Spaziergangswissenschaft

 

 

Perception in Motion: A Stroll through Paris in the Spirit of Lucius Burckhardt

The photographs featured in this article were taken during a journey to Paris in 2025. More than just visual impressions, they reflect a particular way of engaging with urban space—one inspired by Lucius Burckhardt’s theory of strollology.

Rethinking Space through Perception

Lucius Burckhardt, sociologist and economist, introduced strollology as a means to critically explore how landscapes and urban spaces are perceived1. For Burckhardt, perceiving is not merely seeing—it is discovering new perspectives, noticing the unfamiliar, and reflecting on one’s own cognitive filters.
In this view, space is not objective; it is a construct of perception, inherently ambiguous and shaped by individual experience.

The Dynamic Nature of Perception

French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that perception is not passive reception, but a living and dynamic process2. Influenced by the Greek term aisthesis, from which the word aesthetics derives, perception is understood as an active, embodied interaction with the world3. The subject becomes a participant in the experience—not just an observer, but a co-creator of meaning.

Movement as a Medium of Understanding

From a constructivist perspective, walking through a landscape—or a city—becomes a process of learning. Individuals actively integrate new impressions into existing cognitive structures4. This movement through space is both experiential and epistemological: it fosters awareness of the city as both a material and social creation.

Paris as a Living Text

Urban environments like Paris serve as rich, layered texts. They demand to be read, felt, and interpreted. The city is not static; it responds to those who move through it.
The images presented here capture moments of resonance between perception and place—snapshots of an ongoing dialogue between observer and environment.

The photographs, taken during a journey to Paris in 2025, document such moments of conscious spatial appropriation. They reveal not only places, but traces of a specific mode of perception—a subjective, process-oriented way of seeing, as described by the theory of strollology.

References

  1. Burckhardt, L. (2021). Why is landscape beautiful? The theory of strollology. Martin Schmitz Verlag.
  2. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1966). Phenomenology of Perception. Berlin: de Gruyter.
  3. Schürmann, A., Meyer-Drawe, K., & Wulf, C. (2000). Figurations of Learning. Munich: Fink Verlag.
  4. Ibid.; see also Burckhardt (2021).

 

 

 

 

Triptych Anthropocene

 

 

 

The intervention and use of nature is possible even at heights where agriculture no longer plays a role. Hydropower is an important source of energy in Austria and is endangered by climate change. The photographs show an aesthetic approach
to how human intervention in nature creates new forms and dependencies.

 

The view of the Pasterze on the Grossglockner massif is also a farewell. The knowledge of glacier melt on the environment is known, but the exact effects are still uncertain. The glacier and its beauty are evident, the disappearance of it inevitable. The photographs want to express an emotional point of view more than a documentation.

Was macht man denn so in Polen?

Mir begegnet in Deutschland, als auch in Polen oft die Frage, warum es mich so oft nach Polen zieht und warum ich mir die Mühe gemacht habe, Polnisch zu lernen. Da es mir bei der Antwort meist die Sprache verschlägt, versucht die Bilderreihe darauf einzugehen. Denn das Land bietet mehr als Kaczyński, die Kirche und Karol Wojtyła.

Weiß-Nicht-Russland

Verbildlicht die Farbe Weiß, die Leerstelle im Wissen über das Land Weißrussland? Mit dem Essay „Weiß-Nicht-Russland “ gibt Barbara Standke einen Einblick in die kunstgeschichtliche Bedeutung des Landes.

Der Essay wurde veröffentlicht im Campus-Magazin „Lautschrift“ der Universität Regensburg und auf dem Onlineportal der „Baltischen Rundschau“.

Super Märkte! in Rumänien

Märkte in Cluj-Napoca

barbara_4

Tandemprojek der Universität Regensburg 2012

Kann man in einer Woche einen Einblick in die rumänische Kultur bekommen? Wo gibt es ein Treffen von unterschiedlichen Bevölkerungsschichten? Dieser Frage ist Barbara Standke während demTandemprojekt der Universität Regnsburg nachgegangen und hat sieben Tage auf Märkten in Rumänien recherchiert. Der Bericht ist eine Ländererfahrung, der alle Sinne anspricht.

 

 

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