WOHNEN MIT KLASSE

ED. BY AMELIE OCHS AND ROSANNA UMBACH
SUPERVISION BY REGINE HESS

Kritische Berichte.
Journal for Art History
and Cultural Studies, 2/2025

Hous­ing and class are inex­tric­ably linked. The art­icles in this issue ana­lyze this con­nec­tion with a view to images of hous­ing in pho­to­graphy, film, magazines, archi­tec­ture (debates) and on social media and dis­cuss how class rela­tions are made vis­ible and invis­ible in them. The issue is pub­lished in German.

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DAS ERBE VON
MINDER­HEITEN /
THE HERITAGE OF
MINORITIES

ed. by Regine Hess,
ORKUN KASAP, SILKE LANGENBERG

Kritische Berichte.
Journal for Art History
and Cultural Studies, 1/2024

The issue brings together con­tri­bu­tions from monu­ment preservation, archi­tec­ture and art history on top­ics of labor, gender, race, child­hood, psy­cho­path­o­logy, sub­cul­ture and the right of mar­gin­al­ized groups to the European archi­tec­tural and cultural heritage. The authors are Clara Aroki­asamy OBE, Pres­id­ent of ICOMOS UK (inter­viewed by Regine Hess), Tom Aver­maete, Rune Frand­sen, Kos­tas Tsi­am­baos, Coordin­ator of DOCO­MOMO, Greece.

kb Debate 2024: The rules of the debate
The exist­en­tial crises of recent years – cli­mate change, the covid-19 pan­demic, the latest wars and the rise of polit­ical pop­u­lism – have led to a social debate cul­ture that is increas­ingly emo­tional and ideo­lo­gical. The harden­ing of ideo­lo­gical stand­points and the com­mu­nic­at­ive logic of the new media are accom­pan­ied by a boom in altern­at­ive offers of truth, which are increas­ingly accom­pan­ied by attacks on science and its insti­tu­tions that con­stantly chal­lenge the scientific rules of find­ing truth and solu­tions. The debate topic there­fore aims to ask what strategies the human­it­ies, and spe­cific­ally art history, can offer to counter the erosion of the basic rules of a demo­cratic exchange of opin­ions and the loss of trust in inde­pend­ent science. The debate begins with Wolfgang Ullrich’s con­tri­bu­tion Kunstwelt im Kon­f­likt.

Read more about edi­tion 1/2024          Ulmer Ver­ein

Archi­tec­ture
Con­flict

ed. by Regine Hess,
work­ing group
Archi­tec­ture Conflict

Kritische Berichte.
Journal for Art History
and Cultural Studies, 2/2023

This issue is ded­ic­ated to con­flict in archi­tec­ture. Here, we con­sider plan­ning and build­ing in at its most import­ant – con­flic­tual – stages, where a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ent act­ors are involved. Archi­tec­ture and preservation are thus more strongly embed­ded in the polit­ical, social, and his­tor­ical sci­ences. Research­ing con­tro­ver­sies and the pro­duc­tion of dif­fer­ence are guid­ing research prin­ciples. The work­ing group Archi­tec­ture Con­flict is inter­ested in a his­tor­ical, source-crit­ical per­spect­ive on built and unbuilt archi­tec­ture, pub­lic space, infra­struc­tures, as well as those nar­rat­ives, insti­tu­tions and inter­ac­tions doc­u­ment­ing that.
This year’s debate on Queer­ness in Art Sci­ences is con­tin­ued by the con­tri­bu­tion «Queer Spa­tial Prac­tice: The Forum Queer Archive Munich as stor­age of memory and feeling».

Read more about edi­tion 2/2023          Ulmer Ver­ein

Kunst­ge­schichte
kommu­nizieren

ed. by Julian Blunk, Hen­rike Haug, Regine Heß, Andreas Huth, Henry Kaap, Franziska Lampe, Kath­rin Rottmann, Yvonne Schweizer

Kritische Berichte.
Journal for Art History
and Cultural Studies, 1/2023

Read more about edi­tion 1/2023          Ulmer Ver­ein

Many art and cultural insti­tu­tions are cur­rently under­go­ing a trans­form­a­tion pro­cess and are sub­ject­ing their col­lec­tions, exhib­i­tion con­cepts and arti­facts to a crit­ical revi­sion. This also con­cerns the reappraisal of their ideational and mater­ial gen­esis, which is determ­ined by the per­spect­ive of the Global West. Linked to this is the task to build up a diverse per­son­nel struc­ture that leads to a greater vari­ety of per­spect­ives and positions.

