Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the visual representation of one particular street in sixteenth century Lisbon reflected the broader dynamics of an emergent world economy at the time. In so doing, it introduces the notion of a "global street."

Paper long abstract:

The Rua Nova dos Mercadores in Lisbon was once described as "one of the richest streets in the world." During the sixteenth century, this was the main commercial thoroughfare of a multicultural city at the heart of global trade. "Every day, merchants representing almost every people and region of the world flock together here," wrote historian Damião de Góis of the street, "joined by great throngs of people enjoying the advantages of business at the port." In 2009, the only surviving painting of the Rua Nova dos Mercadores was identified in the collection of Kelmscott Manor in England. It depicts a remarkable everyday street scene, populated by foreign merchants, slaves and even exotic animals. Departing from this painting, the current paper explores how the visual representation of this street reflected the broader dynamics of an emergent world economy. In so doing, it introduces the notion of a "global street." Today, as Sharon Zukin has argued, "local streets are fast becoming a 'global' urban habitat, where differences of language and culture are seen, heard, smelled, felt, and certainly tasted." Similarly, Suzanne Hall has suggested how modern-day streets provide "a contextual lens with which to view local expressions of social adaptation in the face of global change." Could the same be said about the Rua Nova dos Mercadores? What can such historical case studies help us understand about global streets today? And, what role does visual representation play in this?

Paper short abstract:

This paper identifies three distinct European public space projects that governments and designers that have been put forward as best practices for public space design to enhance social cohesion in contexts of cultural diversity. It examines their aims, design outcomes and public reception.

Paper long abstract:

The last two decades have witnessed a growing commitment to European public space projects seeking to promote social cohesion. These projects are built on the premise that social cohesion is under threat from the increasing cultural and economic differences in contemporary cities and that should be promoted or maintained in public spaces.

This paper examines the key commonalities and differences among these new public spaces, in terms of their social, economic and planning policy contexts, their aims, design and representation outcomes and public reception. The paper characterises three distinct approaches that governments and designers that have been put forward as best practices for public space design to enhance social cohesion in contexts of cultural diversity. These three design approaches are well illustrated by three much-publicised award-winning public space designs projects located in similar socio-cultural and urban contexts: multicultural, low income neighbourhoods that are experiencing gentrification. These are: the multiculturally-themed Superkilen in Norrebro, Copenhagen; the programmatic Afrikanderplein in Feijenoord, Rotterdam; minimalist design approach: Gillett Square in Dalston, London.

By combining archival and ethnographic material from each of these three case studies, this paper will offer a productive assessment and comparison of the relative merits and limitations on how they used public space design to support the divergent functional and representational needs of diverse social groups and the common aim of enhancing cohesion among these groups.

Paper short abstract:

In Helsinki, ethnic retail has been transforming abandoned retail premises into lively places. Everyday intercultural communication faces challenges relating to the politics of identity. As tasty as ethnic cuisine may be to an autochthonous Finn, it doesn't stimulate cosmopolitan practices.

Paper long abstract:

Ethnic retail finds fertile ground in European cities, especially amongst migrants. It provides them with a variety of services as well as impromptu places of belonging. Furthermore, it enables the place-making through the communication between users, and initiates cosmopolitan practices. Yet, socio-spatial exclusion may also occur when places of retail are seen by natives as no-go zones. The Helsinki, the capital of Finland, has been undergoing a transformation of vacant small retail premises that take on new life due to entrepreneurial migrants and their super-diverse industries and services. We present three case studies of ethnic retail that demonstrate the variations that exist according to the intercultural communication they give space to. We first look into a suburban milieu planned upon the high-street concept including many stores operated by migrants. Then, we present a shopping mall erected in the early 1970's that after a period of vacancy and disarray became one of the most lively urban hubs in the capital. Finally, we present a transport node leading to the most popular shopping centre in the city, surrounded by premises of ethnic retail. We conducted field research, collected observations, mapped the spaces and interviewed users, entrepreneurs, and planners. We discuss the intercultural communication potential presented in each case, the representations they embody as places of Otherness, and we ponder on the policy that facilitate cosmopolitan practices in urban space.

