Meaning-making strategies on the balcony: The night sky in K. Taha’s Beschreibung einer Krabbenwanderung (‘Portrait of a wandering crab’)

Abstract

The meaning-making system of the sky has persisted for millennia (Peters 2015). Yet, many of us do not relate to the importance of the connection with celestial sky anymore. One of the many contributing factors is our relation to urban systems, as well as densification and, consequently, the verticalization of living. As an example of the power of place-making strategies and its friction with the architectural set-up in high-rise mass dwellings and estates, the novel Beschreibung einer Krabbenwanderung by Karosh Taha makes use of the night-time sky in idiosyncratic spaces of the high-rise, such as the balcony. Here, the links between relations of time and space, the here and there (), as well as inside and outside spaces, become apparent and show a connection of the liminality of post-migrant identities. In an analysis of the access to the night-time sky and its concluding place-making strategies by one of the protagonists of the novel, I show how the balcony functions as a liminal space that is idiosyncratic for the mobile and mediatized identity in the western European high-rise dwelling.