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Simone Rueß (2021). de-re-konstrukt – "Lass uns von vorne beginnen...", pp. 98-107


Simone Rueß (2021). de-re-konstrukt – "Lass uns von vorne beginnen...", pp. 98-107
"Based on the insights I received during the conversations and narrative mappings of residents along my first tour through the city (Nowa Huta), I revisited and approached selected locations in greater detail (Lynch 1960, 15). I stood with my mobile table at six locations for a longer duration of time (approximately two to three hours), scanning the visual field and documenting the multiplicity of moments as layers of strokes and lines on a single sheet of paper (Figure 4). The live drawings were simultaneously filmed from above and later digitally sped up in videos and superimposed. Inverted to white on black, like an X-ray, the time-based images illuminate ‘a view of bodies seen through and beyond their skins’—that is, a view of environmental structures seen through their surfaces (Rueß 2023a, 89). Built on my artistic practice, I used the method of overlaying drawn movements into simultaneity to reveal the so-called movement space in relation to the architecture, environments, and their histories."
excerpt: Simone Rueß (2025). Performance Drawing: Uncovering Multiple Timescapes of Nowa Huta, In: Spacetimes Matter. A Collection of Mapping Methodologies. Baxter, Jamie-Scott / Heinrich, Anna Juliane / Marguin, Séverine / Sommer, Vivien (Eds.), Jovis: Berlin.
References:
Lynch, Kevin. 1960. The Image of the City. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.
Rueß, Simone. 2023a. ‘Drawing and (Re)Acting: The Creation of Movement Spaces’. Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice 8 (1): pp. 81–94. https://doi.org/10.1386/drtp_00107_1.
Nowa Huta is a unique testimony to urban and social 're-figuration' in today's Europe. Originally designed from the top down as an ideological, socialist, and urban planningproject, Nowa Huta has been undergoing an ongoing economic and social transformationsince 1989. The accompanying geographical changes and the progressive changesof Kraków have led to new residents, different everyday activities, and altered patternsof movement. The audiosphere is also undergoing a profound transformation, whichis linked, for example, to the closure of the industrial context. In an interdisciplinarydialog, Simone Rueß and Rafał Mazur bring together analyses of urban structures andsoundscapes in the form of a hybrid mapping. Residents are invited to actively participateand reflect on their neighbourhoods in the context of local and global upheavals. An audio-visual 5-channel installation makes the artistic investigations spatio-temporally experienceable.
A. A. is a writer and dentist born in Deir Ezzor, Syria. He grew up in the Ar Raqqa region, which is characterized by a cultural and linguistic intermingling. In Damascus he pursued his studies and his profession. After a short stay in Mauritania, A. A. left Syria forever in 2013 and fled to Germany via Beirut (2015). In 2018, his family came to Germany. After successful language courses and medical exams, A. A. works now in Berlin as a dentist.
With A. A., we had our first space/biography conversation in 2016. Later we met again in 2021, 2022 and 2023. In continuing conversations we reflected on the changes in spatial biographical perceptions, . In this drawing series from 2023, we can follow reflexions on relations between memories and the feeling of home, the language and translocal and transnational social spaces.