Portfolio

My name is Niki Maria Lore. I was born on the 22nd of November 1994 in Berlin, Germany.

This is a collection of works I created during my studies in Communications, in Social and Economic Contexts, at the University of the Arts, Berlin.

My work is based on a qualitative approach to create pieces using a social lens and an emphasis on aesthetics*.

*I see aesthetics within ideas and concepts that are thoroughly thought through - ideas where every component, every detail, is seamlessly connected and a harmony within has to persist.

CONTEXTBackground

I observe, then I adapt. This is my nature. This is what I like. I have dissected my approach to life many times knowing that when I adapt, I follow something, someone, sometimes become obsessed, seemingly causing me to lose my ‘true’ self along the way. Yet, I have grown to understand that these cycles are what I seek and my ‘me’ is just that. I require exposure to unknown circumstances, new people, and the experience of finding that ‘me’ in these given situations - a ‘me’ that evolves to identify ways to communicate truthfully.

In my work I observe, follow, sometimes obsess, and then adapt to narrate what I see. I am particularly interested in the truthful depiction of cultural phenomena, and I have been wondering how to transform research to material practice - a transformation into a subjective representation.

This may sound a bit conflicting in itself. Isn’t depicting truthfully depicting objectively? The analysis of culture claims to be objective, but in reality it can not be anything other than subjective. By truthful works, I mean something which is authentic and well-researched.

My wish is to learn to do so. Hereinafter are my projects leading up to this point.

LIFTAExhibition

At the entrance of Jerusalem there is a place full of history and memories a lot of people don’t know about. For thousands of years, people inhabited the steep slopes of Lifta, Jerusalem. The last stable residents were forced to leave during the civil war of 1948, and since then the houses of Lifta have been demolished and slowly falling apart with only 50 structures left standing. One of the few depopulated Palestinian villages to not have been completely erased. Lifta’s 2,000 villagers fled – mostly to East Jerusalem and the Ramallah area. The village was never ‘officially’ resettled. However, the history of the village did not end there.

Declared a nature reserve in 1959, Lifta was renamed Ein Neftoach. The village’s spring became a popular hangout spot for Jerusalemites. In 2006 a plan to gentrify the site was approved, turning the area into an upscale development with hotel and shopping mall, but some residents of Jerusalem have been opposing this move - claiming that the village should be preserved as a historical site - leaving Lifta in a limbo. Its ruined houses largely empty and its spring echoing the voices of families and couples who enjoy this hidden corner of Jerusalem, yet might be completely unaware of its violent history.

A er learning about Li a, and a er several visits and severak talks with former inhabitants of Li a, two friends and me organized an open air exhibition in and about the village. With the help of 7 art and design students of the Bezalel Academy of Arts, we wanted to inform about Li a and the urgency for preservation.

The students created works in connection to Lifta that were exhibited within the ruins. We prepared flyers about the historic and current climate of the village which were distributed on site and around Jerusalem. It was important to us to make people aware of the planned developments which disregard the history of the place. 2016

BERLINATHENPaper

Berlin is considered cosmopolitan and tolerant. Beijing, a city of political power. Oxford, the city of learning. Paris, the city of love. And Athens, the city of antiquity. These heterogeneous cities, like the people who live in them, are shaped by their past, culture, and environment. Yet we draw parallels between cities that share certain characteristic traits, much like with people. “This is the Kreuzberg of Copenhagen (Nørrebro)” “Barcelona is like Berlin - only in the south” “Tel Aviv looks like Athens” and “Athens is the new Berlin”. These cities are almost personified, subjectified, equated with each other and rivalled. We constantly make comparisons of this kind, which probably serve to illustrate and make a person or place tangible. The problem that I see here is an emerging homogenization and generalization, whereas the diversity, the otherness, of a person and a city is what makes them special. This search for similarities of things and places can lead to an unconscious assimilation, since the uninformed and unreflective observer accepts it and in the worst case carries it with him and passes it on. Expectations and possible false assumptions arise, which in turn could bring about an adjustment in order to do justice to the designed image. It is an image that is most- ly constructed by an outsider, and may not correspond to the identity of the city, instead in reverse could change the identity. Because of this, I think that we should be more careful with comparisons, especially when it serves the sole purpose of making known what was previously unknown. This paper explores (dis)similarities be- tween the cities of Berlin and Athens based on their identities. Some time ago there were several articles that

called Athens the new Berlin. The reasons given, that Athens is like Berlin of the 90s, a breeding ground for artists, cheap and run-down, poor but sexy, seem plausible. Yet these labels are misleading. Because where exactly are the (dis)similarities of these two cities?

