PhdReferences / PhdNotes / YvesMettler /

Berlin, just a place to start

FindingATitle...

As Berlin opens it's new main train station, setting a new panorama for the capital, the city also inaugurates its brandnew Europe Square, the northern square of the station, its backdoor http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europaplatz_(Berlin)∞. I moved to berlin in 2005, looking forward to overcome my city reading practices. In this perspective, the project of a Phd has to be considered as a research crossing several fields produced along a personal artistic practice. Also, this is not the PHD but the building site of it. This is not a stable version, but a site which might be different next time you come. In order to be able to share my research and progression with those involved, i chose this media for its editability and sharability. If you register, you will be able to comment on the different pages, but the editing of the content will be reserved.

Cities as (obsolete) models
A basic need to rearticulate what I understand by city, urban life observation, city planning and history, and art practices since my first writing about "angst" and New York City, AnimadversoR .
An intuition to follow about public space and collective exchange: What if the agora, forums, marketplaces, etc... are obsolete models, and that western society lost its skill, or just its interest for building and designing public squares and spaces? Perhaps the city is more a space that offers parts of itself as an infinity of models, metaphors, ImagesofThought, to be always re-used and re-interpreted, rather than beeing a space on which to apply models. Is the city still relevant as the space of social organisation and representation, as from the Renaissance to the 20th century? I will start answering yes and look how true this is, as the city, or rather the urban space, has been my primary material i worked on these years. A shift to another field might occur in the research for this Phd

Europe as an (old) idea for the individual and the collective
A desire to expand my work Europe's squares that i started in 2003 ( WhatistheProjectEuropeSquare ) and to give it a theoretical and propositional background: It's basically about understanding and intervene on cultural identification processes in western culture.
Europe processed out of the network of its cities, relocating continously its capitals. Networks is an absolute keyword of todays thinking about social, political, cultural and economical organisation of worlds. Mapping, locating, tracing those networks is one of the contemporary practices that search for modes of representation of thoses worlds, composing the world. Basing my reflexion on a first small text by Derrida, L'autre cap (but as this one seems to be not translated in english, i'll look for another primary source), my question on Europe goes towards an understanding of Europe as a cultural realm that overcomes national and geographical determinations. Maybe I'd like to say, following the documenta11, EuropeUnrealized and also sometime EuropeisaCulturalReservation ...

These axes requires following researches, both in theory and actual art and/or cultural practices. At this very point of beginning, the basic method applied will be a complete opening of research directions. Each of the following fields opens as a chapter of research:

Define for my work todays urban space and public space, their actuality and differences, especially in Europe. UrbanspaceandPublicspaceinEurope

How are cities always giving themselves as models, and how on the contrary models for cities are always obsolete. CitiesandModels

Set my definition of Europe, why: Europe of cultures vs. nations of Europe Europe of cities vs. city of Europe relation and scales between the inhabitant, the city and this thing called Europe. What is european? CulturesofEurope

What is european? Existing and production of fictions, myths, representations, metaphors. Through the work, getting over this.

If Europe has been built up through the network of its cities, how does this network exist, work and continuously produce Europe? How is this network more than the E.U?

Researching examples of digital and/or real spaces e.g. FreeSoilorg and others in the ExhibitionsandWorks

Collaborational (art) practices are since a long time of interest to me as contingent models and experiences for producing and reflecting contemporary culture. Personally involved in some projects, they will feed a reflection on participatory and/or performative events/practices/productions based on collaborations with other artists, from same or other fields, and with other experts (for now, hardly with common or normal people, as they, for me, do not exist as such). MakingArtorCulturewithOthers

What methods are used in art practices to produce art works? Is it possible to tell them? How do they find a legitimation? Is it through the artist?

City, Europe; both macro entities that enclose relations of collectives with its members (and non-member. What scale use between the one and the other? This is one of the questions that is for me the most interesting: How are the relations defined between the whole and the one? Or, as i put it in my works until now, how can i talk of a city and from its inhabitants that are making the city live? PluralandSingular, ScalesandArt, WhennottheIndividualThenWhat

If for cities questions of boundaries and limits are already dismantling the unity that a city seeks and needs to be recognized as such, what about Europe, mainly defined towards an outside? National and supra-national identities, latter yet so undefined and at the same time emotionally so overloaded, are backing the territorial affirmation, that is already suppressed by corporations. What is this outside? Those outsides? WhatisanOutside, SwitzerlandasGreySpacewithFewIdeas,

My position:
To have an effective production i have to position myself, to give a point of view from which i act and talk. BuildingMyPosition is both an intellectual critical position and a set of concrete actions. One of the aims of this Phd is to have a tight interrelation between a critical reflexion, based on writing, and a concrete production, works and art works, interventions in the cultural realm.
Building my position will also have to do with the methods i will use for this work. Based in visual art schools, but oriented in the field of philosophy, this project is rooted in an interdisciplinary practice. The methods will develop along the works and the writing, aiming to be as explicit, or at least as productive for each field as possible.