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- Convenors:
-
Paul-Francois Tremlett
(Open University)
Meghan Tinsley (The University of Manchester)
Atsuhide Ito (Solent University)
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- Stream:
- Urban Space
- Sessions:
- Monday 14 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We invite abstracts for papers that address the city as an emergent entity, and which seek to make visible some of the modes through which multiple scales of urban time and space that are ordinarily invisible to each other, intersect and collide.
Long Abstract:
We invite abstracts for papers that address the city as an emergent entity, and which seek to make visible some of the modes through which multiple scales of urban time and space that are ordinarily invisible to each other, intersect and collide. In particular we invite abstracts to explore three interrelated facets of the city: its capacity to become toxic to its inhabitants, its capacity to forget itself and to generate sites of amnesia and its capacity to change in ways that seem to exceed the agency of its citizens. Cities may be ancient or contemporary and real or imagined, and we anticipate Latourian and Deleuzian theory to provide points of departure for these explorations.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 14 September, 2020, -Atsuhide Ito (Solent University)
Paper short abstract:
The inhabitants of the cities and towns with nuclear facilities share similar concerns about the invisible but a slow impact of radiation on their lives. The paper assesses how the plutopians, the inhabitants of atomic cities, perceive their safety and risks, and respond to their situations.
Paper long abstract:
The plutopians, the inhabitants of atomic towns and cities, share similar concerns in regards to their biological rights. As radiation is invisible, living with nuclear facilities tests the limit of knowledge. Consequently, experts measure, interpret and provide data and information about the levels of safety in a plutopia. Since the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and the Fukushima Meltdown in 2011, the discord between pro and anti nuclear positions have been solidified and entrenched. Against this backdrop, the paper documents some of the strategies that a local protest group in Bridgwater, Somerset has taken against a construction of HInkely C new nuclear power station, and assesses how the plutopians are developing strategies to claim ownership over their safety.
Daria Radchenko (RANEPA)
Paper short abstract:
Verbal interaction with monuments is an important feature of vernacular memory. In the paper I'll argue that it, among other functions, serves to overcome the emptiness of commemorative urban spaces and weaving them back to the city texture.
Paper long abstract:
In the last decades, memory has become a particularly competitive space in Russia. Both Soviet and post-Soviet memorials are generating conflicts and discussion. One of the problematic questions is the vernacular usage of the monuments. One of the very stable practices connected with memorials as urban anchor points, however, implies rather linguistic than physical interaction — production and transmission of vernacular toponymy. Its legitimacy and the right to exceed the borders of official interpretation is widely discussed. The paper dwells upon functions of vernacular toponymy in the narrative landscape of post-Soviet cities and in the memory of their citizens.
The author interprets a number of plots concerning how a monument transforms via verbal intervention and physical interaction with the memorial and the space surround- ing it, as exemplified by 546 cases of vernacular toponymy existing in Russian and other post-Soviet cities. The sacral nature of the relevant space leads to the transformation of the monument and the adjacent territory from a "place of memory" into a "place of oblivion", but the citizens resist this emptiness — by using informal toponyms, among other means. If we interpret vernacular toponymy not as some static object from an "in- formal lexicon" vocabulary but as a practice of verbal intervention, then said toponomy can highlight the complex relationship between the monument and the city — its inhab- itants, spaces and history.
Meghan Tinsley (The University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers the capacity of sites of memory to disrupt the relationship between past and present, celebration and shame, Self and Other. Drawing from actor network theory, I examine the garden of tropical agronomy as an unsettled, melancholic site that haunts the Parisian present.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers the capacity of sites of memory to disrupt the relationship between past and present, celebration and shame, Self and Other. Forgotten and suppressed sites of memory, in particular, give rise to new expressions of time and space that transcend the intentions of either architect or spectator. As a case study, I look to the garden of tropical agronomy, a palimpsestic ruin in the Parisian suburbs that gives material form to both the imperial past and the process of forgetting the empire. Drawing from actor network theory, I examine the garden of tropical agronomy as an unsettled, melancholic site that haunts the Parisian present.
Vincenzo Lo Re (Sapienza University of Rome)
Paper short abstract:
The historic town represents a space crossed by processes of abandonment and redevelopment. The concept of "place of memory" opens new scenarios for understanding the tensions between memory and storytelling practices, between performative actions of rediscovery and reuse of spaces.
Paper long abstract:
This contribution is the result of an ethnographic research about practices of reuse of abandoned spaces in the "Old City" of Taranto, a historical town characterized both by depopulation phenomena and by a long history of settlement and sedimentation of meanings and practices. The work argues on the relationship between the processes of urban regeneration and the experience that inhabitants and social groups reproduce in the narrative-action of the neighbourhood space. This report reveals an articulated tension that reflects on the one hand the need to find new solutions to the environmental crisis caused by the steel industry (ILVA - Arcelor Mittal), on the other from the possibility of rethinking the economy and management of urban spaces in a capitalization and new exploitation of a marginalized territory that today returns to being central. The relationship between memory and forgetfulness is a central question to understand what meanings and position the old city is taking, and through which practices we try to build new narratives and new reuse experiences. Memory, oblivion, narration become social practices, which the subjects perform in relation to history and the use of the past, in the configuration of a given urban space. The analysis focus on the performative practices of ritual enunciation that associations and groups of inhabitants achieve in the context of the old city. Material and immaterial elements are remembered and manipulated to express actions and planning, relocate the historical centrality of the neighbourhood, and produce transformative projects on the spaces.
Paul-Francois Tremlett (Open University)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I draw on the work of Deleuze and Latour to contrast two kinds of urban religious space in Manila.
Paper long abstract:
This paper contrasts two kinds of religious space or assemblage in contemporary Manila: I begin with the the church-plaza assemblage with its baroque, Spanish colonial-era architectures of walls and carefully regulated flows of bodies and things. I contrast this with the virtual and physical assemblage of the charismatic El Shaddai movement, and its privileging of hyper-mobility and connectivity. Drawing from Deleuze and Latour I suggest that each of these assemblages forms a pattern, and when these patterns are overlaid, one on top of the other, a kaleidoscope effect is generated which reveals a changing sequence of elements as well as the generation of new ones. Importantly, the changes appear to be the property of the assemblages themselves.
Emanuela Caravello (University of Palermo) Mauro Ferrante (University of Palermo )
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes the role of WHL inscription as a mean for image creation of places. In this study, the revitalization of the Arab-Norman image of Palermo city (Sicily) is discussed and the process of social construction of cultural heritage and the roles of the actors involved analyzed.
Paper long abstract:
This paper proposes a reflection on the conceptualization of image creation of cities and places adopted by UNESCO at the global and the local level. The concept is analyzed in relation to the social construction of cultural heritage carried out by local actors. Special attention is given to the role of UNESCO in the process of creation of collective memory and on the ways in which citizens are involved in creating the image of a city. The potential deriving from new technologies in shaping the image of a place is also discussed. The study context examined is the city of Palermo (Sicily) and the UNESCO site "Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedrals Churches of Cefalú and Monreale". The cultural and stylistic overlap that underlies the exceptional universal value recognized by the site represents the conscious selection of a portion of places' memory which may determine the obscuration of other cultural forms of representation of the city. The essential role of all the actors involved (the representatives of the institutions, citizens and visitors ) and of their interaction in the construction of origins and space is critically examined, as a fundamental component of the image creation process. Only by retracing the itineraries of memory it is possible to trace the coordinates of the present time and to orient a community in space, in places and therefore in itself.