The purpose of this paper was to illuminate subtle differences or unexpected similarities between Berlin and Athens. To do this, I used qualitative methods and combined them with existing data. The interaction of existing data and subjective opinions, observations and experiences should reveal the nuances and gray areas. For this purpose, I took to the streets of Berlin and Athens as a flâneuse and interviewed residents. I stated the themes to be compared and contrasted, and in conclusion, consider what insights could be gained.

The themes of the paper were: the restoration of an identity, the city as a place of refuge, and the ambivalence of urban identity.

On the phone - in the evening - I was talking to Jonathan.

I created this piece in a class on communication with text in intercultural contexts. In 2017, I lived in Jerusalem for six months. The piece was made for this class and was based on an interview I made with a friend. It deals with the question of the connection of two seperate worlds within one culture. At the same time it tries to reproduce the intercultural conflict in a place that is entirely foreign to it.

BE.LIQUIDCommunication project

In the communication project, a project spanning over the last two semesters, we (I, working in a group of 5) were required to implement prior acquired knowledge of our course of study. The course is divided into four parts: strategic-, verbal-, audiovisual-communication and media studies. Under consideration of this subdivision we were graded on our concept, project report, presentation and defence. However, we were free to decide on how we wanted to implement this into an innovative idea that considers all four parts.

How can well-executed communication bring about change? Who needs to be involved? Who needs to listen? And how can we make ourselves heard?

We started off the project with these questions. And realized our upcoming generation, the so called Generation Z, is all about change. Never before did generations bring forth young people so comfortable with virtual and offline experiences, so creative, outspoken, diverse, and connected. They value access, expression of individual identity, and ethical action. If this will for change is there on a societal level, it is still mostly missing on a structural and institutional level. The question arose as to who is in a position to generate change. Who has to listen? It was clear to us that our society is largely shaped by large organizations and that it is companies that need to lead by example to achieve a structural change. Through these initial reflections and iterations, we arrived at the basic idea of our concept - be.liquid.

be.liquid is a digital community of people who are involved, outspoken, and strong-minded about various social issues. e idea was for companies to access this community and collaborate with to better understand speci c social issues.

We wanted to draw the attention to socio-political problems with the insights of our members to create options for action that companies can use to get involved in socially relevant issues and thus drive the changes that this young generation is striving for.

After a thorough research of the treatment of social issues in companies, Generation Z and Alpha, the use and gaining of insights, and a first trial run we formed a community of 85 young people. We recruited through Instagram, let everyone introduce themselves with a video on the profile (in which they also addressed issues they were involved in), connected through group chats and Zoom-calls to generate insights, and developed a business plan. The academic part of the project finished in July 2020 and we as a group put it on hold to complete our studies.

The communication project helped me understand how to transition an idea of greater magnitude from theory to practice, how to navigate different strengths within a team, how to truly manage a long term project and what it takes to find the red thread through all coexisting parts. After creating the concept and researching in our group of five my role was to implement the creative strategy and lead Zoom-talks about current issues with our community. I was responsible for the general design (except logo and website), layout of our project report, conception and creation of a promotion and product video, as well as generating trial discussions, questions for insights and conducting the talks.

October 2019 - July 2020

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman speaks of a fluid modernity and observes a prevailing order with the main characteristics of volatility, instability, as well as fragility. To survive in today’s world, you have to be fluid, you have to adapt quickly to new changes and reinvent yourself again and again. David Foster Wallace also uses the water motif in his fish parable, when he wants to grasp the prevailing reality with the question “What is water? It is important to know one’s surroundings precisely, to be awake and to become aware of other life worlds. With be.liquid we wanted to start precisely at this point and help to swim with the flow of time.

