Berit Hummel

Filmmaking in independent and underground cinema, working outside the film

industry with almost non-existent budgets, depended strongly on the

resources accessible in the immediate everyday environment. Furthermore

these films often premiered in the very same urban milieu in which they were

made. The dissertation project investigates the spaces generated by these

artistic practices and their relation to the respective urban surroundings.

Examining the ways in which mass- and subcultural representations are

assimilated into experimental filmic approaches focusing on new forms and

contents, the study investigates the restructuring of urban perceptions in

New York's avant-garde and underground cinema between 1959 and 65, in a time

of a socially paradigmatic change.

The historical and sociocultural context of radical urban and societal

change is placed in relation to artistic-cinematic practices by applying a

production aesthetic perspective. The subject of the study is therefore both

the manner in which the city is represented in the films as well as the

social space created by their exhibition. The films and the milieu

associated with their production and dissemination not only provide

information about the perception of urban change, but make the spaces

originating in this process visible. Assuming that cinema, in its wider

sense, is a spatial practice located in the city, the films and the

practices of production and distribution associated with them are taken as a

lense through which to decipher the perception of transforming urban

environments. Cinema in this context is understood as a symbolic practice

which restructures the perception of a transformed everyday urban

environment, producing a new image of the city.

Archival research has been carried out in New York at Anthology Film

Archives, Film Makers Cooperative, MoMA Film Study Center, New School for

Social Research, the NYPL Performing Arts Research Library and at the

Special Collection Libraries at NYU and Columbia as well as at the Getty

Research Institute (GRI), Los Angeles and Stanford Special Collections &

University Archives.

05/2012 – 04/2016

DFG Fellow at the International Graduate Research Program Berlin - New York - Toronto, Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University of Berlin

2004 – 2008

Institute of Art in Context, University of the Arts, Berlin; M.A.

1998 – 2004

Visual Arts and Media Art at Academy of Visual Arts (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst), Leipzig; Dipl.

1994 – 1997

Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin; Vordiplom

Urban space in cinema and media,

Media as historical artifact,

Institutional history,

Artistic production and spatial politics,

Methods of artistic research

04/2016 - Present 

Lecturer (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) at the Department of Visual Arts,

Institute of Architecture, TU Berlin

04/2016 - Present

Associate Lecturer (Lehrbeauftragte) at Institute for German and Dutch

Philology / Berlin-Studies, FU Berlin, courses taught: Perceptions of

Urbanity. A Visual Culture Approach to Berlin (summer 16); The City in

Cinema ­ Histories of Place (fall/winter 2016/17); From Rubble Films to

Berlin School. Urban Memory and Identity in German Cinema (planned for

summer 17)

12/2014 - Present

Conceptualized and organized 2-day conference “New Visions. Cinema and

Cinematic Practices in Times of Radical Urban Transformation³ with 12

international presenters and 3 invited keynote speakers

2009 – 2012

Project Manager for KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Production Manager for Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

2006 – 2009

Cofounder and organizer of artist run gallery Stedefreund, Berlin

Realization of annual exhibition program

2004 - 2009

visual artist, national and international exhibitions and projects

2004 - 2007

Production manager, Barbara Thumm Gallery, Berlin

03/2017

Spirits of Listlessness. Metropolitan Temporalities in Films from the

Underground; Conference: Underground Adventures: Temporal Experimentation in

Postwar Countercultures, Humboldt University, Berlin, 03/2017 [forthcoming]

04/2016

Entgrenzungen des Raums. Performative Stadtinszenierung in Dick Higgins

Flaming City, Workshop: “Performance und Architektur in der Fotografie,

Universität der Künste, Berlin

11/2015

„Ästhetische Strategien der Besetzung von Stadtraum. Kinematographische Verarbeitung metropolitaner Zeiterfahrung“ at the conference „Bilder: Zeitzeichen und Zeitphänomene / Images: Signs and Phenomena of Time,“ Universität Hamburg

10/2015

„Topographies of Liminality in 1960s New York Underground Cinema,“ Princeton-Mellon Works in Progress Series; Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities; School of Architecture; Princeton / NJ

08/2014

Topographies of Ambiguity. Mappings of a Peripatetic City in Films from the New York Underground, 'Geographies of co-production' - Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society, London/GB

03/2014

Continuous Wanderings. Driftende Protagonisten in Peter Emanuel Goldman’s 'Echoes of Silence', 27. Film- und Fernsehwissenschaftliches Kolloquium, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München/D

03/2014

Shifting Perspectives: 1960s Avant-Garde Film and the Gaze of the Flâneur, Conference: 'Capital' - Annual Conference of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), New York University, New York City/USA

10/2013

Cartography of the Modern City. Space and Movement in Alphaville and Playtime, Conference: Cinematic Urban Geographies / University of Cambridge, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge/GB

05/2013

Mapping Dériville. The Recapturing of Urban Space in 1960s Cinema, Conference: Art and Maps Since 1945, University of Essex, School of Philosophy and Art History, Colchester/GB

“Topographies of Liminality in 1960s New York Underground Cinema,³ in:

re·bus - Journal of art history and theory, Issue 8, 2017 [forthcoming

spring 2017]

„Urbane Wanderungen und städtischer Wandel. Der Drifter im New Yorker Underground- Film der 1960er Jahre am Beispiel von Peter Emanuel Goldmans Echoes of Silence,“ in: Beiträge des 27. Film- und Fernsehwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums, Marburg: Schüren. 10/2016.

„Topographies of Liminality in 1960s New York Underground Cinema,“ in: Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, Vol. 3.1/2016, Bristol: Intellect. [Peer Review]