Guests 2020

The Opening Week is an opportunity to talk with guests from all over the Republic and beyond about "Future::Cities". You can follow our keynotes and talks in the daily Youtube live streams. These focus on the big questions and connections to the four hashtags of the starting week: decarbonisation, democracy, digitality and diversity.The greetings tell about the courage of starting in difficult times. The impulses from civil society practice support the project groups in exploring visionary patterns for the cities of tomorrow.

Keynotes & Talks

Elijah Anderson

©Privat
Elijah Anderson is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University. He is one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States. His publications include Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999), winner of the Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society; Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (1990), winner of the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best published book in the area of Urban Sociology; and the classic sociological work, A Place on the Corner (1978; 2nd ed., 2003). Anderson’s most recent ethnographic work, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life, was published by WW Norton in 2011.

  

Holke Brammer

©Privat
Holke Brammer works as a Strategic Mission Lead at ProjectTogether. He leads programs such as the #wirvsvirus Solution Enabler that supports 100+ initiatives from the civil society to develop, pilot and scale solutions in the COVID-19 crisis. He also co-develops this Open Social Innovation process further as a multi-stakeholder solution mechanism for a wide variety of societal and ecological challenges.

  

Katharina Fegebank

©Daniel Reinhardt/Senatskanzlei
Katharina Fegebank is a politician of Alliance ´90/The Greens. She studied Political Science, Public Law and English, with the final degree of Master of Arts at the University of Freiburg. From 2007 to 2013 she was Research Associate for the Executive Committee of the Leuphana University Lüneburg. She has been Second Mayor of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and Senator for Science, Research and Gender Equality since 2015.

  

Diana Kinnert

©Benjamin Zibner
Diana Kinnert is a politician of the CDU and an independent entrepreneur, consultant and publicist. She also works for various research institutes and think tanks. Since 2016 Kinnert has been advising various actors in the political process. Since 2018, her political work has focused in particular on the topics of technology, demography, anti-isolation, urbanisation and participation.

  

Injairu Kulundu-Bolus

©Privat
Injairu Kulundu-Bolus is a Researcher at Rhodes University working in the Tranforming Education for Sustainable Futures Research Network Plus South Africa Hub. She has a background in politics and drama and has recently completed a PhD focussing on Transgressive Learning as a decolonial praxis amongst young change drivers involved in the Activate! Youth Movement where she is a leading Change Driver, interested in rising cultures for sustainability and social justice.

  

Heila Lotz-Sisitka

©Privat
Distinguished Professor Heila Lotz-Sisitka holds a Tier 1 South African National Research Foundation Chair in Transformative Social Learning and Green Skills Learning Pathways. She has co-ordinated and led many sustainability education programmes and processes nationally and internationally including a recent ISC research programme focussing on Transgressive Learning in Times of Climate Change. Her research interests include critical research methodologies, transformative environmental learning, agency, and education system transformation.

  

Dirk Messner

©privat
Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner has been President of the Federal Environment Agency since 1 January 2020. He is also co-director of the "Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research" at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Dirk Messner was previously Director of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University (UNU-EHS) in Bonn and Vice-Rector of the United Nations University (UNU). Dirk Messner is an internationally recognised expert in the fields of globalisation/global governance, transformations to sustainability, decarbonisation of the global economy, sustainability and digital change, international cooperation and social change.

  

Saskia Sassen

©Privat
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in New York and a Member of its Committee on Global Thought, which she chaired from 2009 until 2015. She is a student of cities, immigration, and states in the world economy, with inequality, gendering and digitization being the three key variables running through her work. She is the author of eight books and the editor or co-editor of four books. Together, her authored books are translated in over twenty languages.

  

Uwe Schneidewind

©Wolf Sondermann
Uwe Schneidewind is a German economist and politician. Until 2020, Schneidewind, who is considered one of the most influential economists in Germany, was president of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy in Wuppertal. In 2020 he was elected Mayor of the city of Wuppertal.

  

Marina Weisband

©Tibor Bozi
Marina Weisband is a psychologist, author and former political director of the Pirate Party Germany. She is an expert for digital participation and education and heads the democracy project "aula" at politik-digital e.V.

