scholarly journals The Derma of Crisis: Imagining Athens in Crisis as an Urban Collage

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-202
Author(s):  
Panagiotis Ferentinos
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Main Field ◽  
Unique Case ◽  
The Public ◽  
Visual Elements ◽  
Dynamic Potential ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Bear Witness

A close look at the urban surfaces of Athens during the years of the economic crisis reveals the extensive phenomenon of the people’s interaction with the surface of the cityscape, the skin of Athens. A derma of crises that reflects Greece’s socio-political conditions over this period, and the austerity measures enforced by the official state. This rapidly transformed and ever-changing surface imagery can be recorded and used for reading and further understanding of how the public sphere responds to this period of decline, and reacts to the recession’s strategies of sovereignty. The urgency to document, give prominence to this urban field and examine it as a whole is of pivotal importance, considering the fact that the official authorities (such as the mayor of Athens) have recently taken action to eliminate the urban traces. However, these inscriptions bear witness to the continuous crisis mirrored on the Athenian walls and architectural volumes. Over the last years, there have been numerous scholars and researchers that have engaged with the study of the Athenian cityscape. Nonetheless, they particularly focus on graffiti, street art and slogans, and this engagement sometimes facilitates the emerging artistry or the discussion of socio-political connotations. In contrast to this, this article moves towards the identification of the phenomenon as a dynamic potential of a derma–city skin and does not specifically focus on them as mere details (often intentionally made, e.g. a graffiti). It examines the wholeness, the anonymity, the unintentional activity; how they contribute to the formulation of an urban collage, an assemblage of visual elements that co-exist making Athens a unique case of an over-marked city. The study of various dimensions of this skin and of the virtual preservation means aims to add a further layer of understanding to the urban space as a main field of socio-political connotations during the crisis.

scholarly journals Formation of Subcultural Entity under the Influence of Public Sphere

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuliya Kuzovenkova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
The Public ◽  
Youth Subcultures ◽  
Long Time ◽  
New Space ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Short Time ◽  
The City

The last two decades have been a time of serious transformation of youth subcultures. Researchers speak about the formation of the postmodernism paradigm of subculture and the virtualisation of sociocultural phenomena. The subcultural subject and the power that formed it continue to exist in the new realities, but are undergoing a transformation. Changes having occured to the public sphere were especially significant for a subcultural entity since it is the public sphere where a subcultural entity can present itself to authorities, thereby maintaining its social subsistence. Our research was aimed at studying how the transformation of the public sphere has affected the entity’s subculture. For the study, the authors employed the method of a qualitative half-structurated interview and draw on the disciplinary authority concept suggested by M. Foucault. The analysis was based on materials of interviewing some representatives of the graffiti subculture in the city of Samara (twenty-two people) from 2016 to 2018. The author has established that the subcultural subject is processual and dependent on the practices in use; a change in practices leads to a change in the subject. Changes of practices in the graffiti subculture were a result of the virtualisation of culture. The author has identified the changes that have taken place in the subcultural subject under the influence of the transformation of the public sphere (the ‘short time’ of instantaneous fame prevails over the ‘long time’ of the symbolic capital of the nickname, new space-time coordinates within which the entity exists, the ‘digital body’ of the subcultural entity becomes ever more informative rather than that which was created via sketches placed in urban space). Unlike the public sphere, the private sphere under the influence of a subculture ideology remains unchanged.

scholarly journals Islamic Moral Comedy? The Representation of Islam in Malaysian Comedy Films Syurga Cinta (Paradise of Love, 2009) and Ustaz, Mu Tunggu Aku Datang! (Ustaz, I’m Coming! 2013)

