Mapping the Public Space

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-270
Author(s):  
Pramod Kumar Mohanty
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Asian History ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Asian History

The article intends to give a comprehensive understanding of the colonial urbanisation as a cultural process in colonial Odisha centred at Cuttack city as manifest in the evolving public sphere and in the process contribute to the historical studies on colonialism in one of the neglected regions of South Asia and also from such a neglected perspective in South Asian history. While trying to assess the ‘problematic objectively’, it adopts the theoretical perspectives associated with ‘new cultural history’. Against this backdrop, the article tries to look at the issues of class, community and nationalism and the attendant politics during the ‘decisive phase’ of late nineteenth and early twentieth century of colonial Odisha by trying to explore the emergence of Cuttack as a city, a colonial urban space. As the capital city of Odisha, Cuttack is seen as the site around which ‘evolved and revolved the modern regional cultural tradition of Odisha’ and more crucially so, the ‘citizenry’ including its middle class, constituted the ‘microcosm of Colonial Odisha’. The article examines the issues by negotiating with the growth of the middle class, shaping up of the concept of ‘public space’ and the structuring of ‘public’ as a ‘discursive entity’ along with the crystallisation of cultural politics underlying competing hegemonies and identities.

Emotions in performance: Poetry and preaching

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-102
Author(s):  
Carla Petievich ◽  
Max Stille
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Collective Emotions ◽  
Performance Poetry ◽  
Performance Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Nation State

Emotions are largely interpersonal and inextricably intertwined with communication; public performances evoke collective emotions. This article brings together considerations of poetic assemblies known as ‘mushāʿira’ in Pakistan with reflections on sermon congregations known as ‘waʿz mahfil’ in Bangladesh. The public performance spaces and protocols, decisive for building up collective emotions, exhibit many parallels between both genres. The cultural history of the mushāʿira shows how an elite cultural tradition has been popularised in service to the modern nation state. A close reading of the changing forms of reader address shows how the modern nazm genre has been deployed for exhorting the collective, much-expanded Urdu public sphere. Emphasising the sensory aspects of performance, the analysis of contemporary waʿz mahfils focuses on the employment of particular chanting techniques. These relate to both the transcultural Islamic soundsphere and Bengali narrative traditions, and are decisive for the synchronisation of listeners’ experience and a dramaticisation of the preachers’ narratives. Music-rhetorical analysis furthermore shows how the chanting can evoke heightened emotional experiences of utopian Islamic ideology. While the scrutinised performance traditions vary in their respective emphasis on poetry and narrative, they exhibit increasingly common patterns of collective reception. It seems that emotions evoked in public performances cut across ‘religious’, ‘political’, and ‘poetic’ realms—and thereby build on and build up interlinkages between religious, aesthetic and political collectives.

Mocking Parades and the Place of Pagan Statuary in Late Antique Alexandria

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-288
Author(s):  
Jonathan Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
Visual Contact ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

AbstractWith the present paper I would like to discuss a particular form of procession which we may term mocking parades, a collective ritual aimed at ridiculing cultic objects from competing religious communities. The cases presented here are contextualized within incidents of pagan/Christian violence in Alexandria between the 4th and 5th centuries, entailing in one case the destruction of the Serapeum and in another the pillaging of the Isis shrine at Menouthis on the outskirts of Alexandria. As the literary accounts on these events suggest, such collective forms of mockery played an important role in the context of mob violence in general and of violence against sacred objects in particular. However, while historiographical and hagiographical sources from the period suggest that pagan statues underwent systematic destruction and mutilation, we can infer from the archaeological evidence a vast range of uses and re-adaptation of pagan statuary in the urban space, assuming among other functions that of decorating public spaces. I would like to build on the thesis that the parading of sacred images played a prominent role in the discourse on the value of pagan statuary in the public space. On the one hand, the statues carried through the streets became themselves objects of mockery and violence, involving the population of the city in a collective ritual of exorcism. On the other hand, the images paraded in the mocking parades could also become a means through which the urban space could become subject to new interpretations. Entering in visual contact with the still visible vestiges of the pagan past, with the temples and the statuary of the city, the “image of the city” became affected itself by the images paraded through the streets, as though to remind the inhabitants that the still-visible elements of Alexandria’s pagan topography now stood as defeated witnesses to Christianity’s victory.

