Debord, Guy (1931–1994)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Robert Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Situationist International ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
Advanced Capitalism ◽  
The City

Guy Ernest Debord (1931–1994) was a French radical political theorist, writer, activist and filmmaker. After his early involvement with French avant-garde art movements in the 1950s, Debord founded a revolutionary organization, the Situationist International (SI), in 1957. Inspired by earlier avant-garde movements like Dada and surrealism, Debord sought to create an explicitly political and critical art practice that could be employed to transform everyday life. The SI attracted sound poets, architects, writers, activists, graphic artists and painters. The movement sought to merge everyday life, art and politics through such practices as radical city planning, the beautification of the city through graffiti, and rambling psycho-geographic drifts through urban spaces, seeking to uncover the desire and beauty that had been hidden by advanced capitalism.

scholarly journals NEGOTIATED URBAN SPACE AT MANGGARAI STATION JAKARTA: THE APPROPRIATION OF SPACE BY BAJAJ DRIVERS

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Nurliani Lukito ◽  
Rumishatul Ulya
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Urban Informality ◽  
Use Of Space ◽  
Specific Mode ◽  
The City ◽  
Limited Possibility

This paper aims to investigate the negotiation between the “formal” and the “informal” urban space in Jakarta through the examination of use of space of marginalized transportation of bajaj – a three-wheeled public transportation. Bajaj drivers continuously and creatively create their use of space and territory as the result of the limitation of space. Creativity in using space emerges as a way to get available space and this activity results in the appropriation of urban space. The basis of such appropriation is how to survive in urban space and such condition is characterized by negotiation, flexibility and adaptability. In high-density Jakarta city, it is necessary for bajaj drivers – who have only limited possibility in using strategic urban space – to use both the formal and the informal to sustain the city at large. An analysis of how bajaj drivers negotiated urban spaces around Manggarai Station reveals the appropriation of urban space that relies on temporality, tactics and negotiation of rules of access among users. In this paper, we analyze how urban informality as an ‘organizing logic’ results in a specific mode of the production of space. The analysis of negotiations of space around Manggarai Station is intended to contribute to an understanding of how informal and negotiated spaces, which shape everyday life in the city, are inseparable parts of formal and designed spaces in the city of Jakarta.

Establishing the theory and practice of a defeatured landscape

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Modigliani
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Land Development ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Situationist International ◽  
Concrete Poetry ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The City

Chapter 4 recounts the emergence of the theory and practice of a “Defeatured Landscape,” the name given in 1970 to a new urban semiotic that would constitute photo-conceptual artists self-defined counter tradition to those cultural practices deemed uncritical, expressionist, and mythical that were explored in Chapter 3. NETCO’s Ruins (1968) and Portfolio of Piles (1968) are examined as important precursors to the defeatured landscape. Dennis Wheeler, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace and Christos Dikeakos’ art and writing are discussed as examples of defeatured landscapes in relation to their influences: American conceptual artist peers like Dan Graham; Concrete Poetry; awareness of the vehicular landscape; and Surrealism and its legacy in the psycho-geography and dérives of the Situationist International. This history is set against two contrasting examples: the real political conflicts of land development and associated financial speculation going on at the same time in the city; and an accounting of the erotic female bodies who often populate the otherwise defeatured landscapes of the photo-conceptualists. These examples show how the social politics of public space in Vancouver are left out of avant-garde representations of the city through the discursive framing of a landscape not so defeatured after-all.

Philosophy for Spiders

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
McKenzie Wark
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Kathy Acker ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Body Building ◽  
Philosophy Of Life ◽  
Phenomenology Of The Body ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The City

It's time to recognize Kathy Acker as one of the great postwar American writers. Over the decades readers have found a punk Acker, a feminist Acker, a queer Acker, a kink Acker, and an avant-garde Acker. In Philosophy for Spiders, McKenzie Wark adds a trans Acker. Wark recounts her memories of Acker (with whom she had a passionate affair) and gives a comprehensive reading of her published and archived works. Wark finds not just an inventive writer of fiction who pressed against the boundaries of gender but a theorist whose comprehensive philosophy of life brings a conceptual intelligence to the everyday life of those usually excluded from philosophy's purview. As Wark shows, Acker's engagement with topics such as masturbation, sadism, body-building, and penetrative sex are central to her distinct phenomenology of the body that theorizes the body's relation to others, the city, and technology.

scholarly journals A Study of Islamic and Arab Markets' Role in Revitalizing Urban Spaces

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Mohamed Yasser Lotfy ◽  
Abdullah Soliman ◽  
Alaa Mandour
Keyword(s):  
City Planning ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Modern City ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times ◽  
The One ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City

