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.

scholarly journals The (No-)Public Space. Reviewing the Transformation of Al-Qaed Ibrahim's Urban Image

2020 ◽  
pp. 177-192
Author(s):  
Iman Hegazy
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Image ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Public spaces are defined as places that should be accessible to all inhabitants without restrictions. They are spaces not only for gathering, socializing and celebrating but also for initiating discussions, protesting and demonstrating. Thus, public spaces are intangible expressions of democracy—a topic that the paper tackles its viability within the context of Alexandria, case study Al-Qaed Ibrahim square. On the one hand, Al-Qaed Ibrahim square which is named after Al-Qaed Ibrahim mosque is a sacred element in the urban fabric; whereas on the other it represents a non-religious revolutionary symbol in the Alexandrian urban public sphere. This contradiction necessitates finding an approach to study the characteristic of this square/mosque within the Alexandrian context—that is to realize the impact of the socio-political events on the image of Al-Qaed Ibrahim square, and how it has transformed into a revolutionary urban symbol and yet into a no-public space. The research revolves around the hypothesis that the political events taking place in Egypt after January 25th, 2011, have directly affected the development of urban public spaces, especially in Alexandria. Therefore methodologically, the paper reviews the development of Al-Qaed Ibrahim square throughout the Egyptian socio-political changes, with a focus on the square’s urban and emotional contextual transformations. For this reason, the study adheres to two theories: the "city elements" by Kevin Lynch and "emotionalizing the urban" by Frank Eckardt. The aim is not only to study the mentioned public space but also to figure out the changes in people’s societal behaviour and emotion toward it. Through empowering public spaces, the paper calls the different Egyptian political and civic powers to recognize each other, regardless of their religious, ethnical or political affiliations. It is a step towards replacing the ongoing political conflicts, polarization, and suppression with societal reconciliation, coexistence, and democracy.

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.

Spectacle and Détournement

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
McKenzie Wark
Keyword(s):  
Private Property ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Situationist International ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
The World ◽  
Literary Practices ◽  
Western Marxism

The concepts of spectacle and détournement are closely associated with the Paris-based postwar avant-garde movement known as the Situationist International. Spectacle is meant to work as a concept that critiques not this or that aspect of media culture, but its totality. It reveals the spectacle as the double, in the world of consumption, of capitalist commodity production. Détournement is the practice which opposes spectacle by refusing all forms of private property in the production of cultural works. While the Situationist International expired as a movement in 1972, these concepts were subsequently taken up by others, although most often shorn of the revolutionary impulse their linkage was meant to forge. This is why it is important to stress the origins of these concepts in both Western Marxism and also in the radical avant-garde movements of the prewar period. Guy Debord, a central animating presence in the Situationist International, was drawing on militant Marxist thinkers such as Georg Lukács and Henri Lefebvre, as well as the lesser-known Belgian branch of the Surrealist avant-garde. Understood as keys to a unified critical theory and practice, spectacle and détournement can be retrieved from merely descriptive studies of literature and media, and also from more narrowly formalist avant-garde literary practices.

Remaking Oakland’s Streets

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-37
Author(s):  
Robert Lemon
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Community Groups ◽  
Street Food ◽  
Daily Routines ◽  
Spatial Practice ◽  
The City ◽  
Community Activist

This chapter examines Mexican street food as a spatial practice that shapes the cultural landscape of Oakland, California. Community activist Emilia Otero fights for street food vendors’ right to occupy public space along city’s streets in East Oakland. She helps legitimize informal commerce in the Fruitvale district and paves the way for street food vendors to develop their businesses--from pushcarts and taco trucks to restaurants. The chapter calls attention to the friction that arises between the rationally planned city and the ways in which marginalized community groups live the city through their daily routines. It argues that remaking city streets to accommodate informal cultural practices is a way claim one’s right to the city.

scholarly journals City as mobility: a contribution of brazilian saraus to urban theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Pardue ◽  
Lucas Amaral de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Community Empowerment ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
City Space ◽  
Existential Knowledge ◽  
Socially Excluded ◽  
The City

Abstract The article analyzes saraus movement - poetry readings in São Paulo’s periphery - as a cultural phenomenon that over recent years has transformed the city space into a vibrant socio-political project. The movement offers important insights for an anthropology of cities by highlighting the materiality of mobility and spatiality, understood here as a set of social and cultural practices that involve the existential knowledge, social networking, and local community empowerment gained from mobility between predominantly peripheral neighborhoods and urban labor centers. We examine how saraus contribute to the construction of a new imaginary of the city and public space occupied by the socially excluded and racialized peripheries. We provide an analytical and empirical contribution to city production and urban theory, and demonstrate that mobility and the encounter are not simply temporary extraneous interactions, but rather experiences constitutive of social knowledge.

