Culture Writing: Textures of Things, Thresholds, and Bodies

Together with the participants, the workshop aims to develop the ability to approach cultural phenomena through writing techniques. In the seminar, we will explore and develop methods such as the development of everyday cultural sensitivity, observation techniques of phenomena in a spatial everyday culture, and tools of a text-practical practice.

Inspired by the Berlin Summer University of the Arts 2022’s themes, we will look at material (things), transgressional (thresholds), and somatic (bodies) phenomena. In an experimental setup, we aim to encourage participants to explore methods and meanings of new artistic, creative, and textual expression and thereby gain inspiration to create textual and visual projects around thinging, transgressing, and bodying.

As an additional option, the participants possibly could be invited to publish their texts within the context of the 7-volume book series “texturen”, which the two lecturers are co-editors of. This, of course, is only optional and could be a nice way to create some “thing”, a “body” of work as a mutual workshop result.

This course is suitable for people with a theoretical, design, or artistic background in media, design, communication, fine arts, architecture, dance, and for anyone who is curious about the phenomenological potentials of everyday culture and experimental writing techniques.

SCHEDULE

Day I – Intro

  • Introduction concerning methods, techniques and tools of cultural analysis
  • Getting to know each other & expectations; First session of culture writing


Day II – Things
On day two, we deal with things in the widest sense and shift the perspective on to a process-oriented understanding of material culture. How do things become meaningful; how do they transform themselves and others? Using the methodological experiment of creating thing collections, we will engage with the creative energy that lies within things and develop textual and/or visual translations of thinging.

Day III – Thresholds
On day three, the focus will be on different concepts of transgressions. We will stroll through imaginations of new ways, transgression and pathfinding; crossovers, in-betweening, and leaving behind. We will explore imagined worlds as well as the existing one by a strollological approach and get ourselves inspired to create different forms of artistic projects.

Day IV – Bodies
On day four, we will discuss how we can rethink the entity body as a verb. The body as a constant becoming, as a process, in dialogue with its social, political, emotional, economic environment. We will engage with the methodological experiment of Bodywriting and thereby approach bodying in an unusual way.

Day V – Recap
Presentation of workshop results; Recap of (un-)fulfilled expectations and how we could go further

EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS

Please bring a laptop.

Konstantin Haensch, M.A. is interested in media materiality, technological innovation, and writing cultures. He worked as a Research Assistant at the Berlin University of the Arts and is co-editor of the seven-volume ongoing book series Texturen (Logos Berlin), the Forum zur Genealogie des MedienDenkens, and the anthology Uncanny Interfaces (Textem Hamburg). He was a lecturer at Berlin University of the Arts, HTW Berlin, and University Potsdam. He has been awarded fellowships from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Currently, he pursues a Ph. D. at Princeton University.

konstantinhaensch.de

Johanna Kirschbauer, M.A. is a research assistant at the Berlin University of the Arts and researches 'fluid forms' and volatility as a key metaphor of the present. She studied media culture at Bauhaus University Weimar and GWK at Berlin University of the Arts and is passionate about pop culture, design and praxeology. Her focus in research and teaching is on linking perspectives from cultural studies and organisational theory. She also writes about contemporary art and design, previously for Die Neue Sammlung (Walther König München), and is co-editor of the book series Texturen (Logos Berlin).


 



Run period:
25.07.2022 – 29.07.2022
Course time:
10.00 am – 5.00 pm
Application Deadline:
03.07.2022

Course fee:
EUR 550

Min. number of participants:
12
Max. number of participants:
20



For further information please contact:
summer-courses[at]udk-berlin.de