GÄSTEZIMMER: BLUE HOUR

GÄSTEZIMMER: BLUE HOUR

8.12.2023 - 9.1.2023

BLUE HOUR

We are looking forward to a new project in the GÄSTEZIMMER: BLUE HOUR by Mona Hermann. The installation forms the conclusion of the Triolgy of Solitude.

Opening: 8.12.23 , 6pm

EXHIBITIONS, PERFORMANCE, PODCAST

Facts & Figures

Initiated in 2017 by HafenCity Hamburg GmbH, the experimental cultural programme got underway with the appointment of Ellen Blumenstein as HafenCity Curator. Since 2018, we have been operating as IMAGINE THE CITY and are supported by the independent, non-profit association Kunst und Kultur in der HafenCity. So far we have realised more than twenty projects involving almost 100 participants, co-operated with eight cultural institutions and raised more than three million euros.

FUNKFAHRRAD

Funkfahrrad © Stephan Behre 2022
Funkfahrrad © Stephan Behre 2022

The mobile cultural vehicle is able to record and broadcast podcasts directly from street level, stage discussions in public places, organise karaoke competitions and stream movies licence-free. Plus you can also borrow the bike for free for your own projects!

The City Imagined mit/with

The book series documents our work at HafenCity. Order here free of charge one of the four in-depth interviews with Terence Koh, Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus & Richard Wilhelmer, Liz Magic Laser & Dafna Maimon, and Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann about the special experience of developing art within the urban fabric.

denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof at Lohsepark

2021 was all about the ‘gateway to the world’. In seven interviews, historian Sandra Schürmann looked at how Hamburg’s self-image is made visible at HafenCity. This podcast episode for example deals with the question of how remembrance can be kept alive within an urban space and how important ‘authentic’ testimonies are in this regard.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Populär with Ellen Blumenstein

© Jan Northoff
© Jan Northoff

A portrait of Ellen Blumenstein in DER HAMBURGER - the Popular section presents people and projects that give the city a face. To read exclusively in our press area. section features people and projects that lend the city its face. Available to read exclusively in our Press Area.

Breathe in, breathe out

DOMESTICITY

Am Sandtorkai 46 

LIGUSTRUM by Esteban Pérez creates a particular kind of liveliness in HafenCity. 

ITC-Newsletter

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IMAGINE THE CITY elaborates new formats at the interface between culture and urban planning in HafenCity. We incorporate representative artistic perspectives into Hamburg’s urban development and collaborate at the international level with like-minded people across all sectors of society. Practically and discursively, we contribute to shaping the future of our cities in ways that are vibrant, equitable and supportive.

THE GATE Editions

© Svenja Björg Wassil
© Svenja Björg Wassil

Still looking for Christmas presents and/or keen to support artists? If so, why not buy a work of art by Marlon de Azambuja, Eduardo Basualdo, Marc Bijl, Camillo Ritter or Svenja Björg Wassil! Send us an email to receive a list of available works. 

Interactive culture in the urban space

© Sansho Studio
© Sansho Studio

Build your own app: our web-based editorial system INTERKIT is set to go online next year, allowing familiar features such as AR, Player, Chat, Archive and Map to be linked together as required. Simply select what you need or programme your own extensions; the open source toolbox is available free of charge for all non-commercial uses!

From our archives

© Laura Léglise
© Laura Léglise

Having trouble sleeping? – If so, pick a suitable lullaby from our YouTube archive: The HUSH performance by Liz Magic Laser and Dafna Maimon in the fall of 2021 armed each participant against their own personal fears about the future.
In return, they shared their personalised reassurances with all those in need.

Message from SAM

Florence Jung’s manipulative bot follows users throughout their day and communicates with them via a mobile app. The last sub-project of our OPEN WORLDS digital network runs until February 2023 at MGK Siegen – and everywhere online: available now from the App Store or on Google Play.

Our favourite video trailer

Together with two artist friends Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann shot his own BACKDROP road movie to indicate to our audience the best way to get to his work.
The three artists thus instantly relocated the famous original C’était un rendez-vous by Claude Lelouch (1976) from Paris to HafenCity: a little work of art all of its own.

