Küchen/Politiken – Wohnen als politischer Schauplatz

In the organizer's words:

Talk on the occasion of the book presentation
Rosanna Umbach: Un/familiar ways of relating. Visual Politics of the Familial in the Magazine "Schöner Wohnen", 1960-1979, transcript Verlag 2025, series wohnen+/-ausstellen, Volume 11

"The transformation of society also requires a radical reorganization of kitchens," says the anthology "Die Neuordnung der Küchen" by the kitchenpolitics editorial collective. The book seeks a new examination of unrealized/realized utopias of living in materialist feminist, socialist and left-wing movement contexts in the 1920s, 1960s and 1980s. In the period of social change from 1960 to 1979, the West German magazine "Schöner Wohnen" (Beautiful Living) also negotiated the kitchen as a place of emancipation without dissolving the usual gender differences. Rosanna Umbach analyzes the ambivalent simultaneities in the magazine's display between alarm clock glasses and resistance.

Darja Klingenberg, co-editor of "Neuordnung der Küchen" and Rosanna Um bach discuss the social outlines of kitchen architecture and the home as a political arena. And ask about the history and influence of queer-feminist interventions in the 'private sphere'. Because the question "How do we want to live, work, comfort, cook, wash up and love?" posed by the kitchenpolitics collective remains topical, controversial and urgent.