After successful completion of the course, students are able to conduct a socio-critical and artistic examination of the topic: (Exchange) Spaces - Neighborhoods. They have learned a cross-disciplinary approach, methodology and implementation of the topic in the field of art and research.

In the context of interdisciplinary approaches to the topic, we begin by addressing questions about the understanding of art and, based on this, illuminate built and digital-virtual, urban spatial structures. In the next step, we will situate the flea market at Vienna's Naschmarkt in the context of the "post-growth city" and neighborhoods and examine its potential as an exchange space with regard to a planned redesign of the market area.
The flea market in the context of cultural institution, attraction pool for tourists, collectors and recycling of commodified goods, can be read from a sustainability perspective, even though it obeys capitalist logic. Every commodity traded at the flea market exhibits the local and the global and their entanglement within and with other commodities. In this context, objects of exchange, which incorporate present and past material and symbolic action, are examined from a sociocultural perspective: Where do they come from, what histories and processes are generated through them in the space of the flea market?
The flea market is also a space where publicity is produced through encounters and exchanges. By observing spatial interactions, we aim to discover how people appropriate or use the concrete space differently based on gender, class, origin, and other categories that are intertwined.
The spatial layout of the entire flea market is marked with floor lines. The lines of the "market area", which is used as a parking lot on other days of the week, overlap with the contour lines that delimit the individual booths of the traders. The permeability of these parcels, the spatial exchange across their boundaries, the interacting neighborhoods will be examined in the seminar.  
The participants will investigate the project site in an open-ended exchange with scientific discourses and from an intersectional perspective. They will work with the artistic concept "Syntopian Vagabond", whose central research tool is a mobile glass cube. The syn-topic or "place-connecting" research understands a project as a place in which actors are involved, spatial atmospheres are formed and which is related to visible and non-visible places.
With the elaboration of site-specific design sketches, the course participants develop an exchange space between art and society.

Interdisciplinary methods from the fields of art, research and spatial analysis

The course has an examination-immanent character; attendance and obligatory active participation are required, one absence is permitted. Partial performance is required, consisting of reading and discussing texts, media research, spatial observation, ad hoc interviews, experimental research, idea sketches, design/action and their elaboration in the scope of 8-10 pages per participant.

Brand, Ulrich/Wissen, Markus. 2017. Imperiale Lebensweise. Zur Ausbeutung von Mensch und Natur im globalen Kapitalismus. München: oekom verlag.

Evans, Sandra/Schahadat, Schamma (Hg.). 2011. Nachbarschaft, Räume, Emotionen. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu einer sozialen Lebensform. Bielefeld: transcript.

Redecker von, Eva. 2020. Revolution für das Leben. Philosophie der neuen Protestformen. Frankfurt am Main. S. Fischer Verlag. 3. Auflage.

Weitere Literatur wird in der Lehrveranstaltung bekanntgegeben!