Hidden Present, Visible Absent in the City of Dreams: Assembling the Collective Imagination

Abstract

This paper serves as a collaborative auto-ethnography of psychological researchers, engaged in a unique encounter with each other and with the streets, artefacts, history and ghosts of Vienna, the City of Dreams. This small international and interdisciplinary group engaged in four pre-planned exercises in this city, each geared towards developing the Human Arenas (2018) sensitivity of researchers to notions of embodied introspection. Participants were asked to recollect and diarise their internal dialogue and these voices were assembled according to the practice of bricolage. This paper aims to demonstrate how new forms of knowledge might be created, based on the material experience of place, and the assembling of the collective imagination of researchers. It also aims to demonstrate how this collective imagination might be written about in novel ways, with a decentred author capturing the atmosphere while it lasts.