Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Institut für Kulturwissenschaft

Thomas Sieverts and Lars Lerup Lacunas—The Middle Landscape

 

a dialogue moderated by Wolfgang Schäffner (Cultural Theorist, Humboldt University) and Gunnar Hartmann (Architect, Dessau Institute of Architecture)

Welcome: Dr. h.c. Kristin Feireiss, Director ANCB

 

Routinely dismissed as mere sprawl, the middle landscape is the black hole of recent urbanism, absorbing human energyand resources but seldom revealing the principles of its operation.

Besides the recent affirmation for the dense city under the auspice of sustainability, the reality confronts us with a rather complex conurbation and a weak set of planning instruments.

Triggered by Lars Lerup’s most recent publication, One Million Acres & No Zoning, the New Dialogues series brings together two key investigators on the subject of the middle landscape, Thomas Sieverts and Lars Lerup, to reexamine our understanding of unregulated cities—their huge potential and difficult problems for the 21st century.

 

Monday, January 23rd 2012 at 6pm

Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Humboldt-Universität zu

Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Room No. 3031

Arturo Montoto im Gespräch mit Hans-Jörg Rheinberger und Wolfgang Schäffner

 

zur Finissage der Ausstellung »Unsichtbare Gärten« von ArturoMontoto, Instituto Cervantes 22. September–20. Oktober 2011

 

20. Oktober 2011, 18–20 Uhr

Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Raum 3031

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 

10099 Berlin

The Architectural Performance. New experiences in the significance of Urban Space

 

Public Lecture by Carlos Campos (FADU, UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina) 

 

October 17 2011: 5–7 p.m., room 4.11, Sophienstrasse 22a

The Fourth Dimension and the Ether as the 'Meta-Realities' of Modernism ― and Beyond

 

Public Lecture by Linda Dalrymple Henderson 

(The University of Texas at Austin)

 

This public lecture derives from work on the sequel to my 1983 book The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art which sets the original text's treatment of the early 20th century into its larger scientific context and extends its coverage through the entire century. The idea of a higher, spatial fourth dimension was often connected to the ether of space, the impalpable medium understood in this period to suffuse all space and serve as the necessary vehicle for the transmission of vibrating electromagnetic waves. Both concept served as signs of an invisible 'meta-reality―just beyond the reach of human perception―that served as a major stimulus for the invention of new artistic styles―from Cubism, Futurism, and the art of Duchamp to the abstract paintings of Kandinsky and Malevich. Both the spatial fourth dimension and the ether would meet the same fate as of 1919: they would gradually be eclipsed with the popularization of Einstein and Relativity Theory that began that year.  

 

However, this was not the end of the story, since both concepts continued to have at least an underground cultural (and even scientific) impact. In the case of the spatial fourth dimension, which would rise to new prominence with the emergence of string theory in the 1980s, the concept experienced an earlier cultural recovery starting in the late 1950s, and artists like Robert Smithson responded eagerly to it. Both Marcel Duchamp and Buckminster Fuller played key roles in this process of renewal, and the lecture concludes with a brief sampling of this "beyond" moment in the second half of the century.

 

June 24 2011: 16 p.m., Heise-Archiv (1.01), Sophienstrasse 22a

Mobilität der Dinge

 

Eine Ausstellung im Rahmen des Rundgangs der Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, Tag der offenen Tür 2011

 

Studierende aus Produkt-Design und Kulturwissenschaft sind im Rahmen eines Kooperationsprojektes zwischen der Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin und dem Institut für Kulturwissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin im WS

2010/11 der Frage nach der »Mobilität der Dinge« nachgegangen. Unter der Leitung von Prof. Helmut Staubach und Prof. Carola Zwick (Produkt-Design) sowie Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schäffner und Dr. Sandra Schramke (Kulturwissenschaft) wurden die Spuren der unterschiedlichen Mobilisierungstechniken in den Dingen selbst historisch und theoretisch untersucht, um zu sehen, wie Dinge bewegbar, verschickbar und mobil werden und ihre Gestaltung fordern.

Die Arbeitsergebnisse dieses Projekts, die den Versuch der Verbindung von kulturellem Wissen und gestalterischer Praxis wiederspiegeln, werden im Rahmen des Rundgangs der Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin in einer Ausstellung präsentiert.

 

16./17. Juli 2011, KHB, Bühringstraße 20, 13086 Berlin,

Raum 305

Public Lectures »Archive-Public« 

 

Panos Kouros : Performative archive and the public sphere Elpida Karaba: An instituent artistic practice

 

Aspects of the research curatorial program Archive Public are discussed focusing on the question of how archival art practice can create conditions of emergence of public sphere. Two approaches are deployed: Performative archiving is proposed as a productive concept of the archive which can form open (virtual and physical) public spheres, setting to circulation ideas, practices, policies, redefining traditional references of the archive, such as

property, trace, public access, writing and use. The design of the archive mechanism enact protocols, regulations which allow certain interactions between partial identities of readers, writers, spectators, as they undertake roles in archival time.

The undertaking of public power as potentia (Arendt); not as an acting out or an actually violent act, but rather as a lawful (en loi) articulatory practice, which sets the conditions for a non-utopian, radical artistic practice. Within this frame issues of authority, law, and institutionalization will be discussed and the Public Archive will be examined in the scope of an instituent practice. 

 

Panos Kouros is artist, art theorist, Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Patras, Greece.

Elpida Karaba is art theorist, curator, Phd cand., Department of Architecture, University of Patras, Greece.

 

June 10 2011: 16 p.m., Heise-Archiv (1.01), 

Sophienstrasse 22a

The Design Process of Skins 

 

Public Lecture by Andrea Saltzman

 

Moving Shelter: Design&WissenTalk 

Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2010