i Ring: a practice-based research within Berlin's circular train line
Valeria Schwarz - work in progress since 2009
Railways, a symbol per se from the industrial era, were created in the city to ensure that workers would arrive on time to their working places. Goal-orientated, the industrial model has reduced people to merchandise which has to be transported from one place to the other. So, the urban space became a space to pass through instead of a place to inhabit. Time minimization, extreme individualism, standardization and regulation of the public space are also consequences of this way of organizing reality in which interchange is based on economic interest. How to re-appropriate then a place specifically created under the necessities of capital production? How to re-imagine this interstitial space, the public space, where power is encoded?
i Ring investigates the social connections that characterize the culture of mobility as well as the mobility of culture within the urban landscape. The virtual world has shown that people with different backgrounds do not need to know each other to create a community and share their culture in form of information. By temporarily creating a state of communication and interchange between people sharing by chance a trajectory inside Berlin's circular train line, S41, i Ring explores how to encourage people to become creative and reflective individuals aware of themselves as part of a community of citizens. Using the knowledge acquired throughout the process, i Ring aims to promote the access and exchange of a mobile, flexible, participatory culture available to all people.
Originally based on the cyclic, ever-mutating concept of time found in the Chinese classic text, i Ching, i Ring is a mobile laboratory operating since 2009 in Berlin's circular train line, S41. Conceived as a practice-based research project it is concentrated on the investigation of people's mobility and the articulation of this experience in contemporary society. The collaborative platform develops hybrid strategies in order to reinvent everyday life in the public space and change the way people understand the urban contemporary landscape by using the logic of art and game playing as a socio-poetic strategy. In fact, i Ring structures its practice around the creation of a playful state that is simultaneously a collective state of communication and interchange. i Ring creates sceneries in which each individual contributes to the creation of consensus that produces a trajectory towards a transitory goal. The difference with the industrial model is that the establishment of this consensus becomes more relevant than the goal itself. i Ring works ultimately on how to propose alternative forms of social organization. Through participation citizens are temporarily disengaged from their role as isolated, passive, and observant consumers of information, merchandise, and services and thus increase their consciousness as potential changers of society.
