The Knot

3 

The KNOT – linking the existing with the imaginary. 

preface''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 3 

From hidden bureaucracies to cooking with aliens – 

The Knot in Berlin, Warsaw & Bucharest''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 4–10 

Legend'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 11 

Travel Log Berlin'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 12–57 

Travel Log Warsaw '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 58–107 

Travel Log Bucharest'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 108–144 

Further Reading '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 145–171 

Jan Świdziński ›12 Points of Contextual Art‹'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''146 

Malcolm Miles ›An Actually-Existing Public Sphere?‹''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 147–150 

Krzysztof Nawratek ›Rejecting The Communicative Paradigm of Public Space‹'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 151–156 

Owen Hatherly ›An Empty Space Creates A Richly Filled Era‹''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 156–158 

Kathrin Wildner & Fritz Schlüter ›Talk About The Walk – Soundwalk At The Tempelhof Field‹'''158–160 

Bricolagekitchen ›So Pan-Demonium Goes On..............‹'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 160–161 

Jan Przyłuski ›On The KNOT‹''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 162–163 

Joanna Erbel & Julia Kluzowicz ›Knotted Researcher’s Body ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 163–165 

›Conversation Bucharest‹'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 165–166 

Wojtek Kosma ›Untitled‹''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 166–171 

Index participants '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 172–203 

photographers'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''204 

acknowledgement'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''205 

imprint'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 206–207 

From April–October 2010, the mobile platform The KNOT occupied three different public sites in Berlin, Warsaw 

and Bucharest, transforming them into spaces for free encounter, exchange and artistic experiment. 

For the Goethe-Institut Warsaw and the Polish Institute Berlin, this was certainly one of the most complex 

and organizationally challenging projects to be realized during ›The Promised City‹, their large-scale project 

dedicated to the search for fortune and happiness in these cities. From the outset, The KNOT was not so 

much a finished product but a process of experimentation, an idea in progress. Zygmunt Bauman would 

have very aptly described ›The KNOT‹ as an ›unfinished adventure‹. Erected at interesting sites, the aim of 

the urban research station was to surprise spectators of the three capital cities time and time again and to 

involve the residents of the cities within their environments. 

What emerged was an experimental space for new forms of cooperation in the digital age. In contrast to the 

rigid and fixed nature of museum presentations, the wide-ranging programmes of The KNOT were defined 

by the elements of simultaneity and interaction. This ›live‹ aspect meant that everyone, participants and 

spectators alike, enjoyed a shared experience in real time. Art merged with simple everyday life. The artistic 

process did not come about in the intimate setting of a closed studio but was transferred to a public place, 

where the art was manufactured and produced. In this way, the unusual vehicle was able to ›extend its 

feelers‹ and be used, as people chose, as a space for rehearsal and exhibition, as a workshop or classroom, 

as a concert hall or café. 

This temporary rededication of public space was intended to serve as a ›promised city‹, and indeed revealed 

alternative forms of use for cities. Just as contemporary art is unpredictable, so too is interaction with an 

audience uncontrollable; it offers, however, the chance to follow new paths and overcome the apparently 

hermetically sealed nature of art. The universal and interdisciplinary approach of The KNOT was a promise 

in itself, and proved itself able to keep its promise. Open shapes and spontaneity sometimes transform onedimensional 

urban structures into many-layered landscapes of artistic experience, expand horizons and can 

have a lasting influence on the digital age. 

In staging this project, the Goethe-Institut Warsaw and the Polish Institute Berlin intentionally deviated away 

from the conventional artistic domain in order to test out new formats and dialogues with the city’s citizens 

and their life worlds. In so doing, they also wanted to give new impetus to European and international 

cultural exchange. We would like to thank all artists and the curators who took part, not to mention all the 

sponsors, for making this project possible. 

Dr Martin Wälde, Director of the Goethe-Institut Warsaw 

Tomasz Dąbrowski, Director of the Polish Institute, Berlin

6 

7 

The KNOT as stage 

The KNOT as party location 

The KNOT as corner for lectures and discussions 

fic approaches. After all, we all set ourselves 

some rules when we start a journey, and we 

only discover at the end of it how prejudiced 

or convenient the rules were. I would say the 

ways in which people reacted to the different 

places that we were in, depended not 

only on the uses they gave to that certain 

spot (be it an empty spot, a park or some as 

yet undefined terrain) but also on what we 

were offering them, guessing their motivation 

for being there. In Bucharest, before which 

we had already experienced quite a large 

range of situations, I couldn’t help noticing 

that people reacted in the same way to the 

different activities of The KNOT, irrespective 

of where they were. It was as if the project 

could manage to create a space of its own, 

in which it set down its own rules (read this 

to sometimes include the lack of rules), and 

whoever was willing to comply to those rules 

was very welcome, while the others could at 

best be mere spectators. I think it really takes 

time, if you give something to people without 

an instructions manual, and you wait from 

them to create a way of using it for their own 

purposes. At the same time, the question is 

when do we address people? In their spare 

time (when they are coming to the park and 

are more willing to let themselves be disrupted, 

questioned, invited), or when they have 

something else on their minds, when they 

are on their way to work, or back home with 

their groceries, or in inconvenient situations? 