Analysis on Building Readable Image of Urban Public Spaces

2013 ◽  
Vol 409-410 ◽  
pp. 883-886
Author(s):  
Bo Xuan Zhao ◽  
Cong Ling Meng
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Space Images ◽  
Urban Public Space ◽  
Good Image ◽  
The Public ◽  
The City

City, is consisting of a series continuous or intermittent public space images, and every image for each of our people living in the city is varied: may be as awesome as forbidden city Meridian Gate, like Piazza San Marco as a cordial and pleasant space and might also be like Manhattan district of New York, which makes people excited and enthusiastic. To see why, people have different feelings because the public urban space ultimately belongs to democratic public space, people live and have emotions in it. In such domain, people can not only be liberated, free to enjoy the pleasures of urban public space, but also enjoy urban life which is brought by the city's charm through highlighting the vitality of the city with humanism atmosphere. To a conclusion, no matter how ordinary the city is, a good image of urban space can also bring people pleasure.

Mobile Methods and Large Screens

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikos Papastergiadis ◽  
Amelia Barikin ◽  
Xin Gu ◽  
Scott McQuire ◽  
Audrey Yue
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Global Era ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Mobile Methods

This chapter details the case studies that were conducted as part of a five-year research project, which conducted the world’s first real-time cross-cultural exchange via the networking of large public screens located in Melbourne and Seoul. The project linked large screens located in Seoul and Melbourne for three media events: SMS_Origins and <Value>, HELLO, and Dance Battle. The chapter details methodological innovations of the research, which involved the reformulation of the way in which the scholar was embedded in the research and transformed according to the interactive research process. It also elucidates critical insights into the process of cultural exchange, the impact of media technologies on public space, and the transformation of the public sphere in the global era. The empirical research generates fresh insights into public interactions with large screens, providing a prototype for future cross-cultural events and offering new theoretical perspectives on the use of public space.

The Streets of Cairo and the Salihiyya Madrasa

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-56
Author(s):  
D. Fairchild Ruggles
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Educational Program ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
The Public

Sultan Salih’s major architectural work was the Madrasa Salihiyya, supported by a perpetual endowment, in the center of the walled city of Cairo. The second institution in the Islamic world to include the four major branches of Islamic law within one building, and the first in Egypt, it was the first to organize the educational program in four iwans (large open-sided halls), a typology that soon became ubiquitous. The solemn yet extensive ornament on its long facade, dedicatory inscriptions, large projecting entrance block, and tall ornamented minaret reveal the attention paid to urban space in that period in Cairo, especially the public space of the street.

Rearranging Urban Space

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Francesca Menichelli
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
The Public ◽  
Surveillance Cameras ◽  
Public Character ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City

This article investigates what happens to urban space once an open-street CCTV system is implemented, framing the analysis in terms of the wider struggle that unfolds between different urban stakeholders for the definition of acceptability in public space. It is argued that, while the use of surveillance cameras was initially seen as functional to the enforcement of tighter control and to the de-complexification of urban space so as to make policing easier, a shift has now taken place in the articulation of this goal. As a result, it has slowly progressed to affect the wider field of sociability, with troubling consequences for the public character of public space. In light of this development, the article concludes by making the case for a normative stance to be taken in order to increase fairness and diversity in the city.

SPACE AND ITS USE FOR PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC IN CENTER AREAS OF SELECTED POLISH CITIES

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (0) ◽  
pp. 45-52
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Nosal ◽  
Łukasz Franek ◽  
Sylwia Rogala
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
City Center ◽  
Technical Parameters ◽  
The Public ◽  
Pedestrian Traffic ◽  
Street Furniture ◽  
Pedestrian Infrastructure ◽  
The City

