Capacity to Develop Lasting Cooperation with the Third Country

This research project has high capacity to develop lasting cooperation with Canada. Via his reintegration at the Center for German Studies, Dr. Markin will obtain an opportunity for joining, coordinating and advancing research efforts that scholars from the University of Alberta and elsewhere in Canada undertake. The doctoral supervisor of Dr. Markin, Prof. Shields is of international reputation. This enables developing cooperative relations that can take form of co-authored articles, research collaboration, co-edited books, and on-line initiatives. Prof. Shields works on the interface between English and French social and cultural theory, whereas Dr. Markin explores connections between English, French and German theory. This creates an opportunity for a fruitful cooperation in the future that will concentrate on the research of relations between space and culture. Since the University of Alberta is the home campus of the Space and Culture Journal, it is to be expected that Dr. Markin will be publishing a significant part of his articles in this journal. Additionally, Prof. Shields is a member of the editorial board of the Theory, Culture and Society Journal. Though the journal is highly reputed internationally, it is yet to have an Israeli scholar as part of either its editorial board or its associate editors team. Upon his reintegration in Israel, Dr. Markin may seek to assume some of the editorial duties of either of these journals.

Additionally, given the extensive academic contacts of Prof. Shields with Brazilian academics - he has spent his sabbatical in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, in 2007-08 -, it is a possibility that Dr. Markin will develop tri-lateral academic networks between Israel, Canada and Brazil with a research focus on art biennials, especially since there is a long-established Sao Paolo Biennale that can be an important point of comparison in the eventual theoretical sample of these events. As a collaborator of Dr. Odile Cisneros from the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies of the University of Alberta on topics of Latin-American, and especially Brazilian, avant-garde and literature, Dr. Markin can maintain and build on his contacts accumulated during his doctoral program. In view that Russia has launched Moscow biennale in 2005, there is great interest in collaboration with Dr. Markin on the part of Dr. Elena Siemens from the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies who specializes in post-Soviet contemporary culture, urban studies and critical theory. As a member of Dr. Markin's expanded examination committee, Dr. Siemens is well acquainted with his work and is greatly inclined to take part in research projects that address the relations between art biennials and urban space.

Art biennials being network-oriented institutions, there is a growing participation of cultural, urban and regional studies periodicals in the series of lectures and conferences that accompany these biennial events. The simultaneous growth in the numbers of high-quality peer-reviewed on-line journals, such as Fast Capitalism of whose editorial board Prof. Shields is a part, allows relations of co-operation to extend globally. A case in point is Prof. Charles Barbour from the Department of Sociology whose scholarly interests range from social theory to Italian philosophy. He is recently appointed as a professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney, Australia. His involvement in Dr. Markin's work on his dissertation has laid a strong foundation for their future collaboration on subjects of theory and aesthetics.

Potential of Transferring Knowledge to Host

This research project has high potential of transferring knowledge to the Center for German Studies that hosts it. Over the years of its implementation, this research project can establish and develop working relations between the Center for German Studies and Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin, Germany. In addition, this research project will acquire a trilateral dimension via collaboration with the Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy. This research can join forces with Prof. Mario Perniola's research projects, hosted at the Tor Vergata University, on German theorists of new aesthetics as they relate to art biennials, urban space, and global culture. Dr. Markin actively maintains his contacts with Prof. Rob Shields, a Tory Marshall Chair at the Departments of Art History and Sociology, and Prof. Massimo Verdicchio from the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, who served at his doctoral supervisory committee. With Prof. Shields, his doctoral supervisor, there is a possibility to conduct a joint research project on alternative global culture capitals that will transfer valuable knowlegde both to the hosting Center for German Studies and to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, since contacts between Israeli and Canadian academics continue to be rare and possible collaborative projects are a unique opportunity to mutually introduce to each other these different academic environments. These perspectives do not exclude avenues of multi-lateral cooperation since Dr. Markin has also established contacts with Prof. Richard Münch and Prof. Gerhard Schulze from the Sociology Department of Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg, Germany, who represent the more interesting directions of development of contemporary sociology. As he was finishing his doctoral degree, Dr. Markin has secured an invitation for a research stay at the University of Bamberg from Prof. Richard Münch that it will be possible to activate during his reintegration at the Center for German Studies.

The willingness of both Prof. Wolfgang Kaschuba from Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin, and Prof. Mario Perniola from the Tor Vergata University of Rome to take part in collaborative research projects, such as this research project, bodes well for the potential that it can have for its results. In the form of working papers, conference proceedings and inter-personal contacts, the results of this research project will not only serve the mission of the Center for German Studies of the Hebrew University but also promote the information and knowledge exchange between academics, artists and curators who are engaged in Israeli art scene. For example, Prof. Gannit Ankori from the Art History Department and Prof. Ruth Hacohen-Pinchover from the Music Studies Deparment of the Hebrew University have both expressed their interest in the works of Prof. Perniola since they offer philosophical perspectives that go beyond the Euro-centric project of Enlightnement towards the exploration of new forms of aesthetic sensibility. Likewise, Prof. Jeanette Malkin from the Theatre Studies Department of the Hebrew University finds that that re-reading of classical authors of German social and cultural theory, such as Georg Simmel, in light of contemproary sociology can lead to insightful perspectives on theatre and performance studies.

Feasibility and Credibility of Research Project

This research project is feasible and credible because it proposes to explore the models of urban development that go beyond linear economic growth and it takes place on the background of macro-processes of critical re-assessment of the extant models of capitalist development. A culture-oriented urban growth is providing cities around the world with rationales to justify the creation of various cultural clusters that without further research into the circumstances of their success, as in Bilbao, or failure, as in Baltimore, is yet to become an accepted point of policy-making, social theoretical and city-transformational reference. Between the claims for uniqueness of every city or state and comparability of urban locations, there lies a process of paradigmatic cities, such as New York or Paris, serving as models for urban development strategies around the world. Signature buildings, representative landscapes and urban design routinely inspire efforts to revitalize cities that seek competitive advantage in inter-urban competition. This research project argues that drawing interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary connections around a precisely defined kind of urban spaces, that of art biennials, can generate theoretical, historical and situated insights that will easily lend themselves for adoption by specialists active in the fields of urban, policy and cultural studies.