I think to a great extent all the places we 

used, in all the three cities, no matter what 

their differences, the predisposition that they 

gave to people was common; that they were 

places for leisure, for consuming (time, culture, 

food) (Praga was a bit different maybe, 

as a not-yet-defined place, whose use will be 

reinvented). None of them was really problematic 

in a deeper sense, so I don’t think 

the project generated any knowledge. In my 

opinion, it helped to underline the big gaps 

between public space as a pre-determined 

place of political design (made behind closed 

doors), and the space of decision, and of 

collective action, of indeterminacy, of the 

informal and un-regulated. One cannot hope 

to only access the latter through cultural projects; 

I think this is where we didn’t dare to 

venture with The KNOT (Praga again seems 

to be a counter-example, but it will take long 

time to see if we were really moving some 

mechanisms of decision there). 

Oliver: The knowledge created was probably 

more about what works and what does 

not work in a set-up like The KNOT project. 

Giving people, artists, participants time to 

explore the possibilities makes the project 

better, that’s probably rule number one: Take 

your time! 

It is more the questions of what did the 

city learn from The KNOT and what did The 

KNOT learn from the city. What knowledge 

did you gather about different cultures of 

inhabiting public space? 

Markus: It’s not so much a scientific set up 

than an extended conversation of the curators 

in space. 

Kuba: You definitely feel some differences 

between cities and people’s habits. But I rather 

think that the similarities prevailed. We 

were ultimately travelling in Europe, where 

cities are built in a very similar way and 

comparable urban situations exist. The poor, 

deteriorated districts in Warsaw or Bucharest 

are not so different from each other, which 

also results in analogous behaviour by their 

inhabitants. For instance, kids reacted to The 

KNOT in an almost identical manner in Praga 

and in Park Carol. They came along, were 

interested and had fun saying dirty words in 

their native languages to foreign artists who 

could not understand them. 

Oliver: I don’t agree with Kuba that the cities 

are almost alike. Although they are European 

cities, they have definitely been shaped completely 

differently by their respective histories 

and contexts. This reminds me: during 

the project I liked to play around with clichés, 

each city unveiled new aspects linked to 

them; it was fun and helpful to express those 

prejudices, which also included laughing at 

yourself. 7) So attitudes differ greatly, even 

within Europe; what makes a project so exciting 

is that these can be experienced through 

the process. The other question is: didn’t we 

encounter a common thing in all three cities? 

Structurally, (an example is the walks by 

Heimo Lattner) 8) ,it is obvious that the further 

you get from the centre the less used the 

space that is labelled public space is. 

Markus: What was interesting to me about 

Ursynów was that there were spaces where 

people used to meet, to manifest their potentially 

critical thoughts towards the government. 

But there is no such tradition of expressing 

yourself in public, exposing yourself 

to the police and making yourself vulnerable 

as there is for example in Berlin. The project 

revealed to us the different traditions of public 

forms of expression and use of space 

between east and west. 

Oliver: Poland probably follows the French 

example of parks more; you’re not allowed to 

sit in them but you have all these chairs nicely 

placed around the lawn. It’s not only a socialist 

thing; it’s a nineteenth century idea of 

how space should and should not be used. 

Raluca: To me it was not only that in Berlin 

you can do mostly anything while in Warsaw 

and Bucharest you still have a lot of restrictions, 

it was also about the motivation for 

doing whatever you are doing. Do we want 

to sing loudly in public space because that’s 

what they do in Berlin or because we think it’s 

funny and liberating both for us and for our 

social lives? Do we want to save this derelict 

palace because we like its architecture, its 

position and mostly its potential, or because 

we think these poor people here in its neighbourhood 

need it, that this could be a space 

for them to come together, with their kids or 

with their friends? I think there is a big gap 

between how people inhabit public space and 

how we would like them to – defined by our 

different backgrounds, education, desires. 

After The KNOT was over, I looked at a lot 

of the pictures taken by different participants 

from abroad in Bucharest; most of them were 

amazed by the inexhaustibility of the city, 

everywhere you turn someone is teaching 

you a different way of using/claiming your 

space and your presence. In such a context, 

what you can give back to the city is possibly 

the theorization of such use, which could be 

a step towards the authorities, in persuading 

them not to flatten all these particularities; to 

make people aware that it is even ok to have 

some weird plastic elephants in the city as 

long as they are used and given a meaning 

by some of the city’s dwellers. 

Amongst the artists contributions was 

there anything outstanding or unexpected 

happening in The KNOT? 

Markus: For me it was a revelation to see who 

the other curators were inviting. I was very 

much a fan of the idea of extension. The 24- 

hour concerts 9) create a different atmosphere. 

You go home, you come back and it is still 

going on. It creates some kind of crazy mind 

space. But as a sort of artistic reaction to The 

KNOT I’m really a fan of hoefner+sach’s 10) 

work where they took the inflatable tents or 

at least one of them, and brought it to the flower 

market in Bucharest to have it decorated, 

then brought it back, turned it upside down 

and turned it into a fountain. 

Did it develop out of the situation? 

Markus: It certainly did. It was a reaction of 

the artists coming to Bucharest, doing local 

research. They created a different connection 

between the city and the project. 

Oliver: I found it interesting how Graw Böckler 

11) with Paulina and Tomek 12) explored 

the area around Praga. They were inspired 

by each other. Not only were Graw Böckler 

filming but Paulina and Tomek also started 

to make a new short film, asking kids, youth 

and elderly people in Praga fundamental 

questions, i.e. What’s your dream? Why is 

dreaming important? People connected, and 

there sudden, unexpected, unintended 

works of art happened. The other example 

was the work of Kai Schiemenz. 13) He created 

this cubic sculpture that you could unfold; 

a sort of milestone of how to deal with 

things differently. In Berlin people reacted to 

it, in Warsaw it was completely ignored and 

in Bucharest there were new attempts to use 

it, but people tried to paint on it. However 

the process came to a halt in the middle, because 

the project time was over. This unfinished 

sculpture of Kai’s is a metaphor for the 

project, which could have lasted longer. 

