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Start > Masterprogramm Kulturwissenschaften: Medien und Digitale Kulturen (M.A.) -> Wahlbereich -> Städte, Öffentliche Räume, Infrastrukturen

Lehrveranstaltungen

European Summer Academy: Cultural and artistic ecologies of organizing (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Timon Beyes

Inhalt: +++ The European Summer Academy, enabled by the German Haniel Foundation, brings together MA students and teachers from four different European universities: the University of St. Gallen, the Copenhagen Business School, Leuphana University Lüneburg and CaʹFoscari University of Venice. The Academy will have its base in Berlin, Germany. Thanks to the generous support of the Haniel Foundation, we can offer free accommodation as well as supporting train travel to Berlin and back. If you would like to participate please send an email to haniel_esa@leuphana.de until April 1st, 2026 (max. 1 page covering your motivation why you would like to attend the Summer Academy; please also indicate your study program in the letter). You will be notified until April 3rd . The maximum number of Lüneburg participants is 10. +++ 2026’s European Summer Academy will investigate the organizational conditions and capacities of urban cultural production in times of budget cuts and political antagonism. How can cultural and artistic milieus, scenes, organizations and sites respond to current economic and political struggles? How do urban cultural ecologies change under such conditions, and how are the spaces, atmospheres and infrastructures altered in which any form of cultural organization is embedded and to which it contributes? The Summer Academy will take the predicament of Berlin’s cultural sector as empirical ground. For 2025, Berlin’s cultural budget has been slashed by 12%, with further cuts announced for the year of 2026. Impacting both established cultural institutions and independent art spaces, the cuts constitute a major blow for a city whose reputation is largely based on a thriving and globally renowned cultural scene. They affect livelihoods and modes of organizing culture. At the same time and like elsewhere, Berlin’s cultural and artistic milieus are marked by increasing political antagonisms and struggle. The rise of right-wing populism and its call to defund everything that is critical of a nationalist understanding of culture threatens the comparably diverse sphere of art and culture and its capacity for irreverent, subversive and creative thought and action. Moreover, the violent disputes unfolding in the Middle East have provoked deep disagreement within the cultural field and have led to increasingly interventionist attempts to govern artistic expression. The Summer Academy will be dedicated to these developments. It will ask students to become participant observers and ethnographers of the everyday, so as to study – on their feet, with compassion, care and a critical sensibility – how cultural and artistic sites might find responses to the current travails, and how urban cultural milieus and atmosphere are re-shaped by them. To do so, the Summer Academy will be fieldwork-based and work together with a number of cultural sites, organizations and collectives. Students will venture out into the city, conducting fieldwork and translating their empirical findings into exhibits of cultural and artistic ecologies in turbulent times. Course structure After an (online) introduction/preparation session, the course is organized in four parts and runs over 5 full days, which consist of thematic discussions, guest lectures, preparatory methodological exercises, on‑site visits and fieldwork, project analysis and putting together an exhibit of findings. Please note that this is an intense week of fieldwork and discussion, in which you're expected to fully participate. Through mixed groups made up from participants from the various participating universities, the learning process centres on the fieldwork on and on cultural sites in the urban context of Berlin, which are reflected conceptually and personally by respectively drawing upon the preparatory readings and group reflections. Part 1 consists of exploring concepts of and methodologies of urban cultural production and milieus. Part 2 consists of fieldwork and empirical research based on specific locations in the city of Berlin. In Part 3, we develop and analyze empirical findings through interweaving observations with findings from literature research. Part 4 is for preparing, setting up the exhibition and presenting the findings.