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-138
Author(s):  
Suria Hani A.Rahman ◽  
Rosidayu Sabran ◽  
Rosninawati Hussin
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
The Public ◽  
True Love ◽  
Islamic Principle ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article examines how Islam is being represented in Malaysian comedy films: Syurga Cinta/Paradise of Love (Ahmad Idham, 2009) and Ustaz, Mu Tunggu Aku Datang!/Ustaz, I’m Coming! (Pierre Andre, 2013). As one of a popular genre in film, comedy and its comical narratives has the ability to critique social, cultural and political conditions within the specific context of Malaysia. Using film narrative analysis, this study identifies that both films revolve around a similar plot of a male quest for haram (forbidden) obsessions, such as fortune or women, and a return to morality (i.e. humility and true love). As these comedies attempt to illuminate the intersection between religion and comical narrative, the way they feature the main characters are not simply as sinful or immoral. Rather, they are portrayed as misguided, but equally amusing in dealing with misfortune and wrongfulness. This article found that the central element of both films lies in its incongruity between the traditional Islamic principle and trajectories which against morality. Besides the call for morality, this article also argues that Malaysian comedy is also shaped in response to the Islamisation of the public sphere, thus, underlines the ‘re-imagine social life’ within the Malay (sian)-Muslim context.

Festivals that Change Lives

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Floriane Gaber
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Structural Transformation ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Street Art ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Western European ◽  
The Public Sphere

There are countries in the world where ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ don’t have the same meaning as in our western European countries, especially in the street or in what is called ‘public space’. Even so, in some of these countries, street art festivals exist and they can change the life of the artists and of the population. Jürgen Habermas, in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), has defined this term. According to him, the bourgeois public sphere (which appeared in the 18th century) is the place between private individuals and government authorities in which people can meet and have critical debates about public matters. Whether debates are about culture, habits or law, in the countries discussed in this chapter (Iran, Belarus, Morocco and Kuwait), this barely happens. Critical debate is forbidden or simply inconceivable.

City as Performance

2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imanuel Schipper
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
The Public ◽  
Living Together ◽  
Artistic Interventions ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

While artistic interventions in urban space multiply continuously, there seems to be a lack of knowledge about what is really happening in and with public spaces in such processes. David Harvey’s proposition that “the right to the city” means the “right to change ourselves” begs the question: Who is producing the city, and in turn, what new ways of living together are they producing? Artistic productions in urban environments produce new modes of engaging with public spaces and initiate a process in which a city’s inhabitants and users make and remake the public sphere.

From Literal to Spiritual Soldiers of Christ: Disputed Episcopal Elections and the Advent of Christian Processions in Late Antique Rome

2012 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob A. Latham
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Public Display ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

There were at least five disputed episcopal elections in the fourth through the sixth centuries. This intra-Christian competition did not, however, lead to the contestation of space in the form of processions as it did, for example, in Constantinople. At Rome, intra-Christian competition took the form, at least rhetorically, of siege and occupation. Instead of conquering urban space through processions—impossible as the Roman aristocracy and their patronage of traditional spectacles still dominated and defined the public sphere—Roman Christians resorted to warfare, until the mid-sixth century C.E. when an impoverished aristocracy ceased to lavish its diminished wealth on traditional forms of public display.Throughout all of these electoral disputes a number of elements consistently emerge: one, the use of martial language to describe the events; two, the concentration on a few contested sites; and three, internal divisions among Roman Christians. A strategy of militaristic occupation of centrally important churches clearly marked these schisms, as each side marched upon and occupied the principal churches of Rome, invading and expelling their enemies from other principal churches when they could. The martial language in the descriptions of these conflicts often veered close to the religious, indicating, hinting, that the origins of Christian processions lie in conflict and battle. From the literal soldiers of Christ, armed with clubs, rocks, and swords, emerged spiritual soldiers bearing crosses and singing hymns.

scholarly journals Zur symbolischen Rückeroberung und Politisierung des öffentlichen Raums

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (166) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Michael Janoschka ◽  
Jorge Sequera
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Geography ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Protest Movement ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

