Eine Plattform für die Wissenschaft: Bauingenieurwesen, Architektur und Urbanistik
Eine Plattform für die Wissenschaft: Bauingenieurwesen, Architektur und Urbanistik
Pfand and bottles: drinking patterns in the city
The urban life is characterized by objects we normally don’t notice. Invisible even though in plain sight, they actually reveal habits and activities of the recent past. The empty containers of beverage are an effective example of this “politics of little things” in urban life: their ubiquitous presence in the city brings to light and clearly proves the centrality of drinking. One of the co-authors, Elena, started taking pictures of abandoned bottles in Berlin as a way of registering a typical German habit: leaving bottles (whose deposit is worth 8 to 25 cents) for the next poor or homeless person is arguably the most common act of kindness. The photo project, which is the basis for our article, now includes other cities and the pictures will be published in an Instagram profile, @pfandosophy. Abandoned bottles reveal urban drinking patterns: bottles or cans are left next to the bins, but also piled up in the corners of a nightlife street, thrown against walls with an iconoclastic punk attitude, or gracefully located on urban furniture and monuments, as ironic and ephemeral finalization of the architecture. In every case, bottles are the material reference of the various modalities of drinking in the city, as an individual and collective practice, in capitalistic subsumption and politically planned contexts as well as in resistant or marginalized situations. At the same time, their presence is not planned nor intentional, it is an overflow: bottles break the floodgates of the waste stream and spread in the city, where they become a normal presence, allow for the creation of new practices, and gain a second life as as material symbols.
Pfand and bottles: drinking patterns in the city
The urban life is characterized by objects we normally don’t notice. Invisible even though in plain sight, they actually reveal habits and activities of the recent past. The empty containers of beverage are an effective example of this “politics of little things” in urban life: their ubiquitous presence in the city brings to light and clearly proves the centrality of drinking. One of the co-authors, Elena, started taking pictures of abandoned bottles in Berlin as a way of registering a typical German habit: leaving bottles (whose deposit is worth 8 to 25 cents) for the next poor or homeless person is arguably the most common act of kindness. The photo project, which is the basis for our article, now includes other cities and the pictures will be published in an Instagram profile, @pfandosophy. Abandoned bottles reveal urban drinking patterns: bottles or cans are left next to the bins, but also piled up in the corners of a nightlife street, thrown against walls with an iconoclastic punk attitude, or gracefully located on urban furniture and monuments, as ironic and ephemeral finalization of the architecture. In every case, bottles are the material reference of the various modalities of drinking in the city, as an individual and collective practice, in capitalistic subsumption and politically planned contexts as well as in resistant or marginalized situations. At the same time, their presence is not planned nor intentional, it is an overflow: bottles break the floodgates of the waste stream and spread in the city, where they become a normal presence, allow for the creation of new practices, and gain a second life as as material symbols.
Pfand and bottles: drinking patterns in the city
Elena Caccin (Autor:in) / Fabio Bertoni (Autor:in)
2019
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Unbekannt
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