IUR enjoyed a visit from Berlin in June from our former artist in residence Prof. Dr. Friederike Landau-Donnelly and 13 bachelor students of Human Geography from Humboldt University of Berlin. Below is a reflection from Friederike on the trip and its activities (including photos!):
The 10-day excursion with the 13 students, facilitated by former IUR artist-in-residence Prof. Dr. Friederike Landau-Donnelly, offered a rich mix of student-led tours to public spaces such as Folkets park, public art sites such as legal graffiti walls and contested monuments like Människan och Pegasus, Arbetets Ära, the Knotted Gun, the Anti-Racist Monument (to be erected), the Charles X Gustav statute at Stortorget, and Torgbrunnen in front of Radhuset, as well as the old prison Backa Kåken in Kirseberg. These explorations were accompanied by colleagues Robert Nilsson Mohammadi, Adam Lundberg, Marthe Nehl, and Joshka Wessels, to whom we are deeply grateful for shaping the activities with appealing insights, local knowledge, care and generosity. A day trip to Lund, including a graffiti tour facilitated by Dr. Erik Hannerz from Lund University and museum visits in both Malmö and Lund were further highlights of the program. Overall, the students discussed questions of in- and exclusion in public spaces and urban development, explored public spaces via multi-sensory methods, and collected a variety of multi-modal data via street interviews, library research, creative mapping and visual methods.
The students brought curiosity and energy to each day – even though the unsteady weather and sounds of Malmö’s seagulls were a bit challenging at times for emerging public space researchers 🙂 The excursion ended with a collectively cooked meal in the community kitchen of Backa Kåken – an overall multi-sensory experience!
On behalf of all Berliners, we want to thank the IUR for the welcoming kick-off, and all colleagues for supporting us – tack så mycket!
