RIOTS—FROM PROTEST TO SPACE PRODUCTION
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY LÜBECK
SUMMER SEMESTER 25
SEMINAR
Protests, riots, and urban activism are integral to everyday urban life. They surface social conflicts in public space, leave visible and invisible traces, and influence how cities evolve. Yet the questions remain: How does protest transform urban space? Which sites enable assembly and resistance—and why? How do urban authorities respond, and with what lasting effects?
This seminar combined theoretical reflection with spatial investigation and collective mapping. In the first phase, students engaged with key theories of protest, urban activism, and spatial production—analyzing how public space is used, claimed, or restricted, and which actors and dynamics shape these processes.
The individual research component focused on the spatial dynamics of specific protests: from where they unfolded, to how they inscribed themselves into the city through architecture, symbols, bodies, and regulations.
The second phase shifted from analysis to Critical Cartography—collective mapping of power, visibility, and control. Here, students identified recurring spatial motifs, from the body as protest form to murals, barriers, clandestine distribution, and post-protest urban adaptations. Each cartography visualizes how protest is entangled with space: as movement, as material inscription, and as contested terrain.
By interlacing political analysis with visual and spatial methods, RIOTS invites a rethinking of protest—not as an isolated event, but as an ongoing form of urban production, negotiation, and transformation.
Input session with Dr. Gal Kirn.
Vernissage: 10.07.2025, Versuchshaus Lübeck.
Critical Cartographies
Students:
Elena Römer
Fatmanur Avci
Halil Simsek
Jan-Luca Jansen
Johanna Horchler
Lea Reents
Luca Wloch
Lucia Loriga
Merle Klintworth
Niklas Duppach
Sukhmani Sandhu
Tamara Lazar
Literature selection:
Sara Ahmed (2004)—Affective Economies
Michel de Certeau (1980)—Die Kunst des Handelns
Mustafa Dikeç (2017)—Urban Rage: The Revolt of the Excluded
Keller Easterling (2014)—Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space
Natasha Ginwala, Gal Kirn & Niloufar Tajeri (Hrsg.) (2021)—Nights of the Dispossessed: Riots Unbound
David Harvey (2012)—Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution
bell hooks (1990)—Choosing the Margins: The Will to Change
Judith Butler (2011)—Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street
Henri Lefebvre (1968)—The Right to the City
Henri Lefebvre (1970)—From the City to Urban Society
James C. Scott (1985)—Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance