Berlin is famous for its lack of industry and finance economy, as well as its pre-war quarters and lifestyles. Having to deal with an intense history after 1989; a variety of images from the past are brought back, for the contemporary city imagery. The city is also imagined with a variety of new references: art and artists, civil society activities or urban interventions which play an enormous role in the production of metropolisness of Berlin. The city is imagined as unique, based on the past; and also dynamic, new and visionary. Our lecture argues that in this process, history is disappearing. What does this process of imagining the ‘New Berlin’ tell about the ways to deal with & replace a city's history?
Information about speakers:
Dr. Eszter Gantner completed her Ph.D. in History, titled “Budapest-Berlin: left-wing Intellectuals in Berlin of Weimar Republic 1919-1933”, at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2010. Currently she is a post-doc researcher at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, where she completes her second book with the title: “Industrial Palace, Urania and Logos: Knowledge transfer and Urbanization in Central Europe 1873-1914”. Dr. Gantner has studied Law, History and Political Sciences in Budapest, Jerusalem and Berlin. She has been research scholar at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University 2015 and 2016.
Dr. Ayse Erek is an Associate Professor of Art History at Yeditepe University, Istanbul. She was a post-doctoral research fellow at Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies of Humboldt University in Berlin a visiting lecturer at the European Ethnology Faculty at the same university. Her current research focuses on urban imaginaries in the context of political and cultural discourse in Istanbul and Berlin, issues of modern and contemporary art and exhibiting practices. She has been at the editorial board of Istanbul, a quarterly journal on architecture, arts and public space and co-edited a special issue of Visual Resources Journal titled ‘The Imaginary City in the Twenty-First Century’, published in December 2014.