An analytically realist approach applied to art biennials will selectively take into account those aspects of these events that are highly relevant to the theoretical framework on which this research seeks to elaborate. In this research project, the focus is on urban spaces of global culture. This approach to art biennials, considered from the perspective of spaces that they activate, makes manageable not only case-studies of each biennial series separately but also their comparisons across cities where they take place. Taking urban spaces as common denominators for this comparative research can credibly lead to its carrying out within the chosen interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary network of research centers and international scholars. A closer consideration of either contexts or contents of art biennials would put into question the soundness of both theoretical and methodological assumptions of such a research since it is important that research data compose a sample, have a variation and correlate amongst each other. There is a strong empirical basis to argue that art biennials, urban spaces, and global culture enter into meaningfully interpretable relations across the cities that deploy promotional strategies that make culture their center-piece.

The positioning of the urban spaces where art biennials take place provides an important source of information on the process of reformulation of urban development strategies in cultural terms. Whether these processes of increasing presence of festivals and biennials on city calendars allow to redescribe them as grounds for stating that a culture-driven development of modern capitalism is taking place is not a question that can be answered inductively. Rather, a multidisciplinary combination of disparate sources of expertise is in order, should a methodologically and theoretically credible answer be tentatively offered. The aims of this research project explicitly pursue this strategy of research design and theory-building.

At this initial stage, the work plan of this research project presupposes progressive clarification of theoretical points that describe the relations between urban spaces and urban culture on the concrete examples of art biennials in Germany, Italy and Israel. To this end, an active set of collaborative relations among the Center for German Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies of Humboldt University of Berlin, and Tor Vergata University of Rome will be sought to be established. Full potential of on-line means of communication will be sought to be utilized for planning, following up, and team working on this research project. The theoretical mandate of this research project seeks to establish a dialogue between classical sociology, especially as it relates to the theorization of culture, and contemporary philosophy, theory and cities. For this reason a series of meetings among the participants in the research project will be sought to be conducted within the framework of a research group coordinated by Dr. Markin. These meetings will set interim goals and assess progress at each stage. Each step of the research project will be vetted by the members of the research team as both its theoretical framework and its sample of art biennials are expected to evolve.

The interdisciplinarity of both the subject-matter and institutional composition of this research project subordinates its work plan to achievement of clearly definable objectives such as establishment of an international research group, publication of its working papers, and participation in public discourse. Tentative work plan for this research project would include establishment of a research group in its first year of operation, engagement of intellectual discourse surrounding art biennials in its second year, participation in discourse over culture as factor of urban development in its third year, and publication in various formats of research results of this project in its fourth year. In no small measure, art biennials serve as prototypes for this work plan as they increasingly cross institutional, cultural, and geographical boundaries in opening up new horizons of cultural dialogue, multidisciplinary cooperation and urban engagement. Frequently networked with scholarly events that take place on their occasion, art biennials store in their materials a fund of knowledge that waits for its second-order organization within a research framework that this project proposes. Therefore, as important part of its work plan is close reading of the primary documents that art biennials generate. Among them are exhibition catalogues, conference proceedings, journal articles, and essay collections. For this research project, these primary sources have to be read for the terms in which urban spaces figure in art biennials as instantiations of global culture. From a methodological point of view, this will represent content analysis of art biennials along the theoretically relevant dimensions of this research design.

This research design is inherently scalable. Addition of art biennials from countries, such as Canada, Brazil or China, into research sample will provide opportunity to qualify the interim conclusions that this research project will have reached.

Practical Arrangements for Implementation and Management

This research project has made practical arrangements that will ensure its successful implementation and management. Dr. Markin has received a preliminary agreement from Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin, Germany, for a research stay as soon as requisite funds become available. As well, Prof. Kaschuba from Georg Simmel Center who has a very relevant research and publication record has given his agreement to take part in a future team research project, especially given its comparative focus on art biennials in Berlin and Jerusalem. In this context, Dr. Jeanette R. Malkin from the Theatre Studies Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has expressed her agreement to act as a scholarly supervisor of this research project. Prof. Gabriel Motzkin, a director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, has expressed his interest in the research project and has given his agreement to take part in it as soon as its formal framework becomes finalized. Given that the initial stages of this research project will take art biennials of Germany, Italy and Israel into consideration, with a further widening of the countries sample being planned, Prof. Mario Perniola, a professor of aesthetics at the Tor Vergata University of Rome and a more well known representative of contemporary Italian philosophy, has agreed to take part in the future research project. Prof. Perniola possesses highly needed expertise on art biennials in Italy. He is a theorist of intellectual and art history who is highly regarded internationaly. These arrangements lay a firm basis for the future research project to succeed.

Additionally, a bridge funding between the completion of his doctoral program by Dr. Markin and the start of his Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant has been secured. As a returning resident, he is eligible for a partial post-doctoral fellowship from the Israeli government. The Center for German Studies has come forward with a matching amount of support to make sure that the reintegration of Dr. Markin takes place in Israel. Though this arrangement puts the start date of Dr. Markin's present stay in his host country before the forthcoming cut-off date for this Marie Curie People Call, this circumstance does not contradict its guidelines. Moreover, presently Dr. Markin has an opportunity to start a smaller scale research project that will lay groundwork for the team research project this research proposal applies for. The current arrangement is intended to be separate from and auxiliary to the prospective framework of the Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant. Dr. Jeanette Malkin, Prof. Wolfgang Kaschuba and Prof. Mario Perniola has been involved in the composition of this research project. They all have expressed their agreement to future cooperation and their support of this research proposal.

