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Wednesday 12 April 2023
16.30 - 18.30
W-4
URB04
Experiences of Urban Space through Different Media
Västra Hamngatan 25 AK2 135
Network:
Urban
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Chair:
Anna-Lisa Müller
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Organizers:
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Discussants:
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Shahal B :
Multisensorial Boundaries between Urban and Non-urban: a Study on Playing Film Songs in Private Buses of Kerala, India
This article examines how changes in the soundscape mark the boundary between the urban and the non-urban in the South Indian state of Kerala. I analyse the ritualised habit of playing Malayalam film songs in private buses of Kannur, Kerala, as a backdrop to the noisy, dull, and generally uneventful ... (Show more)This article examines how changes in the soundscape mark the boundary between the urban and the non-urban in the South Indian state of Kerala. I analyse the ritualised habit of playing Malayalam film songs in private buses of Kannur, Kerala, as a backdrop to the noisy, dull, and generally uneventful everyday. I draw on extended conversations with bus drivers to first historicise this everydayness of public transport and then interpret it as to ‘how the city feels’ in/to the body. I posit the categories used by the bus drivers to mark these soundscapes of everyday travel in terms of tactile and non-tactile music and set these categories against a 2007 judgement of the Kerala High Court regarding the playing of music in buses.
I argue that pausing of music by the drivers as they enter what they understand as the city limits, cause physical sensations on the travellers’ bodies, and thus marks a sensorial boundary that is beyond administrative. (Show less)
Samuel Holleran :
Stone, Dirt, and Brick: Ash Remains in the Built Environment
This presentation examines cremated remains (cremains) as constituent parts of cities. It chronicles the development of infrastructure for cremation, the interment of ash, and a more recent push to use cremains as a substrate for, largely speculatively, buildings. While the unsanctioned interment of bodies is generally illegal, rules around the ... (Show more)This presentation examines cremated remains (cremains) as constituent parts of cities. It chronicles the development of infrastructure for cremation, the interment of ash, and a more recent push to use cremains as a substrate for, largely speculatively, buildings. While the unsanctioned interment of bodies is generally illegal, rules around the distribution of cremains are more nebulous. They can be mailed, stored, and, increasingly, transformed into domestic objects. While human in their entirety, they are loaded with psychic weight, giving them a ‘more-than-human’ role to play in cities.
Building on archival research and ongoing ethnographic work with deathcare sector personnel and built environment practitioners in the US, UK, and Australia; this paper examines how ashes enter urban space in three modes, as: stones (discrete designed objects), dirt (organic material left to fan out), and bricks (building blocks of habitable architecture). While cemeteries have sought to create niches, gardens, and columbaria for ashes, many next-of-kin are delaying interment and choosing new alternatives; these include processes that ‘solidify’ cremains—compressing ash into small rocks. Others mix ashes into garden beds or surreptitiously scattered them on public lands. While some sporting grounds and monuments try to prevent this, many turn a blind eye. The use of cremain-based bricks is still risqué, but gaining ground. Ash-brick concepts have won design competitions and have been realised (at limited scale) as art projects.
This analysis will look at post-war technological and policy shifts related to cremains and their implications for public space. It will also draw on actor–network theory to understand how objects themselves afford and facilitate new memorialising traditions. This subject is, naturally, confronting and suggests both past losses of a personal nature and dark chapters in human history, like genocides. These pasts form a natural background to all discussion around cremains, but this paper focuses specifically on the material-technological aspects of bodily disposal practices in the post-war era and how they interface with new approaches to memorialisation and urban design. (Show less)
Vladimir Rizov :
A Walk in Thomas Annan's Glasgow: Documentary Photography, Class, and Urban Space
This paper explores the photographic documentary work on the city of Glasgow by Thomas Annan in the mid- to late 19th century. I focus on Annan’s most well-known project –The Closes and Streets of Old Glasgow, 1868-1871, which remains the most significant urban focus in his work. I will begin ... (Show more)This paper explores the photographic documentary work on the city of Glasgow by Thomas Annan in the mid- to late 19th century. I focus on Annan’s most well-known project –The Closes and Streets of Old Glasgow, 1868-1871, which remains the most significant urban focus in his work. I will begin by briefly outlining Annan’s position in the history of photography and the relation of his photographic work to the city of Glasgow. Subsequently, I will engage directly with the volume of interest and outline the character of the photographs. Finally, I will provide an analysis of Annan’s photographic work and the manner in which he contributed to a classed construction of the city of Glasgow through documentary photography. In particular, I will explore the images themselves through the lens of critical visual theory and relate them to the urban space of Glasgow itself. (Show less)
Harutyun Vermishyan :
Diagnose the "Post-Soviet" by Exploring the Urban Space: the Case of Yerevan
Social transformations are visible and tangible in separate loci of social spaces, revealing the deeper structure of public transitions. The city, as a space of social change, is actualizing such locus that can make visible social expressions of these transformations. The bearer of production and reproduction of the post-Soviet liberal ... (Show more)Social transformations are visible and tangible in separate loci of social spaces, revealing the deeper structure of public transitions. The city, as a space of social change, is actualizing such locus that can make visible social expressions of these transformations. The bearer of production and reproduction of the post-Soviet liberal and capitalist ideologies circulated in the 1990s became the urban space of city of Yerevan. Based on the concept of space production, the Lefebvre’s concept will attempt to retrieve post-Soviet transformation codes in the context of specific production and reproduction of social relationships. The purpose of the research is to diagnose the ideological and cultural quality of post-Soviet transitions by studying the urban space of Yerevan. For this purpose, a series of research has been carried out with observation, key informant interviews and narrative in-depth interviews, targeting post-soviet occurrences of both residential and public spaces (new boulevard, pubs and gardens). In parallel with thematic qualitative analysis, narrative semiotics were used as an analytical method. The general outcome of the research has elaborated and commented on the structure of the post-Soviet urban space in detail; space presentations and spatial practices. Summarizing the results of the survey, it is based on the thesis that urban spaces in Yerevan carry and reproduce post-Soviet transformation by producing the equivalent cultural realities at the level of ideological practices. (Show less)
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