What if? Pre-enactments as cultural methodologies for future knowledge production

Abstract

Over the course of the last decade, urban experimentations about sustainable futures have become a common method of knowledge production in the practices of planners, think tanks, agencies, architects, and urban designers. Especially in the context of tech developments and ‘smart city’-related activities, solutionist-oriented formats dominate the field, aiming at a time-efficient production of specific artefacts, such as pilots, prototypes, or related outcomes. These artefacts and the accompanying formats often provide a controlled experimental field in the urban realm, intending to literally test the envisioned future though remaining under the control of those who have set up these activities and artefacts. They last until the next experiment is about to come.

What if tech futures were pre-enacted by cultural and performative means? The point of departure in this lecture will be to problematize the underlying cybernetic idea of control which we find in most of the experimental formats at issue and which only provides a shorthand and exclusionist conception of what counts as experience and what doesn’t. This lecture then focuses on the cultural dimensions of collective experiences in less controlled or controllable environments; it wishes to situate pre-enactments as specific cultural methodology in the wider field of urban experimentation and knowledge production. Engaging with the performative method of pre-enactment means to place special emphasis on the sensory and collective bodily experiences and scenic engagements with future scenarios.

The lecture will then inquire into pre-enactments from a cultural studies point of view. With a focus on the co-constituting effects of collectively assembling, these inquiries wish to make graspable desirable and/or promised institution designs on an everyday level of practices by foregrounding a collective reflection and interpretation on the realized encounters. I will distinguish this knowledge production approach from other speculative formats by using empirical materials from the field of accessibility urbanism. The lecture provides research insights from a realized pre-enactment on accessible digital infrastructures, which was hosted online and at HCU by a group of disability scholars and media activists located between disability studies, media studies, and cultural studies. The focus will be on the differential dimensions of collective experiences and on a resulting exploration of their integrating effects and an interpretation of their potentialities for future encounters.

With these insights, the lecture aims to show that the value of the cultural method of pre-enactment lies in the exploration of the cultural consequences of these experiences and in the collective engagement in cultural reflexivity. It closes with an outlook on how this kind of experiential knowledge production can be situated within the wider field of urban experimentation. 

Bio

Hanna Göbel is a substitute professor for urban anthropology and ethnographic methods at HafenCity University Hamburg. Her research crosses dimensions of culturality, urbanity, and digitality; she combines qualitative methodologies with digital methods and data infrastructures and develops sensory approaches with performative inquiries at the intersection of science & technology studies, media studies, urban studies, and cultural studies. She studied in Friedrichshafen and London and worked at the Universität Konstanz, the University of Edinburgh, and Universität Hamburg before coming to HafenCity University. She is currently a member of the DFG network ‘Cultures of aesthetic resistance’ and a board member of the section ‘Sociology of the body and sports’ at the German Sociological Association (DGS). Her more recent research focusses on the relationship between sensory engagements, built environments, and (open) tech infrastructures.

More information
https://www.hcu-hamburg.de/bachelor/kultur-der-metropole/team/professorinnen/hanna-goebel