Poems can be found in public spaces in many cities: in subways from New York to Seoul, on facades in Charlotte and Leiden, on billboards in London, on notes in parks in Hamburg and Vienna, on bookmarks raining down from an airplane in Berlin and Milan – to name just a few examples.
In an interdisciplinary research project that brings together approaches from literary studies and urban sociology, we are not only interested in the aesthetics of these different works. Public poetry is also investigated by looking at the production of space through poetry at concrete sites. Our theoretical background thus relies on approaches from poetics, art theory, and interdisciplinary theories of space; its empirical approaches include on-site exploration and interviews with passers-by, locals, poets, and initiators.
The lecture will present the theoretical foundations of the study and exemplary analyses of two or three poetry projects from our mutual book publication in progress (to appear in 2023).
 

Claudia Benthien Professor, Modern German literature at the Institute of German Language and Literature, Universität Hamburg, and Principal Investigator “Poetry in the Digital Age” (ERC). Main research interests: literature and cultural theory, visual culture, contemporary poetry. Publications i.a.: The Literariness of Media Art, with Jordis Lau and Maraike M. Marxsen, London/New York: Routledge, 2019; „Public Poetry: Encountering the Lyric in Urban Space”, in: International Journal for Comparative Cultural Studies 2 (2021): 345-367.

Norbert Gestring Dr., Dipl. , urban sociologist at the Institute of Social Sciences, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. Main research interests: urban development and public space, migration and integration. Publications i.a.: Urbanität im 21. Jahrhundert, ed. with Jan Wehrheim. Frankfurt a.M., New York: Campus, 2018; Stadt und soziale Bewegungen, ed. with Renate Ruhne and Jan Wehrheim. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2014.
 

• Aesthetic seminar Poster
• Aesthetic seminar Programme

Aesthetic seminar is organized by Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen and Morten Kyndrup on behalf of School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University.