  

Ranga Yogeshwar

©H.G. Esch
Regarded as one of the leading independent science journalists in Germany, Ranga Yogeshwar is interested in bringing science to the general public. He received major media awards for his journalistic contributions and book publications. He draws attention to his personal concerns about innovation and education in Germany and Europe through regular television appearances.
Yogeshwar graduated from RWTH University Aachen with a diploma degree in physics.

Greetings

The courage to start

Dorothee Bär

©Bundesregierung / Tobias Koch
Dorothee Bär ist Staatsministerin für Digitalisierung im Bundeskanzleramt.

   

Melanie Brinkmann

©Privat
Melanie Brinkmann is a virologist, working group leader at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and Professor at the Institute of Genetics at the Technical University of Braunschweig.

   

Ulrike Guérot

©DED
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Guérot is head of the Department for European Politics and Democracy Research at the Danube University Krems and founder of the European Democracy Labs in Berlin. Previously she worked in European think tanks and universities in Paris, Brussels, London, Washington and Berlin. In autumn 2019 she was awarded the Paul Watzlawick Ring of Honour and the Salzburg State Prize for Futures Studies.

   

Phenix Kühnert

©Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.
Phenix Kühnert ist eine 25-jährige in Berlin lebende LGBTQIA+ Aktivistin, die sich besonders für die Rechte und Sichtbarkeit der trans* - und non-binary Community einsetzt. Sie ist an der Ostsee aufgewachsen und hat nun in Berlin ihre Stimme gegen Diskriminierung gefunden. Außerdem ist sie Model, Moderatorin und Podcast Host von „FREITAG ABEND“. Instagram: thisisphenix

   

Konstantin Kuhle

©Miriam Merkel
Konstantin Kuhle is a German politician of the FDP and member of the Bundestag. He studied law in Hamburg and has worked as a lawyer since 2017. From 2014 to 2018 Kuhle was chairman of the German Young Liberals, the youth organisation of the FDP.

  

Van Bo Le-Mentzel

©Privat
Van Bo Le-Mentzel is an architect, author ("Der Kleine Professor", 2016, Ecowin) and filmmaker from Berlin. Among other things, he is the initiator of several initiatives between design and social participation. Well-known projects are Hartz IV Möbel (2010), One Sqm House (2013), Karma Chakhs (2013), Tinyhouse University (2015) and the Co-Being House.

   

Leif Lewinski

©Privat
Leif is a co-founder of "besser zuhause", a curious lateral thinker and a driving force for innovation. He constantly questions the status quo - and loves to find solutions to challenges. As a young company, "besser zuhause" is initially offering an all-round, carefree range of measures to improve the living environment in Hamburg.

  

Andrej Safundzic

©Privat
Andrej is the founder of Tech4Germany, Germany's technology task force under the patronage of the head of the Federal Chancellery. For this, Andrej is the youngest person ever to be included in Capital's Top 40 Under 40 list. Andrej is currently at Stanford with the Knight Hennessy full scholarship and is doing his MBA and Master's in Computer Science there. His mission is "Tech For The Public Good."

Impulses

Peter Androsch

©Volker Weihbold
The artist born in 1963 in the Upper Austrian city of Wels can be called a sound artist in the truest sense of its meaning: hearing sound, understanding it, shaping it, holding onto it. This yields music, acoustic ecology, language and sound recordings (as acoustic and visual documents). Peter Androsch is convinced that you can find out more about the world if you listen closely than if you look closely. After his education both at university as well as in a working environment, and extensive tours through Europe, Africa, and the USA, he has intensively dedicated himself to compositional work. Peter Androsch is internationally active as a musician, composer, an artist with space and writing, a researcher, a writer, and as an lecturer.

  

Alice Bischof

©privat
Alice Bischof is a PhD candidate at the Business Management & Organisation chair group of the School of Social Sciences at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her research examines how urban agriculture organisations transform urban food systems through sustainable business models. She is part of the EdiCitNet (Edible City Solutions) Project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Her previous education includes a MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance from the University of Oxford, England, and a BSc in Agricultural Sciences from Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.

