Negoatiating Urban Order— Artistic Research on Urban Ordering Processes
Technical University Lübeck, Summer Semester 2026, Seminar 

Lecturer
Cities do not stabilize themselves. They are continuously organized, prioritized, and legitimized. At the same time, spatial practices emerge from concrete needs: initiatives respond to missing spaces, communities self-organize, temporary uses develop where access, care, or participation are insufficiently provided.

Whether such practices persist, gain resources, become integrated into planning processes, or disappear depends on structural conditions. Order operates through administrative procedures, property regimes, funding structures, and political priorities. It determines which practices gain continuity—and which encounter institutional thresholds. Urban space is thus structured through ongoing decisions.

The seminar examines this tension between socially articulated needs and existing urban order. Each student selects a specific case—such as a temporary use, a contested site, a community initiative, or a highly regulated space—and analyzes its structural configuration: actors, rules, resources, and temporal dynamics.

Based on this analysis, a shared analytical instrument is developed. Key parameters—such as resistance, acceptance, resource availability, political effectiveness, visibility, or duration—are collectively defined and translated into an AI-supported visual model. The tool allows for the exploration of how different conditions shape processes of stabilization and transformation.

The analytical work is complemented by an artistic translation. Diagrams, spatial interventions, visual essays, or installations reorganize and condense the findings, making structural relations visible and spatially perceptible.

The seminar concludes with a public presentation at the Versuchshaus Lübeck.

Digital Artist Dirk Koy will contribute a guest input, offering insights into his digital artistic practice and the singular visual language of his work. Situated at the intersection of digital art, image production, and contemporary visual culture, his contribution opens a compelling perspective on representation, perception, and the mediated construction of reality.
 TH Lübeck
Arts of the Working Class


Literature selection

Benjamin, Ruha (2019): Race After Technology. Polity Press.
Borgdorff, Henk (2012): The Conflict of the Faculties: Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia. Leiden University Press.
Crawford, Kate (2021): Atlas of AI. Yale University Press.
Easterling, Keller (2014): Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space. Verso.
Forensic Architecture (2014): Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth. Sternberg Press.
Kurgan, Laura (2013): Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics. Zone Books.
Latour, Bruno (2005): Reassembling the Social. Oxford University Press.
Lefebvre, Henri (1968/1996): The Right to the City. In: Writings on Cities. Blackwell.
Löw, Martina (2001): The Sociology of Space. Suhrkamp.
Müller, Martin (2015): Assemblages and Actor-Networks: Rethinking Socio-Material Power. Geography Compass.
Paglen, Trevor (2016): Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You). The New Inquiry.
Roy, Ananya (2005): “Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association.
Scott, James C. (1998): Seeing Like a State. Yale University Press.
Schuppli, Susan (2020): Material Witness: Media, Forensics, Evidence. MIT Press.
Weizman, Eyal (2017): Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability. Zone Books.





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