Ulrike Almut Sandig’s Urban Interventions: From ‘Augenpost’ in Leipzig to a Posthuman Epic of Berlin

Abstract

Ulrike Almut Sandig's ‘bootleg’ version of Walter Ruttmann's 1927 documentary of Berlin consists of a 22 canto cycle recorded and read over the film image, with a soundtrack by her Ukrainian collaborator, DJ and composer Grigory Semenchuk. This article argues that Gesänge des Funkturms — nach Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt, 1927 (2016) makes an intervention into urban space that constitutes a claim of ‘right to the city’ (Lefebvre). The methodological roots of the Gesänge can be traced to Sandig's ‘Augenpost’ project in Leipzig (2001–08), in which the poet and two collaborators staged a sustained intervention into public space in Leipzig, pasting poetry onto the city's walls. Through the Gesänge Sandig develops the right to the city into an emancipatory reconceptualization of the relationship between urban space and urban subject. Close reading of the Gesänge demonstrates how Sandig produces an epic reconstitution of Berlin's history from a radically ‘othered’ position and proposes a new ontology of the city constituted by a porous, hybridized, collective network of others.