Baustelle Commune (Construction Site Commune)
Book launch + discussion Talks & Workshops Social/Urban Movements
“Up until the present day, the Commune represents the sole attempt at revolutionary urbanism,” writes philosopher and urban space theorist Henri Lefebvre in his book on the 1871 Paris uprising. As part of the FFT urban laboratory Place Internationale, it has been translated into German for the first time. The result of this process is the publication of Baustelle Commune. Henri Lefebvre und die urbane Revolution von 1871 (Construction Site Commune. Henri Lefebvre and the 1871 Urban Revolution).
It provides access to key passages from Lefebvre’s text for a German-speaking audience and puts them into the context of contemporary questions: How was the Commune a “permanent festival”? On this evening, the authors will discuss Lefebvre’s observations on urbanism as well on revolutionary theory, with an eye towards contemporary changes in the city, in public space, and in urban community.
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Moritz Hannemann graduated in Theatre and Literary Studies, was a research associate at the Theatre Studies Institute at Ruhr University Bochum, and a dramaturge at FFT Düsseldorf from 2020 until 2023. Here, he participated in the international urban laboratory “Place Internationale” that combined the FFT’s change of house into its new venue KAP1 with the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune.
Ulrike Haß is a theatre scholar and publicist; she taught Theatre Studies at Ruhr University Bochum until 2016. She founded the Theatre in the Ruhr Area yearbook (2001-2011), initiated the Master’s Degree Scenic Research and was a visiting lecturer in Paris and Frankfurt on the Main as well as elsewhere. Her most recent publication is “Kraftfeld Chor (Force Field Choir)”, dedicated to the ancient choir and its afterlife with Kleist, Beckett, and Jelinek.
Jan Lemitz studied photography at the University of Brighton and Research Architecture at London’s Goldsmiths College. As a photographer and visual artist, he utilises landscape architecture and infrastructure as the base for media-archaeological research. He was part of the “Stadt als Fabrik (City as Factory)” project at the FFT Düsseldorf that dealt with inner city transformation processes in the vicinity of the main station as well as the periphery. He also served as one of the “Place Internationale” curators.
Klaus Ronneberger studied Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, Sociology, and Political Sciences in Frankfurt on the Main. He was on the staff of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in the 1990s, later writing his thesis on “Die Stadt und der Konsum. Zur Kommerzialisierung städtischer Räume. (The City and Consumerism. On the Commercialisation of Urban Spaces)”. He more recently lectured and taught at the Kassel and Frankfurt Universities, and he also collaborated on the FFT Düsseldorf research project “Stadt als Fabrik (City as Factory)” as well as bing among the curatorial staff for “Place Internationale”.
Laura Strack graduated in Theatre Studies, Romance Studies, and Literary Translation and wroth her thesis at the Graduate College European Cultural Studies in Palermo and Düsseldorf. She currently works at the intersections of theatre, text, and theory. Apart from creative and research endeavours at the theatre, she translates literary and theory texts from French and Italian. Her book “farsi commune. Topographien prekärer Theaterorte im Europa der Gegenwart (farsi commune. Topographies of precarious theatre spaces in contemporary Europe)“ was published by Neofelis Berlin in 2023.
credits
Theatre scholar Ulrike Haß, Artistic and Managing Director at the FFT Kathrin Tiedemann, photographer Jan Lemitz as well as with publishers Moritz Hannemann, Klaus Ronneberger, and Laura Strack.