Program

Detailed Program

Workshop

Johanna Steindorf: Views from Somewhere: The Audio Walk as Artistic Practice and Method
Oct. 1st, 2019, 14:30-16:00

In the audio walk as artistic format, a narrative is created for a specific location within a city. These narratives are often linked to the site, its history and/or its inhabitants. Equipped with a portable and headphones, the individual participant can explore these site-specific stories by foot. As an artist, I also propose using the audio walk as an artistic method, inverting its original logic by evoking personal narratives in the participants. By combining specific audio with a location, individuals explore their own thoughts, memories and emotions that surface while walking through the place. I have used this method in the past to work with women who had recently migrated to Cologne. Together with the women, I investigated how our personal experiences and memories of other places influence the perception of a city that is new and unknown to us. The workshop is based on my 6 years of research on audio, gender and migration within the Ph.D. program at the Bauhaus-University Weimar. In the workshop, I will present both approaches and propose experiments in order to investigate how our individual view on a location is always embodied, gendered, situated and can benefit from others’ views: “(…)the joining of partial views and halting voices into a collective subject position that promises a vision of the means of an ongoing
finite embodiment, of living within limits and contradictions-of views from somewhere.”<sup>1

1</sup> {Donna Haraway 1988 #498D: 590}

Cultural and Regional Explorations

Cologne is one of Germany’s renowned centers for art and media and one of the foremost cities consistently promoting its diversity of lifestyles and its rich (and at times troubled) history of migration and multilingualism.

To complement the thematic focus of this Summer School guided excursions to explore local museums, such as Rautenstrauch-Joest – Cultures of the world, and practical explorations in teams with advanced students from Cologne are planned. Participants will visitand significant quarters of the city, such as Mülheim, Ehrenfeld and Eigelstein and consider commemoration projects such as Stolpersteine/Stumbling Blocks will accompany the academic program and offer insights into German culture and public German media history.

The hosting chairs would like to take this opportunity to invite renowned voices to contemplate “Diversity and Minorities in Germany” in a Public round table, which is not only open to Summer School participants, but opens the doors to Cologne’s public. This special event will take place on October 2, eve of ‘Tag der deutschen Einheit’, reunification day.

To round out the topic of exploration of reunification and cultural trajectories participants will take a trip down memory lane and move into a vintage indoor glamping site located in Bonn for the final weekend of their stay. Bonn is the former capital of BRD, where we will visit ‘Haus der Geschichte’, Germany’s foremost museum dedicated to German history since 1945. They will also get to know the Bundeskunsthalle, where we will again broaden the perspective beyond Europe and visit the exhibit “California Dreams – San Francisco. A portrait”.