Academic activity

Since 2024: researcher and doctoral candidate at the DFG-Graduate School 2638 “Normativity, Critique, Change”.

Master in Film Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.
Masters thesis: Verhältnissetzung durch Kinoarchitektur. Der Kasch als Element räumlicher Vermittlung und Abschirmung im Kinoraum. (English: Relationality through cinema architecture. The cache as an element of spatial mediation and shielding in the cinema space.)

Bachelor in Cultural Anthropology and Media Studies at the University of Basel.

Professional activity

Since 2022: Project coordination archive digitization (with an emphasis on film, video and audio)
DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program

2020-2022: Handling of film copies, program coordination, text editing         
Sinema Transtopia / bi'bak

2015-2019: Webmaster
Bildrausch Filmfest Basel

Kinoasyl. Raumpolitiken zwischen Stadt, Kino und Film (working title)

(English: Cinema Asylum. Spatial Politics between the City, the Cinema, and Film)

“The view of place advocated here, where localities can in a sense be present in one another, both inside and outside at the same time, is a view which stresses the construction of specificity through interrelations rather than through the imposition of boundaries and the counterposition of one identity against an other”

• Doreen Massey: Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge, Oxford 1994.

Places are a “product of our relations with each other” (Doreen Massey/Nigel Warburton). The movie theater and the films shown there are no exception. In my dissertation, I examine filmic space, the movie theater, and the surrounding urban landscape as an aesthetically, socially, and culturally constructed relational context. The focus is on moments of spatial opening and closing, in which aesthetic and sociopolitical orders intersect. I assume that spatial orders are fundamentally normative and transformative: they determine what is considered “inside” or “outside”, who is included or excluded, and how different spatial positions relate to one another.

What possibilities does the movie theater offer as a space for alternative counter-publics? What relationship is established with the urban exterior in this process, and how are filmic images of the city thereby recontextualized?

The doctoral thesis is composed of two parts:

Part 1: Cinema, Gender, and the City

The first part examines cinema as an urban counterpublics and brings together feminist film theory (Heide Schlüpmann, Gertrud Koch, Miriam Hansen), queer theory (Michael Warner, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, José Esteban Muñoz), and critical urban studies and geography (Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, Rosalyn Deutsche, Quill R Kukla).

The argument is structured around three main themes that are interconnected through an examination of spatial opening and closure:

1. The first theme examines the urban class and gender politics of silent cinema, as addressed in feminist film theory’s reception of the “Frankfurt School” (notably by Heide Schlüpmann, Miriam Hansen, and Gertrud Koch). The focus here is on the idea of the cinema as an asylum or “refuge” (Theodor Adorno/Max Horkheimer) as interpreted by cinema theorist Heide Schlüpmann, as well as Alexander Kluge’s and Oskar Negt’s concept of “counterpublics” as discussed by film historian Miriam Hansen.

1. The second focus examines cinema as a queer “counterpublics” (Michael Warner, Lauren Berlant, José Esteban Muñoz) and as a “closet space” (Michael P. Brown, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick). The examination focuses on two essayistic explorations of cruising cinemas in the racialized and gendered “cityscape” of New York’s 42nd Street: James Baldwin’s “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood” (1985) and Samuel R. Delany’s “Times Square Red, Times Square Blue” (1999).

1. The third thematic thread deals with urban practices of appropriation, cinema squatting, and filmic imagination. The spotlight is on an illegal cinema in the Paris Catacombs, which is interpreted in relation to the Situationist International’s filmic-cartographic practices of appropriation in the run-up to the Paris May 1968 protests. Here, I center on the mutual influence of social and aesthetic productions of space (Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, Derek Gregory, Edward W. Soja, Rosalyn Deutsche), examine the demand for a “right to the city” (Henri Lefebvre), and explore the fundamental conditions for “spatial agency” (Quill R Kukla) in urban space.

Part Two: An Open Shelter

In the second part, the urban politics of the cinema developed in the first part will be linked to a political aesthetics of filmic framing. Here, too, there is a particular focus on processes and practices of spatial opening and closure.

The starting point for the second part is a comparison drawn by design theorist Doris Agotai between André Bazin’s concept of the “cache” and Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Destruction of the Box.” Bazin uses the term “cache” to describe the frame of the filmic image as a planar covering, comparable to the effect of a shielding wall. Accordingly, in Bazin’s view, the filmic world does not end at the edges of the frame but continues to exist beyond. Rather than a purely formal imposition of the picture’s boundary, the “cache” is more reminiscent of the architectural organization of screens and transparency in a three-dimensional (architectural) space. According to Agotai, this conception of cinematic framing coincides with a development in modern architecture of understanding walls as screens that, in turn, enable a interplay of enclosure and openness and thus a fluid spatial continuum – a development referred to as the “Destruction of the Box” with reference to a text by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

On this basis, I argue that by connecting these two conceptions of space, a politically and socially situated understanding of filmic space can be established: the analysis of filmic space can thus take into account the relationship between the cinema space and urban space (as developed in part one). In this way, my dissertation develops an understanding of filmic space that builds upon a spatial paradigm developed in critical urban studies, queer theory, and feminist film theory, “where localities can, in a sense, be present in one another, both inside and outside at the same time” (Doreen Massey).