We created a kind of twisted institution in 

public. Some artists feared that. Compared 

to a gallery space, in The KNOT no opposition 

was possible because you had endless 

freedom. Some of the artists were shocked 

by this so they closed down and withdrew 

into a bubble. 

Kuba: I learned a lot about the traps of – as 

we did – commissioning work, i.e. inviting 

artists and asking them to come up with a 

project description of their own before the 

project started. And to frame that with a discussion 

of ›how much control do we need?‹ 

and ›how much can we let go?‹ In the prepa-

12 13 

berlin 

1 berlin kulturforum 

29 April–1 May 2010 

The KNOT opened at one of the most paradox 

locations in Berlin: sited between the strongholds 

of established cultural representation 

and production, it inhabited public space, 

attempting to enlighten the desertedness 

with it’s first flash of liveliness, imagination 

and international presence. The beginnings of 

The KNOT’s cultural caravan were therefore 

located at the very centre of the blind spot 

of society’s cultural eye: publicly accessible 

spaces; the open spaces of the city. At night, 

those cultural elephants loomed over their 

tiny new brother – our temporary presence. 

2 berlin mariannenplatz 

3 May–16 May 2010 

The KNOT’s second stop was located at the 

heart of the densely populated borough of 

Kreuzberg; at Mariannenplatz. Here relationships 

to hybridized everyday cultures of 

different global origin could be tested. In close 

collaboration with Kunstraum Kreuzberg, located 

just behind The KNOT in the Bethanien, 

the project made use of the diverse spatial 

potentials of this location. Apart from acting in 

public space, discussions and performances 

also took place inside the building. Meetings 

were held in cafés around the area, especially 

as the coldest day was 6°C and rainy (not the 

best conditions for lively collaborative outdoor 

activity)! 

1 

kulturforum 

mariannenplatz 

2 

3 berlin tempelhof airfield 

17 May–30 May 2010 

The KNOT’s final destination in Berlin was in 

the wide emptiness of the former Tempelhof 

Airport; a place that is subject to ongoing 

debate and dispute around how to approach 

its development. How can a huge piece of 

land, which has been cut off for nearly 100 

years due its exclusive use as an airport, be 

integrated into the urban fabric? The KNOT 

was a pioneer in this conversion process; it 

started to inhabit the field just after it’s public 

opening on 8 May 2010. 

Tempelhof 

3 

Berlin – Warsaw » 591 km

16 

17 

25°C 

fri 30.4.2010 

berlin 

kulturforum 

1 Claus käpplinger »wie bringe ich gegenwart 

ans kulturforum bzw. an einen 

ort vieler vergangener uneingelöster 

zukünfte?« 

Walking & Talking 

Page 179 

5 

Dwayne Browne playing 

Body Cash with Diana 

McCarty from Boombx III 

Soundsystem. 

2 owen hatherley »an empty space 

creates a richly filled time« 

Lecture 

Page 193 & 156 

3 vasile ernu »on the soviet cultural 

underground« 

Lecture 

Page 199 

4 boris buden, vasile ernu, h.arta, 

michaŁ kozŁowski & ovidiu Ţichindeleanu 

»after-life of communism. some positions 

on political imagination« 

Discussion 

Page 200 

wojtek kosma »body cash« 

Each player contributes a banknote to the pot to join the game. The goal is for every 

player to hold the pot anywhere with his body, in such a way that it only touches 

the flesh and it doesn’t depend on gravity e.g. inside of a hand. The following player 

takes it out of the hand and holds it somewhere else with his body – a location 

can be used only once. If a player is unable to find a unique place for the pot or 

is unwilling to take it out, the player has to quit. A player is also eliminated after 

dropping the money on the floor. The body is treated symmetrically equally – e.g. 

the left hand and the right hand counts as the same. The last player to hold the pot 

gets the money. 

Graw Böckler support the 

Boombx III Soundsystem 

with visuals from ›Forbidden 

Images‹ & ›Unauthorized 

Commercials‹. 

3 

The KNOT friends enjoying 

their round of Body Cash. 

4 

5 roman dziadkiewicz »romances« 

(illustrated by pola dwurnik) 

Multisensual Live Installation/Process 

Page 196 

6 janek simon »zollskulptur« 

Installation/Performance 

Page 185 

»Romances« by Pola Dwurnik 

5 

Claus Käpplinger giving a tour of the 

Kulturforum. First encounter of the group 

of artists with the site. 

1 

Owen Hatherley explaining the political 

potential of empty, urban spaces. 

2

42 1 

43 

Karaoke afternoon in Dutch, 

German, English, French, Spanish 

2 

and Italian. 

