A Mural Erased: Urban Art, Local Politics and the Contestation of Public Space in Mashhad

Urbanisation ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-179
Author(s):  
Rustin Zarkar
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Urban Art

Salafism and Libya’s State Collapse

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-137
Author(s):  
Frederic Wehrey ◽  
Anouar Boukhars
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
State Collapse ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
National Power

Libya’s post-2011 fragmentation, factionalism, and violent civil have profoundly transformed its Salafi landscape. In contrast to other states where a coherent central government plays a role in co-opting and managing Salafism, Libya’s Salafis have become highly localized, increasingly assertive in politics, and influential in the cultural and social sphere. While much outside commentary has focused on Salafi-jihadism, the most powerful trend in Libya today is a self-described, “quietist” trend that follows the Saudi-based scholar Rabi bin Hadi al-Madkhali. Overlapping with class, ethnic, and tribal boundaries, these so-called Madkhalis are aligning themselves with Libya’s warring factions and are engaged in a contest with other Islamist currents for public space and institutions. Though Madkhalis are unlikely to emerge as a coordinated national power, they will continue as a force in local politics and society.

How to Be Visible in Student Politics: Performativity and the Digital Public Space in Bangladesh

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 707-738 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Kuttig ◽  
Bert Suykens
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
Student Politics ◽  
Ruling Party

In Bangladeshi student politics, political performances in public spaces play an essential role in establishing patronage relationships and determining local authority structures. As Thomas Blom Hansen has famously argued, “visibility means everything” in such a context. With the emergence of social networking sites like Facebook, new digital public spaces have appeared. Focusing on ruling-party student activists at Rajshahi University, this article examines how student politicians in Bangladesh utilize Facebook to become visible in their everyday politicking. It shows how longstanding performative repertoires in the nondigital public space have gained a new salience through performances in the digital public space. It is those digital spaces that allow the performer to rearticulate even mundane everyday events as political performances. As these new digital public spaces impact the politics of visibility, it is crucial to integrate them in our efforts to understand local politics in South Asia and beyond.

scholarly journals The instrumental time of memory: local politics and urban aesthetics in a tourism context

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio-Miguel Nogués-Pedregal
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Expressive Dimension ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Urban Aesthetics

Purpose This paper aims to show that tourism is one of the most perfect creations of the capitalist mode of production insofar as not only does it consume places and territories and perpetuate dependency relations, but in the expressive dimension, it also produces feelings and meanings and generates a new relationship of the past with the present and future (chronotope). Design/methodology/approach The study was carried out using a socio-anthropological approach with participant observation over several decades. Findings The modes of time are described and how the tourism chronotope shapes the historic centre of a consolidated tourist destination. The case study, analysed with the model of the “conversion of place through the mediation of tourism space”, illustrates the prevalence of instrumental and commercial values over one’s own aesthetic-expressive values in tourism contexts. This fact encourages the emergence of local political projects and the incorporation of uniformities outside the local place. These processes end up uprooting the anchors from collective memory. The definition of territories according to visitors’ imaginaries and expectations encourages the abusive occupation of public space and the adoption of new aesthetic attributes of urban space. Research limitations/implications Because of the chosen research approach and methodologies, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test both the model and the propositions further. Originality/value This study approaches the relationship of the idea Tourism with the idea Development based on the anchors of memory.

scholarly journals FROM A ‘BLIND WALKER’ TO AN ‘URBAN CURATOR’: INITIATING ‘EMOTIONALLY MOVING SITUATIONS’ IN PUBLIC SPACES / NUO KASDIENIO MIESTELĖNŲ „AKLUMO” IKI MIESTO AKTYVIZMO: INICIJUOJANT „EMOCIONALIAI PAVEIKIAS SITUACIJAS” VIEŠOSIOSE ERDVĖSE

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jekaterina Lavrinec
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Spatial Structures ◽  
Urban Settings ◽  
Urban Art ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
Alternative Scenarios

