Transcription of some generic cocktail-parties and conference mingle talk
Jonas R Bylund
(This is a somewhat outdated presentation, but the thematic stuff still holds. I have used a version of this transcription to introduce myself to the other participants in the project Thirdspace Göteborg-Moscow-Berlin.)
Smiling person holding some beverage: -And… who are you?
Jonas R Bylund: -I'd love to answer that question satisfyingly, I'm on it for several years now. In this context, though, I think this question is better answered through what I do than any declaration of essential identity.
-Then, What do you do?
-Projects fascinate me. For my pay-job, I study the implementation of environmental or eco-technologies in an urban setting. Generally, I’m academically specialised in urbanism – planning and policy, urban design and everyday life. More broadly still, how do we get from X to Z, but somehow always keep ending up Y? Or in other words, why nothing ever really turns out quite as expected. This is my standard answer on parties.
-Uh-huh, but where do you come from?
-Berlin is my head-quarter for now, or has been for the last four years.
-Wow, Berlin – but… you are Swedish, or? Your nametag - and accent - says Sweden?
-Self-imposed exile from Stockholm. I was born and raised there, in the suburbs. But my interest in urban issues convinced me that it might be good to do some real participant observation – going native – in a traditional cosmopolitan city (apart from the enervating issue of finding a place to live in Stockholm). Although for the time being affiliated to the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University.
-So what’s your interest in this project?
-Because, for one thing, I study projects. There’s always something to learn. Secondly, I am interested in Berlin (and Gothenburg and Moscow too), but becoming somewhat home-blind. So the opportunity to make Berlin active by finding things out is a welcome one. Thirdly, it’s always nice to exchange views within a circle of invited people – well, they must be up to something interesting, otherwise they wouldn't be invited.
On the long term, what I would like to explore is the connection or opening up a meeting point for aesthetics and politics of space. That is, I’m quite into politics of space as a geographer, where aesthetics is mostly seen as a means to an end. The notion of aesthetics (and not only the academically canonised ones) and the debates surrounding it intrigue me from another point of view, as there is a connection to severe conflicts in urbanism. For example, it is common that architects and urban designers find environmentally sound technology applications simply ugly, so in many cases there are a lot of negotiations between economy, aesthetics, and energy questions – where aesthetics cannot be reduced to a rhetorical or discursive function.
-Sounds interesting, but I have to go get another beer…
(End of transcription.)
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Senast uppdaterad 2010-11-01 |
