Visualising Urban Resilience through Film

#film #video

Through flânerie the workshop sensitises participants to utopian cadavers and transformative places in Berlin. Participants will then create short videos that experiment along these interstices of urban resilience, utopian imaginaries and space.

Today’s world is shaped by multiple crises that question the way we live. Especially in densely populated areas this urges us to transform existing structures and to come up with creative, communal and sustainable solutions. Creating smart, sponge or future-proof cities and nurturing urban resilience are but some of the possible paths to take in this respect. Here, the intricate interplay between community and potential utopian imaginary takes on a special role and allows for a critical examination of past, present and future urban transformation processes. What do former utopias look like today, what kinds of futures can we currently imagine and what does that say about our present?

Until the fall of the wall, West-Berlin was known as a tax haven and utopia for free spirits. After its reunification cheap housing and undeveloped spaces offered a vast playground for creatives and communities of all kinds. Its history left a unique mark on the city, traces of which can still be found today in the form of large-scale housing estates, electronic music clubs or communal gardening projects, amongst others. And despite their rapid disappearance and contested existence, there is still an array of places that seek to enable the transformation of communal and urban spaces now. The workshop will sensitise participants to the “utopian cadavers” and transformative spaces found in Berlin through the walking practice of flânerie in relevant areas, drawing on Mirjana
Mitrovic’s artistic research. Grounded in the flâneur after Walter Benjamin, Mitrovic’s practice de- and reconstructs the figure from a postcolonial and feminist point of view. This perspective is then combined with filmmaking as a critical documentary practice, theoretically guided and with hands-on practical advice by Insa Langhorst. This covers the development of visual narratives to basic editing. Throughout the workshop participants will develop and accomplish their own short video projects that experiment along the interstices and connections between urban resilience, utopian imaginaries and space. Hence, participants will learn how to engage with urban space in an innovative way and act upon their reflections through the use of (audio)visual media, creating an output that can be further shared.

Schedule:

Day 1: Exploring utopia through flânerie
• Introduction to feminist and postcolonial flânerie practices
• Walking exercise in “utopian” spaces of Berlin

Day 2: Film as critical documentary practice
• Concepts and theory of (audio)visual narratives as research
• Filming and walking exercise in “utopian” spaces of Berlin

Day 3: Introduction to basic video editing and guided planning of own projects

Day 4: Shooting and editing of own projects

Day 5: Finishing of projects and presentations within the group

Equipment requirements
Digital camera and/or smartphone, Laptop

Mirjana Mitrovic is an media artist and researcher working between Berlin and Mexico City. She combines artistic and academic practices, focusing on the influence of new technologies, especially Internet and smartphones, the everyday life of women* and feminist activism as well as geographical, corporal and mental borders and the transgression of these. Currently, she works as a research associate at the Vilém Flusser Archive and is doing a PhD about the flâneuse and the digitalisation of urban space at Berlin University of the Arts. She is an associated member of the CRC 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces”.

www.mirjana-mitrovic.de

Insa Langhorst is an artist, filmmaker and curator based in Berlin. Experimenting with different genres she researches topics such as the role of art during the climate breakdown, AI and interspecies communication, as well as the multisensory within (urban) spaces. Insa completed an MA in Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester, obtained a certificate as an Audio Engineer and graduated with an MA in Curatorial Cultures in 2024. Her video and sound installations have been shown internationally, including at the Montreal Underground Film Festival and at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art (as part of a project by artist Zorka Wollny).