»…Sounds of the Kitchen« 

21°C 

sat 22.5.2010 

berlin 

tempelhof airfield 

sun 23.5.2010 

berlin 

tempelhof airfield 

26°C 

1 heimo lattner 

»Once Upon a Time (Campfire Stories)« 

Walking & Talking/Process 

Page 183 

1 Coffee, Cake, Karaoke / Musical 

Afternoon with Raluca Voinea & 

»It rains and rains« Oliver Baurhenn 

Drawing by Pola Dwurnik 

Karaoke 

Page 175 

2 The ParadisGaraj, Bureau of Melodramatic 

Research & Olivia MihÂlŢianu 

»instructaj – the recreational camp« 

Participative Performance & Installation 

Page 178 

Péter Szabó & Beja Margitházi »Sounds of the Kitchen« 

2 Péter Szabó & Beja Margitházi 

»sounds of the kitchen« 

Cooking Workshop with Kids & Interactive 

Soundinstallation 

Page 194 

3 Modulorbeat (Jan Kampshoff) & 

Raumlabor Berlin (Markus Bader) »Modulorbeat 

+ Raumlabor = Raumlabeat 

– Raumlabeat Solves the Problem of 

Contemporary Urbanism« 

Lecture & Performance 

Page 191 

3 

Club Real digs on Tempelhof 

Airfield and makes amazing 

discoveries... 

We hosted a series of cooking sessions with local kids at an amplified table. Apart 

from the variety of cakes, the sessions generated a unique sound performance 

each time. The performance was repeated three times: the first two where really 

silent, but the last was full of children because it was the weekend. It was really 

successful, and hard to control, because the kids where going mad about the sound 

that bounced back in delay. They heard themselves and started to use the system 

in a creative way. It was hard to finish the last cake under those circumstances, but 

we managed, and it was delicious. 

3 Club Real (Georg Reinhardt) 

»GUDRUN 1876–2010« 

Lecture & Dig on Tempelhof Fields 

Page 179 

4 jackie triste »jackie triste« 

Concert 

Page 194 

5 Ellen Blumenstein (The Office) »Blow 

Up My Town – a selected film program« 

Page 181 

Screening 

6 pola dwurnik »mapping the knot« 

Drawing/Process 

Page 194 

club real »gudrun 1876–2010« 

In spring 1876 a ballon airship takes off from the parade ground of Tempelhof, loaded with a present from the German 

Empire to the United States of America. Before beeing loaded onto a ship, the head of the monumental statue 

should fly over the capital of Berlin and off to Hamburg. 

Map of Walk IV: Oberspree to THF 

1

58 

59 

warsaw 

1 warsaw » pole mokotowskie 

17.6.–20.6.2010 

The KNOT’s first stop in the capital was 

Warsaw’s ›Central Park‹, at the well-known, 

popular and acclaimed (Pole Mokotowskie) 

Mokotów’s Field. The park is a relaxed place 

to which residents of Warsaw come for walks, 

sport and recreation. Its vast, green fields 

not only appeal to residents of the close 

neighbourhood; as the one of largest green 

areas in Southern Warsaw, it attracts crowds 

of people on the lookout for weekend fun. During 

its stop in Pole Mokotowskie, The KNOT 

attracted such people by merging relaxation, 

sport, entertainment and reflection. 

2 warsaw » ursynów 

22.6.–4.7.2010 

The KNOT’s second stop in Warsaw happened 

to be on the very peak of Kopa Cwila Hill, an 

artificial hill with an awesome view over the 

blocks of Ursynów – Warsaw’s showcase 

residential area. Contemporary Ursynów 

was built during the nineteen-seventies as 

an ideal example of the communist building 

boom. It is dominated by tower blocks, vast 

green spaces and modern urban ideals. We 

enjoyed the panorama of the high-rises and 

multi-level junction of Puławska and Dolina 

Służewiecka Streets over a period of two 

sunny weeks in early summer. It became an 

ideal observation point for architects and 

urban planners as well as a perfect place 

for fans of unconventional ways of spending 

warm, summer evenings. 

3 warsaw » praga 

6.7.–18.7.2010 

At the end of our Warsaw adventures, we 

moved to the right-bank of the River Vistula 

to the infamous district of Praga Północ. It 

used to have a notorious reputation among 

those living on the left-bank of the river, as 

being the most dangerous district in the city. 

It is now becoming a stronghold of artistic 

bohemians, a paradise for profiteers and a 

residential area for the new bourgeois. The 

KNOT hid in the seclusion of the amazing, 

magical garden of the ruined Konopacki 

Palace. The former residence of one of 

Praga’s first industrialists was built in the 

second half of the nineteenth century. For 

two extremely hot weeks in July, The KNOT 

became a vibrant gathering place for bored 

kids, international artists, urban activists and 

curious neighbours. 

Berlin – Warsaw » 591 km 

pole mokotowskie 

1 

3 

praga 

2 

ursynów 

Warsaw – Bucharest » 1271 km

134 

135 

13°C 

1 Hoefner & Sachs »Knotapark« 

Installation & Performance 

Page 184 

Hoefner & Sachs brought one of The KNOT’s tents to the flower market to recontextualise 

it. This happened first on a temporary basis when the tent was in the flower market 

mon 25.10.2010 

tue 26.10.2010 

and turned into a playfield for the kids. Secondly the tent put upside-down and fitted 

bucharest 

bucharest 

with the floristic ornaments handmade by the flower market’s skilled workers, was 

parcul carol parcul carol 13°C 

turned into a soft monument below the rigid one on top of the hill: a fountain! 