<p>Market places have occupied a major role in most cities around the world, being a site for more than just economic interactions, but rather a cultivating agent for social and cultural growth. The Arab and Islamic cities have a proud history of market places, most of the times being the main core of the city, with urban development encompassing it, and till the present day market places are in the heart of most communities. The <em>modern city </em>brought with it a devaluing of the traditional market places, making it a tourist attraction as in the case of <em>"khan el Khalil",</em>or leaving it to rust like <em>"bab el louq" </em>market. Those markets while playing a big role historically, <em>modern city planning </em>moved the services and markets into other form, thus becoming less important, abandoned, or even demolished at cases.</p><p>The issue at hand deals with how the contemporary urban planning affected market places, with emphasis on <em>closed markets</em> (Bab el-louk)which can be said to be the successor of the ancient <em>Bazaar </em>or <em>Wekala</em>.  Bal el-Louk market was once in the heart of Cairo and vital part of its community life, but now the market after more than a 100 years, is in ruins, but hope is not yet all lost, since the market can still be revived and revitalized.</p><p>To tackle this issue a combination of <em>comparative and field studies </em>must occur. On the one hand, comparative studies with <em>markets </em>in the US or closed markets in European cities such as Paris or Copenhagen would be done to find the necessary elements and goals that would make those markets vital, and the necessary steps to revitalize our own forgotten markets. The other study would have to deal with the current condition of bab el louk market in Cairo, finding out the reason behind its demise, the owners and users feedback on said market, and the opportunities for change.</p><p>With the results of the studies, general recommendations would be made for the <em>revitalization </em>of the Egyptian marketplaces, using an urban framework that would lead to those markets be available for costumers again and back to playing their major cultural and social rule.</p>

scholarly journals A Review of P. LOZOVYUK, A. PRIGARIN, A.O., ETNOLOGIYA ODESSY V ISTORICHESKOY I SOVREMENNOY PERSPEKTIVAKH [THE ETHNOLOGY OF ODESSA FROM HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY PERSРECTIVES]. Odessa: Irbis, 2017, 387 pp.

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (47) ◽  
pp. 229-240
Author(s):  
Julia Buchatskaja ◽  
◽  
Denis Ermolin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Virtual Image ◽  
Festive Culture ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
The City ◽  
Tools And Methods

The reviewed monograph is devoted to the ethnology of Odessa in the broadest sense — from the stages of the formation of individual districts of the city and the image of Odessa in fiction, the press and memoirs, to various aspects of contemporary urban life, such as the functioning of markets, festive culture, the virtual image of the city, or the everyday life of sailors’ wives. The authors of the monograph primarily aim to examine the formation and stages of the evolution of Odessa as a multifaceted city with emphasis on certain subjects of urban everyday life. In the opinion of the reviewers, however, there is practically no analysis of urban spaces in the monograph, in spite of the “successful urbanistic model” of Odessa proposed by the authors. It is also important to emphasize that — with the existing insider knowledge and experience of living in Odessa — the authors of the monograph under review did not fully problematize the described social and cultural reality and the range of modern problems that the city and its inhabitants face with varying degrees of intensity. They thus remain within the comfortable captivity of the so-called “Odessa” myth and, to some extent, end up reproducing rather than deconstructing it through the theoretical tools and methods at their disposal.

scholarly journals Sensing the City - Mapping the Beat. A rhythmanalysis of music-making in Wellington and Copenhagen

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Katie Rochow
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Mental Maps ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Meaningful Experiences ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
The City

<p>The idea of rhythm has figured as a key conceptual and empirical motif in current research on (urban) space, place and everyday life. Urban spaces are considered polyrhythmic fields, a compound of varied everyday life and spatial rhythms, which produce a particular, but ever-changing, complex mix of heterogeneous social interactions, mobilities, imaginaries and materialities (Edensor 2010). Music-making in the city therefore constitutes and is constituted by a plurality of urban rhythms including the movement between different locations as well as regular temporal patterns of events, activities, experiences and practices as well as energies, objects, flora and fauna which shape the music-maker’s mundane ‘pathways’ through the city. Based on current ethnographic fieldwork in the urban spaces of Wellington (Aotearoa/New Zealand), and Copenhagen (Denmark) this project proposes a way of capturing, understanding and interpreting the multi-faceted rhythmical layout of urban spaces. It will do so by introducing a rhythmanalytical methodology, which draws on interviews, participant generated photographs and mental maps as analytical tools for capturing the interwovenness of socialities, atmospheres, object, texts and images in people’s everyday lives and in this way affords opportunities for attending to the multiple rhythms underlying music-making in the city. The use of cartographic and photographic means of representing these rhythmical dimensions allows us to better attend to an affective register that is often overlooked in studies of music-making. It makes visible some of the ways in which places, from the home to the studio to the performance venue and points in-between form a connective tissue, which anchors the music-makers to the city as well as lends the city its ambience, and, more importantly, its affective charge. As such, the manner in which mood, feeling, a “sense of place,” is evoked through the visual representation of music-makers’ everyday life suggests how the scenic aspects of the city work to simultaneously frame, mediate and facilitate meaningful experiences of place. Consequently, this study documents, through a unique medley of research methods, the way in which music-making serves as a vehicle for the social production of place and the creation of an affective attachment to that place both individual and collective.</p>

scholarly journals Public policies and the city: producing inclusive urban spaces

