissertation. During the last three days I typed 2.5 pages per day (line spacing is 1.2) and I intend to keep this speed for the next weeks. If this works out and I take a day off now and then I would be finished sometime in August, I guess. Well, it is not as easy as that, sadly. There will be the concluding ceremony of our post-graduate college in Darmstadt next month – for which I want to prepare a short movie – there will be a christening which I am going to attend, there will be the Gartenfest in August which will take a week and, at the end of August, two more conferences await. Summer ends in September. I think even with these foreseeable delays my dissertation will also be done before the end of summer. To be able to achieve this I will have to cut back on communication and socializing – for which I want to beg your pardon in advance. Keep your fingers crossed for me and we’ll have a very happy Lars sometime in September who will invite you to some major festivities!
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.
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…
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.
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
The end of this year’s leisure season has come. The future months will show if it came just on time or too late… I am seriously behind schedule with my dissertation therefore having at least several weeks of highly concentrated work in front of me – including a disruption caused by our college’s conference in October.
To smoothen the switch I took a relatively early train from Buchholz to Berlin. The hope is that I will only need this day for going from feeding the washing machine, re-organizing my stuff, staring mindlessly into thin air, distributing and caressing birthday presents, updating and synchronizing my computers, eating homemade plum pie, feeling disoriented, going through accumulated mail and odd household jobs via the fearsome afraid-to-start-working procrastination to actual page-production mode. The updating-my-blog phase is now done with at least.
Ich habe eben die Kurzbeschreibung des Projekts Mobiles Wohnen von Hannah Groninger online gestellt. Die geneigte Leserin wird sich erinnern, dass ich schon einmal über meine Mitarbeit an diesem im Rahmen von X-Wohnungen Suburbs 2005 organisierten Projekt berichtet habe. Mir persönlich hat sowohl Hannahs Projekt, als auch das gesamte X-Wohnungen Konzept hervorragend gefallen – besonders die Erkundung in Zweiergruppen war Tipp Topp. Die Tour durchs Märkische Viertel bot immer wieder überraschende und ungewohnte Perspektiven und Erfahrungen. Bis auf einzelne Ausnahmen waren alle Wohnungen, die ich im Rahmen der Tour A besucht habe wirklich spannend und ausgesprochen anregend. Wenn das noch Theater ist, dann ist es genau das Theater, wie ich es mir wünschen würde. Falls es im nächsten Jahr wieder X-Wohnungen geben wird, werde ich unbedingt teilnehmen.
Änderung 4. Juni: Link korrigiert und .pdf Datei mit besseren Bildern eingesetzt.
Etwas kurzfristig, aber hier noch eine kleine Ankündigung: in den kommenden Tagen (vom 5. bis zum 8. Mai) wird das Projekt X-Wohnungen im Märkischen Viertel in Berlin stattfinden. Eine der Künstlerinnen, die dort eine Wohnungsbegehung konzipiert und gestaltet hat, ist Hannah Groninger. Ich werde ihr Projekt Mobiles Wohnen als Soziologe begleiten – wir haben uns im Vorfeld des Projekts über soziologische Aspekte verständigt und planen auch eine an das Projekt anschließende weitere Zusammenarbeit. Mehr zu ihrem Projekt in Kürze auf meiner Startseite. Karten gibt es nur im Vorverkauf (Telefonnummer usw. siehe den X-Wohnungen Link oben).
Back again from the land of classic profiles. We had a great time, met many nice people, saw a few piles of stone, and got to know quite a few new and delicious dishes and beverages. Want to hear an anecdote? Let me think… Kerstin made an observation that has good anecdotal value: Here in Germany, dogs usually do live their lives accompanying the humans they belong to. They walk around with them, they sleep in the same houses, they eat food that is served them personally. In Greece, there is not only a human population in settlements, there is also an almost independant population of dogs. They hang out with other dogs, they eat with them, sleep in packs, trot along the trottoir with other dogs and generally ignore humans (except for trying to pay attention to cars and other dangers). Funny to watch them be dogs that are different from local dogs. Doggier, I would say. I also felt less threatened by those dogs and I saw fewer piles of dog shit in Athens than here in Berlin.
This week we talked about Richard Sennett‘s Corrosion of Character in our seminar on the diagnosis of capitalism in the 21st century. It has been a while since I last read Corrosion of Character, and over the course of the last years I seem to have forgotten some of the central arguments he made and some of the terms into which he molds his critique. Here, I want to focus on two terms in particular:
drift. I think this term describes the feeling many people experience living their lives without a firm anchor very well. Some kind of unknown but forceful current takes you into a direction, carrying you to a place that is not known, and, although appearing on the horizon, might never be reached because the currents have changed again, taking you to through murky waters to some other place. Will I be working in Berlin or in Darmstadt in 2006? Or maybe in some other city or even some other country? How long will I be there, what will I have to do there, whom will I (still) know and work with? What will my perspective be then? Will it actually be connected to what I am doing today, or will I have to work in a different sector? I will surely try to row and set sail to get to particular places, and I may know how to hold a certain course. But I am not sure if the drift will bring me to where I will go, or if it is me, and I know that the drift will have a much stronger influence on other people than it has on me.
corrosion. I realized how well this term works today, especially if one imagines the corrosion of character as the corrosion of a car’s body: it will begin slowly, eating away the metal structure under the finish. After a while the finish cracks, the fabric of the masks we want to wear and play with (comp. Sennett The Fall of Public Man) becomes threadbare, making it hard to maintain the images we want to create of ourselves. If the corrosion proceeds the structure itself becomes more and more fragile, and finally prone to collapse. Such an imperiled character might not have the strength to build up enough resistance to the forces of a capitalist economy that pushes and tears in several different directions.
