GERMANY, Frankfurt (Oder): Viadrinicum 2019 “Transsectoral UrbanLab. Participatory Urbanism Beyond Metropoleis”

Viadrinicum is an annual summer school devoted to the countries of the Eastern Partnership region with a special focus on Ukraine. It is organized by Europa-Universität Viadrina (Frankfurt (Oder), Germany).

Viadrinicum 2019 Transsectoral UrbanLab. Participatory Urbanism Beyond Metropoleis  Summer School 2019 takes place in Frankfurt (Oder) on 19 August – 1 September 2019. This year it aims to tackle the complex issues of (glocal) urbanism, urban development and active citizenship in small and medium-sized post-socialist cities from multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Detailed Program

Public events open to broad audience include:

19 August 2019, 6.15 pm

Opening Lecture Viadrinicum 2019: Multiple Transitions: (Re-)Assembling Cities into and out of Socialism. Speaker: Dr. Sofia Dyak (L’viv). Moderation: Felix Ackermann (Deutsches Historisches Institut, Warschau)

Venue: Hauptgebäude, HG 109, Große Scharrnstr. 59, Frankfurt (Oder)

The lecture will provide a broader lens to thinking about the transformations of cities in the (post)Socialist world by exploring two optics. First, multiple trajectories of cities transitioning from the socialist project in 1989 or 1991 will be examined. Second, these observations will be complicated by considering how cities within the Socialist world experienced previous transitions – not only into Socialism, but also within Socialism itself. In other words, Socialist cities will be considered as highly dynamic sites that were constantly assembled and reassembled, invented and re-invented. Moreover, a perspective that includes these highly dynamic and radical urban experiences of transformations in postwar Eastern European cities can provide more insights into the ways we might see cities as sites of development and laboratories of the future. In order to highlight the major and multiple transitions into, under, and out of socialism in Eastern Europe the lecture will focus on two regional urban centers that were radically reassembled and reimagined: L’viv and Wroclaw. Event’s page in Facebook can be found here.

27 August 2019, 6.15 pm

Panel Discussion Viadrinicum 2019 “UniverCity. Knowledge Production about/in the Local Context”

Panelists: Prof. Julia von Blumenthal, president of European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder); Dr. Daria Bocharnikova, curator and scholar at Bozar – Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels; Dr. Ulrike Kremeier, director of Brandenburg State Museum for Modern Art, Frankfurt (Oder)/Cottbus; René Wilke, lord mayor of Frankfurt (Oder). Moderation: Kirill Repin (Europa-Universität Viadrina)

Societal processes are increasingly urbanized nowadays. Being the nodal points in transnational networks of goods, ideas and (human) capital, cities function as the major sites of innovation and political contestation. At the same time with the advance of knowledge economy such institutions of knowledge production, as universities and museums, get interwoven into the urban fabric of the cities even deeper than they used to be, turning into the crucial mediators between the local and the transnational. In search for common visions of fairer future, what potential can such institutions offer to the city residents and which role can/should they adopt in the development of citizen/resident science – knowledge about community produced by the members of community themselves? What is the suitable model for city-university cooperation in such smaller localities like Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice, where trans-border entanglements could not be more salient? Finally, how can the university and the museum contribute to the (re-)construction of the city as a common good, enabling emancipatory modes of belonging and developing tools for taming the “urban growth machine”? Event’s page in Facebook can be found here.

Venue: Hauptgebäude, HG 109, Große Scharrnstr. 59, Frankfurt (Oder)

31 August 2019, 11.00 am

Be/Longing. Exhibiting the Results of the UrbanLab.Workshops

Based on academic input, 30 students, young civil society activists and artists explore the local context of Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice using scientific, cinematic and artistic means.
The Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art (BLMK) provides the exhibition rooms of the Packhof. In cooperation with the participants, the BLMK team will transform the existing exhibition ‘Protest!’ to a presentation in which works from the collection are integrated into the topic of the post-socialist city.  The results of curatorial cooperation and field studies will be presented in the form of an interactive exhibition at a vernissage. Event’s page in Facebook can be found here.

Venue: Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst (BLMK), Packhof, Carl-Philipp-Emanuel-Bach-Straße 11, 15230 Frankfurt (Oder)

This Summer School is supported by:

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