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 1007-1014
Author(s):  
Sonia Maria Fleury Teixeira ◽  
Joan Subirats ◽  
Daniel S. Lacerda ◽  
Ismael Blanco
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Financial Investments ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

Abstract Research on cities have received increased attention over the years. Urban spaces are, on the one hand, a significant target of speculative financial investments and commodification of life, generating dynamics that are very difficult to contain within the competencies of local governments. At the same time, cities are the central space of everyday life, where there is resistance at many levels seeking to defend the conditions of living and subsistence of the majority of citizens. This special issue presents exciting contributions to the debate on public policies and the city. The articles published approach cities as urban spaces of diversity and encounters; the arena of discursive and material struggles; contradictory embeddedness of commodification and resistance; the focus of institutional disputes between exclusion and participation; and finally, changing spaces that respond to the need for new management technologies at a local level. Drawing on various theoretical frameworks and rich empirical discussions, this special issue reclaims cities as central spaces of everyday life, which are particularly important for protection and emancipation in a global scenario of uncertainty.

scholarly journals Public Space as Infrastructure of Care

Lateral ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Kallianos ◽  
Pafsanias Karathanasis
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Central Places ◽  
Public Square ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
Critical Site

Our contribution puts forward an examination of public spaces as infrastructures of care. The eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the “social distancing” measures imposed by several governments around the world, transformed the very use and conceptualization of urban public spaces. In Athens, Greece, public space, which had already been in different ways at the forefront of multifarious crises since 2010, reemerged, once again, as a critical site of sociopolitical antagonism. Public spaces, such as squares, became central places where people could come together to share knowledge and emotions, collectively alleviate anxieties, and thus (re)negotiate their positionality in the city. Such formations and enactments of social connection, affectivity, and antagonism, reflect the entanglement between everyday life and the political, and also draw attention to the association of public space with practices of care for collective well-being during precarious times. During the ever-increasing securitization and policing of urban spaces in Athens, in which everyday life has come to be ever more permeated by precarity and uncertainty, public spaces have been reenacted as safe and more inclusive environments where people can be and act together. Our contribution also employs a video to render more intelligible the affective interconnectedness of sounds, images, bodies, materialities, and practices in public space. By attending to the affective dynamics of a public square in central Athens, we examine the entanglements between the sociopolitical production of public space and forms of care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals Lifestyle Enclaves in the Instagram City?

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630512094069
Author(s):  
John D. Boy ◽  
Justus Uitermark
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Community Detection ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
The City

Commentators and scholars view both social media and cities as sites of fragmentation. Since both urban dwellers and social media users tend to form assortative social ties, so the reasoning goes, identity-based divisions are fortified and polarization is exacerbated in digital and urban spaces. Drawing on a dataset of 34.4 million interactions among Amsterdam Instagram users over half a year, this article seeks to gauge the level of fragmentation that occurs at the interface of digital and urban spaces. We find some evidence for fragmentation: users form clusters based on shared tastes and leisure activities, and these clusters are embedded in four distinct lifestyle zones at the interface of social media and the city. However, we also find connections that span divisions. Similarly, places that are tagged by Instagram users generally include a heterogeneity of clusters. While there is evidence that Instagram users sort into groups, there is no evidence that these groups are isolated from one another. In fact, our findings suggest that Instagram enables ties across different groups and mitigates against particularity and idiosyncrasy. These findings have important implications for how we should understand and study social media in the context of everyday life. Scholars should not only look for evidence of division through standard network analytic techniques like community detection, but also allow for countervailing tendencies.

scholarly journals The 1930-s Unrealized Projects on Development of Gorky City (Nizhny Novgorod)

2018 ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
Olga V. Orelskaya
Keyword(s):  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Master Plan ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
High Rise ◽  
General Plan ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Radical Reconstruction

The article deals with little-known unrealized projects shaping the image of the socialist Gorky city, its river panoramas, squares and highways in accordance with the first Soviet master plan of 1935-1937, made by the creative collective of Leningrad Giprogor, under theleadership of N.A. Solofnenko. The development of the master plan of alarge city was based on the principles of reconstruction of the General plan of Moscow in 1935. The architecture of a post-avant-garde epoch allowed to clearly demonstrate the architectural searches of the period, identify their characteristics, their mistakes and achievements. A radical reconstruction of an ancient city assumed a demolition of historic buildings. Instead of the lost town­planning dominants - churches that adorned the river facades of the city for many centuries, architects offered new high-rise accents in the form of monumental public buildings. Projects with classical compositions of central squares contributed to the formation of a fundamentally new image of the city. The tendencies of monumentalism appeared under the influence of well-known projects of accomplishment and organization of urban spaces in the capital cities - Moscow and Leningrad. This was an important phase of the new appeal to historicism, namely the development of the classics, which began in the mid 1930-ies and ended in the mid-1950s Archival photographs of 1930-ies complement the history of Russian Soviet architecture and urban planning and disclose the concept of the planned ambitious reforms.

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