Paola Berenstein-Jacques

Paola Berenstein-Jacques is an architect and urban planner with a doctorate in art history. She is Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Federal University of Bahia. She is a researcher at the National Scientific Council (CNPq/Brazil). She is scientific leader of the Laboratório Urbano Research Group (PPG-AU/FAUFBA): https://www.laboratoriourbano.ufba.br/

The project

Title: The principle of urban montage in Walter Benjamin: the case of the presentation of the city of Paris in the Passages work (Das Passagen-Werk).

The modern city is an enigma for Walter Benjamin. By studying the way in which he recounted his own urban experience, in several different cities in the 1920s and 1930s, as a plurality of different urban fragments, which are assembled, disassembled and disassembled and reassembled in a procedural manner, we understand that he has always resorted to a "puzzle"-like game of montage. Benjamin thus offers us another way of approaching, presenting and understanding cities undergoing transformation (the intense urban modernization of the 1920s and 1930s), one that does not seek to master or reduce their complexity, and one that can certainly show us, even today, other methodological avenues, ways of understanding and narrating urban experiences, pointing us to other ways of understanding cities undergoing transformation or, as we dare to imagine, another urban epistemology. This alternative way of presenting cities is based on three principles: the medium of reflection, the image-thought-city and urban montage.

Hosting institution: Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie – UMR LAVUE 7218 CNRS

Selective Bibliography

• M comme Montage Urbain. Abécédaire de la Transformation Urbaine. Paris : éditions BOA, 2023.
• Enigma das cidades. Ensaio de epistemologia urbana em Walter Benjamin (avec Rita Velloso). Belo Horizonte : Cosmópolis, 2023.  
• Pensamentos Selvagens. Montagem de uma outra herança 2. Salvador : EDUFBA, 2021.
• « Salvador, Campus Ondina UFBA ». In: Alessia de Biase (dir.) Regards sous contrainte. Carnet de terrain d’un monde pandémique. Paris : éditions BOA, 2021.
• « Urban Improvisations ». In: Alessandro Bertinetto; Marcello Ruta. (dir.). The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts. London : Routledge, 2021.
• Fantasmas modernos. Montagem de uma outra herança 1. Salvador : EDUFBA, 2020.