TY - CHAP

T1 - White on Black

T2 - Snow in the City, Skiing in Copenhagen

AU - Reeh, Henrik

N1 - Bidraget rummer seks digitalfotografier ved forfatteren

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - Snowfall transforms the city in sensory and practical terms. Sometimes it is even possible to ski in the city. Such an event may promote an intense and altered experience of space, body and the self. All of a sudden, the urban walker is transformed into a skier, as well as the dark cityscape of horizontal surfaces and rectangular forms take on a white appearance and a whole new geometry. Moreover, an altered acoustic but also new forms of social reciprocity come about and soon affect the skier's perception of places and people. In addition to six digital photographs of nightly urban snowscapes by the author, and to a series of personal notes on a skiing experiment in central Copenhagen, this essay addresses the issue of urban snowscape by way of Walter Benjamin’s writings exploring snow in Moscow and Berlin of the early 20th century. Six short chapters – ”State of Exception”, ”The Physics of Snow”, ”New Spaces and Forms”, ”Humans in the Night”, ”A Project of Photography” and ”At Home Again” – add up to a mimetically based reflection on the somaesthetic potentials of urban snow and skiing in contemporary urbanity.

AB - Snowfall transforms the city in sensory and practical terms. Sometimes it is even possible to ski in the city. Such an event may promote an intense and altered experience of space, body and the self. All of a sudden, the urban walker is transformed into a skier, as well as the dark cityscape of horizontal surfaces and rectangular forms take on a white appearance and a whole new geometry. Moreover, an altered acoustic but also new forms of social reciprocity come about and soon affect the skier's perception of places and people. In addition to six digital photographs of nightly urban snowscapes by the author, and to a series of personal notes on a skiing experiment in central Copenhagen, this essay addresses the issue of urban snowscape by way of Walter Benjamin’s writings exploring snow in Moscow and Berlin of the early 20th century. Six short chapters – ”State of Exception”, ”The Physics of Snow”, ”New Spaces and Forms”, ”Humans in the Night”, ”A Project of Photography” and ”At Home Again” – add up to a mimetically based reflection on the somaesthetic potentials of urban snow and skiing in contemporary urbanity.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Urban culture

KW - Walter Benjamin

KW - Roland Barthes

KW - Copenhagen

KW - Moscow

KW - Berlin

KW - Urban snow

KW - Urban skiing

KW - Urbanity

KW - Nighttime light

KW - Photography

KW - Analog photography

KW - Digital photography

KW - Cityscape

KW - Darkness

KW - Color photography

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-90-04-41112-8

T3 - Studies in Somaesthetics

SP - 60

EP - 85

BT - Bodies in the Street

A2 - Shusterman, Richard

PB - Brill

ER -