New episode VOICES OF THE CITY

The podcast gives actors from the growing urban fabric a voice and inspects special areas. This time, we report from Oberhafen on the challenges of bringing together creative processes and urban development interests.

New headquarters

Visit us at the Coffee Plaza: from January 1 you will be able to find us at our new address with our own terrace, directly at Sandtorpark.

New Feature: our magazine

Along with our website revamp we’ve also introduced a new category. In our Magazine we regularly post exclusive and/or special essays that use the power of language to sketch out images of cities. From all eras and from all over the world.

Photo knowledge on Telegram

THE INVISIBLE HAND dives deep into the history and theory of photography with videos, chats and comics. As a virtual companion to the 8th Triennial of Photography, we deliberately aimed the festival motto Currency at Hamburg’s urban space in the summer of 2022.
The channel remains permanently accessible and is well worthwhile even without the exhibition!

Smiley over the city

A prominent text about our first project, PUBLIC FACE. In March 2020, a detailed analysis appeared in the architecture and urbanism magazine Arch+. available online anytime.

History, Technology, Infrastructure

Space for dreaming

Our latest podcast feature on HafenCity’s last unplanned site brings together ambitious, whimsical and visionary ideas for one of the district’s most expensive pieces of real estate.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to what Annika Kahrs, Hadi Teherani and many others have come up with for this special ‘lost place’ on the Elbe.

Filter Exhibition, Performance, Podcast, In Print, Hands-on, Immersion, Sculpture, Sound, History, Contemplation, Entertainment, Stage, Technology, Event, Threshold, Outdoors, Narrative, Trade, Infrastructure, Explore, Cooperation,

GÄSTEZIMMER


Fall/Winter 2023

13 STEPS

Omer Fast, 13 Steps for the Liberation of Germany, 2023, 3D film, color, sound, 32 min. (film still) © 2023 the artist

Omer Fast
September 29th - November 30th

GÄSTEZIMMER: PORT FICTION


Fall/Winter 2023

GÄSTEZIMMER: BLUE HOUR

© Tanja Modrakovic


8.12.2023 - 9.1.2023

DOMESTICITY 3: LIGUSTRUM

Esteban Pérez

DOMESTICITY 2: HOME WANDERER

Saray Purto
15 September 2022 – 15 January 2023

BEE CHAPEL HAFENCITY

The chapel at the HafenCity Ecumenical Forum, © Laura Léglise

Terence Koh
From Spring 2023

FUNKFAHRRAD

Funkfahrrad © Stephan Behre 2022

Javier Acevedo, Theresa Michel, Jonas Wietelmann
From 2023

How To Live In The Echo Of Other Places

© Cansu Naz Tekir

Annika Kahrs
1 June – 4 September 2022

VOICES OF THE CITY

Theresa Michel
Online

DOMESTICITY 1: RUBIA Y MORENA

© Cansu Naz Tekir

Kristina Kröger
16 June – 15 August 2022

THE INVISIBLE HAND

© Frank Höhne

Ellen Blumenstein, Harriet von Froreich, Theresa Michel, Cansu Naz Tekir
18 May – 15 July 2022

THE CITY IMAGINED WITH/MIT

© IMAGINE THE CITY

Ellen Blumenstein (ed.)
2019 – 2022

ON THE THRESHOLD OF WISDOM

Daniel Tyradellis
Online

BEDFORM

© Laura Léglise

Kapwani Kiwanga
1 June – 31 December 2021

A CITY IN FLUX

Sandra Schürmann
Online

HUSH. THE REASSURER

© Liz Magic Laser, Dafna Maimon

Liz Magic Laser and Dafna Maimon
16 – 19, 23 – 26 September 2021

THE GATE. ART WALK

© Laura Léglise

Curated by Ellen Blumenstein, Mona Hermann
1. June – 31. October 2021

THE GATE. AUDIO LIBRARY

Dennis Rudolph, THE PORTAL HAFENCITY, © Laura Léglise

Curated by Ellen Blumenstein, Theresa Michel
Online

BOTBOAT

© Laura Biermann-Fireck

Sebastian Quack
19 August 2020 – 21 December 2021

BACKDROP

© Volker Renner

Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann
17 April 2020 – 11 April 2021

