Open Set Seminar session #5 - Traces of Rhythms: Heritage, Data and Fiction

Caroline Nevejan Irina Shapiro Pinar Sefkatli +1

8 December 2018, 10.00–13.00 | Location: CBK Zuidoost

In this session we will examine the following: the agency of rhythmical narratives and how they affect social dynamics and knowledge production; artistic and research practices of developing narratives; and filters in urban and historical narratives, which amplify some rhythms and withdraw or overwrite others.

Rhythm on any scale is an abstraction until it becomes part of a narrative. This is the case whether the narrative is fictional or factual and recognized as ‘history’. For instance, the data on the intensity and dynamics of a transportation network in a city remains just a number unless it’s contextualized within the cultural, economic and environmental data. Or, the significance of a particular event for a city can be observed in connection with cultural developments or other happenings. The meaning of a rhythm, or rather the interpretation of such a meaning, emerges through a narrative, which makes rhythms debateable and translatable. The translation, which is never neutral, creates a new meaning and a new rhythm itself in urban and social fabrics.