  

Thomas Burkhalter

©Privat
Thomas Burkhalter is an ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, filmmaker and music journalist from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient – Performing Music Research (norient.com), the Norient Film Festival (NFF) and the new Norient Space “The Now In Sound”. He co-directed the documentary films “Contradict” (2020 - Berner Filmpreis 2020) and “Ghana Controversial” (Al-Jazeera Witness, 2019), the AV/theatre/dance performance “Clash of Gods” (2018), is the author of “Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut” (Routledge), and he co-edited the books “The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East” (Wesleyan University Press), “Seismographic Sounds – Visions of a New World” (Norient Books), and “Out of the Absurdity of Life – Global Music” (Norient/Traversion).

  

Claudia Kemfert

©PETER HIMSEL
Claudia Kemfert is an economist and heads the department "Energy, Transport, Environment" at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) since 2004. She is Professor of Energy Economics and Energy Policy at Leuphana University. Until 2009 she was Professor of Energy Economics and Sustainability at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin. From 2004 to 2009, Claudia Kemfert held the Chair of Environmental Economics at Humboldt University.

  

Hong Kongers

©Copyright (c) 1998 Hewlett-Packard Company
Joel Kwong and Eric Siu submitted this project to Ars Elcetronica not as artists but as messengers. Their agenda is to collect examples of digital excellence from within the protest movement and generalize them into one discourse of “digital community.” Hong Kongers have set new standards of digital activism, the lessons of which must be shared. “Be Water” is their guiding philosophy, just as in the Chinese classical text Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, the highest good is like water. As messengers and Hong Kong citizens, Joel and Eric document the past and present, credit the Hong Kong protesters, and hope to bring Hong Kongers to the center of art, technology, and society and provoke a much-needed dialogue about how digital culture shapes our practice of civic responsibility now and in the future.
©Privat
Joel Kwong and Eric Siu submitted this project to Ars Elcetronica not as artists but as messengers. Their agenda is to collect examples of digital excellence from within the protest movement and generalize them into one discourse of “digital community.” Hong Kongers have set new standards of digital activism, the lessons of which must be shared. “Be Water” is their guiding philosophy, just as in the Chinese classical text Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, the highest good is like water. As messengers and Hong Kong citizens, Joel and Eric document the past and present, credit the Hong Kong protesters, and hope to bring Hong Kongers to the center of art, technology, and society and provoke a much-needed dialogue about how digital culture shapes our practice of civic responsibility now and in the future.
©Privat
Joel Kwong and Eric Siu submitted this project to Ars Elcetronica not as artists but as messengers. Their agenda is to collect examples of digital excellence from within the protest movement and generalize them into one discourse of “digital community.” Hong Kongers have set new standards of digital activism, the lessons of which must be shared. “Be Water” is their guiding philosophy, just as in the Chinese classical text Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, the highest good is like water. As messengers and Hong Kong citizens, Joel and Eric document the past and present, credit the Hong Kong protesters, and hope to bring Hong Kongers to the center of art, technology, and society and provoke a much-needed dialogue about how digital culture shapes our practice of civic responsibility now and in the future.

  

Bernhard Knierim

©privat
Bernhard Knierim is a biophysicist (PhD) and political scientiest. He works as a scientific advisor for a member of the German parliament on transport policy and is engaged in several initiatives for better mobility - especially on rail: "Back on Track" campaigns for a better European rail system with night trains as an alternative to short-haul flights, and "Bahn für Alle" demands a better, comfortable, reliable and climate friendly public train system in Germany. Knierim is also author of several books and journal articles on mobility and writes on his blog mobilitaetswen.de.

