Public Spaces as Homophilic Spaces

Abstract

Our research project on homophilic spaces in Berlin’s club culture is based on the cooperation with the French artist Julie Chovin. Through her work of more than 220 photos of club entrances in Berlin we were able to grasp the qualities of the Berlin clubs. We made the observations of a heterogeneous landscape yet hosting respectively homogeneous audiences. In order to understand the constitution of such homophilic communities, we focussed our sociospatial investigation on the threshold space of Berlin club. Based on a comprehensive review and analysis of visual representations of club doors, qualitative interviews with bouncers, mental maps, and ethnographic multimodal field notes, our research reconstructs – in a first step – the spatial arrangement of Berlin’s club threshold at the interplay between the gate, the queue, and the selection practices of the bouncers. In a second step, we analyse the audience curation along three dimensions generative of public spaces: firstly, the affective dimension that refers to the emotional state of the guests and their collective contribution to atmosphere making; secondly, the imaginative dimension about the meaning of the exclusiveness and distinction of a typical club in Berlin; and thirdly, the technological dimension in terms of media technology and their absence to create a non-mediatized space.