Eurograd message

                Dear all,
<br>
<br>It is our great pleasure to invite you all to the upcoming summer semester
<br>2019 edition of the Institut für Europäische Ethnology’s
<br>(Humboldt-University of Berlin) Institutskolloquium (our departmental lecture
<br>series), under the title The world/s at the ends of the city. Explorations in
<br>urban and environmental anthropology
<br>
<br>These public lecture series will take place each Tuesday 2-4pm (except
<br>otherwise stated, *) from April 9, 2019 until July 2, 2019 in the Room 0007 at
<br>Hausvogteiplatz 5-7 10117 Berlin.
<br>
<br>We’re enclosing all relevant information. And more information will be
<br>available soon at http://hu.berlin/ifee-institutskolloquium
<br>
<br>
<br>We would be really grateful if you could share it with anyone interested.
<br>
<br>If you happen to be in Berlin any of those dates, don’t hesitate to come!
<br>
<br>All the best,
<br>Ignacio Farías, Tomás Criado & Jörg Niewöhner
<br>
<br>**
<br>
<br>The world/s at the ends of the city. Explorations in urban and environmental
<br>anthropology
<br>
<br>What if the city was not a world in itself, but an interface to multiple,
<br>overlapping, often invisible and conflicting worldings? That is, more or less
<br>powerful, more or less precarious ways of composing urban ecologies that
<br>sustain–and impede–forms of life. But also, what if those worldings were
<br>the end of the city as we have come to know it to date? This departmental
<br>lecture series wishes to explore the world/s at the ends of the city, giving
<br>this term a twofold sense:
<br>
<br>• Firstly, the series pays attention to nonhuman worldly forces both shaping
<br>and challenging urban cohabitation. The challenges these forces bring with
<br>them lead us to explore the potential shape of an urban cosmopolitics in the
<br>Anthropocene. We are thus interested in understanding how organic and
<br>inorganic, geological, chemical and biological forces challenge our
<br>understanding of the city and the modes of operating in it.
<br>• Secondly, we want to zoom into critical and experimental ecologies of
<br>practices un-doing and re-doing the city at the edges of habitability. That
<br>is, social movements but also movements or, rather, displacements of the
<br>social be they reclaiming infrastructures, apprehending or appropriating urban
<br>ecologies. We aim to explore what it could mean to rethink urbanism, in its
<br>constructive and moral/citizenship dimensions, from different kinds of
<br>engagements of human and nonhuman others. We aim to make visible arts of
<br>survival, inquiry, and design that unfold in the ruins of the city as a modern
<br>project of social integration through infrastructural connection.
<br>
<br>The departmental lecture series ‘the world/s at the ends of the city’ will
<br>thus shed light onto what an urban politics might involve in the face of
<br>disruptive irruptions of both nonhuman and unruly forces through the
<br>boundaries, thresholds and interstices of urban worlds: that is, the spaces
<br>where what we call ‘the city’ not topographically, but mainly
<br>ontologically, ends. Exploring these ends is critical, especially considering
<br>that while in policy worlds cities are increasingly targeted as a key site to
<br>achieve a sustainable future, many other critical voices suggest we should
<br>dismiss the city as a useful analytical and political category. In this
<br>context, it seems crucial to articulate the discussion about worldly forces at
<br>the ends of the city with the question of the ends (telos) of our inquiries
<br>and interventions in urban worlds. At stake are not just the conceptual
<br>apparatuses to decenter the city, but most prominently the necessary
<br>re-articulation of the epistemic politics of an urban and environmental
<br>anthropology.
<br>
<br>Three interrelated avenues of disciplinary reflection might shape our
<br>conversation: How to follow and immerse ourselves in the life of urban biomes,
<br>bees, microclimates, tsunamis, so that we can represent and give a voice to
<br>such urban actors? How to learn from the methods invented by different urban
<br>ecologies of practices and collectives to know, represent, intervene and
<br>engage with unknown worldly forces? How to collaborate with scientists and
<br>artists in the production of in/commensurable accounts of the world/s at the
<br>end of the city?
<br>
<br>
<br>9. April
<br>
<br>NaturenKulturen: Denkräume und Werkzeuge für neue politische Ökologien -
<br>Book Launch
<br>Michi Knecht / Katrin Amelang (Uni Bremen)
<br>
<br>Commented by Tahani Nadim (MfN/HU Berlin)
<br>
<br>16. April
<br>
<br>Growing city surfaces: anthropology and the urban soil sciences
<br>Germain Meulemans (EHESS, Paris)
<br>
<br>23. April
<br>
<br>The air as an end of the city?
<br>Nerea Calvillo (CIM, Warwick)
<br>
<br>30. April
<br>
<br>Beyond Concrete: Imagination, Material Futures and Construction in Times of
<br>Ecological Crisis
<br>Rachel Harkness (University of Edinburgh)
<br>
<br>7. Mai
<br>
<br>Integrating edible city solutions for socially resilient and sustainably
<br>productive cities
<br>Ina Säumel (IRI THESys, HU Berlin)
<br>
<br>14. Mai
<br>
<br>Quer-denken – A cosmo-politics of urbanthropocene?
<br>Anders Blok (University of Copenhagen) / Regina Römhild (HU Berlin) / Jörg
<br>Niewöhner (HU Berlin)
<br>
<br>21. Mai
<br>
<br>Ruderal City
<br>Bettina Stoetzer (MIT)
<br>
<br>28. Mai*
<br>
<br>Violence and vigilance: on militarized sentience and phantasms of terror in
<br>Paris, France [*Sondertermin: 6-8pm c.t.]
<br>Robert Desjarlais (Sarah Lawrence, NY)
<br>
<br>4. Juni
<br>
<br>Autonomia ethnographica: liberal designs, designs for liberation, and the
<br>liberation of design
<br>Alberto Corsín Jiménez (CSIC, Madrid)
<br>
<br>11. Juni
<br>
<br>Low Tide: Submerged Humanism in a Colombian Port-City
<br>Austin Zeiderman (LSE)
<br>
<br>18. Juni
<br>
<br>Re-imagining detoxification beyond the molecular register
<br>Nick Shapiro (UCLA)
<br>
<br>25. Juni
<br>
<br>Quer-denken – Remaking the city: How to care?
<br>Tomás Criado / Martina Klausner / Beate Binder (HU Berlin)
<br>
<br>2. Juli*
<br>
<br>Für eine Anthropologie des Urbanismus (inaugural lecture/Antrittsvorlesung)
<br>[*Sondertermin: 6-8pm c.t. am IfEE, Raum 408]
<br>Ignacio Farías (HU Berlin)
<br>
<br>An event of each of these sessions will also be created soon at IfEE’s FB
<br>channel: https://www.facebook.com/IfEEBerlin/
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>Dr Tomás Sánchez Criado
<br>
<br>Senior researcher at the Chair of Urban Anthropology
<br>Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
<br>Møhrenstr. 41, R. 131 – 10117 Berlin
<br>+49 (0)30 2093 70849
<br>
<br>www.tscriado.org | @tscriado
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