Event

Tuning into the garden’s rhythms: Conflicting and intersecting temporalities at a community garden in Berlin

Organizer : Institut für Geographie
Location : Universität GW2 B1150
Start Time : 14. June 2023, 16:15
End Time : 14. June 2023, 17:45

Bremer Geographisches Kolloquium:

Tuning into the garden’s rhythms: Conflicting and intersecting temporalities at a community garden in Berlin

Dr. Jan van Duppen

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Research Fellow an der Humboldt-Universität Berlin

Jonathan Crary argues that one of the forms of disempowerment of the 24/7 capitalist economy is its ‘incapacitation of daydream … that would otherwise occur in intervals of slow or vacant time‘ (Crary 2014, p. 88). This begs the question: what sort of space could be helpful in resisting the restless demands and continuous interface of the new digital economy? Urban gardens, for instance, can offer citizens the opportunity to tune into the cyclical rhythms of the seasons, allowing for multi-modal sensorial explorations of naturecultures, a slowing down, a temporary escape from the pressures of paid work and social obligations (Crouch and Ward 1997, Schoneboom and May 2013, Odell 2019). This paper develops a nuanced understanding of the intersecting, overlapping and conflicting temporalities enacted whilst volunteers garden together at the Prinzessingarten in Berlin. It discusses the shaping and falling apart of more-than-human collectives, and the new temporalities that emerge in the intricate processes of this ‘becoming-with’ (Haraway 2008, Phillips 2020), whilst responding to that other temporality of the climate emergency.