Urban Transcripts (Mar 2021)
Both feet in murky waters: Fieldnotes from the Floating University in Berlin
Abstract
The Floating University is a summer school organised by the “Raumlabor” collective of scenic architects in Berlin. The proposal is to connect a neighbourhood, the city’s infrastructure and a hybrid ecosystem through the exploration of a specific place. They experiment with new formats of collective research, pedagogy “on site” and political activism. In 2019, the summer school temporary facilities consisted of six light structures built over a body of water – a rainwater reservoir that has become a swamp over time. What critical scope may an architectural activist serve by developing hybrid practices? By proposing an outdoor school of bodily sensations and specific perceptive situations, the gesture of the architect or designer gives, indeed, a palpable presence to events that are beyond comprehension, such as climate change. Destabilizing established balances and ordinary routines of bypassing the living environment around us encourages the “students” to work on their own gaze and responses. The difficulty of translating and discussing an atmosphere like that of the Floating University opens up the hope of a broader shift in the practices of academic research on our environments, habitats, ecosystems; a shift that would not be reduced to the agreed, opacifying discourses on “nature” or “landscape”. These reflections lead us to consider the artistic, economic and social context of this performative event, as well as the current development of ecological and environmental humanities. In order to critically cross-examine the political significance of such an experiment, we must take the attempts of the artists seriously, without exaggerating or minimizing the reach of small-scale interventions such as the education of the gaze, movement and exercises of attention and care.