TABLE TALKS

© IMAGINE THE CITY

Liz Magic Laser and Dafna Maimon, Playful Commons
19 December 2019, 5 February 2020

PUBLIC FACE

© Carsten Dammann

Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus, Richard Wilhelmer
23 November 2018 – 27 September 2020

IMAGINE THE CITY & FRIENDS #2

© Florence Rist

Curated by Cornelius Altmann
25 July 2019

IMAGINE THE CITY & FRIENDS #1

© Ayna Steigerwald

HAFENLESUNG GOES SEUTE DEERN
4 July 2019

ON-BOARD KIOSK SURPRISE

© IMAGINE THE CITY

Curated by Raphael Dillhoff and Nina Groß
11 July 2018 – 29 August 2018

from Marc Bijl: THE WORKS. 1984 : 2084
Jap Sam Books Amsterdam (coming soon)

Chapter 1/5

THE GATES

Women, violence and the HafenCity

Ellen Blumenstein

Initial release: Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, 1840

From: poestories.com/read/manofthecrowd

The Man of the Crowd

Part one

Edgar Allen Poe

Initial release: Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, 1840.

From: poestories.com/read/manofthecrowd

The Man of the Crowd

Part two

Edgar Allen Poe

from Marc Bijl: THE WORKS. 1984 : 2084
Jap Sam Books Amsterdam (coming soon)

Chapter 2/5

THE GATES

Women, violence and the HafenCity

Ellen Blumenstein

Also available as Podcast

Street Philosophy
Chapter 3/5

On the Threshold of Wisdom

A city’s media

Daniel Tyradellis

ADDRESS

IMAGINE THE CITY 
Am Sandtorpark 2 
20457 Hamburg 
info@imaginethecity.de

PRESS 

For press inquiries please contact info@imaginethecity.de.

Our press section has all the latest press material available for download.

© Jan Northoff
© Jan Northoff

In DER HAMBURGER magazine: a profileof IMAGINE THE CITY.

© Helge Mundt
© Helge Mundt

The Hamburger Abendblatt featured Annika Kahrs's installation in the old dockside warehouse.

© Thomas Hampel
© Thomas Hampel

DER SPIEGEL interview with Terence Koh, talking about his BEE CHAPEL HAFENCITY.

© Thomas Hampel
© Thomas Hampel

Understanding the PUBLIC FACE: in-depth analysis in Arch+.

© Laura Biermann-Fireck
© Laura Biermann-Fireck

The BOTBOAT in the practical test of the ADAC travel magazine. Published in issue No. 181.

WHO WE ARE

Initiated in 2017 by Hamburg’s largest development company, HafenCity Hamburg GmbH (HCH), the experimental cultural programme got underway with the appointment of Ellen Blumenstein as HafenCity Curator. The following year she adapted the programme to create IMAGINE THE CITY, a project orientated less according to her own personal input and more towards the content-related tasks with which she had been entrusted. The project itself is funded by the independent, non-profit association Kunst und Kultur in der HafenCity. HCH provides the basic funding during the pilot phase and is represented on the Association’s Board in a bid to facilitate the co-ordination of the various projects. A significant portion of the required budget is secured through the acquisition of third-party funding. Since 2017, we have realised more than twenty projects involving almost 100 participants, co-operated with eight cultural institutions and raised more than three million euros. 
 
WHAT WE DO

IMAGINE THE CITY elaborates representative new formats at the interface between culture and urban planning. We incorporate artistic perspectives into the HCH’s urban projects in an illustrative way while collaborating at the international level with like-minded people across all sectors of society. We look at the city from a user perspective and enable encounters with, in, and through its built-up environment so that, together, we can reformulate society’s expectations of culture. In doing so, we target an aspect of the city that planning cannot ‘plan’ for: informal urban spaces highly charged in terms of both narrative and imagination. Practically and discursively, we contribute to shaping the future of our cities in ways that are vibrant, equitable and supportive. 
 