XEROLITHIABachelor thesis

an attempt to ethnographically understand the cultural space of the g r e e k i s l a n d o f s i f n o s t h r o u g h i t s t r a d i t i o n a l d r y s t o n e w a l l s

Walls. As far as the eye can see, you will see walls. I never really noticed them; they were there long before I was. Silent companions that I probably didn’t even take for granted, because for that I would have had to pay more attention to the walls. They were simply objects, neutral companions, in the truest sense of the word, and gradually became things that could no longer be imagined without.

Whenever I described Sifnos, the island close to my mothers home, I described the terraced landscape, the many paths and the numerous churches, all built of dry stone walls and seemingly framed by them. They were so present, so close in front of me, I could hardly make them out. But all at once the walls embodied everything that I could never put into words before - the culture and life on the island of Sifnos. I began to wonder if this was just a feeling, a pure intuition, or if this feeling had a sound basis, and how I could fathom it?

My Bachelor thesis is an ethnographic approach to understand the culture of an island in Greece through their local dry stone walls and to communicate the ndings through writing as well as through a visual result - maps and video.

I assume that the dry stone walls - Xerolthia - on the island of Sifnos have a kind of agency, and through their study I can infer the culture of the island’s inhabitants. That this inference is possible is also confirmed many times in the literature on material culture. My explanations and considerations in the context of the thesis are based on the theory and method of the Thick Description by Clifford Geertz, who put me on the track of the ethnologist. Critically considered and theoretically continued, my reflections are supported by Karl H. Hörnings with his theory on Doing Culture as well as by Daniel Miller, who advocates the radical approach of judging and describing the individual also according to the things they surround themselves with. Drawing on their theories, I justified my sense, my intuition, of perceiving the island and part of its culture through stone walls.

Insofar as these walls embody something in my eyes in a supposedly simple way, I wanted to reflect this in my work. This does not mean that I described the construction of a wall; no, it was rather about creating a tangible, perhaps visual representation of its embodiment. In order to both understand and present the culture, space, and experience surrounding the Xerolithia in an understandable way, ethnographic methods and an interdisciplinary approach were required.

For this purpose I spent some months on Sifnos, accompanied locals on their ways over the island, observed them in the construction of these walls, interviewed, photographed, filmed, made notes, sketches, and systematically collected further related data.

Data collection and its interpretation make up the bulk of my work. From the very beginning, I asked myself how I can communicate the results. As a visually influenced person, it was obvious for me to make knowledge accessible through visualization. In context and in support of the written work, findings were visualized in maps and accompanied by a short video.

I limited myself in my written work to six topics, in which I present my interpretations of culture. There were of course several aspects of the culture, which I could not take up all. This would have gone beyond the scope of the work and would be an almost endless approach. The division into different topics precedes a simplified reading flow. Ultimately, they were all interrelated.

The maps were created on the basis of these topics. They work with spatial representation and thus try to give the world a meaning through ratio solutions. I used a ‘context map’ on which the island and minimal information about it become visible (on the cover). Each additional map (5) is drawn on tracing paper and is to be read in conjunction with the context map. Without the context map, they are, in this sense, just a mapping of things.

In the sense of the Thick Description, each medium adds value to the other and makes the ‘reading’ of culture more comprehensible.

Nevertheless, the project of comprehending a culture and rendering it meaningful is an almost endless undertaking. The more time I spent on the island of Sifnos, the closer I got to the people and the better I understood their environment, the more confusing and ambivalent my observations became with regard to their culture. With each additional knowledge, the result became more truthful, but more complex. With less knowledge, it was not profound enough, but supposedly more understandable.

One question in particular remained: How can I go further with the visualization, translating interpretations into a composition and still achieve a truthful effect? .

September 2020 - January 2021

The themes of this work that emerged through the interpretations reveal aspects of the culture of my actors and their environment. In relation to the stone walls, I maintain that they strongly influence the individuals I followed, their lives, their daily doings, that they embody them and are a part of the ir existence.

The hard work, the logical but uncomplicated approach with the existing, the building materials on site; the varying, partly culturally determined construction methods of the walls, the closeness to nature, the balanced and harmonious image of the landscape and the accompanying serenity of the locals. They build walls, not to separate things, but to make the land their own. The Sifnoi have managed to do this not by the power of individuals, but over several generations in the community. The meaning of Xerolithia thus goes beyond its functional and technical, and it becomes a symbol of coping with life, simplicity, hardship, community and cultural change.

The video can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/536481544

nikilore@gmail.com