{"id":1470,"date":"2021-06-09T17:33:12","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T16:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2021-06-09T17:33:12","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T16:33:12","slug":"tom-brennecke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/tom-brennecke\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Brennecke"},"content":{"rendered":"

My room is in Berlin-Marzahn<\/em> on the Avenue of the Cosmonauts<\/em>. It is also in the Stalinist<\/em> skyscraper next to Lermontov Square <\/em>in Moscow<\/em>. The entrance of it is somewhat also in Rostock-Evershagen<\/em>… where I was born. From one window I can see Helsinki<\/em> and from the other one Tallinn<\/em>. My yellow wall is the outer wall of the Great Mosque of Djenne<\/em> in Mali<\/em> and my other orange wall is the bathroom entrance of Hooters<\/em> in Las Vegas<\/em>. My mosquito net is the same as in an airport hostel in Douala-Cameroon<\/em>. My rotatable armchair stands in the Hilton Garden Inn<\/em> in Hong Kong<\/em> and the lamp in the corner is the highlight of a display window of an antique shop in Nuremberg<\/em>. But my lamp on the ceiling seems more glorious than the chandelier in the Semperoper<\/em> in Dresden<\/em>. Only the design of my window blinds \u2014 that protect my room from the overly strong heat \u2014 remind me that my room is actually in Milan<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Beyond the visual there is more reminiscent of Milan<\/em>. The Wi-Fi comes from a router just placed outside my room and I can close the door as much as I want, it will always enter. This router comes from a shop just down the street. The air I breathe is an amalgam of the smog from the cars that pass from the Central Station<\/em> to the eastern outskirts and \u2014 (so I hope) \u2014 some free and fresh alpine air from the closer north. The electricity that runs through the walls may come from Lake Garda<\/em> but may also come from Russian<\/em> or Turkish<\/em> gas pipelines.<\/p>\n

Between these different realities and degrees of imagination, I can almost only be sure that I, myself, am rooted in Milan<\/em>… isn’t it where I travelled to by train? But even I am full of experiences and memories that constantly resettle me, so that I am left with no other choice than to believe that I am in Milan<\/em>. But the clothes I choose to wear every day are not from Milan<\/em> and neither is the water I am drinking. My room is a VPN with a global setting. Whereas I am writing this text in Silicon Valley<\/em>, if I happen to fall off my chair, I am falling into a forest of linden trees that my floor is made from. Beyond that, the reflection in my mirror would remind me of Chilean<\/em> salt lake Salar de Uyuni<\/em>, if I did not have to clean the mirror from my fingerprints again\u2026.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tom Brennecke researches loneliness in his second year as a PhD Candidate at the University of Milano-Bicocca.<\/em>
\nWebsite: www.prospektmag.xyz<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My room is in Berlin-Marzahn on the Avenue of the Cosmonauts. It is also in the Stalinist skyscraper next to Lermontov Square in Moscow. The entrance of it is somewhat also in Rostock-Evershagen… where I was born. From one window I can see Helsinki and from the other one Tallinn. My yellow wall is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":1473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[693,1,696],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milan","category-uncategorised","category-university-of-milano-bicocca"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1071"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1479,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/journey-around-our-rooms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}