As part of the process of its preparation, this research project has been submitted for review by Prof. Bianca Kuhnel, the director of the Center for German Studies and of the European Forum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Significant parts of the research output of this research project will be published in the Working Papers Series of the Center for German Studies.

Quality of Host Organization and its Facilities

The Center for German Studies at the European Forum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is singularly suited to host Dr. Markin within the framework of Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant. As a research and instruction center newly founded with the funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst) obtained on a competitive basis in 2008, the Center for German Studies offers an unparalleled combination of organizational resources, institutional infrastructure and research facilities to promote the aims of recruiting returning and overseas scholars. Falling into the mission of the Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant Call, Dr. Markin will have at his disposal the aid of highly qualified staff of the center, the synergies with nation-wide support for researchers, and the environment of the campus of the Hebrew University where multiple academic event take place every week. In keeping with its aims of strengthening the relations between Israel and Germany, the Center for German Studies will certify the existing level of knowledge of German language of Dr. Markin and create opportunities for its improvement to the level of fluency. This will make it possible for Dr. Markin to collaborate seamlessly with his German colleagues for the duration of his research project and beyond. Moreover, the association of the center with the European Forum, an umbrella unit that furthers the academic relations between the Hebrew University and its counterpart institutions from the European Union, will add an important level of institutional support for the comparative aspects of the proposed research project.

To the quality of the Center for German Studies one must add the many visiting scholars and instructors thst the center hosts throughout the winter, spring and summer semesters. For the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research projects, such as that of Dr. Markin, an on-going exchange of ideas and expertise that contact with visiting faculty enables is an indispensable condition for academic excellence that can stand out internationally. Moreover, having the status of a university department, the Center for German Studies can take full responsibility for the research project and for the reintegration of Dr. Markin at their each stage, which is an important evaluation criterion of the quality of hosting organization and infrastructure. Being part of the Hebrew University allows to the Center for German Studies to be a location for forging strategic contacts with scholars doing cutting-edge research in related areas. This way the strengths of multiple research and disciplinary environments can be pooled from a single organizational base. To this one must add the development of the scientific contacts between Israel and the European Union to which the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has proved to be a contributor of highest caliber. The facilities of the Hebrew University relevant to this research project include expanding holdings of its campus library, instant access to multiple academic databases and physical proximity to the Israel Museum Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv Museum of Art that have relevant research centers and library and archival holdings of their own.

As the relations between Europe and Israel continue to grow, the Center for German Studies, as a future-oriented institution, is equipped especially well for the support of existing and emerging areas of research and collaboration. The high quality of the center and of the university will contribute to the optimal implementation of this research project.

Benefit to the Career of Researcher from Reintegration

The planned period of reintegration of Dr. Pablo Markin will benefit his career by offering him an opportunity to accumulate valuable research experience in the emerging field of metropolitan studies. As innovative research centers are being founded in Berlin, such as Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, the Center for German Studies of the European Forum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a rare combination of preconditions that make it optimal for hosting Dr. Markin, given the intrdisciplinary and multidisciplinary ambit of the center. The active guest lectures and courses program of the Center for German Studies will allow Dr. Markin to forge important scholarly contacts with the community of his European colleagues many of which take part in other events taking place around the Hebrew University and at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. The Van Leer Institute adds to the rich scholarly environment, together with events hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Center at Mishkenot Sha'ananim, that Jerusalem has to offer as a host city. The growing international visibility of Israeli contemporary art, with Tel-Aviv as its major urban center situated nearby, will put Dr. Markin in close proximity with existing and emerging art biennials that take place in these cities. The air travel distances to Europe being no farther from Israel than from many member states of the European Union, the comparative aspect of Dr. Markin's research will benefit from the opportunity to frequently visit European art events and conferences that Israel's positioning makes possible.

As a budding scholar specializing in a fast developing research area taking art biennials into its focus, Dr. Markin will have opportunity to build his publication record during the period of holding his Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant at the Center for German Studies. There are numerous research resources in Europe that he will be able to have access to from the Hebrew Univesity of Jerusalem as his home campus. Dr. Markin will also be building his academic contacts network by taking part in the events that the Center for German Studies holds for visiting scholars from across Europe. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of networking for a beginning scholar who is sure to continue pursuing an internationally oriented career path, as is Dr. Markin. The desired duration of the reintegration grant of four years will let Dr. Markin to deepen his specialization in related areas of expertise, such as German Studies and Urban Studies. The many research initiatives underway in Israel and Germany, a significant portion of which taking place under the aegis of the Marie Curie calls framework, will offer to Dr. Markin a unique combination of conditions to pursue a comparative course of research that will go beyond comparison of art biennials in Germany, Italy and Israel to include other countries such as Canada or Brazil.

Additionally. a proven record of research and publication that this reintegration grant and location will make it possible for Dr. Markin to create will open many avenues of further academic career for him. Tenure-track and research related positions being filled on a competitive basis, a successful holding and managing of Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant by Dr. Markin will represent a most significant contribution to his academic portfolio that stands to win from the high international standing of the Hebrew University.

Match between Researcher's Profile and Project

The academic profile of Dr. Markin adequately matches the proposed research project. The grounds for this are his longstanding interest in contemporary art and literature, his proven expertise in comparative regional studies, and his theoretical training obtained during his doctoral studies. The proposed research project will both play towards the strengths of Dr. Markin's expertise and let him transform his previous achievements into novel comparative research within a collaborative framework of the project. His unique combination of linguistic capabilities, his high chances of finding a research position in Israel as an associated state of the EU, and his promise to make progress in urban, metropolitan and German studies, make him into an excellent candidate for the work on this research project. Given that the European Union expands its cooperation with neighboring states via association agreements, such as Barcelona Process and Mediterranean Union, the widening scope of relations between the countries of the region will include urban culture into its institutional architecture. The way that each given city will be realizing its network of inter-urban relations in the changing structure of international conditions that the institutional development of the relations between the EU and its surrounding region is creating needs approaches that break with previous focus on linear economic growth as unsustainable, for ecological, social and economic reasons.

