Tabea Michaelis: Showtime Wilhelmsburg – A Randonnée of Possibilities

Tabea Michaelis:
Showtime Wilhelmsburg – A Randonnée of Possibilities

Text: Bernd Kniess and Tabea Michaelis

Photos: Tabea Michaelis

Something hangs in the air,
in the evening, at dusk, the mood high-spirited.
Loud, squealing and screeching.

Engaging in a virtual dialogue with French sociologist Bruno Latour and philosopher Michel Serres, Tabea Michaelis sets off on a “randonnée” around the Wilhelmsburg Elbe Islands and observes the everyday interactions of umpteen human and non-human actors from the perspective of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). In texts, photographs, open-ended stories, and drawings, she records tattooed sports cars in the port area, empty sunflower seed kernels under park benches and individual balcony usages in large housing estates. Using the iterative coding method of Grounded Theory, Tabea Michaelis ultimately devises thirty-two conceptual terms that form an analytical/poetic reflection of the program of a space of possibilities. Moving beyond simply bringing together countless episodes of a “randonnée” as a diagrammatical catalog, thanks to its methodology this book opens up a new perspective on the city.

The series UD is edited by Bernd Kniess, Urban Design, HafenCity Universität Hamburg.

Numerous colour images, thread-sewn softcover, English

Design: Wolfgang Schwärzler
Leipzig 2015