The debate ini­ti­ated by the board of the Ulmer Ver­ein and the edit­ors of the kritische berichte for the year 2022 would like to con­trib­ute to this neces­sary dis­cus­sion about the rethink­ing of institutions.

Racism in
Archi­tec­ture

ed. by Regine Hess,
Chris­tian Fuhrmeister
and Monika Platzer

Kritische Berichte.
Journal for Art History
and Cultural Studies, 3/2021

Racisms, ideo­lo­gies, and power rela­tions have become every­day top­ics of pub­lic debates also in the cultural sphere. Within these dis­curs­ive pro­cesses, racism plays a key role: for European and non-European civil soci­et­ies and act­ors, in research and teach­ing, in cur­at­orial prac­tices, in insti­tu­tions and organ­iz­a­tions, in dis­cuss­ing and writ­ing, and in deal­ing with the past and the present.

Against this back­ground, this issue gath­ers con­tri­bu­tions that doc­u­ment crit­ical think­ing and expand our know­ledge and thus (can) con­trib­ute to reflec­tion. By rene­go­ti­at­ing his­tor­ical and cur­rent pos­i­tions, con­structs, prac­tices, and nar­rat­ives, we delib­er­ately engage this debate in the field of archi­tec­ture and pub­lic space: to what extent have racism and struc­tural viol­ence influ­enced archi­tec­tural the­ory? In which areas of archi­tec­ture and urb­an­ism did and does racism leave its mark? How can archi­tec­tural history be decon­struc­ted anti-racistically?

By focus­ing on soci­et­ies, we ask which forces can influ­ence and shape cre­at­ive work in archi­tec­ture. At the same time, we need to address the part that our dis­cip­lines, pro­fes­sions, insti­tu­tions, and organ­iz­a­tions play in struc­tural racism in science and soci­ety: How do our con­scious and uncon­scious can­ons con­trib­ute to these ten­sions and injustices? Which mech­an­isms of inclu­sion and exclu­sion do we reflect, and which do we fail to reflect?

Read more about edi­tion 3/2021          Ulmer Ver­ein

Hous­ing
Regimes

New Approaches to a State-Citizen-Relation, ed. by Yael Allweil and
Regine Hess

Kritische Berichte.
Journal for Art History
and Cultural Studies, 2/2020

Hous­ing, unlike wohnen, includes the sense of the German verb behausen, which brings the estate’s and the land’s pro­vider into the pic­ture. That is, the mod­ern state (and its jur­is­dic­tion and build­ing law), and its over­arch­ing goal of nation-build­ing and estab­lish­ing nation­al­ism. Under­stood this way, hous­ing has a double lin­guistic denota­tion and enables one to under­stand the pro­duc­tion of ‹houses› and the sub­jec­tion of its inhab­it­ants to a regime or even com­pet­ing re¬gimes, like that of East and West Ger­many dur­ing the Cold War.

Regime is defined by the Oxford dic­tion­ary as a «sys­tem of gov­ern­ment or ad¬ministration» or as a term to «cover norm-bound inter­ac­tions relat­ing to issues such as the global envir­on­ment or human rights». Under­stand­ing stately subsi¬dised hous­ing this way, the history, soci­ology and anthro­po­logy of urban plan­ning have devoted much research to plan­ning mech­an­isms pro­du­cing a «rule of experts» apply­ing gov­ern­ing prin­ciples via urban and national infra­struc­ture, while archi­tec­ture studies on wohnen com­monly focus on town plan­ning and archi­tec­tural hous­ing design.
The here made shift in ter­min­o­logy has its impact on meth­od­o­logy. The art­icles in this volume reflects it with their new approaches to a broad realm of research fields.

Read more about edi­tion 2/2020          Ulmer Ver­ein