with Carolin Genz

Meeting point: Schillingbrücke (by YAAM), Friedrichshain/Kreuzberg
Google Co-Ordinates

Accessibility:
 - The meeting point is approximately 5 minutes from Ostbahnhof (S3, S5, S7, S9, RE1, RE2, RE7, RB14), or 15 minutes from Jannowitzbrücke (S3, S5, S7, S9, U8). Both stations listed have step-free access. https://wheelmap.org/node/3419894993
- The route is mostly wheelchair accessible. Please contact us in advance so we can support any access needs.
- Accessible bathrooms are available at Ostbahnhof station.
- Rest-points made available en route.
- Access contact: cruisingcurators@gmail.com.

This performance takes the form of a guided walk along the Mediaspree area, a site that has undergone drastic transformation over the past decades. Once a contested urban space, it now stands as a concrete symbol of neoliberal urban development, despite persistent and long-standing protests, including a citizen referendum. Performers turn the walk into a living echo of Berlin’s lost promise of affordable housing. Walking the Walls serves as a moving act of remembrance and resistance, revisiting past efforts and highlighting the ongoing struggle for housing justice in Berlin.

The two-hour walk, led by Carolin Genz, will include dialogical exchanges exploring the historical, cultural, and political context of the route, as well as performative interactions along the way. The event is a collaboration with the Urban Ethnography Lab and features special guest Diana Lucas-Drogan, who will trace the walk through live mapping.

Carolin Genz is an anthropologist working at the intersection of spatial research and urban design. Combining artistic and ethnographic methods, her practice explores the shifting geographies of urban imaginaries and contested narratives of everyday life. She focuses on socio-spatial practices related to housing, protest, gender, and aging, using multimodal techniques that combine qualitative and visual inquiry. Carolin is a co-founder of the Urban Ethnography Lab (UELab), established in 2017.

Urban Ethnography Lab: The UELab adopts creative, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches at the intersection of architecture, design, art, and urban anthropology to uncover the underlying logic of cities’ social and built environments. Through multimodal fieldwork and collaborative research, we examine the urban everyday—its social and spatial practices, interactions, architectures, and infrastructures.

Special Guest: Diana Lucas-Droganis a trained architect and works as a planner, developing a performative and critical spatial practice for municipalities and universities. In her artistic work, she weaves feminist methods into mappings and performances. Diana enjoys opening boxes — to subvert dichotomies.

PATH 3: STREETS AND PROTEST (on movements and demonstrations)
With contributions from Elena Biserna, Carolin Genz, Mahshid Mahboubifar, Suelen Calonga, Rüzgâr Buşki

Protest means disturbing, interrupting, or altering social rhythms; it sets something static into motion or halts something that is moving too fast. Streets are a stage for protest, and today, they become ever more critical spaces where collective movement through public space creates a context for citizens from different backgrounds and social spheres to urgently assert their voices and seek change.

This Path explores how walking, marching, occupying, and gathering in public space become acts of resistance. From women walking at night as a gesture of reclamation (Elena Biserna), protesting gentrification and the housing crisis in Berlin (Carolin Genz); to collecting evidences of police violence against peaceful demonstrations (Mahshid Mahboubifar), disrupting the institutional forgetting embedded in colonial museum collections (Suelen Calonga), and community screenprinting of protest banners (Rüzgâr Buşki) ‒ each contribution reimagines how movement resists, remembers, and reclaims.