Elke Krasny
cultural theorist, curator of exhibitions, writer and project artist based in Vienna, works along the overlap of architecture, urbanism, gender, museums, culture and art, contributes regularly to architektur aktuell; teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, holds a guestprofessorship on urban transformation at the University of Bremen; creates communication processes in public spaces as well as in museum venues; www.musieum.at
Selected publications: Les Mots Trouves. Eine Orientierung des Öffentlichen, in: Waidhofener Begegnungen, Hg. Theresia Hauenfels, Präsens Verlag, 2006; Räume zum Handeln und zum Lachen auch. Von der öffentlichen Wirkung der Partizipation in urbanen Räumen. In: Temporäre Räume. Strategien innovativer Stadtnutzung. (Hg.) Florian Haydn und Robert Temel, 2006; The Butterfly, the Garden, the Island and the Mountain, in: Hans Schabus. The Last Land, Austrian Pavilian, La Biennale di Venezia, Commissioner Max Hollein, 2005; Warum ist das Licht so schnell hell? Eine Reise durch die Welt des Lichts. Herausgegeben vom Technischen Museum Wien, NP Verlag, Österreichischer Kinder- und Jugendbuchpreis 2006; Frauenarchitektouren. Arbeiten von Architektinnen in Österreich. Hrsg. von Anne Bauer, Ingrid Gumpinger, Eleonore Kleindienst, Pustet Verlag, Mitarbeit als Redakteurin, 2004; Auf Spurensuche in der Landschaft des Wissens. Die Wiener Weltausstellung von 1873 im Kulturleben der Gegenwart, in: Welt Ausstellen. Schauplatz Wien 1873, Ausstellungskatalog des Technischen Museums Wien 2004; Ottokar Uhl: Gegen-Sätze. Architektur als Dialog. Ausgewählte Texte aus vier Jahrzehnten. Hg. Elke Krasny u. Claudia Mazanek, Wien Picus Verlag, 2003
Speaker at Session 4: Continuing Narration
Memory and topography go hand in hand or so it seems in the rhetorics of how we imagine the spatial structure of remembering. But what if we take this idea a step further and try to understand the topography in the everyday movement patterns of people as a kind of memory. Cities have been referred to as museums or archives, places of storage in the widest sense, in preserving bits and pieces of the past even though with a strategy very different from the collector’s approach of a museologist. Unlike museums’ collections, though cities are the site of perpetual change and conflict, least the conflict between the old and the new. The perception as well as the production of meaning of this unified juxtaposition of the historical and the contemporary which clearly highlights the urban environment as an environment of contrasts and differences shape people’s experiences of both space and time. We navigate easily through these sites of multi-temporality extracting a sense of direction with every step we take in the “temporal collage” (Kevin Lynch) of our surroundings. People’s perception of their urban habitat is being created on their daily ways and they act on this on their specific routes. Urban multiplicities are accumulated and stowed away for further memorable use on our daily walks through town. We are the sensors and informants of urban change. The tools of investigation I want to lay out for focussing on the temporality and atmospheric shifts, thus taking the focus from the singled out historically valued architectural object to the urban landscape on a bigger scale, are walking and talking. Through listening to multiple subjectivities the diversity of urban patterns emerge and make up a strong multifold narrative. Methodologically I want to approach the city by walking, by chaining sites and places through routes in always letting people define their route. Then, when two people set out on these routes, the expert/informant and the listener/observer, in their talking and taking notes constitute what we may call an emerging urban landscape. Step by step, word after word the city is created, made up of impressions that leave their delible mark in the eye of the beholder, thus joining together the everyday practices and the programming and re-programming of urban development. The narrations themselves are figures of memory, re-enacted and actualized in the daily ways. Urban transformation makes itself felt along the way. If we are to study the daily ways, the comings and goings in a close follow-up of the subjective narrations we are to produce a detailed understanding of urban transformation as the city showcasing „memorabilia“. A close reading of these narratives (Mieke Bal) creates a portrait of the urban surroundings. In the multidisciplinary layering of all the elements of such a portrait lies the opportunity to reveal how urban transformation is shifting from sites to places to use(R)s and back, always adding another connection in remembering and constructing our image of the city.