1 

1 Hoefner & Sachs »Knotapark« 

Event 

Page 184 

2 Anne Kohl & Stefan Endewardt (Kottishop) 

»a-maze-ing – The Spatial Wiki 

(›Let‘s play!‹ – a game for the collective 

creation of the Wiki)« 

Installation/Process) 

Page 176 

3 & Grzegorz Lechowski 

»Re:Knot« 

Discussion/Process 

Page 198 & 165 

4 Biblioteca Alternativa 

»Biblioteca Alternativa« 

Library (Selection) 

Page 177 

2 Anne Kohl & Stefan Endewardt (Kottishop) 

»a-maze-ing – The Spatial Wiki 

(›Scream!‹ an ad hoc & pinhole camera 

workshop)« 

Participative Installation/Process 

Page 176 

3 & Grzegorz Lechowski 

»Re:Knot« 

Discussion/Process 

Page 198 & 165 

4 Biblioteca Alternativa 

»Biblioteca Alternativa« 


Page 177 

5 Kai Schiemenz & Iris Flügel 

»House of Blurry Edges« 

Sculpture/Process 

Page 187 

Almost finished... The 

House of Blurry Edges 

5 

The hated elephant suddenly turned 

out to be a friendly alien. 

1

150 

151 

Roman republic. Fraser adds that the adoption of group identities 

has been more effective than efforts to enter exclusionary 

sites of debate. Similarly, Iris Marion Young writes, ›Contemporary 

participatory democratic theory… inherits from republicanism a 

commitment to a unified public that in practice tends to exclude or 

silence some groups.‹ 47) Fraser interprets a refusal of assimilation 

as the creation of counter-publics articulated through means such 

as, ›journals, bookstores, publishing companies, film and video 

distribution networks […] festivals, and local meeting places.‹ as 

well as in academic programmes. 48) 

Alternative vocabularies emerge to recast the needs and identities 

of participants, reducing but not eliminating ›disadvantage 

in official public spheres.‹ 49) This fractures the idea of the nation, 

dividing its general public into sub-publics and counter-publics, 

producing sub-cultures and counter-cultures. The fairytale of unity 

is replaced by a claim to variegation: 

›On the one hand, they function as spaces of withdrawal and 

regroupment; on the other hand, they also function as bases and 

training grounds for agitational activities directed towards wider 

publics. It is precisely in the dialectic between these two functions 

that their emancipatory potential resides. This dialectic enables 

subaltern counter-publics partially to offset … the unjust participatory 

privileges enjoyed by members of dominant social groups 

in stratified societies.‹ 50) 

Recognising that a public sphere is a site of identity formation, 

Fraser problematises the division of public from private life because 

›democratic publicity requires positive guarantees of opportunities 

for minorities to convince others that what in the past was 

not public … should now become so.‹ 51) Private interests become 

a ground for public intervention and the mechanisms of public life 

figure in private experience. As Fraser insists, public and private 

are classifications ›deployed to delegitimize some interests, views, 

and topics and to valorise others.‹ 52) Fraser turns to the separation 

of civil society’s institutions from the state in Habermas’ public 

sphere, noting that one interpretation of bourgeois civil society 

is the self-ordering of private capital against the state. But there 

is another interpretation which requires more thought: civil society 

as ›the nexus of non-governmental … associations that are 

neither economic nor administrative.‹ 53) Hence the public sphere 

is informally mobilized, a ›counterweight to the state‹ while, ›this 

extra-governmental character of the public sphere that confers an 

aura of independence.‹ 54) Yet with the beginning of representative 

democracy, the public sphere is brought into the state, its opinions 

made laws without the guarantee that strong publics will legislate 

for minority interests. 

For Fraser this leads to questions as to when direct democracy 

is appropriate; and the capacity of the state in face of transnational 

capital. Fraser ends by saying that to pose such questions 

is necessary in critiquing the liberal public sphere, and leads to 

four tasks for critical theory: to make visible how inequalities are 

present in deliberation; to examine how inequalities shape relations 

between publics; to expose how categories restrict debate; 

and to show how weaker publics are excluded from public opinion. 

Salvaging the public sphere 

I began by citing Bloch on the anticipatory character of ›the theory-practice 

of a better world.‹ 55) Bloch fuses genesis and redemption 

(homecoming). Redemption is inherent; a fulfilment of 

what was before, a light warming human history – from Franz 

Rosenzweig’s ›The Star of Redemption‹, which Bloch read with 

Walter Benjamin in the 1920s. Rosenzweig says, ›And this Last is 

not Last, but an ever Nigh, the Nighest; not Last, in short, but the 

First.‹ 56) Bloch colours his Marxism with homeland, the realisation 

of which is redemption. This is latent in popular culture. Hence 

Bloch’s reference to the fairytale has a layered meaning. Marxism, 

as I cite above, ›takes the fairytale seriously, takes the dream of a 

Golden Age practically…‹ 57) To regain hope is to realise a classless 

society; 58) a matter of process: authentic freedom is ›not yet … 

drives towards itself … awaits its genesis in the tendency-latency 

of process‹. 59) 

Reprint from: Paper given at the Utopian Studies Society conference, Marie Curie University, Lublin, 

7 July 2010. 

1) Paper given at the Utopian Studies Society conference, Marie Curie University, Lublin, 7 July 2010. 

2) Bloch, Ernst (1986) The Principle of Hope, Cambridge (MA), MIT, p. 1370. 

3) Ibid. 

4) Ibid. 


6) Ibid. 



9) Ibid. 

10) see note 4 above. 

11) Arendt, Hannah (1966) The Origins of Totaliltarianism, London, [ first published as the Burden 

of Our time, London, Secker and Warburg, 1951]. 

12) Canovan, Margaret (1974) The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt, Letchworth, p. 16. 

13) Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago. 

14) Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago, p.5. 

15) Canovan, Margaret (1974) The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt, p. 61. 

16) Sennett, Richard (1995) Flesh and Stone, London, p. 37. 

17) Sennett, Richard (1995) Flesh and Stone, London, pp. 40-44. 