The quality of urban space in terms of walkability can be assessed taking many parameters into account, such as the presence of sidewalks, their density and continuity, appropriate technical parameters as well as the presence of greenery, squares, parks, which create the environment for pedestrian traffic. The lack of travel barriers, the possibility to shorten the route, travel safety and security, the presence of street furniture, shops and services are also significant. This article concerns some of the above described factors and presents selected research results on the use of space in city centers of several Polish cities – Kraków, Gdańsk, Szczecin, Warsaw, Gdynia, Wrocław and Poznań as well as the results of an analysis on the friendliness of this space for pedestrian traffic. The first phase of this study was to determine the share of public space within the analyzed city center areas, and then define areas used as roads, infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, squares, green areas, parks and public courtyards. The balance of the used space was created for each researched area, and the space dedicated to pedestrian traffic was additionally analyzed in terms of the presence of obstacles as well as sidewalk location. The analysis results prove that that greatest amount of the public space is located in the city center of Poznań, and the smallest in Kraków. Warsaw is characterized by the greatest and Szczecin by the smallest percentage of the pedestrian infrastructure. Szczecin dominates in terms of the share of roads in the downtown area, Wrocław in terms of squares and Gdańsk – public courtyards.

scholarly journals An attempt of creating new museum narratives by the example of the exhibition project «Shevchenko by the urban tongue»

2021 ◽  
pp. 112-123
Author(s):  
Mykhailo Zubar ◽  
◽  
Oleh Mahdych ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Process Of Urbanization ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The City ◽  
Ukrainian Society

Taras Shevchenko is one of the most researched and discussed figures in Ukrainian society. In each historical period receptions and assessments around Shevchenko` personality differentiates, depending on the public circumstances or prevailing trends in humanitarian discourse. These perceptions swayed between positive and critical judgment. Authors identified several key perceptions of Shevchenko in Ukrainian public space, for instance, «national hero», «father of the nation», «poet», «revolutionary democrat». In their opinion, modern Ukraine still faces the search for Shevchenko` new image. New forms of public honour (commemoration) are being developed, including through museum exhibition projects. Authors also analyze the significance of the museum narrative expositions and exhibitions for the creation of new public images, giving the example of the exhibition project «Shevchenko by the urban tongue», which took place in the Taras Shevchenko national museum from November 4th to January 31th in 2021. Curators attempted to explore how personal experience in the city changed due to the process of urbanization from the XIX-th century and how the urban space influenced the shaping of the Taras Shevchenko figure. Specifically, in the XIX-th century, cities ultimately transformed into an environment, which created trends, emphases of the global public development that influenced Shevchenko, since exactly in the city he gained domestic freedom, profession and widened his social circle. The city gave him a sense of understanding of the culture, its influence and importance not only for consumer purposes or acceptance but also for the creation of new meanings. According to the authors, this approach allows us to better understand the significance of Taras Shevchenko, his connection to modern Ukrainian realities and world context.

scholarly journals La bibliothèque au-delà de la bibliothèque

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 86-95
Author(s):  
Maurizio Bergamaschi
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Public Library ◽  
The Public ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Surrounding Areas

The public library of Casalecchio di Reno, a small town near Bologna (Italy), is an articulated and multifunctional space, a reference point not only for the municipality but also for the surrounding areas. This library is characterized by multiple spaces and functions, some of which are well-defi ned whilst others less, and diff erent groups of population use it. Together, its low level of regulatory framework, its geographical location and its confi guration as a «public space» make this library both a place of culture and a place of hospitality and friendliness in urban space. By analysing the everyday practices and the concrete actions performed by the subjects, the present study focused on the redefinition of space and on the practices of re-signifi cation, as well as on the manifest or latent needs that underlie such practices.

scholarly journals Design of Sound and Place - Recent Studios

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Paul MacDonald ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Visual Display ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
The Public ◽  
Built Form

Urban public spaces and their associated architecture should be capable of eliciting responses from all of the human senses, yet traditionally urban and architectural designers rely primarily on visual display to persuade the public of the qualities of new proposals. As it becomes more common to use a variety of media to depict and simulate proposed urban spaces, designers and teachers of design look for ways to sensitize emerging designers to the full spectrum of sensations that inform potential users of a public space. The design studios discussed in this paper bring together the issues of the design of the experience of visual and aural settings, in an era of podcasts and ear-buds.In order to address issues of sound and public space, the author selected examples from two architectural design studios that took place in 2016 and 2018. Undergraduate students composed their own programs and projects to take into account the aural as well as visual qualities associated with their design intentions and ambitions. The process began with a programming phase to designate performing and listening as interactions that constitute primary activities happening in the context of the proposed public built form and related urban space. The research continued with an exploration of the tectonics and materials of the projects. Preliminary field research located and mapped small centralized urban organizations related to the sonic: collectives and small businesses working, for example, in the areas of sound recording, radio and musical performance.

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