This more, rather than less, competitive enviroment of inter-urban relations challenges cities to higlight their uniqueness on the background of their homigenization, variously connected to globalization, capitalism and modernity. The recent focus on East-Central Europe of transition studies seems to be a cogent approach to cities around the world as well, as the processes of de-industrialization, tertialization, and re-orientation question the strategies of urban development of increasing number of cities. The focus on cultural clusters, signature museums, and architectural heritage that cities around the world exhibit brings to the fore of public awareness the tensions that these phenomena either release or fail to alleviate. In this regard, art biennials become instances of spacial territorialization of global culture, as both international and local artists are increasingly more in contact with each other than with their places of permanent residence, that critically interrogate their host cities. Globalization as an entwined process of both homogenization of conditions of action and heterogenization of contexts of its consequences, as cities are differently capable to put policy measures into practice in areas such as environment or finance, makes cities into key players in the game of generation, selection, and application of urban projects of change. Art biennials as component parts of a globally insntitutionalized circuit of international exhibitions, performances and festivals download into widely varied urban conditions the institutional forms of interaction between urban space and gloval culture.

To provide a comparative take on this process, the qualifications of Dr, Markin for this task are more than matching. Furthermore, the academic network of international contacts of Dr. Markin in Canada, Germany, Italy and Israel will stand him in good stead while carrying out the research project as they will connect him to initiatives on alternative global cultural capitals, classical sociology and metropolitan studies, contemporary philosophy and art history, and performance studies and comparative research.

Independent Thinking and Leadership Qualities

An ample evidence of the capabilities of Dr. Markin for independent thinking is his carrying out a doctoral research project. His completion of a doctoral degree also serves as an indicator of his leaderships qualities. Doctoral study critically depends on extensive intellectual collaboration between supervisor and student as colleagues. One has to inter-personally manage the larger engagement of supervisory committee. It is imperative to adequately respond to external reviews to his submitted thesis. Doctoral education is a formal process with a particular stress on accountability. Integrity is an inseparable part of the work ethics that doctoral students have to demonstrate to maintain their good standing. On-going interaction with members of faculty, staff and personnel of university develop in doctoral students capability to work in large-scale organizations. Regular reviews and reports encourage taking initiative. Intellectual risks are part and parcel of the process of discovery that doctoal education is about. Informal networks form the increasingly recognized part of operation of multiple organizations. Community engagement not only builds bridges beyond the walls of the academia, but also widens the horizons of those working in its walls. In all these regards, Dr. Markin's record has been remarkable enough to ensure his international scholarly career.

For his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Markin has made an independent choice of Richard Münch, a German scholar whose work is yet to be widely known to English-speaking sociology. Such decisions involve risk-taking capabilities, independent judgement on the scholarly value of out-of-the-way theoretical works, and capability to defend one's choices both in writing and orally. As leadership involves making original choices and following through on the steps that follow from them, Dr. Markin can be said to possess the qualities that will enable him to lead a team project, especially one that has a high degree of originality. Given that his research project concentrates on the exploration of the paths of urban development that go beyond the paradigm of quantitative growth, Dr. Markin's previous career has well prepared him for this challenge since his record of participation in research projects as doctoral student has been intimately connected with thinking independently and taking charge of the tasks he was given to perform. Connecting areas of technical expertise, bodies of diverse theorization and collection of empirical data has been part of his graduate education at the Sociology and Anthropology Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

As a social scientist that has accomplished a number of professional transitions from Ukrainian Studies to European Studies to Cultural Studies and, currently, to Metropolitan Studies, it is this rich interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary background that makes for more experienced and reflexive leaders of research teams. The wide choice of the subjects in which he decided to specialize and the international experience he has accumulated on a competitive basis speak for his independent thinking. His research experience has nurtured his leadership qualities that wait to be put to practice.

Scientific and Technological Quality of Previous Research

Previous research of Dr. Markin has high scholarly quality. This claim support recent publication of his doctoral dissertation, appearance of his articles in peer reviewed journals, and forthcoming reviews in scholarly periodicals. Of relevance to this research project is the distinction between the qualitative and quantitative criteria of quality. Technology and science favor linear criteria of quality evaluation that correspond to quantitative measurement scales. In contrast, culture and art demand non-linear criteria of evaluation that assign quality in terms of qualitative description. For the twenty-first century, cultural competences are key drivers of future development of modernity. From this point of view, the criteria of quality evaluation have also to accomodate to literary theory, cultural studies, and interdisciplinary expertise. In each of these areas, Dr. Markin has a proven record. For his graduate education, he specialized in European Studies in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His graduate reserarch project on "Ukrainian Contemporary Art: Civil Society, Inernational Organizations and Public Sphere" has won research competitions at the Department of Sociology, the Helmut Kohl Institute for European Studies, and Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies, Canada, in years 2001-2003. His graduate thesis has been published by GRIN Verlag, Germany.

Prior to that Dr. Markin has won an international competition for the research grant by Open Society Institute for participation in the Summer Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, USA, in 1998. Among other research awards Dr. Markin has won, this shows the opinion of international selection committees on the quality of his scholarly work. It is on the strength of his extant academic record that Dr. Markin was accepted to the grauduate course of study at the Hebrew University. Having barely finished his Master's degree, Dr. Markin has been accepted to a unique doctoral program in Modern Languages and Cultural Studies of the University of Alberta, Canada, winning a major recruitment scholarship in 2003 on the strength of his research proposal, publication record, and academic activity. It is these qualities that allowed him to put together an interdisciplinary doctoral supervision committee, successfully pass comprehensive and final doctoral examinations, and publish parts of his output in European peer reviewed journals, such as Kakanien Revisited, and in European academic publishing houses, such as GRIN Verlag. Throughout his doctoral studies, Dr. Markin has taken part in a wide range of research initiatives that ranged from internet platforms for scholarly archives, such as StreetPrint Project, through research involving proficiency in Spanish and Portuguese languages, such as collaboration on encyclopedia of Latin American writers, to work with primary sources in French language, such as content analysis of Cahiers Leon Trotsky.