20) Curtis, Kimberley (1999) Our Sense of the Real: Aesthetic Experience and Arendtian Politics, 

Ithaca, p. 112. 


Curtis, Kimberley (1999) Our Sense of the Real: Aesthetic Experience and Arendtian Politics, 

Ithaca, p. 71. 

23) Ibid. 


25) Ibid. 


27) Habermas, Jürgen (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: 

An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, Cambridge (MA), MIT, p. 1. 





30) Sennett, Richard (1995) Flesh and Stone, London, p 52. 






An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, Cambridge (MA), MIT, pp. 102-103. 


An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, Cambridge (MA), MIT, p 116. 






An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, Cambridge (MA), MIT, pp. 244-245. 



39) Fraser, Nancy (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical reflections on the ›postsocialist‹ condition, 

New York, p. 69. 


New York, pp. 70-71. 





43) Ibid. 

44) Ibid. 

45) Sennett, Richard (1977), The Fall of Public Man, London, p. 81. 

46) Fraser, Nancy (1988) Justice Interruptus citing Landes, Joan, Women and the Public Sphere 

in the Age of the French Revolution, Ithaca, p. 73. 

47) Young, Iris, Marion (1990), Justice asnd the Politics of Difference, Princeton, Princeton 

University Press, p. 183. 

48) Fraser, Nancy (1988) Justice Interruptus, Ithaca, p. 81. 

49) Fraser, Nancy (1988) Justice Interruptus, Ithaca, pp. 81-82. 






55) see note 1. 

56) Rosenzweig, Franz (1985) The Star of Redemption, Notre Dame (IN), University of Notre Dame 

Press, p. 424 [ first published in English, New York, Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1970]; 

see Wolin, Richard (1994) Walter Benjamin,.An aesthetic of Redemption, Berkeley, University of 

California Press, p. 283, no.55 on the influence of Rosenzweig’s book on Benjamin’s Trauerspiel 

study, for example. 




Krzysztof Nawratek »Rejecting the Communicative 

paradigm of Public Space« 

Lecturer in Architecture, University of Plymouth, UK 

Page 189 

Contemporary capitalism is often described as an economical 

system based on knowledge, what indicates a shift from material 

production to more intangible assets related to exchange, control 

and circulation. It is strictly connected with something what we 

can define as a ›language (or communicative) turn‹ in debate on 

contemporary city, and particularly on public space. Architects and 

many urban theorists define public space as a kind of materialisation 

of Habermas’ public sphere idea. However, the basic problem 

still concerns the relationship between the physical structure of 

the city, its social structure (in the broad sense) and the intangible 

constituents of modern capitalism. This paper challenges ›the language 

turn‹ in defining public space, focusing rather on production 

than communication, on a tangible outcome of a communicative 

action than on the communication itself. 

Keywords: public space, cognitive capitalism, language turn 

Public space or what? 

There are four basic approaches to what is (or what should be) 

defined as public space. Let’s start with a ›ceremonial space‹. 

This approach symbolises the triumph of the political space, the 

advantage of political power over private interests and over the 

market. Ceremonial space could be closely related (but only at a 

symbolic level, not a practical one) to the idea of a public space 

as an area of political action. The second approach focuses on 

the community that uses a given space. This approach is focused 

more on the scale of the district (the model of ›urban village‹) than 

the city as a whole, and again is close to (but only to a limited 

spatial extent) the space of political action. The third approach can 

be described as ›liberal‹. This is a case of a typical public space 

of the contemporary city – it is or has to be a place where different 

people can meet and different activities can take place. This 

›democratic‹ space, focused on communication between citizens, 

is a kind of spatial materialisation of Habermas‹s public sphere. 

And again, this could be considered a political space, if dialogue is 

defined as a foundation of democracy. The fourth approach could 

be called ›post-modern‹. The belief in one ceremonial space having 

disappeared, no one can believe in the possibility of a space 

in which the community can gather. The idea of equal, universal 

citizens is not valid any more – today we speak of a ›multi public‹ 

or ›counter public‹, today the differences are important. The existence 

of different communities and the different values that they 

profess is an essential feature of post-modern public space. No

176 

177 

participants 

8rolek 

Musical Performance/Concert 

Berlin › 12.5.2010 

Page 29 

›8rolek‹ is a project by Bartek Kujawski from 

Poland. His debut on Mik.Musik’s ›Ptak Mechaniczny 

EP‹, which means ›mechanical 

bird‹ immediately entered the top-20 charts 

of Poland´s influential Fluid magazine at number 

16. The music consists of subtle shifts of 

synchronic and asynchronic rhythmic layers, 

of small irregular looping segments, noisy reverbs 

and non-direct stereophonic play. 

› 8rolek.mikmusik.org 

Agnieszka Szreder 

»Furniture for The KNOT« 

Furniture Workshop 

Warsaw › 19.6.2010 

Bucharest › 9.10.–10.10.2010 

Page 64 

Page 111–112 

›Furniture for The KNOT‹ is a meeting place, 

workshop and a proposal for anyone who likes 

to deduct, add, exchange, assemble, process 

and contrive in any possible way. Let’s 

join forces to make furniture for The KNOT! 

We invited everyone to have a good time 

together; we offered practical assistance in 

furniture construction, providing all the necessary 

tools and materials on-site – from 

worn out second or third-hand trash, through 

classic MDF to exclusive accessories. 

Let’s Knot together! 

Agnieszka Szreder is a mixed-media artist 

based in Warsaw/Poland. 

