Urban Explorations through Chemnitz. Performative-narrative Cartographies of Urban Space – conception of an audio-visual method. (Working title)

The lack of including emotional, atmospheric and experienced aspects in urban planning processes is one initial focal point for my PhD thesis. Thinking about the necessity to explore these characteristics of urban space, one question addressed is how inhabitants perceive and experience their everyday surroundings, and how they feel concerning urban environments. According to atmospheric approaches and Lefebvre´s production of Space, which shape the analytical frame, I am developing an empirical approach on how to make multi-sensory and fleeting aspects tangible, visible and comprehensible. Focusing on the practices of seeing, remembering and formulating places I am using a mixed methods approach. The conception of my empirical approach is based on the ethnographical method of go-alongs extended through photo documentation by the participants as well as gathering GPS data of the walk. In order to (re)present the atmospheric aspects and analyse the different layers and diverse perspectives, I combine the audio sequences and photos into small clips because the usual way of transcription does not fulfil the complexity of the gathered data. This performative draft can be seen as another »writing« of geographies and the additional combination with GPS creates a sketch that “maps” the emotional, the atmospheric and experienced aspects.