Tracing (future) mobility through walking and film

Using flânerie and filmmaking the workshop delves into questions surrounding traffic, mobility, city-making, co-habitation and the use of public space in Berlin, from construction projects to so-called ‘culture-wars’ surrounding transportation.

How does mobility shape our everyday life in Berlin? And what are the consequences of different kinds of moving through the city? With the planned extension of the inner city car highway A100 Berlin currently is home of a highly disputed construction project: The highway would displace or erase garden parcels, trees, flats, cultural centres, criticised by a growing protest movement. Meanwhile, in the capital’s 2023 election the conservative party CDU made the question a central and emotional part of their campaign stating: “Berlin is for everyone. Also car drivers.” They won the election.

So what does Berlin actually have enough of? Cars or bike lanes? Available space or transport highways? And what does enough mean for whom in that context? Using flânerie and filmmaking the workshop aims to delve deeper into these questions surrounding mobility, city-making, co-habitation and the use of public space in Berlin, from architectural possibilities to aspects of so-called ‘culture-wars’ surrounding transportation.

We propose walking as a method to start artistically researching these issues. Grounded in the flâneur after Walter Benjamin, the figure will be de- and reconstructed from a postcolonial and feminist point of view, then combined with other practices such as dérive and strollology. Likewise, modern smartphones, consumer cameras, computers and readily available software allow us to create meaningful audiovisual works to investigate and disseminate findings. A critical walking practice will thus be combined with DIY-filmmaking, covering the conception, shooting and editing of the participants’ own works on one of Berlin’s highly contested and future-relevant questions.

Schedule

Day 1: Exploring transport, traffic and futures of mobility through flânerie

• Introduction to feminist and postcolonial flânerie practices
• Walking exercise in Berlin

Day 2: Film as critical documentary practice

• Concepts and theory of audiovisual narratives as research
• Filming and walking exercise around the construction sites of highway A100

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 a 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”.

mirjana-mitrovic.de

Jan-Holger Hennies is a filmmaker, cinematographer and editor working in documentary film and audiovisual research. The resulting films and transmedia projects have been internationally screened, exhibited and awarded. Recurrent topics in his work are counter-forensics in regard to forced disappearance; collective political organising; housing politics and urban practices of resistance; the physical, social and imaginary processes of landscape creation. Besides, he regularly creates video content for artists, cultural and political organisations and teaches as a lecturer for filmic research methods. He holds an MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester, UK.

jhhennies.com