WHERE TO FIND US

In January 2023, IMAGINE THE CITY will be relocating to new headquarters at Coffee Plaza in HafenCity. Our premises are open on three sides, allowing us to interact directly with the outside space and enliven the site for our neighbours, cultural workers and other interested parties, whether it’s through performances, film evenings, lectures or workshops. These events are aimed at everyone living a city who is keen to reflect on seemingly unconnected aspects, track down their own blind spots, and as a result help develop images or ideas of the sort of city we would all want to live in. 
 
WHAT MAKES US TICK

Our work ties in with a broad spectrum of cultural initiatives that were incorporated early on into HafenCity’s development, e.g. the founding of the Oberhafen Cultural Quarter, the establishment of a number of festivals, and the promotion of temporary and/or subculture-based usage concepts. At the same time, IMAGINE THE CITY has gone beyond the scope of these previous approaches. Indeed, for the first time, we deliberately took action in a systematic, long-term, cross-project and cross-genre way, specifically in those areas where the course for our future lives together is being chartered, i.e. urban development areas. This orientation calls for new concepts, new alliances and new infrastructures that mediate between culture and urban development, stakeholders and clients, representation and activism. 

JOBS 

We are regularly on the lookout for interns. Please submit your applications to: info@imaginethecity.de

TEAM 

DIRECTOR (on maternity leave)
Ellen Blumenstein 
blumenstein@imaginethecity.de 

Always in search of new formats that convey cultural issues to a broad audience, Ellen is utterly committed to the task of thinking about culture and urban development as a consistent entity for Hamburg. At the same time, she is also associate curator at Spreepark Berlin and oversees the Reallabor Kunst im öffentlichen Raum at the University of the Arts Bremen until 2023.  

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 
Jonas Wietelmann 
wietelmann@imaginethecity.de 

Jonas relocated from Dresden to Hamburg in spring 2022 in a bid to help make the infrastructure of IMAGINE THE CITY shipshape. He is tasked with turning interesting concepts into doable projects, looks after our fundraising, and is also in charge of networking us far beyond the borders of Hamburg. His main focus is on digital strategies and art education technologies. 

CURATOR
Theresa Michel 
michel@imaginethecity.de 

Theresa has been a member of the IMAGINE THE CITY artistic team since 2019, working as a research assistant and co-curator for three years focusing on Hamburg’s past and its trading history as well as helping to develop digital formats. Since 2022 she has taken on curatorial responsibility and is the first point of contact for project and format ideas, joint ventures – and the coining of creative titles. 

OFFICE MANAGER
Lea-Elisa Jüttner 
juettner@imaginethecity.de

Lea has been working on her Master’s in Urban Design at HafenCity University since autumn 2022, elaborating repurposing strategies, urban meeting spaces and cultural formats beyond traditional institutions. Besides her office management duties, she also contributes her experience from the Hamburg Office for the Protection of Historic Buildings and as a mediator at documenta 15 to the programme work of IMAGINE THE CITY. 
 

ACCOUNTS AND ADMINISTRATION 
Anke Hollmann 
info@imaginethecity.de 

ART DIRECTION AND DESIGN 
Timm Häneke 
timmhaeneke.de 
Tobias Röttger 
stahl-r.de

WEB DEVELOPMENT
Stefan Wunderwald 
src.plus 

The website was funded within KULTUR.GEMEINSCHAFTEN. The program is funded by the NEUSTART KULTUR rescue and future package of the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien and the Kulturstiftung der Länder.

 

 

'The dream is the royal road to the unconscious,' Sigmund Freud says. Contrary to what one might assume, the unconscious is not a chaotic chaos of drives, but is composed of the building blocks of the known world. Its highest condensation is the city, from which the individual consciousness feeds its imaginations, its fears and desires.