In the discussion it also became very clear that Sennett is not formulating his critique from a postmodernist perspective. He wants to argue for a stabilization of characters, for anchoring them in some firm ground, for providing them with a coherent narrative that enables them to formulate their own desires, norms and positions; he does not argue for an urban guerilla that is always changing it’s shape, that is radically localized and fluent, appearing at unpredictable times and locations. I think that there are some convincing reasons for doing this, for taking this conservative position – a position that is probably based on his conception of the antique greek polis as he develops it in Stone and Flesh and some of his other works. The postmodern position probably also has its place. However, to me it also seems to be an elitist and group specific perspective: it relies on a group of actors who have to be highly qualified, highly mobile, independent, skilled with modern technologies and generally living a life-style that by its definition is restricted to a small minority of the population (a group, it might be added, that also relies on distinction from “the rest” of the population to a very high degree, even if it may sympathize with the poor, the homeless, and the disadvantaged.)
After I was told for the zillionth time that I am proceeding in a phenomenological way in my studies (both on the Potsdamer Platz and currently on train stations and passenger terminals) I finally decided to actually get acquainted with this thing called phenomenology. Several people in the post-graduate college recommended reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty‘s Phenomenology of Perception. Perception is my business and my passion so this is the book I bought. It seems I won’t regret this decision. Not only does the name Maurice Merleau-Ponty have a very pleasant french ring to it, the book also has a beautiful cover! Nonetheless, the content is even better. A small citation for those German blog readers:
Was immer ich – sei es auch durch die Wissenschaft – weiß von der Welt, weiß ich aus einer Sicht, die die meine ist, bzw. aus einer Welterfahrung, ohne die auch alle Symbole der Wissenschaft nichtssagend blieben oder vielmehr wären. Das Universum der Wissenschaft gründet als Ganzes auf dem Boden der Lebenswelt, und wollen wir die Wissenschaft selbst in Strenge denken, ihren Sinn und ihre Tragweite genau ermessen, so gilt es allem voran, auf jene Welterfahrung zurückzugehen, deren bloß sekundärer Ausdruck die Wissenschaft bleibt. [S. 4]
Judging from my current level of joyful involvement with this book, you can expect some more citations in the coming weeks. Weeks? Yes, classic books I do read slowly – usually I don’t read more than about 20-30 pages or the equivalent of one or two new ideas per day. For me, these fundamental things have to settle slowly.
Yesterday evening I arrived back in Berlin after a 12 hour trip from Darmstadt via Leipzig to Berlin – there have been quite a few traffic jams on the autobahn. Makes one remember quite vividly, why traveling by train is a Good Thing. There was a lot of comment spam – most of it generated yesterday though, so I hope it hasn’t been indexed by search engines yet. Now I have to rent an apartment for when we visit my brother’s wedding, organize other stuff concerning the wedding, write a few mails regarding college seminar organization, try to find somebody to rent the free room in our apartment to from now to September, get my article published, try to get my diploma published, and, of course, work on my dissertation, i.e. read Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, and analyze my recordings.
The college’s workshop was excellent, we managed to get quite some stuff accomplished for the people who presented their material, though we had a hard time agreeing on the procedures for the conference we will host in 2005. The chalet was wonderful and the view we had from there magnificent. I am also pleased to report that my knees managed to cope with the downhill part of the one hiking tour that we made on our free day.
Aber alles hängt davon ab, wie man den Fortschritt auffaßt. Man könnte ihn darin sehen, daß da die berühmten dafürs auftauchen: ein Säufer, dafür aber ein ausgezeichneter Spezialist, ein Wüstling, dafür aber voller genialer Ideen, ein Dieb zwar und ein Gauner, dafür aber ein erstklassiger Verwalter! Ein Mörder, dafür aber diszipliniert und der Sache treu ergeben… Man könnte den Fortschritt aber auch so verstehen, daß alle zu guten und ehrlichen Menschen werden. Und dann werden wir irgendwann einmal die Zeit erleben, daß man sagen wird: ein Spezialist ist er, das stimmt, und er hat auch wirklich viel Ahnung, aber es ist ein schmutziger Typ, so was können wir hier nicht brauchen. der schlafende Pfeffer in der Bibliothek der Verwaltung; in Die Schnecke am Hang von Arkadi und Boris Strugatzki.
Goldener Oktober. Heute noch mal auf dem Balkon gefrühstückt. Die Wespen sind immer noch unterwegs, aber schon etwas träge, so dass Olli und ich sowohl Brötchen geniessen als auch ausblühenden Lavendel anblinzeln konnten.