Paper short abstract:

Adopting a visual content analysis of maps, this intervention critically investigates multiple creative cartographies of Italy as experiential images for encountering diversity through empathy, negotiating the idea of coexistence and embracing or resisting a sense of plural belonging.

Paper long abstract:

For decades, the national map has been the target of severe criticism that views the cartographic reproduction of the state as one of the most powerful tools for building restricted, homogeneous identities. Nonetheless, within the constantly changing panorama of contemporary mapping practices (educational, every day, activist and artistic) that has been evidenced by the new shift to post-representational cartography (Dodge et al. 2009), the imageries evoked by the figure of the national map emerge in multiple unpredictable, unexplored ways, particularly when revisioning the experience of the national map in light of the mobile, multicultural nature of European societies. Although cartographic national imaginations are more commonly associated with the tendency to dismiss cultural diversity within the framework of exclusionary nationalism, we investigate the consequences of these cartographic imaginaries when they accommodate migrants under the framework of a super-diverse and progressive nationalism. Indeed, today, cartographic images are variously associated with migration and multiple (positive or negative) feelings towards it. In the context of Italy, we examine a visual corpus of 300 creative re-drawings of the nation that readers have submitted online to the newspaper, La Repubblica, in response to a (carto)graphic call by Renzo Piano on the theme of Italy as a cross-cultural Mediterranean space. Empirically drawing on this collective and public cartographic experiment, this contribution offers an alternative carto-centred perspective for further problematising the many feelings that make and remake the sense of uniqueness, plurality, coexistence and solidarity of a nation as a visible, tangible presence.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the everyday super-diverse space of the city is experienced and disrupted through visual exhibition. It argues different understandings of conviviality can come into contact and emerge through the exhibition space, intervening on the conceptions of the neighbourhood.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects upon how super-diverse places can be (re)presented and (re)produced through visual exhibition. It explores the potential of public exhibitions to construct, represent, layer and interrupt different narratives of everyday super-diversity and conviviality.

The paper is based on an audio-visual exhibition, 'Superdiversity: Picturing Finsbury Park', that was part of my doctoral research project based in London. This public exhibition signalled the culmination of 16-months field work exploring vernacular geographies and experiences of place in the multicultural area of Finsbury Park. 'Superdiversity' displayed the visual and participatory elements of the research through three aesthetics: vernacular cartographies, video encounters and place portraits. It was framed as open and provisional to reflect the dynamism and multiplicity of neighbourhood, recognizing that the vernacular geographies of the area are continually being remade.

However, the exhibition also became a process of representing and disrupting the everyday super-diverse space of the city through a constructing a relational space of encounter. Different understandings and affective spatial narratives of Finsbury Park came into contact and became layered to question the 'representational space' (Lefebvre, 1991),'the everyday space that people produce, inhabit and act within' (Bloch, 2010:2603), of the area. This paper argues that through vernacular aesthetics the exhibition entailed a process of translation and a form of learning (McFarlane, 2011), manifesting the co-production of place. The paper questions how this exhibition intervened on Finsbury Park and whether translations of place had the potential to lead to urban attunement and dwelling in multicultural space.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how superdiversity and everyday multiculturalism have been utilized within spatial planning policies. We argue that cultural rather than political difference often inform understandings of identity in state-led urban regeneration focusing on the Korean "community" in London

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how superdiversity and everyday urban multiculturalism have been utilized within spatial planning policies. The rise is attention to everyday or convivial multiculturalism has produced new perspectives on the material practices of living in diverse places (sJones et al., 2015). We argue that more connections are needed with structural inequalities (Young, 1990). Cultural difference often inform understandings of identity in state-led regeneration. Yet they are deeply problematic as they often rely on essentialized ethnic singularity. Through an examination of one group, the Korean "community" in New Malden, we explore how a particular set of discourses have emerged. The Korean community, based in south-west London, are in fact a diverse group including North Korean and Korean Chinese people (Shin, 2018). Our paper examines urban regeneration projects and intersections with representations of urban diversity Whilst these have capitalized on the recent popularity of South Korean culture, the history of the Korean community in New Malden is more complex and challenges assumptions of ethnicity and identity in London.