Overall, the current specialization of Dr. Markin in German Studies comes on the heels of his deep knowledge of both classics of German sociology, such as Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, and contemporary German sociological works, such as those authored by Richard Münch and Gerhard Schulze. His book review of a book on communications society by Richard Münch is forthcoming in Space and Culture Journal. It is hard to overestimate the value that his proficiency in English, French, and German languages has for the quality of his research.

Cut-outs for Further Development

This research project is timely and relevant beacause art biennials serve as testbeds for intercultural dialogue beyond enduring divisions, connect into a network of recurring events around the globe, allow to transitional and temporary urban spaces to act as fora of novel and experimental cultural initiatives, bring global peripheries and global centers into contact on non-hegemonic institutional terms, form platforms for the formulation of alternative and inclusive linguas francas of culture, and open new horizons of culture-oriented cultural, social and economic devlopment on an urban scale.

Research Experience

Dr. Pablo Markin was recruited to his present position as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for German Studies at the European Forum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, before he has successfully defended his doctoral dissertation at the Modern Languages and Cultural Studies Department of the University of Alberta, Canada, in November 2008. His work on his doctoral dissertation, entitled "Cultural Accumulation in Richard Münch's Sociology of Modernity, Systems of Accumulation, and Action," demanded reading knowledge of German language, contacts with his German colleagues and overseas research stays. Apart from his contribution to the larger discussion on the relations between classical and contemporary sociological theory, in his dissertation he argues that more attention should be payed to less well known social and cultural thinkers whose works are presently accessible only to the public sufficiently proficient in German language. His dissertation was published by GRIN Verlag, Germany, in January 2009. Additionally, he has won a research grant for his research project on contemporary art biennials in Berlin and Jerusalem from the Center for German Studies of the Hebrew University in 2009.

To collect materials for his dissertation, Dr. Markin has conducted an independent research trip to New York in 2006. In 2007, he has been invited as a Visiting Scholar to the German Language and Literature Department of Columbia University, USA. In New York, he worked under the supervision of Prof. Andreas Huyssen, a leading German Studies scholar and cultural theorist of modernism, postmodernism and globalization, to do extensive fieldwork at major art museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The research experience thus accumulated has served as an invaluable contribution to bringing the doctoral research project of Dr. Markin to completion. Throughout his doctoral studies, he has forged and maintained multiple connections across different academic departments, such as Art History, Sociology, and Anthropology. His work as a research assistant has involved command of working knowledge of Spanish, French, and Ukrainian languages as he has worked on website design and database management, draft preparation of literary encyclopedia entries, and independent research of primary sources and scholarly corpora. Additionally, as a doctoral student, he has been actively involved in the many years of activity of Space and Culture Scholarly Research Group of the University of Alberta.

Supervised by Prof. Rob Shields, who served as scholarly mentor and doctoral supervisor of Dr. Markin, this internationally known research group has held bi-weekly meetings at which contemporary and classical works in areas ranging from post-structural theory, cultural studies, contemporary philosophy and sociological theory were studied by graduate students, visiting scholars and academic staff. As a student of Prof. Shields, Dr. Markin has acquired valuable interdisciplinary experience in research areas such as metropolitan studies, urban studies, and cultural theory. Moreover, Dr. Markin continues to maintain contacts both with his former supervisor and with Prof. Charles Barbour, specializaing in social theory, and Prof. Massimo Verdicchio, a translator of contemporary Italian philosophy. Prior to his winning of prestigious FS Chia Doctoral Award at the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research of the University of Alberta in 2003, he has worked as an independent research assistant at the headquarters of the Jewish Agency for Israel in Jerusalem since 2001.

Timeliness and Relevance of the Project

On the background of crises of global and local capitalism, art museums and art biennials continue to expand their activity. This cultural turn in urban development has not yet met with an adequate amount of sociological, philosophical and historical attention. Moreover, interdisciplinary research projects dedicated to art biennials are extremely rare, if existent at all. As constantly increasing number of cities launch their own art biennials, among the aims that their organizers pursue is the urgently felt demand to address the alternatives to the historical development of modern capitalism. The discourse over the developmental paths of modernization process that have been overlooked represent one of the most significant cultural resources for future development that could confirm to important goals of culturally, ecologically, and socially sustainable development such as those promoted by the UNESCO, United Nations and European Union.

It is exactly cities on geographical fault-lines, such as Berlin or Jerusalem, that are in need of alternative models of cultural development most. The interactions among the local, regional and global dimensions of culture and society are marked by daunting complexity. However, cultural events that already straddle these cross-cutting dimensions are important sources of cultural and social insight that need to be recovered through interdisciplinary research into their contexts, effects and interdependencies that gain in salience when approached via broadly comparable categories such as urban space. It is urban space that connects across the volatility of the present moment to more durable structures of relations that set regions, countries and cities apart. While reconstruction of national particularities has its undeniable merits (Munch 1984, 1986), it is the opening towards the cities that form the environment where the urban spaces of art biennials are set that can find relevance to the multiple other issues that surround cultural events. For this research project, the strategies of urban development that are oriented towards turning cities of modern capitalism into cities of culture are relevant for the reason that they can be initiators of cultural, social and economic change. Cultural revolutions (Lazzarato 2003), rather than violent protests, can open previously unimaginable spaces of opportunities for social, economic and cultural development.

