rePLACE is a project initiated in 2007 by PROGRAM and Transit Lounge.

The rituals of everyday life trace regular paths along streets and through buildings, organising the solids and voids of the built environment into narratives and patterns of association. Complicated by memory and social rituals, our experience of the city is of a dynamic place, a stage for public performances and private tragedies, of significant moments and the incredibly mundane. The habits, rituals, and actions of its population, the lived experiences within the city define it as something that is always current, always in constant, random movement.

RePLACE BERLIN began in 2007 by a public invitation to reconsider the city as an active process of documenting time and place inseparable from our everyday, lived experience. This year the project expands to Beirut and Beijing and returns again to Berlin, where we seek to retread the city in this new phase of rePLACE. Your contribution in text, image or sound is requested such that we can further these alternative, collective understandings of how the city both literally and metaphorically vibrates, or where 'the beaten track' runs rich with/counter to personal knowledge, memory and cultural myth.

Please join rePLACE by mapping out a frequent route from your day-to-day life. Record the regular patterns and particular moments associated with your journey, then simply follow the instructions to upload your route as well as text, images, video and/or sound documenting observations and discoveries made along the way.

Through the various stages of the project, rePLACE seeks to provide a way to understand the city, not only through its built spaces, but in the ways its residents are interacting with it in their daily lives — the routes we follow and the moments where these routes cross, overlap or run tangent to each other. This is foremost a reconsideration of history and image-making outside of our traditional understandings of these terms, where forms of heritage preservation can go beyond passive historicisation and generate living processes to actively celebrate the city-in-flux.

*Participate now by submitting your own route online at http://berlin.re-place.info.

WORKSHOP // BERLIN, 18-26 JUNE

As part of this next stage of rePLACE Berlin, a workshop will be organized to consider the online collection of routes as a jumping off point for (re)experiencing the city via the stories and routes of the people living here. Workshop participants will follow the submitted routes, documenting and reconrding with video,photography and sound their observations as led through the words of our guides. Specific points from certain routes will be chosen as 'landmarks' for further research, creating a series of visual and historical investigations into the placeness of the city's inhabitants.

Please check the website or e-mail us for more information. If you are interested to participate in the workshop, please sign up with your name, occupation and a brief statement of interest at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

IMAGE 1:

submitted by JN, male, 23

2-5 hours, walking, 3-4 times a week

I leave my house at the strange Nikolaiviertel village and head straight away from Alex as quickly as possible, under the S-bahn bridge at Hackesher Markt and up Rosenthaler Strasse. Crossing Torstrasse and heading up Brunnenstrasse, I go say hi to my favorite Goff&Rosenthal employee, then continue my walk straight up Brunnenstrasse until Bernauer Strasse. Hang a left, cross the street, and it's gallery employee #2 at Feinkost. Maybe I use the restroom, maybe not; I bid him adieu and head down Bernauer Strasse, due east until Nordbahnhof. Further east down Invalidenstrasse I poke my head into Program to find employee-friend #3, maybe I check my email on his computer, maybe not; maybe we get a coffee across the street, maybe not. I say byebye and make a left onto Chauseestrasse, moving on a few blocks until Wilde Gallery to see friends #4, 5 & 6. An espresso and a cookie later, back to the street and heading home, down Chauseestrasse/Friedrichstrasse, left onto Oranienburger Strasse, through Hackesher Markt again and, passing Marks&Engel, maybe I sit on a bench and read for a while in the sun, maybe not. All in a day's work.

IMAGE 2:

submitted by JR, female, 36
20-30 min, bicycle, daily

This ride is something that I had to continually refine as the location of 'home' changed a number of times during my residency with Transit Lounge at the Josetti Hofe Studio in Berlin. It is my morning route from home to the studio. The first version starts at Frankfurter Allee 150, exit the high rise and cycle along the main road towards Frankfurter Allee U-Bahn. Cross over and turn left at the lights under the railway and right at the first street into Friedrichshain, then follow your whimsy and intuition depending on how you feel that day until you get to the diagonally opposite side of the area. Sometimes I go further along to turn right at Boxhagener Str. (stopping for a coffee at the trendy old icecream shop on the right) diverging into Krossener Str. until Boxhagener Platz, then left at Gartner Str, cross over to Wuhlich Str and cycle for a while until you get to Simon-Dach Str, turn left and then right at the club on Revaler Str to get up to Warschaeur Str. Jodi Rose

rePLACE is a project initiated in 2007 by PROGRAM and Transit Lounge. rePLACE BERLIN and rePLACE BEIRUT are supported in 2011 by the  Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures, the Arab Image Foundation, PROGRAM and Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development. rePLACE BEIJING is supported by HomeShop.