‘Gateway to the world’: it just trips off the tongue, does it not? But if it’s a gateway to the world, where exactly does that put you? Not yet – or no longer – in the world? The seemingly innocent formulation is in fact a paradox. A paradox is something that opens up space for differing opinions. Which is precisely why philosophy enjoys toying with it so much. And not just philosophy. Whenever we think about gates, gateways and thresholds, we come up against fundamental issues pertaining to thinking and therefore to human existence. Indeed, waiting beyond the gate is always the Other, there to challenge all that we consider our own, making us curious, but also frightening us, and questioning us. For example, the threshold of consciousness. Something you are compelled to step across. 

As Sigmund Freund, the founder of psychoanalysis, famously put it, ‘dreams are the royal path to the unconscious’. The dream is the realm of the in-between, the threshold between wakefulness and sleep, the place where you encounter yourself as the Other. As is so often the case with Freud, things are more complicated than they appear at first glance as most of the time he turns the certainties of everyday thinking on their head. The unconscious, then, is not a mystical or even chaotic world located beneath consciousness, as is regularly claimed. It’s actually the exact opposite: the unconscious is structured; it stands there unwaveringly and defines us in our capabilities. Indeed, the fantasies, the things we imagine for ourselves, are all made up from the armoury of the world known to us and surrounding us. Why do I mention this here? Because a city represents these capabilities in their utmost concentration. If there were no media capable of continually beaming us elsewhere, the city we live in would be the blueprint of the unconscious, with individual consciousnesses sketched onto it. A city’s routes and locations, its intersections and constellations provide these fears and desires with visualisation material and, consequently, with ways of combating or fulfilling them – and vice versa. The shape of a city shapes the imaginings we believe to be our own. For us today it is difficult to think in this way because we find ourselves in a tradition of thought that would have us believe that we ourselves are the creators or originators of our fears and desires. The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel considered the human being as ‘this empty nothing’ that absorbs all these scenes into itself in a ‘night’ bereft of contemplation, in the darkness of which the pure self has to resolve the conflicts within itself. This self, however, is not pure; rather, it is a place of trans-shipment for conflicting forces of the most secular kind. Being determines consciousness, as Karl Marx once phrased it. And this is true not just of personal economic circumstances, but quite literally of all manner of experience. In the 19th century for instance, there was little consensus, if any, on whether the introduction of street lighting – and, with it, the relinquishment of what was perceived as a natural threshold – was a good idea. The argument raised was the wanton interference with divine creation, but also the need to tame the human inclination to let oneself be led by circumstances and abandon the civilised self.

Electric street lighting on Jungfernstieg, Photo: Hamburg State Archives
Electric street lighting on Jungfernstieg, Photo: Hamburg State Archives

There is a painting by Francisco de Goya entitled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, and the question is whether sleep is the absence of reason, which is why the monsters emerge, or whether it is not reason itself that creates these monsters in the first place, which then go about their nefarious deeds while we sleep, purely and simply because reason has no truck with them. The question (not just in Hamburg) was whether street lights turned night into day or day into night – and what ultimately would prevail. Does night lighting improve societal control over primal urges or does it in fact provide them with a stage setting? It’s the question of thresholds and gateways between consciousness and the unconscious, as and in the city: how and where we become aware of that which we would rather not think about. As far as night lighting is concerned, the matter has been resolved: Hamburg now has more than 120,000 street lamps, i.e. one lamp to every fifteen inhabitants, as it were. All the more important is the question, then, of where that which resists consciousness manifests itself. For what we repress emerges all the more mercilessly, but not in the places that our consciousness has reserved for it. It is said that there is no place in kitsch for all that is ugly. A city must resist this one-sided imagination and can never be a pure haven of the good and the beautiful; to do so would be to risk losing its vibrancy. It is always worthwhile looking at a city to see how it hides in plain sight that which no one really wants to see. 

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, circa 1797-1798
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, circa 1797-1798

In his philosophical miniatures, philosopher and curator Daniel Tyradellis took various constellations of people, objects, and places in HafenCity as his starting point for a reflection on urban living for the audio library of THE GATE (2021). These texts are published here exclusively for the first time. Chapter 3 will be published soon.