The radical conquest of public space and its transformation into political spacehave introduced major alterations of the Spanish public sphere after the outbreak of the 15-Mmovement. Such modifications refer also to a topic of symbolical interest, which is the conceptionand configuration of urban space – a space that in the course of neoliberal urbanproduction has been characterized as a residual category and a place of controlled and profitorientedactivities. By analysing key practices of the protest movement, the article brings togetherdebates from critical urban geography and political theory. In a first step, it develops aconceptual perspective towards the multiple logics of neoliberal urbanism and the transformationof public space. Subsequently, counter-hegemonic spatial politics and urban demandswill be discussed through the conceptualization of protest as acts of citizenship, proclaimingthe construction of the public sphere and public space via strategic disobedience and thetransgression of rules and laws. Protest camps, public political assemblies and recent squattingcan be analysed as newly created spaces of citizenship that reconstruct the meaning of publicspace and of a political and politicised public sphere, claiming different ways of policy making.

Research in urban history: recent Ph.D. theses on gender and the city, 1550–2000

Urban History ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARION PLUSKOTA
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Limited Participation ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Definition Of

Since the first outcries from feminist historians in the early 1970s against the absence of women as historical subjects, tangible progress has been made towards the inclusion of both female and male identities and experiences in historical research. The definition of gender as a ‘category of analysis’ brought about a small revolution in historical research, especially in social, economic and, more recently, cultural history. Traditional narratives about the marginal economic role of women or their limited participation in the public sphere have subsequently been re-evaluated and new hypotheses about people's gendered experiences have emerged. This growing interest in the formation and influence of gender identities is also increasingly discernible in urban history, where gender analysis has proven to be of particular relevance in understanding men's and women's use of urban space and, vice versa, the ways that the urban environment shaped the construction of people's gendered identities.

Introducing Massive Media

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Colangelo
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Empire State Building ◽  
The Social ◽  
Surrounding Space ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter introduces the concept of massive media, a term used to describe the emergence of large-scale public projections, urban screens, and led façades such as the illuminated tip of the Empire State Building. These technologies and the social and technical processes of image circulation and engagement that surround them essentially transform buildings into screens. This chapter also introduces theoretical concepts surrounding space, media, cinema, monumentality, and architecture in order to provide a framework for the analysis of the emergence of the building as screen. These concepts are key axes upon which the ongoing transformations of the public sphere revolve. Subsequent chapters are introduced in which massive media is probed, in case studies and creation-as-research projects, for its ability to enable new critical and creative practices of expanded cinema, public data visualisation, and installation art and curation that blend the logics of urban space, monumentality, and the public sphere with the aesthetics and affordances of digital information and the moving image.

scholarly journals The Conflictual (Trans)formation of the Public Sphere in Urban Space: The Case of Diyarbakır

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 43-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeynep Gambetti
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party ◽  
A Site

“In the East, understanding is a surreptitious shroud.”Kemal Varol“Men come into existence through their struggles”This study aims to contribute to efforts to understand how redress occurs in local contexts impaired by armed conflict. Its particular focus is on events, dynamics and forms of relationality that (re)create public spheres on a local level. It takes the city of Diyarbakır, the largest in Southeastern Turkey, as the vantage point from which to explore the transformation of a site of violent conflict into a space for the expression of differences that were either nonexistent or suppressed. Since the beginning of the armed uprising of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in 1984, the majority of political actors in Diyarbakır have in effect been polarized into two antagonistic camps (the Turkish state vs. the PKK). With the end of armed conflict five years ago, Diyarbakır has been astoundingly transformed into a paradise for civil society activists. The dynamics through which new urban spaces of existence and of expression have been created have not ceased being conflictual. In exploring the formative function of micro and macro struggles on publicness, the theoretical intent of this study is to argue against the Habermasian conceptualization of the public sphere.

scholarly journals Art, Power and Knowledge: Claiming Public Space in Tunisia

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 250-274
Author(s):  
Charles Tripp
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Artistic Interventions ◽  
The Public Sphere

Charles Tripp argues that through artistic interventions – graffiti, visual street art, performances, demonstrations, banners, slogans – citizens have appropriated the public sphere. Despite the monitoring of political dissent through persuasion or coercion, an activist public has created highly visible public spaces, assisted and encouraged by citizen artists. They have generated debates and have helped to give substance to competing visions of the republic.

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