Introduction

In Rhythmanalysis Lefebvre addresses a mlange of spaces, times and rhythms. Rhythms, he notes, draw attention to the blending of time and space in an urban context. The rhythmanalyst, he continues, looks with the ears more than the eyes and is "[m]ore aware of times than of spaces, of moods than of images, of the atmosphere than of particular spectacles.able to listen to a house, a street, a city, as one listens to a symphony or an opera" (1996, 229). And if, as Lefebvre insists ".every rhythm implies a relation of a time with a space" (ibid, 230), how then might a form of rhythmanalysis be used as a guide to explore the impact of imposed global times on the sociability of an urban area? Taking this as a prompt, the account that follows employs visual and audio montage to trace the spatialisation in Berlin's latest centre of the rhythms of 'globalisation' and the "energies they ferry and deploy" (Lefebvre 1991, 206). The images and sounds focus on the urban heart transplant that is now almost complete at Potsdamer Platz, the economic rhythms central to this operation and the affects of the 're-rhythming' of citiness through this form of urban development.

Contact

Michael Pryke
Lecturer in Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University