Aleksandra Hirszfeld 

»Public Noise–Noise Collector« 

Installation & Recording 

Warsaw › 11.7.2010 

Page 99 

The KNOT offers public access to a so-called 

›Noise Collector‹, at which anyone can record 

their own message of any kind. The 

statements gathered later serve as a source 

of informative noise for the ›Information 

Absorber‹–an installation in the shape of a 

sound cabin; it lays bare the not-so-pleasant 

face of public space, neutralising any content 

by locating it among the rest of the accumulated 

communications. A chaotic mosaic thus 

emerges. The message is deadened and multiplied 

at the same time, so that its bursting 

elements contain an echo of the discourse of 

anonymity that belongs to everyone and noone... 

Aleksandra Hirszfeld is an artist and art critic 

based in Warsaw/Poland. 

Anders Johansson & 

Erik Wingquist (Testbedstudio) 

»The Outline« 

Workshops, Lectures & Presentations (in the 

frame of ›Inside – Out. Architectural Probes in 

Ursynów Public Spaces‹) 

Warsaw › 26.6.–30.6.2010 

Page 71–79 

›The Outline‹ set out to mark the Kopa Cwila 

park with lines, tattooing the ground in a way 

that would both tell and give rise to stories. 

Our first strategy was to use a chalk-drawing 

machine as an instrument to make guidelines 

for how to act on the land. This proved 

to be more difficult than we thought. A new 

strategy was invented where we used a lawn 

mower to cut lines, then painted manually 

using a roller. This produced clearly legible 

white lines that were approximately thirty cm 

wide. The field had the same dimensions as 

the Camp Nou field in Barcelona, measuring 

105 by 68 meters. It contained lines pertaining 

to football as well as other elements related 

to the suburb of Ursynów and the way 

people live their lives there. We were expecting 

much more friction and interaction from 

the local inhabitants but we mostly received 

a very soft, gentle response. On the final day 

of the event, we staged a game as a terrain 

version of football, challenging the people 

of Ursynów to play against the actors of The 

KNOT. 

The workshop was organized with support by: 

Iaspis – The Swedish Arts Grants Committeé’s 

International Programme for Visual Artists 

Team: Anders Johansson (Testbedstudio), 

Erik Wingquist (Testbedstudio), Piotr Pindor 

(Lifespace), Iwona Kamińska, Joanna Koszewska, 

Karol La, Agnieszka Kornacka, Ania 

Tropikach 

Anders Johansson and Erik Wingquist are architects 

who run Testbedstudio - an architectural 

office that works within the urban field 

and is based in Stockholm/Sweden. 

› testbedstudio.com 

Piotr Pindor is an architect and urban planner 

who lives in Warsaw. He co-runs a research 

group named ›Lifespace‹. 

› lifespace.pl 

Anca Benera 

»Matter & History« 

Guided Tours of Missing Monuments in 

Bucharest 

Bucharest › 27.10., 29.10.–31.10.2010 

Page 136, 139, 142 

›Matter & History‹ is a fictional journey 

through the afterlife of Bucharest’s removed 

public monuments. Since power structures 

and public space are closely interconnected, 

a radical change in political order deliberately 

determines a re-creation of public 

space. Consequently, the urban landscape, 

and mostly its power symbols and statues, 

becomes transformable, ›meltable‹. I noticed 

how personal memory, shared memory and 

narrative history interact, shaping each other, 

as versions of the past are constructed and 

reconstructed. I created a series of guided 

tours, describing the ghost-like appearance 

of the former statues, as if they still existed 

on their sites. The aim was to activate the 

collective imagination, the role of oral history 

and storytelling in shaping the ›authorized‹ 

narratives of history. ›Matter & History‹ is a 

project supported by Global Mindscape and 

Siveco Romania. 

Anca Benera is an artist based in Bucharest. 

› ancabenera.ro 

Anne Kohl & 

Stephan Endewardt 

»a-maze-ing. The Spatial Wiki« 

Participative Installation 

Berlin › 4.5.–15.5.2010 

Warsaw › 9.7.–14.7.2010 

Bucharest › 23.10.–29.10.2010 

Page 19–37 

Page 94–102 

Page 131–143 

›a-maze-ing‹ is a participative installation 

that documents and reflects on the surrounding 

space through a ›Spatial Wiki‹, developing 

filtered, multidimensional and inter-subjective 

perspectives of space. The word Wiki, 

taken from the computer world, designates 

a structure which allows its users to directly 

include, work with, change or refine different 

contents online. We are interested in the very 

structure of the Wiki, in which diverse content 

is constantly (trans-)formed by many 

authors and thus by a multitude of experiences 

and knowledge. The idea of the ›Spatial 

Wiki‹ takes this content-based structure into 

physical space. 

We understand the installation to be an activator 

of interaction between ›social actors‹, 

and of communication about the space. To 

provide a space for that, we offered a variety 

of workshops to produce visual, haptic and 

acoustic artefacts of examination that were 

installed in the Wiki. By providing the structure 

into which these contents can be placed, 

the installation aims at linking the concrete 

space with its artistic exploration. 

Artists and collectives who we collaborated 

with for the realisation of the ›Spatial Wiki‹: 

Annette Knol (Berlin), Tim Greaves (Berlin), 

Christopher Robotham (Berlin), Ercan Yasaroglu 

(Berlin), Dr. Dietlinde Peters (Berlin), 

Holger Kruse / Gangway e.V. (Berlin), Tomasz. 

