| Beschreibung |
Breaking with the (academic) tradition of looking to the West, we’ll mentally travel to Eastern Europe to collect best practices in the former Eastern Bloc to help save (post)modern heritage from demolition. The Tripping on Modernist Monuments research project, initiated in 2020 by the girlscanscan collective, explores how monuments—whether intentionally or unintentionally—make societal conflicts visible and how expertise from monument preservation, activism, art, and engineering can be integrated. It’s interested in the built environmental heritage not in its clear, visually pleasing representation, but rather in its raw reality, its current use, and its entanglement in postsocialist politics. Interdisciplinarity | Taking architectural heritage as a starting point, we will slowly unfold its historic and social layers in space and time. We are interested in the built environmental heritage not in its clear, visually pleasing representation, but rather in its raw reality, its current use, and its entanglement in postsocialist politics. The Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s not only had to face its controversial communist past but also the effects of the free market. As a consequence, in today’s reality, demolitions taking place in neoliberal urban settings due to ideological or economic reasons are protested, while monuments in rural areas are left to decay, awaiting activation. We are exploring how monuments—whether intentionally or unintentionally—make societal conflicts visible and how expertise from monument preservation, activism, art, and engineering can be integrated. Learning Objectives | Students will gain a broad overview of postsocialist theories in the former Eastern Bloc and its ongoing societal transformation, while also getting familiar with the interdisciplinary approach of Critical Heritage Studies. In most cases, students will be asked to unlearn and reflect on their presumptions regarding Eastern Europe and question the absence of knowledge, as well as the mechanics of knowledge production related to it. Together we will experiment with its socialization through mediation, with film screenings at M18 and the collective curation of an exhibition for Kiosk.6.
Didactic Concept | At the beginning of the semester, each student will choose a former Eastern Bloc country and begin researching a contemporary case study. The goal is to illustrate their perspective on that country's culture of remembrance, while also using a former East German case for comparison and reflection on our own position.
Throughout the semester, faculty members and invited guests will give short presentations on controversial and everyday heritage, as well as on modern and postmodern architecture. In parallel, participants will work through a reader, which will be discussed weekly, and join us for one consultation session.
At the end of the semester, students will present their case studies in a Pecha Kucha format and submit their final texts for printing in the exhibition at Kiosk.6. For the 6 ECTS credits, participants are also asked to help co-curate and co-organize film screenings, exhibition visits, and our final exhibition in Weimar. |
