Beyond the Family: Spatiality, Modes of Re(Production) and Forms of Life
10. Apr. - 11. Apr.
Leuphana University Lüneburg I Central Building, C40.606
Thursday, 10.04.2025, 2 pm - 7:00 pm
Friday, 11.04.2025, 10:00 am - 5:30 pm
Organized by Liza Mattutat and Beate Söntgen
as part of the "Cultures of Critique" Research Training Group (DFG-GRK 2114)
The family is in crisis. Yet again. It has gone through a lot since replacing the comprehensive household economy in which productive and reproductive tasks were not yet spatially and functionally divided. The current shift in social reproduction goes along with spatial phenomena: Co-working spaces are popping up everywhere in urban centers, commercial co-living spaces are monetizing forms of collective living, the sizes of kitchens and living rooms are shrinking, people are increasingly working from home. If every society produces its own space by differentiating the places where we live and reproduce life from the places where we work and produce value (Henri Lefebvre), what kind of societal transformations do these phenomena indicate?
In addition to this diagnostic perspective, the links between space, economy and ways of relating can be addressed from a political perspective. While recently brought up again by the debate on the abolition of the family, the question of the relation between these three fields has been put on the agenda time and again by artistic, reformist and revolutionary movements throughout history. How was the relationship between space, economy and form of life determined in these projects? How have artistic practices intervened in family models and alternative concepts of living? What can we learn from them today?
The workshop Beyond the Family invites scholars from the fields of art and cultural studies, architecture, literature, sociology and philosophy to contribute to this twofold question.
Registration deadline postponed: Please register by sending an email to kdk@leuphana.de by March 27, 2025. Before the workshop, draft papers of the contributions will be sent out to all participants for preparation.