Between Modernity and Postmodernity: The Ambiguous Position of US Planning

1989 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
R A Beauregard
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Planning Project ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Urban And Regional Development ◽  
The City ◽  
Ambiguous Position

In the last half of the 20th century in the United States of America, the modernist planning project that emerged in the first half is being challenged by the political and economic manifestations of postmodernity and its corresponding cultural practices, Despite a serious erosion of its rationalist roots, critical distance, reformist intentions, commitment to master narratives, and focus on the city as object of theory and practice, that project persists. Modernist planning seems suspended between modernity and postmodernity. In order to resolve these tensions, planners need to refocus their work on the built environment (specifically the process of city building), to reestablish a mediative role between capital, labor, and the state, and to project a more democratic profile in public debates surrounding the meaning and consequences of urban and regional development.

scholarly journals A Concept of the Development of Riverside Embankment in the Context of Cracow (A Local Centre)

Buildings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beata Majerska-Pałubicka ◽  
Elżbieta Latusek
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Swot Analysis ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Land Development ◽  
The Public ◽  
Functional Complex ◽  
The City ◽  
Further Development

The subject of this article is the presentation of site conditions and the authors’ concept of the development of the degraded riverside area located in the city of Cracow-Kraków Zabłocie. The concept transforms the above-named area into a multifunctional complex including museum, coworking, business and hotel functions. The area subject to development borders three important districts of Cracow: Old Town (Stare Miasto), Grzegórzki and Podgórze on the bank of the Vistula (Wisła) river. In the land development and urban planning documents of the city of Cracow this area has been marked as the public space which is to become a local focal point or a local centre. The main objective of this work was to find answers to the posed research questions concerning the historic context, formal and legal state, significance for the community as well as economic and ecological implications of the area to be developed. The main purpose was to properly develop the degraded riverside embankment in the downtown environment. The research method was based on own mixed method which encompassed the studies of historical literature and the legal–formal status as well as in situ examinations, including the analyses of the condition of the built and natural environment, traffic and circulation as well as photographic documentation. The authors also familiarised themselves with the activities undertaken by the local community with a view to the area’s regeneration. On the grounds of initial investigations, the SWOT analysis was performed and the evaluation of groups of prospective users was conducted. Comparative studies were conducted including selected examples of European riverside development projects. In its assumptions, the proposed concept of the riverside development in Kraków-Zabłocie is to meet the needs of the local community, enable further development of tourism, which is very important to Cracow, and satisfy the paradigm of sustainable development. The effect is a multi-functional complex that becomes an inherent part of the existing context.

Public Spaces, Private Spaces, and the Right to the City

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Moroni ◽  
Francesco Chiodelli
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Spaces ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Two arguments have recently strongly influenced the theory and practice of planning: (i) public space is what basically characterises any city (the citizen's right to the city is first and foremost a claim on public space); (ii) public space is crucial because it provides the physical fulcrum for public interaction and political debate. This article takes a critical look at these two ideas, highlighting: (i) that private spaces have also crucially contributed (and continue to do so) to defining and determining what a city is – the city cannot be conceived without considering both public and private spaces and the crucial synergy between these two spheres; (ii) that the public sphere does not come into being solely in public spaces (as testified by the Internet); furthermore, public spaces perform other roles and functions (besides making debate and confrontation possible), and these various roles may at times clash with each other. All these aspects suggest a more balanced approach to the understanding of urban spaces and their importance.

Subverting Cartography: The Situationists and Maps of the City

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Pinder
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Situationist International ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Group ◽  
New Form ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The City

It is increasingly recognised that cartography is a contested practice, embedded within particular sets of power relations, and that maps are bound up with the production and reproduction of social life. The author begins by emphasising the importance of these issues for considering how the city has been mapped and represented through cartographic schemes, and draws on debates around the power and politics of mapping, and contentions that maps are ‘preeminently a language of power, not of protest’. However, it is argued that maps and mapping have not been entirely the preserve of the powerful, and the main part of the paper is devoted to examining some specific challenges to ‘official’ cartographies of the city. The author focuses on the radical art and political group, the Situationist International, and its avant-garde predecessors of the Lettrist International, who sought to appropriate urban maps and cartographic discourses and to develop a new form of ‘psychogeographical mapping’ during the 1950s and 1960s. The paper provides an account of their subversions, and an assessment of how their concerns might inform contemporary discussions on cartography and the mapping of urban space.

Reconstruction Of Urban Parks Of Culture And Rest Of The Soviet Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-65
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Senior Citizens ◽  
Urban Parks ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Limited Mobility ◽  
Functional Zoning ◽  
Functional Areas ◽  
The City

This article analyzes the main problems of urban public spaces, because today public spaces can determine the future of cities. It is noted that parks are multifunctional public spaces in the urban environment, as they are an important element of the citywide system of landscaping and recreation, perform health, cultural, educational, aesthetic and environmental functions. The article notes that the need for easily accessible and well-maintained urban parks remains, however, the state of parks in many cities of Russia remains unsatisfactory, requiring reconstruction. A brief historical background of the Park of Culture and Rest of the Soviet period in Omsk is expounded, the analysis of the existing territory of the Park is presented. It is revealed that the Park, being the largest public space in Omsk, does not meet the requirements of modern urbanism, although it represents a great potential for designing the space for the purpose of recreation of citizens. Performed functional zoning scheme of the territory of the Park in question, where its division into functional areas destined for active recreational users of the Park is presented, considered the interests of senior citizens, people with limited mobility, etc. Reconstruction of Parks of the Soviet period can provide the city with additional recreational opportunities, as well as increase its tourist attractiveness.

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