Christoph Michels
Title
Dr.
Last Name
Michels
First name
Christoph
Email
christoph.michels@unisg.ch
Phone
+41 71 224 29 88
10 results
Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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Item type:Publication, Sensory Methodologies for Researching Affective Atmospheres in Higher Education Institutions(2018-09-06) - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, The other university: unsettling spaces of higher education(2018-09-04); Elarji, DalalFraming of the ‘locus academicus’ as a reservoir of reflection and imagination the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s (2008) has suggested to conceptualize the university in terms of Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, as an ‘other space’ of experimentation and invention. In our contribution we take up Sloterdijk’s suggestion and discuss how the design and use of campus architecture contributes to the emergence of reflexive and imaginative learning spaces at institutions of higher education. In particular, we focus on ways of unsettling geographies of education through the (re)design and (re)use of institutional architecture and its boundaries. We describe how the boundaries of university spaces are made permeable and how learning spaces are re-assembled in- and outside of the university buildings. Conceptually, we present an interdisciplinary review of contributions that have considered learning spaces as heterotopic spaces (Beyes & Michels, 2011; Sloterdijk, 2008). In a second step we relate this stream of literature with concepts of learning as an affective process and learning spaces as “affective atmospheres” (Finn, 2016; Michels & Beyes, 2016). We argue that learning can be considered as a process that moves its participants not only intellectually but is inseparable from the body and how it encounters its environment affectively. Interrelating the material and spatial with the aesthetic and affective dimensions of learning we seek to develop an understanding of how heterotopic learning spaces can maintain their affective capacities. Methodologically, we will present our approach to empirically researching and analyzing the composition of learning spaces as affective atmospheres (Michels, 2015). In particular, we seek to understand the ways in which the material environment (e.g. architecture) participates in these encounters (Dovey & Fisher, 2014), by means of ethnographic research. Empirically, the project aims to research, systematize and reflect established and emerging interspaces, which breach the boundaries between institutions of higher education and society and allows the emergence of new geographies of learning. The paper will present first findings of an explorative case analysis.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Play-time and multi-temporality(2015-07-03); ; Sub-Theme: The Temporal Experience of OrganizingType:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
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Item type:Publication, How music takes place : (De-)Composing venues of the creative cityType:conference paperVolume:Session VII - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Music making as urban guerrilla : Challenging the aesthetico-political orderings of Berlin's public spacesAnalyzing a guerilla concert of a young string ensemble from Berlin the paper presents music making as a set of socio material practices which aesthetically organize a wide range of people, technologies and places. The composition of the concert is presented as an enactment of various kinds of socio-material relations, which rely on their mechanical, symbolical and aesthetical performativity. As the concert takes place outside the concert hall, the ensemble encounters various challenges and resistances with respect to the participation of various human and non-human actors. Different modes of organizing music, the city’s public spaces, the audience and the young musicians become visible as they interfere with the ordering logic of the ensemble. By means of an audio-visual ethnography the study explores how multiple logics of organizing music performances in Berlin overlap, produce tensions and enact multiple versions of “good” music. Drawing on the literature of Actor-Network Theory (and its developments after) as well as on conceptual advances made in human geography under the label of “Morethan- representational theorizing” (such as a the coupling of the relational materialism with the concept of affect), the paper aims at analyzing the complex politics of making “good” music. I will argue that such a politics cannot be framed as a simple struggle for or against specific modes of aesthetically enacting music but largely relies on the unfolding of affective dynamics which allow to accommodate multiple and contradictory modes of participating in the music event. For a preview of some of the material see: http://vimeo.com/26186028Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Re-constructing participation(2008-07-19)My paper will, firstly, review the concepts of participation as encountered in mainstream planning theory and practice throughout the 20th century. Secondly, it will question their assumptions on the enactment of urban democracy, the production of urban space as well as the organization of participation itself. Thirdly, it will present a relational perspective on the production of the city, and from there reformulate participation as a contested political concept, which recreates the relational city's orderings on a daily basis and thus make urban life risky, uncertain - and finally, also quite beautiful.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Upsetting participation? Modes of ordering art spaces(2008-07-11); - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Improbable Spaces: Signs of the future city in a university project(2007-07-02); Poralla, SabineIt is as if, through the crevices of the city and the cracks of its edifices, light were always seeping in, illuminating the lines of its becoming other. (Rajchman 1998, p. 26) In October of 2005, 850 newly-enrolled students entered the city and the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland, to start off their studies of (mostly) business science, economics, law or international affairs. Before enrolling for the "regular" seminars, however, the first week in their new surroundings might have turned out somewhat unexpectedly: They were asked to conceive of and visualize a city of the future, "FuturoPolis", within five days. Under the auspices of the architect Daniel Libeskind and supported by an interdisciplinary group of academics, architects and artists, the student teams set out to draft constitutions for tomorrow's urban society, develop working assumptions about the future city, bring these assumptions to life in an artistic way and coordinate the final assemblage of FutoroPolis. A large wooden structure designed by Libeskind served as aesthetic point of departure, i.e. "raw" material to be worked with. Our paper will discuss and reflect upon both the processes and the results of the FuturoPolis-project. Having been responsible for (and thus part of) the project, the empirical material is based on our field notes, the students' work as well as insights and observations from colleagues and guests that have partly been collected in an edited volume recently published (Beyes et al. 2006). Conceptually, we will make use of a socio-spatial as well as an aesthetical perspective (as if these two could be easily held apart…). Drawing upon writings of Henry Lefebvre (1991), Edward Soja (1996) and Michel Foucault (1991) - conceptualizations of space that grapple with “the play between desire for order and the need to reach what escapes it” (Liggett 2003, p. 38) -, we will take a closer look at the spatial practices of organizing "for" FuturoPolis. Moreover, and following Jaques Rancière, envisioning a city of the future through transforming an architect's artefact calls for an aesthetic perspective that broadly refers to "the distribution of the sensible that determines a mode of articulation between forms of action, production, perception and thought" (Rancière 2004, p. 82). Seen this way, aesthetic practices and forms might inscribe themselves into "policed" spaces, producing dissent and thus enabling politics. However, what can be said, thought and done within both cityspace and the spaces of business universities often does not resemble the “level playing field for social contestation” that enables social transformation through aesthetic experience (Amin and Thrift 2002, p. 152). Thus, the aim of our paper is, firstly, to make a contribution to the blossoming research on spatial and aesthetic concepts as ways of knowing and reflecting upon processes of organizing (Dobers and Strannegard 2004). Secondly, and related to Rancière's notion of the distribution of the sensible as producing the modes of perception for participating in a common world, we will use the example of FuturoPolis and the city of St.Gallen to inquire into the role of (business) universities for the possibility of engaging with the city to come.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Rethinking Participation - User involvement in the production of urban spaces(2007-07-05)Type:conference paper