While the role of cities of Renaissance Italy as urban prototypes for modern capitalism (Weber 1922) is widely contested on grounds of historical comparison, Weber's theoretical singling out of cities as cultural laboratories of urban change remains valid. Correspondingly, the growing visibility of Italian contemporary philosophy, German contemporary art and Israeli contemporary cinema serve as indicators of cultural ferment in the respective countries the key urban centers of which can provide entry-points into exploration of alternatives of development of modernity. The theoretical sample of Germany, Italy and Israel, where different cities of culture strategies are represented, will let conceptual and historical comparison of art biennials to map the relations between urban space and global culture along the alternative possibilities of cultural development of modernity. Current state of global capitalism makes this research project both scholarly timely and culturally relevant.

Originality and Innovative Nature

The originality and innovative nature of this research project consist in proposing to explore culture-oriented directions of urban development. Cities of modern capitalism have historically relied on the criteria of quantitative change to direct their development. An introduction of criteria of development that would have qualitative character demands a paradigmatic change in approach to cities, culture and modernity. Urban, social, and economic development that would take orientation to culture as a criterion of its qualitative change has barely begun. This research project proposes to circumvent the theoretical discussions of modernity, capitalism and culture by concentration on urban spaces as points of interdisciplinary reference that can open new directions of multidisciplinary dialogue, multi-sited research and empirically grounded theorization. In this regard, sociology of space can apply on a variety of scales that range from that of a space of an exhibition or a performance to an urban space or a constellation of spaces of a city. While the media discourse around art biennials continues to be couched in economic, social and governmental terms, it is necessary to make a transition to the criteria that are proper to these events - these of culture-oriented qualitative criteria.

In this regard. the individualization of modern societies away from mass movements and towards individual experiences, even though the latter may cumulate into collective forms, also reformulate the texts that can serve as paradigmatic sources of inspiration for research into urban spaces. While quantitative criteria of social science correspond to the historical moment of mass society, the introduction of qualitative criteria into social research derives its validity from the confrontation with the individualized society of today. Moreover, the process of modern development, considered from the perspective of the spaces of opportuninities that it makes available (Schulze 2003), has continued unabated from its inception in the eighteenths century to the present moment. Consequently, while the priority of the early stages of development of modern capitalism has been the quantitative increase in the social, economic and political opportunities - one only needs to consider the growth in social rights, living standards and political participation over the last two centuries -, the yet to be widely perceived challenge of post-modern capitalism is the necessity of the shift to qualitative exploration of the spaces of opportunties already available that would go beyond the exclusive stress on growth (Schulze 2003).

A paradigmatic text for this challenge of literary turn in social sciences is Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. It is no coincidence that when sociological research into the relations between space and culture is concerned Proust's works provide a source of important insights (Bourdieu 1984; Shields 2003). Oriented towards exploration of missed opportunities, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, as was called its earlier translation, raises the questions that quantitative research cannot answer that deal with personal encounter, artistic work, and aesthetic appearance (Schulze 2003). Art biennials show the way towards making these, previously highly individual, orientations into mass phenomena that demand innovative approaches to their conceptualization into models of urban development. The qualitative imprecision that this process invites constitute one of the major advantages of this research project that through multiple negotiations with its diverse subject matter, through its methodological tools of multi-sited and multidiscplinary comparison, and through its recourse to classical and contemporary sources of social and cultural theory makes a high degree of conceptual originality and research innovation possible.

The innovation that this research offers to put into practice stems from the growing sociological awareness of the necessity to open the discussion of the modernization of modernity (Beck 1994; Munch 1994, 1998; Schulze 2003) towards its self-referential, qualitative, and non-linear properties. This turns cultural competence into key area of emerging expertise for the present century (Schulze 2003). This orientation to culture favors community over society, work over product, and appearance over matter (Schulze 2003). These reference points converge on richly experiential encounters that embed urban spaces into global and local networks of cultural exchange (Rectanus 2002). However, the process of collective learning that permeates the everyday life of cities that in the process of inter-urban competition turn into event-cities of cultural encounters is yet to find its conceptualization on the level of urban space. This is the innovative value of this research project. It intends to draw on the state of the art in a wide variety of emerging and existing disciplines such as sociology of space (de Certeau 1987; Lefebvre 1971, 1991; Shields 2003), post-Enlightenment philosophy (Delanda 2001; Deleuze 1991; Perniola 1995, 2004a, 2004b) and German social and cultural theory (Benjamin [1941] 2001; Flusser 1991; Kracauer 1937; Schulze 2003; Simmel 1990).

The last two hundred years of Western modernity have caused the orientations towards quantitatively measured growth to become universal (Schulze 2003). The objective expression of these quantitative orientations towards the increase in material wealth, as expressed in economy geared to the production of consumer goods, has enabled representations of unambiguous growth. However this model of modernity has come at a price of routine thinking, rigid evaluations, and scholarly specialization. This research project successfully resists these tendencies by offering to discover valuable cognitive resources for the culture-driven development of modernity, to explore urban spaces of cultural possibilities of interdiscplinary dialogue and creativity, to conceptually probe the processes that assist in turning cultural preferences from potential into actual, and to add a cultural dimension to the developmental scenarios of modern capitalism (Schulze 2003). In other words, orientation towards cultural wealth has to be based on qualitative criteria that expand the frame of reference of common sense, that allow for the inclusion of ambiguity into the research processes of social science and interdisciplinary projects, and that are sensitive to the growing precedence of experience over utility, personality over skills, and associate over customer (Schulze 2003).

