With the transformation of urban governance into a mode of entrepreneurialism, Museums have become prominent and privileged sites for reshaping cities as attractive places for cultural and artistic consumption. Using an ethnographic field study, the authors investigate how the logic of the creative city is at work in the planning of a new art Museum in a medium-sized Swiss city. The analysis shows how the entrepreneurial rationale is contested and re-appropriated through the use of classic and situational modes to organize this cultural institution. The ways of imagining the museum are described as the effects of these three modes of ordering - entrepreneurial, classic, and situational - as well as their hybridization. The authors conclude that by attending to the multiple layers of urban life, which unfold in and around museums, we can imagine other ‘new museums' than those of the entrepreneurial city.
With the rise of the creative economy and the growth of urban tourism cities around the world became part of a new organizational logic. In order to become attractive for the creative work force as well as for weekend tourists new galleries, museums and libraries were built in many city centers during the past decades. Furthermore, seaside promenades were opened, inner city districts were cleaned and cultural festivals of various sorts became part of many cities' yearly rhythms. With this shift towards a logic which performs a city's culture as economic resource museums, tidy walkways and beautiful piazzas are no longer seen as simply being public services for a city's inhabitants. Rather they become necessary economic investments which are expected to produce a sizeable return for the city's economy. In this regard the atmosphere of a city becomes a tangible asset that has to meet certain requirements and has to be performed according to specific rationales.
In order to understand how this mode of organizing unfolds in relation to multiple other logics of urban life the paper presents a case study on a young string ensemble in Berlin. The ensemble focuses on prising open established formats of performing classic music and explores experimental formats of staging their music. One of the ensemble's predominant interests lies in how public spaces can be appropriated through their music and how they can (or cannot) intervene musically into the organization of urban life. In so called "Guerrilla concerts" they explore various public spaces in Berlin and try to reassemble them aesthetically. While in some places their performances resonate well with other rhythms of urban life, in others cases the ensemble fails in making their fantasies come true.
Through an audio-visual ethnography of the group's rehearsals and performances the paper raises the question of how the production of new atmospheres becomes im/possible. The study is based on an understanding of atmosphere as performance in which human and non-human actors participate. Therefore atmospheres are addressed as aesthetic practices which assembles a wide range of objects, people, narratives and music. The process of assembling new atmospheres is then a process of carefully crafting and negotiating the relations between sets of heterogeneous actors.
Conceptually, the research draws upon the vocabulary and methods of Actor-Network- Theory and its developments after (Law, Mol, Hassard, Hennion) as well as upon some ideas of Non-Representational Theorizing (Thrift, Anderson, Harrison).
With the growing importance of the cultural economy in many Western cities the experience of public space has become a focal point in the organization and planning of urban life. While this aesthetic reengineering of urban life clearly follows the paradigm of the entrepreneurial city, it raises the question if and how other modes and moods of ordering urban public space can participate in its shaping and thus keep urban public spaces alive as places of lived democracy. Against this thematic backdrop the paper addresses the question if and how urban public space can resist the aesthetical streamlining of the entrepreneurial city and stay alive as a place of multiple modes and moods of existence.
Empirically the paper presents the analysis of an audio-visual ethnography of guerrilla concert in the city of Berlin. The concert was planned and played by a young Berlin chamber orchestra which has set itself the task to prise open the traditional concert settings and to experiment with new forms of experiencing classical music. The study explores how this performance relates to multiple other logics of organizing Berlin's public spaces.
Conceptually the study presents music making as a set of socio-material practices which aesthetically organize a wide range of people, technologies and places. Drawing on the literature of Actor-Network Theory (and its developments after) as well as on conceptual advances made in human geography under the label of "More-than-representational theorizing", the paper aims at analyzing the complex politics of organizing the aesthetic experience of public space. I will argue that such a politics cannot simply be framed as a struggle for or against specific aesthetic modes but instead relies on the unfolding of affective dynamics which allow to accommodate multiple and contradictory ways of participating in urban life.
Die vorliegende Arbeit erkundet Möglichkeiten der Partizipation im Kontext der Stadtentwicklung. Entlang einer empirischen Fallstudie und einer theoretischen Erörterung reflektiert sie bestehende Partizipationsbegriffe und schlägt eine Erweiterung dieser durch ein performatives Partizipationsverständnis vor. Die parallel zur empirischen Studie geführte theoretische Diskussion basiert auf einem breiten Literaturapparat, der aus der Humangeographie genauso schöpft wie aus der Organisationstheorie, der Soziologie und der Planungstheorie.
Die Fallstudie beschäftigt sich mit dem St. Galler Kunstmuseum und behandelt die Frage, wie dieses als öffentlicher Raum organisiert wird und welche Formen der Partizipation es ermöglicht. Das Kunstmuseum wird dabei als Raum beschrieben, der im Schnittpunkt von drei unterschiedlichen Ordnungsweisen performativ erzeugt wird. Dabei wird zwischen einer "strategisch planenden", einer "klassisch bewahrenden" und einer "situativ verkörpernden" Ordnungsweise unterschieden. Jede dieser Ordnungsweisen produziert das Museum und seine Zukunft auf andere und zum Teil widersprüchliche Art. Sie weisen den Teilnehmern unterschiedliche Subjekt- und Objektpositionen im Gefüge des Museums zu und erzeugen somit Spannungsverhältnisse, durch die (manchmal) neue Formen des Partizipierens möglich werden.
Die Arbeit erkundet daher zunächst die Praktiken, in denen die Ordnungsweisen ihre Teilnehmer inszenieren und bestimmte Zukunftsszenarien des Museums ins Leben rufen. Anschliessend beschreibt sie, wie manche der Teilnehmer in sich gegenseitig ausschliessende Positionen und somit in Spannungsverhältnisse gesetzt werden. Schliesslich zeigt die Arbeit, wie diese Spannungen zur Stabilisierung oder Veränderung der bestehenden Verhältnisse und der beteiligten Akteure führen können.
Partizipation wird aus diesen Beobachtungen heraus als ein Effekt heterogener, vielfältiger und mehr oder weniger stabiler Ordnungsweisen beschrieben, die in körperlichen Praktiken, Sprache und Materialitäten inszeniert werden und daher verhandelbar und potentiell veränderlich sind.
In this contribution, I suggest activating the notion of atmospheres as a heuristic device to empirically research affects. I will argue that analysing the composition of atmospheres allows one to take into account three key dimensions of affects: their spatio-materiality, their sensuality and their (in)stability. Building on a process understanding of atmospheres, I reflect on how each of the three dimensions can be empirically researched and how they interplay in the emergence of atmospheres. I will illustrate these reflections with examples from a current research project on an artistic intervention into public spaces in Berlin.
