Making Cultural Values out of Urban Ruins: Re-enactments of Atmospheres

This article calls for a consideration of the reuse aesthetics of urban ruins in terms of cultural valuations related to the political status of social practices. In the context of debates on ruins in the field of memory studies and along the division between politics and the political, I argue for the recognition of affective atmospheric practices based upon performative knowledge-making and reenactments of atmospheres from the past. As demonstrated by an example of reuse in Berlin in the 2000s, these practices recall rituals and routines from the pasts of ruins by performatively exploring their futures. This position will be critically situated within the debate about “socially engaged arts” and the neoliberal “creative city” policies in the city of Berlin. It will also be presented as a cultural value-making in conflict with the paradigm of historical reconstruction in architecture and planning aimed at creating architectural replications from the archive. The article concludes with a reflection on reenactments as cultural value-making, a perspective that may have an effect on heritage policies.