References

Jones, H., Neal, S., Mohan, G., Connell, K., Cochrane, A. and Bennett, K., 2015. Urban multiculture and everyday encounters in semi-public, franchised cafe spaces. The Sociological Review, 63(3), pp.644-661.

Shin, H. R. (2018). The Territoriality of Ethnic Enclaves: Dynamics of Transnational Practices and Geopolitical Relations within and beyond a Korean Transnational Enclave in New Malden, London. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(3), 756-772.

Marion, I.R (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to examine the project of the first Eruv in London in the early 2000s, and explore its representation and the effect of mapping its border in the discussion of project, notably the concerns about the creation of a ghetto and of the appropriation of public space by a minority group.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the project of the first Eruv, established in the early 2000s, in London.

The Eruv is a rite performed by some Jewish communities.During feast days, any practical work is forbidden according to the Talmud religious rules. The Eruv allows Jews to perform the work of carrying inside a perimeter called itself "Eruv".

To design an Eruv a deep study of the city through the lens of Jewish religious texts is carried out. The perimeter of this ritual space is mainly 'built' through a resignification of elements of the urban landscape. Poles linked by a fishing line can be used to create continuity between those elements, symbolising a door.

These pole and fishing-line 'doors' created in the public space needed the approval of the Local Authority. Therefore, the Eruv, a religious ritual, needed to be discussed by the Local Planning Office. A project was submitted in 1992 and debated for about 10 years by Barnet inhabitants, their political representative and the press. The Council produced two maps of the project that showed the whole perimeter of the Eruv as a line: the built elements that already existed in the city which were not the object of the application, as well as the 37 pairs of poles linked by nylon wire. This paper aims to explore how the representation of the project affected its discussion, notably the concerns about the creation of a ghetto and of the appropriation of public space by a minority group.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how temple visuals and imageries create multicultural space amongst South Asians in UK and how these spaces are contested by other parallel temple imageries while resisting and reconstructing the multicultural sphere.

Paper long abstract:

Temple has become a primary mode of contesting multicultural phenomenon among South Asian communities in Britain. Temple as an organizing principle not only provides the sense of belonging to a social group but also remains a reference point in everyday conversation to disclose one's social identity within the same religion. The temple imageries and symbols - constructed along religious, linguistic, regional or social basis - play a vital role in the reproduction of everyday vernaculars both in material and symbolic forms. This scenario of (re)production of 'local' invokes a new spectrum of multiculturalism conceived across its diverse symbolic and visual representations. However, this representation in essence constructs rather a singularity of narratives either excluding or 'othering' the marginalized narratives of multiculturalism. This scenario significantly masks the internal socio-cultural complexities endemic to the idea of multiculturalism amongst the South Asians. The visual depiction of temple thus not only informs religious, regional or linguistic diversity but most importantly the internal distinction which significantly reflects traditional hierarchies and differences within a particular religion (i.e. Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism). Based on my recent ethnographic field work among South Asians in UK, this paper analyses how temple imageries reproduce specific forms of multiculturalism and how these imageries and visualization construct socio-religious as well as political identities reinstating traditional norms and values in it. Through exploring temple as a primary mode of imagery and symbol, the paper brings in the marginalized narratives as a way of contesting the dominant narratives while creating an alternative space of temple imageries.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores dilemmas migrant communities face as to how to articulate difference or remain invisible. The case-studies are of London-based Albanian, Brazilian, Lithuanian, Tamil and Farsi supplementary schools set up by migrant parents in order to transmit cultural memory to their children.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is part of a visual ethnography about migrant community schools producing representations in museums, and what remains ignored, unnoticed, and left intentionally hidden.

As renters of community halls and mainstream school buildings, supplementary school communities are careful not to leave a mark. They remain mostly invisible, producing temporary displays and performances which are often unseen by the public. The sense of temporality and uncertainty as weekend school-renters is amplified by experiences of migration. The museum provides a rare platform for these schools to create public representations.

The research follows the dilemmas of each different community group as it seeks to work with the museum in order to gain more visibility, raise the community's profile and display their cultural heritage to a wider audience in a public setting, whilst working through the status of being migrants, and the benefits, pressures and necessities of keeping a low profile in uncertain social, political and financial climates.