Takes place every Saturday. 

// For Dates and Location, please scroll down // 

Portable Polis is a Berlin-wide public-participation project based on oral, close reading of texts by German-American thinker Hannah Arendt. One of Arendt's singular goals was to place serious thinking in the world where it is most needed. As such, readings will occur at sites around Berlin from texts related to the activities and focus of the site where each session occurs.  The aim of Portable Polis is to experience the city's activities and places by examining, as Arendt does, the language, history, and distinctions in our condition. Like a treasure hunt, the goal is to practice, once a week, a kind of proto-polis, a gathering of people to consider a shared thing or concern, in public, around the city, and so to discover and recover a treasure Arendt considered "lost." Thinking the separation and relation of sites and their activities, while being in them, is part of the work. Following the theme of ZK/U's Hacking Urban Furniture project, participants will read aloud from a short piece or excerpt from Arendt around a table or a similar shared type of urban furniture. No prior experience with Arendt or any advance or concurrent reading is required. All sessions are free and open to the public. The ZK/U website will post the site, theme, location, and a map.  People are encouraged to join at any point, or best of all, to experience the investigation in its entireity. The first six sessions will be dedicated to The Human Condition and its chapter on "the public and the private," including the crucial section on "the rise of the social." The next two sessions will be on the refugee question, drawing on Arendt's extraordinary text from the early 1940s, "We Refugees." We will then turn to the subject of the difference between work and labor, so crucial to her work from Marx, and end, at the end of July, with her essay on Gotthold Lessing, concerned with what "humanity" might be for us in potentially dark times. Sessions will be on Saturdays 1-4pm. Paper copies of the texts read will be provided at each site (listed below), though obtaining a copy of the book The Human Condition is suggested. Use of electronic devices is heavily discouraged. Sessions are in English, and where necessary foreign and German language versions can serve as accompaniment. Portable Polis is a project devised and led by Fred Dewey, teacher, activist, independent scholar, and author of The School of Public Life (errant bodies/doormats, 2015). He is based in Los Angeles, and in Berlin since 2010. Dewey began The Hannah Arendt Working Group in Los Angeles in the '90s and has since conducted it around Berlin, in a squat in London, a university in Oslo (and Berlin), and a self-organized space in Amsterdam. Working language is english. Copies of the text will be provided at the site. Participation is free of charge, a continuous participation will be appreciated.

See also on our Hacking-Urban-Furniture Webpage: http://www.hackingurbanfurniture.net/portable-polis/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1245353395590313/

13.05.17 / Launch: Private Apartment, Selchower Str. 22, 12049 Berlin Neukölln // from The Human Condition, 1958, Chapter II, "The Public and Private Realm" 20.05.17 / ZK/U Siemensstr. 27, 10551 Berlin Moabit // "The Public and Private Realm" continued 27.05.17/ Archive Kabinett, Müllerstraße 133, HH, 13349 Berlin Wedding // "The Public and Private Realm" continued 03.06.17 / Südblock, Kotti circle, Admiralstr. 1-2, 10999 Berlin Kreuzberg // "The Public and Private Realm" continued 10.06.17 / Südblock, Kotti circle, Admiralstr. 1-2, 10999 Kotti circle, Berlin Kreuzberg // "The Public and Private Realm" continued 17.06.17 / Die Laube im Prinzessinnengarten, Prinzenstr. 35-38 (Moritzplatz), 10969 Berlin Kreuzberg // "The Public and Private Realm" continued 24.06.17 / ZUsammenKUNFT, Stresemannstr. 95 10963 Berlin Kreuzberg // "We Refugees," 1943, The Menorah Journal 01.07.17 / ZUsammenKUNFT, Stresemannstr. 95 10963 Berlin Kreuzberg // "We Refugees" continued 08.07.17 / Förderband, Torstraße 150 10119 Berlin Mitte // from The Portable Hannah Arendt, "Labor, Work, Action," 1964 15.07.17 / Kotti & Co, Gecekondu (wooden shack) Admiralstr. 1-2, 10999 Berlin Kreuzberg // from Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951, "Decline of the Nation State; End of Rights of Man," on the Right to Rights 22.07.17 / Pro QM, Almstadtstr. 48-50 10119 Berlin Mitte // "Labor, Work, Action" continued 29.07.17 / Final Session: From the Holocaust Memorial to the Lessing Statue Meet at Arendtstr. & Ebertstr. (Holocaust Memorial), walk together to the statue in SW Tiergarten 10117 Berlin Tiergarten // from Men in Dark Times, excerpt from "On Humanity in Dark Times (Lessing)," 1959