Texts

Beobachten, wie es anders sein könnte
On the political potential of ‚Observational Cinema’ in City Hall (Frederick Wiseman, 2020) and For the Many (Für die Vielen) (Constantin Wulff, 2022). Published in 2024 in Protokult, the blog of the Duisburger Filmwoche. Link: https://protokult.de/blog/distanzmontage-beobachten-wie-es-anders-sein-koennte/

Im Kino mehrheimisch werden
On post-migrant and transnational cinema practice. Published 2023 in: Schmitt, Elisa Maria, Theresa Zwerschke: Bewegliche Bilder. Berlin 2023. Published in print only.

Fokus #2: Architektur und Neoliberalismus
Editor. Published 2020 in Jugend ohne Film.
Link: www.jugendohnefilm.com/fokus

I'm all lost in the supermarket, I can no longer shop happily
On utopia, apocalypse and the neoliberal city in Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016). Published 2020 in Jugend ohne Film (with Max Grenz). Link: www.jugendohnefilm.com/im-all-lost-in-the-supermarket-i-can-no-longer-shop-happily-nocturama-bertrand-bonello

Cinderella’s Slums
On postmodern architecture, the politics of Disney World and neorealism in The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017). Published 2020 in Jugend ohne Film. Link: www.jugendohnefilm.com/cinderellas-slums-the-florida-project-sean-baker

Gemeinsam Einsam – Laptop-Musikvideos
On loneliness, community and digital aesthetics in the music videos of Kevin Abstract, Holly Herndon, Vince Staples and Nok from the Future. Published 2016 in Norient – Network for Local and Global Sounds and Media Culture. Link: www.norient.com/video/gemeinsam-einsam

Wolken beobachten mit Cinderella
On four different Cinderella film adaptations: Aschenputtel (Lotte Reiniger, 1922), Cinderella (Clyde Geronimi/Wilfred Jackson/Hamilton Luske, 1950), La jeune fille et les nuages (Georges Schwizgebel, 2000), Cinderella (Kenneth Branagh, 2015). Published 2015 in Y+ Young Swiss Magazine: Issue No. 6 on the topic of “Flirt”. Published in print only.


Film programs, screenings, exhibition projects and events

Mapping the Archive
Co-curation with Natalie Keppler. Online platform with digitizations of films and videos from the archive of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Link: www.mappingthearchive.de

If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag - Art and Internationalism before the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Associate curator of the exhibition project If the Berlin Wind Blows My Flag - Art and Internationalism before the Fall of the Berlin Wall as part of the 60th anniversary of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.
Venues: daadgalerie, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein n.b.k, Akademie der Künste, Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin. Link: https://www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.de/en/events/if-the-berlin-wind-blows-my-flag-art-and-internationalism-before-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall/

Soul Sisters - Sisterhoods: Screening of the films Iris (1971), Baroque Statues (1970-74) and Alice (1974/79) by Maria Lassnig and Damned If You Don’t  (1987) by Su Friedrich
Co-curation with Natalie Keppler.
Venue: daadgalerie, Berlin.

Italian guest workers in Berlin: Screening of Lottando La Vita – Lavoratori Italiani a Berlino (Videobase: Anna Lajolo, Alfredo Leonardi, Guido Lombardi, 1975)
Co-curation with Natalie Keppler.
Venue: daadgalerie, Berlin.

Berlin Lost – Searching for Traces of a Jewish Berlin: Screening of Ein Verlorenes Berlin (A Berlin Lost) by Richard Kostelanetz & Martin Koerber (1983) and Cooperation of Parts by Daniel Eisenberg (1987)
Co-curation with Natalie Keppler.
Venue: daadgalerie, Berlin

Cinematic approaches to West Berlin: Open air screening of the films Aufenthaltserlaubnis  by Antonio Skármeta (1978), Das Schlesische Tor (The Silesian Gate) by Clemens Klopfenstein (1982), Berlin: Tourist Journal by Ken Kobland (1988) and Austausch / Exchange by Egon Bunne (1982)
Co-curation with Natalie Keppler.
Venue: Courtyard of Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin.

Screening of Persistence (Daniel Eisenberg, 1997). Followed by a conversation between Shelly Silver and Daniel Eisenberg
Co-curation with Natalie Keppler.
Venue: daadgalerie, Berlin.

Exhibition “Mapping the Archive” with films, videos and documents from the archive of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program
Co-curation with Natalie Keppler.
Venue: daadgalerie, Berlin.

Film talk accompanying a screening of Özgürlesen Seyirci (Audience Emancipated) (2016) by Emek Bizim İstanbul Bizim initiative (as part of the conference “Cinema of Commoning”)
Audience discussion with Senem Aytaç, member of the collective Emek Bizim İstanbul Bizim initiative.
Venue: Sinema Transtopia, Berlin

Cinema of Commoning 2022
Conceptual editing, coordination of film prints and organizational involvement. Symposium on alternative cinema practice with a collectively curated film program that was shown simultaneously in independent cinemas in Bangkok, Jakarta, Istanbul, Dubai, Santiago de Chile, Cluj-Napoca and Luanda.
Venues: Sinema Transtopia (Berlin), CCC - Centro de Cine y Creación (Santiago de Chile), Cine Geração (Luanda), Cinema Akil (Dubai), Cinema ARTA (Cluj-Napoca), Documentary Club (Bankok), Forum Lenteng (Jakarta), Kundura Cinema (Istanbul). Link: https://cinemaofcommoning.com/2022/

Accounting the Household!
Film program on reproductive and care work after deindustrialization in the north of Berlin.
Venue: Sinema Transtopia, Berlin. Link: https://sinematranstopia.com/en/program/film-series/mit-dem-haushalt-rechnen