Spaces of Appearance

Present whenever people act together and yet never seen for what they do, spaces of appearance come in many guises: a car crash in Vienna, a discussion forum in Dresden, a baker’s queue in Paris, an art festival in Shiraz, an unbuilt house in Istanbul, a law court in Berlin, a photograph from Arkansas. Taking their cue from Hannah Arendt’s famous concept, the case studies in this volume, written in close collaboration, examine how the perceptive standards of a given political situation may subtly change or consolidate. Supported by a wealth of images, this volume demonstrates how the concept can be activated for innovative research ‒ especially in cases where an understanding of aesthetics and politics needs to go beyond their analogization.

Featuring an essay by Susan Buck-Morss.

Author Biography

Martin Renz (Edited by) Martin Renz is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. He works as a freelance journalist on science advice and research policy for the German news publication Research.Table and organizes the research initiative Ästhetik demokratischer Lebensformen in Frankfurt. Before embarking on his PhD, he studied philosophy, political science, and the humanities in Berlin, Paris, Frankfurt, and Chicago. Julius Schwarzwälder (Edited by) Julius Schwarzwälder is a PhD candidate at Technische Universität Darmstadt, where he considers some aesthetic effects of the surging use of algorithmics. In and beyond Frankfurt, he co-organized the graduate research initiative Ästhetik demokratischer Lebensformen. He studied philosophy and aesthetics in London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Darmstadt.