Remembering Henri Lefebvre

“Remembering Henri Lefebvre” is a video installation exploring the dialectic of rural-urban interstices and identities. The urban-rural dichotomy is, as a result of global processes such as industrialisation, globalisation, de-industrialisation, or the erosion of historically rooted traditions and institutions (e.g. the nuclear family or the church), in a dynamic, contradictory and open-ended interplay. Cultural dynamics, such as the ecological awareness of urban dwellers, the consumption of digital media, or the modernisation of rural businesses, have been giving rise to urban-rural interstices, which we aim to explore through our research.

We do not view ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ as spatial categories, but rather as self-reproducing power dynamics of ways of life. The urban is supposedly cosmopolitan, appropriating, self-actualising and adaptive. The rural, by contrast, is ought to be self-contained, humble and embodied. Will the urban therefore triumph over the rural? Are hybrid ways of life emerging in both town and country?

Through the montage of interviews, memories of our own youth and archive material, an associative exploration and discovery of rural-urban hybridities emerges. The artist duo themselves grew up in a village with a longing for the urban, yet have never felt completely ‘inside’ since arriving in Berlin. Biographically, the boundaries between vanity and curiosity, humility and smugness have always been intertwined for us.

The video installation is housed in a construction trailer on the open premises of former Kindl-Gelände.