Adamowicz (Warsaw), Katarzyna Kuzko / Museum 

Pragi (Warsaw), Serduszko dla Dzieci 

Org. (Warsaw), Biblioteca Alternativa (Bucharest) 

Anne Kohl is a freelance performer and musicologist 

based in Berlin/Germany. 

Stefan Endewardt works in the field between 

art, architecture and cultural pedagogy, he 

runs the project space ›Kottishop‹ in Berlin. 

› kotti-shop.net 

› a-maze-ing.net 

Armando Gómez Roo & Jill Iger 

& Fernando Klabin & Maya Gordon 

»Invitation to Dine with the 

Aliens« 

Dinner & Stories 

Warsaw › 4.7.2010 (with Armando Gómez 

Roo & Fernando Klabin & Maya Gordon) 

Page 90 

Bucharest › 30.10.2010 (with Armando Gómez 

Roo & Jill Iger) 

Page 142 

A dinner spiced with stories. The KNOT is a 

big cooking table onto which ideas, tastes, 

ingredients and flavours from the most varied 

sources are mixed together to create – slowly 

but surely – new recipes. Cooking and eating 

together becomes highly representative 

for most activities performed at The KNOT, as 

one of the social activities in which communication 

and interaction take place despite 

a lack of visible direct exchange. Armando 

Gómez Roo, Jill Iger, Maya Gordon, Fernando 

Klabin have taken cooking as a pretext 

through which to reveal insights into their 

different personal experiences as wanderers 

in the world and as inhabitants of alien 

spaces and languages which they have turned 

into their own homes. They cook a dinner 

spiced with stories; stories of displacement, 

in which home is where one can speak, act 

and be outside the narrow frames of national 

culture/ ethnic belonging/ the burden of 

identity, at the same time using only the best 

ingredients of all of these, and thus turning 

clichés into tasty assets. 

Armando Gómez Roo is an artist, born in Venezuela, 

based in Berlin. 

Jill Iger is a public school teacher in Los Angeles/USA. 

Fernando Klabin was born in Brazil but is currently 

based in Bucharest. He is an administrative 

assistant at the Brazilian Embassy in 

Romania, while also working independently 

as an actor, translator & tourist guide. 

Maya Gordon was born in Poland, and immigrated 

with her family to Israel at the age of 10. 

She finished her art studies in Bezalel academy 

in Jerusalem. She has lived and worked in 

Amsterdam/Netherlands since 1975. 

Arnold Schlachter & Veda Popovici 

»Anti-windows« 

Screening 

Bucharest › 29.10.2010 

Page 139 

On long strolls through the neighbourhood 

that surrounds Carol Park, we documented 

all of the bricked-up windows in the area. 

The anti-window is a path that is blocked 

from the passer-by’s gaze. He is the Walter 

Benjamin’s flâneur, wandering through the 

city searching for its particularities. In Bucharest, 

the bricked-up window seems to be a visual 

particularity of the relationship between 

the public and private spheres. The visuality 

of public space is interrogated on our stroll, 

a visuality that is halted by the anti-window. 

It seems a wall to the curious gaze, seeking 

dialogue between the public and the private, 

radicalising difference. 

Arnold Schlachter is an artist based in Bucharest/Romania. 

Veda Popovici is an artist and theoretician 

based in Bucharest/Romania. 

Barbara Reisinger 

»Culinary Construction: Plan 

for a Non-hierarchical Cooking 

Site« 

Cooking & Installation 

Berlin › 9.5.–15.5.2010 

Page 26–33 

Bucharest › 9.10.–16.10.2010 (with Samet 

Reisinger) 

Page 111–124 

Food is part of our daily routine, it satisfies 

one of our most basic needs and at the same 

time it is one of the greatest pleasures of 

our lives. Eating together makes you feel as 

if you belong to a group and in a community. 

We experience security and acceptance. 

When undertaking something together in a 

relaxed atmosphere, it is much easier to strike 

up a conversation with a stranger. In an 

improvised situation e.g. at a sausage stand, 

we can naturally get into conversation with 

the people around us than for example when 

standing on a bus. Just a few, simple means 

are needed to make it possible to cook. 

The Culinary Construction is reduced to the 

essentials: a hotplate, work surface, pantry 

shelf. It remains an outline of a cooking element: 

the chipboard used mediates something 

cheap and tenuous, while only the most 

important ingredients for boiled rice and recipes 

and cardboard crockery can be found 

on the shelves. It is possible to construct a 

small cooking site at any time and any place 

using simple means. The Culinary Construction 

is an alternative to the highly technical, 

multifunctional designer kitchens in which 

not much cooking goes on at all. 

Barbara Reisinger is an artist and art professor 

based in Austria. 

Biblioteca Alternativa 


Bucharest › 23.10.–31.10.2010 

Page 131–145 

›The Biblioteca Alternativa‹ was initiated by 

an informal group to share a collection of 

materials. The intention was to develop a 

critical stance towards the world and society 

that we live in, while also creating a basis 

for discussion aimed at generating social 

change. It is organized on non-hierarchical 

principles. It comprises a collection of over 

600 books and 300 magazines/pamphlets 

that have been passed from hand to hand to 

arrive at this space. They have been grouped 

into various fields: sociology/anthropology, 

anarchism/social movements/direct action, 

gender/sexuality/LGBTQ, colonialism/militarism, 

repression/political prisoners, literature, 

art/photography, etc. It also functions as 

a social-centre, hosting activities organized 

by people who wish to share their ideas and 

practical knowledge with anyone who is interested. 

› biblioteca-alternativa.noblogs.org

The Knot

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