  

Anne-Kathrin Kuhlemann

©www.GordonWelters.com
Anne-Kathrin co-founded StadtFarm in 2011 with the aim of changing the way food is produced: fresh & healthy, near consumers and avoiding negative ecological impact. The result is a technology that combines fish and plant production in urban settings, the only commercial fish farm known globally to recycle all of its water entirely. Producing 50t of fish and 30t of vegetables p.a. on 2,500 m² in each location, StadtFarm saves 90% of the water needed in conventional agriculture, but also 80% of the land used and 88% of the CO2 emissions. By covering the entire value chain, from seed through processing to sales, food mileage is reduced from an average of 1,500km today to less than 5km average. Products ranging from fish sausage to sugar-free ketchup are supplied to restaurants and end consumers via markets and direct delivery - currently in Berlin, soon also in Munich, Hamburg and many other locations.

  

Penthouse à la Parasit

The penthouse à la parasite tries to resist the logic of displacement of the housing market and instead of being driven out to the periphery of the city, it rises up to the roofs. These spaces on the roofs, which are normally reserved for exclusive penthouses or lie fallow, are appropriated by the Penthouse à la Parasit and it begins to reconquer the houses from top to bottom.

  

Justas Petronis

©privat
Company profile: Founded in 2007, Trafi works with various cities and companies worldwide to create the best in class Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) alternative to private cars. Trafi powers the world's largest MaaS in Berlin – Jelbi, and the most comprehensive regional MaaS in Switzerland – yumuv. Trafi’s advanced technology is also used to enhance mobility products developed by Google, Apple, Lyft, and Gojek. Bio: Justas is a Senior Content Strategist at Trafi, where he is helping cities to envision Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) and make it a reality. Having a comprehensive view of urban movement and an in-depth understanding of the technology transforming it, Justas is advising cities and public transit authorities in their quest for building MaaS and a more connected mobility system.

  

David Sperling

©Privat
David M. Sperling is Professor of the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo and coordinator of the Center for Studies on Contemporary Spatialities at IAU-USP. He is a Researcher of the Brazillian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development since 2017 and a member of the Editorial Board of several Scientific Journals. He is an architect, holds a Master's degree, and a Ph.D. in Architecture and Urbanism from USP. He was a Visiting Professor at Leuphana University (Germany) in 2017 (with a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) and from the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Argentina) in 2014 (with a grant from the Association of Universities of the Montevideo Group).

  

Carol Tonetti

©Privat
Carol Tonetti (São Paulo, 1974) is an architect investigating intersections between artistic practice, architecture and the city, with repercussions in research and teaching. She has a PhD in Design, Space and Culture by the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo (2020), and is an associate professor at Escola da Cidade, since 2004, currently tutoring undergraduate students in their final research and in the Vertical Studio. She also coordinates the Post-Graduation course “Architecture, Education and Society”.

  

Jeanne-Marie Varain

©privat
Jeanne-Marie CC Varain is a socially engaged artist and activist. To work with communitites, humans and on site specific topics is what's driving her. After years of rural activism she now rushed into the city, like everyone, trying to bring some community/human vibes and goals into everyday city life. The projects she will talk about are located in Hannover, Germany. Let us have a closer look at the PLATZ Projekt e.V. and the Nachbarschaftsladen KÖ20.

  

Simon Weckert

©Simon Weckert
Simon Weckert is an new media artist with his home base in Berlin. He likes to share knowledge on a wide range of fields from generative design to physical computing. His focus is the digital world – including everything related to code and electronics under the reflection on current social aspects, ranging from technology oriented examinations to the discussion of current social issues. In his recent project "Google Maps Hacks" which got on international news just earlier this year, shows an example of the contemporary situationist practice combining performance, social activism, obfuscation, and hacking. Simon uses technology in the digital space to cleverly impact the physical space, all the while creating some playful mischief.

   

Ang Ye

©Privat
Ang Ye arbeitet als Projektleiterin im Themenbereich "Energieeffizienz in chinesischen Städten" bei der Energieeffiziente Gebäude Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH (dena).

   

Zukunftsstadt Lüneburg 2030+

©Zukunftsstadt Lüneburg 2030+
"What does a sustainable Lüneburg in the year 2030+ look like, where citizens actively participate in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and are aware of their global responsibility? This is the question the project Zukunftsstadt Lüneburg 2030+ deals with.