To sum up, the relations between space and culture gain increasing amount of theoretical and institutional attention. To this attest the foundation of the Space and Culture Journal, the contribution of the Space and Culture Reading Group to the international standing of the University of Alberta, Canada, where it is held, and the activeness of the Space and Culture blog on the internet. Parallel to these developments, there are interdisciplinary initiatives in Europe that pursue similar research directions such as the Metropolitan Studies Center and the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Research in Berlin. This research project intends to foster connections among these pioneering centers of international scholarly excellence. Out of this rich institutional environment grew the future participation of Prof. Mario Perniola from the Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy, whose development of philosophical reflection in the post-Enlightenment direction, of aesthetic conceptualization of contemporary culture, and of conceptual analysis of urban spaces will provide a broadly multidiciplinary addition to the capacities of the future research team around this project. This is especially true since I continue to be in contact with members of my former supervisory committee at the University of Alberta, Canada, and make many new scholarly contacts at my present post-doctoral position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Research Methodology

Given that the theoretical sample (Ragin) of art biennials will be small, the research methodology appropriate for this research proposal is that of qualitative reconstruction of the working assumptions behind the approaches that multiple actors that bring art biennials into being put into operation. The interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary setup of this research makes strong theoretical assumptions less amenable to its objectives since theoretical translations from one discipline into another of later developments in any of them more often than not involve methodological contraditions. The latter are less of a concern when classical sociological texts are being taken as a point of departure for this research project that sees its ambit lie in the emerging field of sociology of space. In this case, methodology is inseparable from the theoretical lines of inquiry. A promising direction of methodological development for this research is a stretegy of methodological realism that seeks to theoretically recontruct the causal environments in which art biennials occur. A return to a founding figure of sociological discourse, such as Max Weber, is not excluded in so far as his dictum of understanding-oriented sociology is read in a broadly interdisciplinalry manner.

While sociological methodologies that are qualitatively sensitive to cases of historical comparison between situations with high degree of documentary densitiy and causal complexity, such as Ragin's, the challenge that the methodological approach needs to address is an establishment of an insightful communication among representatives of as different disciplines as comparative sociology, theatre studies, and contemporary philosophy. In different ways, all these disciplines, as well as their representatives in the future research team, deal with contemporary art, urban space, and global culture. However, building methodological commonalities across these fields can only advance in so far as theoretical commonalities obtain as well. In the case of growing art market, expanding art museums, and flourishing art biennials, a broadly comparative approach can be a prudent counterpart to analytical realism that theoretically defines the dimensions of reality that are of relevance to a scholar's needs. For this research, its methodological aim lies in sharpening the analytical distinctions between different art biennials, the theoretical concepts with interdisciplinary applications, and the epistemological advantages of academic fields that are drawn on.

The risks that inhere in this reliance on emergent interdiscplinary methodology of comparative anlysis promise to be compensated with higher than average probability of insights that a more stringent methodological models will make impossible to discover to the extent that the latter rely on relatively closed and consistent theories. This research intends to be of relevance to figures that are active in the fields of ciltural, urban and policy studies. The state of the art that these fields taks as the point of departure for their activity is both a challange and an opportunity for interdiscplinary research teams, such as the one around this research hopes to be, that need to operate with theoretical and methodological tools that allow for transfer across and unitilization in contexts that differ markedly from one another. Thickly documented descriptions need to be complemented with theoretically grounded generalizations for a mutually enriching dialoge across disciplines to start. The guding assumption of this research project is that art biennials responde to an urgent demand of many cities to reinvent themselves as cities-of-culture. This goes beyond the capitals of culture program of the European Union towards the alternative forms of urban development that gain increasing salience as the models of industrialization, modernization, and urbanization that have been prevalent during the historical development of modern capitalism reach their ecological, theoretical and social limits.

Under these circumstances the role of the urban, cultural, and policy studies representatives may also be changing from that of directing a linear change to that of exploring unexpected possibilities. A literary turn in social sciences may have to find its counterpart in research methodologies that lend themselves to adoption by artists, curators and academics that address urban, cultural and social issues from a creative, curatorial and critical point of view. Similar to institutional ethnography (Smith 2005), a methodology of comparative research can take recourse to an inductive approach to the field of research that in the case of contemporary art oftentimes represents results of various artistic, curatorial and scholarly appropriations of theories, methods and disciplines according to the requirements of the moment. This orientation to the present moment that finds its philosophical counterparts in the works of Perniola on art (2004a), modernity (1994), and sensibility (2004b) has parallels and applications in contemporary art as multiple art biennials pose philosophical questions as their overarching themes. How these ideas of post-Enlightenment aesthetics, post-modern art, and object-oriented experience operate in the expanded institutional field of art biennials can lead to drawing lessons on how urban spaces of global culture contribute to the reimagination of cities as sites of sustainability, preservation and uniqueness or fail to do so.

Sociological reflection on what does historicization of modern condition mean (Schulze 2003) opens the perspective of an imperseptible challenge of the radical possibility at a stage where the fulfillment of the project of modernity arrives at its end. There are important aguments that maintain that the project of modernity is far from reaching its proclaimed objectives (Habermas). If only the duality of tradition and modernity is considered, a post-modern transition may either refer to a return to a tradition or a different modern configuration (Munch 1984, 1986). However, these contraditions become accessible to methodological probing when urban spaces are concerned since the scale of the relations that they let themselves be embedded into can stretch from local to global, from traditional to modern, and from identity to difference. The contemporary contradicitons of cities make them, on one hand, seek their urban identity, and, on the other hand, highlight their global difference. For the cities of modern capitalism of yesterday the limitations of its existing model translate into de-industrialization, negative migration, and social problems. Not by coincidence, the cities that have succeeded at re-inventing themselves as urban centers attractive to creative classes, investment flows, and trend-setting media, such as New York or Berlin, put into practice the strategies of cities of culture.