Reconstructing the mutation of a ‘blind walker’ into the figure of reflexive urban activist, who proposes creative solutions to the problems of de-activated public spaces, urban art interventions are comprehended as a tool for re-inventing and revitalising urban settings while initiating intensive interaction and cooperation between citizens. The idea to arrange ‘emotionally moving situations’ so as to activate reflexive attitude of the citizens toward everyday urban settings was proposed by situationists. By disturbing usual everyday rhythms and trajectories, urban art interventions, flash mobs and urban games establish a reflexive distance from the usual, routine ‘choreography’ of the place and propose alternative scenarios of behaviour in public space. Therefore urban art interventions can be considered as a tool for creative reconceptualization of spatial structures and social order, embedded in urban space. Santrauka Remiantis M. de Certeau pasiūlyta miestelėno „aklumo” metafora, kuri nurodo į nerefleksyvų santykį su kasdiene aplinka, straipsnyje rekonstruojama šios miestelėno figūros transformacija į miesto aktyvistą („miesto kuratorių”), kuris reaguoja į miesto problemas ir ieško kūrybinių šių problemų sprendimų. Aktyvaus santykio su miesto aplinka modelis buvo plėtojamas dar situacionistų (I. Chtcheglovas, G. Debord‘as, A. Kotányi ir kt.), kurie ieškojo kasdienio miesto patyrimo suspendavimo technikų (pavyzdžiui, dreifavimas) ir siūlė reorganizuoti miesto erdves, kad jos imtų produkuoti „emocionaliai paveikias situacijas”. šios paieškos paskatino situacionistus plėtoti „unitarinio urbanizmo” koncepciją. Šiuolaikiniams miestams susiduriant su deaktyvuotų viešųjų erdvių problema, „emocionaliai paveikių situacijų” kūrimo idėja atgimsta nauju pavidalu. Meninės intervencijos į viešąsias erdves, flash-mobai ir miesto žaidimai ardo įprastus elgesio scenarijus, steigia refleksyvųatstumą su rutininiu miesto patyrimu, o taip pat skatina naujųmiesto ritualų atsiradimą bei formuoja emocinį miesto reljefą. Intervencijos į viešąsias erdves gali būti analizuojamos ir kaip refleksijos forma, ir kaip aktualių miesto problemų(viešųjų erdviųdeaktyvavimo) sprendimo būdas.

scholarly journals The Sonic Intra-Face of a Noisy Feminist Social Kitchen

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana España Keller
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ethical Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Site

This paper asks what is the value of transforming the kitchen into a sonic performative work and public site for art and social practice. A Public Kitchen is formed by recreating the private and domestic space of a kitchen into a public space through a sonic performance artwork. The kitchen table is a platform for exploring, repositioning and amplifying kitchen tools as material phenomena through electronic and manual manipulation into an immersive sonic performance installation. This platform becomes a collaborative social space, where somatic movement and sensory, sonic power of the repositioned kitchen tools are built on a relational architecture of iterative sound performances that position the art historical and the sociopolitical, transforming disciplinary interpretations of the body and technology as something that is not specifically exclusively human but post-human. A Public Kitchen represents a pedagogical strategy for organizing and responding collectively to the local, operating as an independent nomadic event that speaks through a creative practice that is an unfolding process. (Re)imagining the social in a Public Kitchen produces noisy affects in a sonic intra-face that can contribute to transforming our social imaginations, forming daring dissonant narratives that feed post-human ethical practices and feminist genealogies. This paper reveals what matters—a feminist struggle invaluable in channeling the intra-personal; through the entanglement of the self, where language, meaning and subjectivity are relational to human difference and to what is felt from the social, what informs from a multi-cultural nomadic existence and diffractive perspective. The labored body is entangled with post-human contingencies of food preparation, family and social history, ritual, tradition, social geography, local politics, and women’s oppression; and is resonant and communicates as a site where new sonic techniques of existence are created and experiences shared.

scholarly journals Urban Art and place. Spatial patterns of urban art and their contribution to urban regeneration

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Laura Guerrero Balarezo ◽  
Kayvan Karimi
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Spatial Patterns ◽  
Spatial Clustering ◽  
Urban Regeneration ◽  
Spatial Relation ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Morphology ◽  
Urban Art ◽  
Strong Relation ◽  
And Gender

