The third iteration of the HafenCity Lectures Relations series, entitled “living as practice,” takes a look at living and at those who live. Only in process, as a relational practice of different routines, rites, and work, in keeping together things and relationships, can living be grasped. Thus, our conversation with interdisciplinary and international guests is not about the investigation of fixed typologies, but rather about the various everyday, architectural, experimental, and artistic perspectives on processes of living. On two dates our guests will present their positions, works, and methods in this context. Relations – living as practice is organized by Marieke Behne, Daniel Springer, Matthias Ballestrem, Christoph Heinemann, Mona Mahall, and Antje Stokman and supported by HafenCity Hamburg GmbH. The event will be recorded.
Symposium 1
Elke Krasny Pier Vittorio Aureli Florian Kossak Staci Bu Shea, Rizvana Bradley, and David Langstaff
Elke Krasny, PhD, Professor for Art and Education and Head of the Department of Education in the Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Krasny’s interdisciplinary scholarship, academic writings, curatorial work, and international lectures address questions of care at the present historical conjuncture with a focus on emancipatory and transformative practices in art, curating, architecture and urbanism. Her interdisciplinary approach connects feminist theory, care ethics, cultural history, environmental humanities, and memory studies. The 2019 exhibition and edited volume Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, curated and edited together with Angelika Fitz, was published by MIT Press and introduces a care perspective in architecture addressing the anthropocenic conditions of the global present. Her 2020 essays ‘In-Sorge-Bleiben: Care-Feminismus für einen infizierten Planeten‘, published by transcript in Michael Volkmer’s and Karin Werner’s volume Die Corona-Gesellschaft, and ‘Care Feminism for Living with an Infected Planet’ develop a care-ethical perspective for pandemic times.
Pier Vittorio Aureli is an architect and educator. Aureli teaches at the Architectural Association where he is Director of studies in the PhD program, lecturer in the History and Theory program and Unit Master in the diploma school. Currently he is The William B. and Shepherd Davenport Visiting Professor, Yale School of Architecture. He has taught at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and Columbia University in New York. Aureli is the author of several books including The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism (2008), The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (2011), and Ritual and Walls: The Architecture of Sacred Space (2016, with Maria Shéhérazade Giudici), The Room of One’s Own (2017, with Dogma) and Loveless: Minimum Dwelling and its Discontents (2019, with Dogma). Together with Martino Tattara, he is the co-founder of Dogma, an office for architecture based in Brussels.
Florian Kossak is an Architect and Scholar with a focus on Urban History, Theory and Design. He was a founding member of the workers co-operative 'Glasgow Letters on Architecture and Space' (Glasgow) and the research center AGENCY (Sheffield). He studied architecture in Berlin and Glasgow and received his PhD from the Edinburgh College of Art. He currently works with Prof Bernd Kniess (HCU) and Prof Alexa Fäber (Uni Wien) on the collaborative project 'WohnWissen übersetzen'.
Rizvana Bradley is Assistant Professor of Film and Media at UC Berkeley. Before coming to UC Berkeley, Bradley was an Assistant Professor in the History of Art and African American Studies at Yale, and has taught at Emory University, and in the Department of the History of Art at the University College London. Bradley's forthcoming book is a recipient of a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and offers a critical examination of the black body across a range of experimental artistic practices that integrate film and other media. Her scholarly writing on art at the intersections of film, media, and performance have appeared in TDR: The Drama Review, Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Black Camera: An International Film Journal, and Film Quarterly, and Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. Her essays on contemporary art have also been published in Art in America, eflux, and Parkett. Bradley has curated a number of academic arts symposia, including events at the British Film Institute, London, the Serpentine Gallery, London, and most recently, the Stedelijk Museum of Art, Amsterdam.
Staci Bu Shea is a curator, facilitator, archivist and writer. Together with the team, Staci has organized the exhibition program at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in Utrecht, the Netherlands since 2017. Staci focuses on aesthetic and poetic practices of social reproduction and reproductive labor, as well as it's relations to community organizing and institutional practice. Staci was co-curator of Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies (2017) at Leslie Lohman Museum of Art (NY) with Carmel Curtis, and graduated from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College with the group exhibition Emphasis Repeats (2016) at Hessel Museum of Art (NY). Staci is a faculty member at the Dutch Art Institute and co-tutored the COOP study group "All about my mother." Staci is a volunteer at Stadshospice in Utrecht and training in end of life care.
David Langstaff is a writer and educator, whose publications have appeared in Interface: a journal for and about social movements, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Wayne Literary Review, Abolition, Counterpunch, and Palestine Chronicle. Prior to his current focus on teaching and writing, he spent a decade engaged in various forms of political activism and community organizing – from eviction defense to prison abolition to disability justice.
Symposium 2
Irene Nierhaus Henrike Naumann Marjetica Potrč Niklas Fanelsa
Irene Nierhaus, Professor of Art Science and Aesthetic Theory at the University of Bremen. Founder and director of the Mariann-Steegmann-Institute in Bremen (since 2010), and head of the research field wohnen+/-ausstellen in cooperation with the Institute for Art Science – Film Studies – Art Education at the University of Bremen. Since 2014 she is co-editor of the publication series wohnen+/-ausstellen at transcript publishers.
Henrike Naumann, born 1984 in Zwickau (GDR), lives and works in Berlin. Henrike Naumann reflects socio-political problems on the level of interior design and domestic space and explores antagonistic political beliefs through the ambivalent aesthetics of personal taste. In her immersive installations she arranges furniture and home decor into scenographic spaces interspersed with video and sound work. Growing up in Eastern Germany, Naumann experienced extreme-right ideology as a predominant youth culture in the ’90s. Therefore, she is interested in the mechanisms of radicalization and how they are linked to personal experience. Although rooted in her experiences in Germany, Naumann’s work has addressed the global connectivity of youth cultures and their role in the process of cultural othering.
Marjetica Potrč is a Ljubljana-based artist and architect. She is best known for on-site projects using participatory design, drawing series, and architectural case studies. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the Americas. From 2011 to 2018, she was a professor of social practice at the University of Fine Arts/HFBK in Hamburg. Potrč is the recipient of numerous grants and awards.
Niklas Fanelsa is an architect and founder of the architecture practice Atelier Fanelsa in Berlin and Gerswalde. He studied architecture at RWTH Aachen and Tokyo Institute of Technology. After his studies he worked for De Vylder Vinck Taillieu in Gent and TBBK in Berlin. He was Teaching and Research Associate at RWTH Aachen University, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg and at the Chair for Design and Housing at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Currently he is Emerging Curator at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montréal.