Given the continuing popularity of building flag-ship museums as a means to revitalize cities, one might surmise an aesthetic turn in cultural, urban and policy studies as they are practices. The controversies that every large museum project causes to flare up, the trenchant critique of the effects on local artistic communities that brand-name museums have, and the social conflicts that large scale transformations of urban space trigger have little in common with the effect that art biennials have in these regards. Connecting money and abstraction in unexpected configurations of art works that they exhibit, art biennials are laboratories of urban, cultural and social future that produce repeated samples of the state-of-the-art of contemporary culture both locally and globally. A research inquiry into the success of their precarious existence demands interdisciplinary and multidsiciplinary bodies of knowledge come into productive contact as modes of inductive theorization of the relations that connect urban spaces and global culture into series of art biennials that at each their instance negotiate the relations between identity and difference. In this effort of philosophy, sociology, and history to be relevant to the global moment of changing modernity, a methodology that allows for exploration, discovery and reflection is in order.

Objectives of a Research Project on Creative Cities

As the theoretical awareness of the analytical limits to capitalist growth increases (Schulze 2003; Munch 1994, 1995, 1998), it becomes imperative to take recourse to comparative sociological approach to cities as the sites where historically more important stages of development of capitalism took place (Lazzarato). The objectives of this research aim to explore the theoretically significant role of culture in capitalist development (Schulze 1992, 2003; Munch 1984, 1986, 1994, 1998) in close relation to cities where novel cultural developments paved the way for historical cycles of capitalist accumulation (Braudel). As a basis for comparison urban spaces will be taken. In the interdisciplinary approach of sociology of space adopted here, cities provide provileged epistemological entry-points into the urban dynamics of global and local contradictions that drive the development of capitalist. From this perspective, capitalism is interpreted as part of a variable structure of modernity that countries in the process of their modernization adopt in accordance with their particular circumstances. The predominantly national focus of comparative studies of capitalism and modernity still waits for a greater attention being paid to cities as sites where dynamic forces and structural contradictions of modernity play out. While economic globalization has long been in the center of sociological attention, cultural globalization is only recently receiving attention due to it in the theoretical works and comparative studies.

Both in historical economics and in comparative sociology there are considerable and durable disagreements over key terms of scholarly reference such as capitalism, modernity and culture. At the same time, there is a growing body of emergent theorization of space as a central analytical category that has extending body of applications in urban studies, cultural studies, and policy studies. The emergent field of sociology of space promises to make interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary cooperation possible across diverse institutional environments. Art biennials serve as a key example for this development. As their number continues to grow around the world, art biennials bring curators, entrepreneurs, administrators, educators, artists, writers and directors into intensive interaction around events that take place from once a year to every five years. The growing role of culture as a decisive factor of economic development makes it imperative that a full gamut of institutions that are constitutive of modern capitalism - such as universities, corprorations, museums, governments, newspapers and foundations - meet and exchange ideas across theoretical, organizational, and cultural boundaries. This change in the cultural dynamics of modern capitalism takes place on the background of unavailing interdependences that span the globe.

From this city-oriented perspective, globalization is made of local places that make global connectivity, cooperation and understanding possible. Among the universities, airports, bookshops, coffeehouses and museums, the urban spaces of art biennails are the late-comers in a historically much longer process of institutional change that as one of its concequences has modern capitalism as a dominant configuration of relations on a global scale. However the cultural side of the developments that for over more than two centuries has defined the configuration of modernity as not only economic but also cultural formation once again becomes important as the current crisis of global capitalism sets in. The literature on global cities routinely comes up with city rankings that produce hierarchies reflecting long-term shifts in both cultural and economic relations. At the same time, in the publications on cultural capitals it is relatively uncontested that particular cities have played dominant roles, in both cultural and economic spheres, at different time periods, so that, for example, Paris in the interwar years of the twentieth century has been a cultural capital of modern art while New York has been at the epicenter of post-WWII artistic life. Therefore, attention to cultural capitals that hold globally alternative positioning can lead to important insights regarding the changing geography of global culture. By extension, the concomitant tendencies of economic development can be surmised as well, even though they are beyond the scope of this research project.

The objectives of this research project are limited to the urban dynamics of global culture. Urban spaces in Germany, Italy and Israel provide apposite base for comparison of art biennials in these countries. The theoretical rationale for this approach is provided by the developments in sociological theory that through the deconstruction of the notion of agency allow for previously overlooked aspects of social and cultural change such as things, spaces and networks to find their due place in sociological research (Latour). The interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary orientation of this research project that seeks to bridge the latest developments in both humanities and social sciences favours renewed attention to classical figures of sociological theory such as Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer. The reasons for this return to classical figures of German social and cultural theory are manifold. In sociological discourse, along with other classical figures, such as Max Weber or Gabriel Tarde, they attract increasing attention in relation to theorization of space. As contemporary art exhibitions become ad-hoc research platforms for urban, cultural and policy studies, the insights that Simmel, Benjamin and Kracauer have originally formulated receive a contextually informed reading in relation to a wide range of issues that arts, cities and countries address. Moreover, for the emerging field of sociology of space, there is a necessity to build tentative bridges between these classical texts, in their original formulation and through their continious reception, and a comparative reading of urban spaces that participate in staging art biennials.

This research project starts with a limited sample of Germany, Italy and Israel as a theoretical sample that is intended to be expanded during further research. The theoretical logic behind drawing this initial sample of countries lies in comparison of the oldest art biennale to date - the Venice biennial -, with the biennial that has a shorter track record and lesser frequency - the Kassel documenta -, and with a less established contemporary art biennial - the Jerusalem biennale. Each country has another point of contemporary comparative reference to control for the effects that time and location have on the conclusions of this research - Torino biennial, Berlin biennale and Tel-Aviv biennial respectively. The methodology of this research draws on analytical comparison of these art events and theoretical reconstruction of the role that particular spatial contexts play in the relationships that these events establish between urban spaces and global culture. Among the participants in this project are Prof. Mario Perniola, a professor of aesthetics at the Tor Vergata University of Rome, Prof. Wolfgang Kaschuba, from the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies of the Humboldt University of Berlin, and Dr. Jeanette Malkin, from the Theatre Studies Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.