Cities face several challenges regarding public space and urban regeneration. Some of them are the depersonalization and lack of interest of citizens in their own city, privatization, gentrification, technologization and gender-insecurity. Public spaces lose their character as articulator and generator of human relations, while neighborhoods lose their role as the basic unity of community and urban identity. Nowadays, many bottom-up strategies have arisen as expressions of neighborhood’s inhabitant’s will, producing cultural diversity and civic engagement, with a placemaking effect. Urban art is one of them. Social and economic products of urban art have been studied, but the spatial manifestation and impact have been largely absent from the discourse of urban morphology. Spatial conditions are representational of social practices like art, by structuring patterns of movement, encounter and separation in the city (Cartiere & Zebracki, 2016). This study aims to discover the spatial relation between urban art displays and the network of public spaces, and whether this pattern has a role in neighborhood regeneration. To identify these relations in Shoreditch, London, Space Syntax analysis and spatial clustering were used, combined with a survey of geographically located public urban art (extracted from social networks data). Also, the spatial patterns of land prices and land uses from 1995 to 2016 were examined. Research showed that various types of artwork have a strong relation with certain spatial network characteristics and visibility of locations from each other. Economic and use outcomes were also related to the development of the art pattern through the years.

Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 1870–1930. By Di Wang. [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 376 pp. £48.50. ISBN 0-8047-4778-4.]

2004 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 1112-1113
Author(s):  
Joseph W. Esherick
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Historical Ethnography ◽  
Street Culture ◽  
Urban Elites

The last 15 years have witnessed a small flood of books on the physical, political, social and cultural transformation of the modern Chinese city covering paved streets and sewers, rickshaws and streetcars, public parks and meeting halls, monuments and museums, theatres and markets, police and gangsters, municipal government and public hygiene, bankers and businessmen, factories and publishing houses, newspapers and movies, law suits and protests, workers, students and prostitutes. Most of this literature has focused on the coastal cities (especially Shanghai), and the approach has usually been top–down: how the state and urban elites have constructed a new Chinese version of modernity.Wang's book stands out as a careful historical ethnography of a provincial capital in the Chinese interior, Chengdu, at the turn of the 20th century. In contrast to previous top–down studies of urban elites and the rise of urban governance and police, this provides a bottom–up view from the street, and the richness of street culture pervades the entire book. Superbly researched and aided by a wonderful collection of illustrations, the book shows us peddlers and artisans patrolling the neighbourhoods, beggars and hooligans harassing residents, religious rituals and entertainment, and, above all, the vibrant life of the teahouse. In a similar book on coastal Shanghai, Lu Hanchao (Beyond the Neon Lights) unforgettably describes the housing projects known as Stone Portals (shikumen) as a locus for the daily life of Shanghai urbanites. In this book, the Chengdu teahouse repeatedly appears as a critical venue of social interaction, popular entertainment, dispute mediation, political discussion and police surveillance.

scholarly journals The “Expo” and the Post-“Expo”: The Role of Public Art in Urban Regeneration Processes in the Late 20th Century

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 985
Author(s):  
Rita Ochoa
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Urban Regeneration ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Urban Art ◽  
Art Program ◽  
Tagus River ◽  
The Impact

In 1998, the Lisbon Universal Exhibition—Expo’98—led to an urban regeneration process on Lisbon’s waterfront. Following the example of other cities, this event was a pretext for rethinking and replacing a depressed area and for reconnecting it with the Tagus river through the creation of a set of new spaces for common use along the water. It was promoted as a public art program, which can be considered quite innovative in the Portuguese context. In view of this framework, this article aims to debate the relationships between public art and the dynamics of urban regeneration at the end of the 20th century. For that, it will analyse: (1) Expo’98’s public art program, comparing its initial assumptions with the final results; and (2) the impact of this program, through the identification of the placement of public art before (1974–1998) and after (1999–2009) the event. Although most of the implemented works did not (intentionally) explore aspects of space integration nor issues of public space appropriation, Expo’98’s public art program originated a monumentalisation of Lisbon’s eastern riverfront, later extended to other waterfront areas. At the same time, it played an important role in the way of understanding the city and public space that decisively influenced subsequent policies and projects. It is concluded that public art had a significant role in urban processes in the late 20th century, which is quite evident in a discourse of urban art as space qualifier and as a means of economic and social development.

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