Cities on the Move: Bilder des Urbanen in der Moderne

This module focuses on the relationship of the image and the city in art, architecture, and urbanism since early modernity, with particular emphasis on global processes. The objective is to outline current theoretical uses of the “image of the city” based on urban development and discourse. We begin with the premise that a city has no single “image” lending itself to empirical research, but rather a multiplicity of competing concepts circulating in the arts and mass-media and informing its public perception. The resulting pictures need not be flat, mimetic representations (e.g. photography and ground plans) but may consist of sculpture, spatial passages, temporal sequences and ephemeral gatherings. To this end we pursue political perspectives: as Arnold Toynbee suggested in his book Cities on the Move (1970), cities have always been the privileged stage on which political identity is acted out. Attention will be paid not only to the viewpoints of the powers that design and alter physical space, but also to the perspective of citizens, insofar as they are articulated pictorially. The image of the city is situated within the context of social debates: our interest focuses on those instances in which the urban image is disputed and opposing images of urbanity collide.