(Re)covered Memory: Memorialisation, Race, and Architecture

<p>The tendency to record only built memory and significant events in architectural practice means that less tangible cultural memory is prone to erasure. This is prevalent in the memories of the other which often diverge from the majority, and so are not considered for preservation. In this context, cultural memory refers to the intangible qualities and experiences which define place, associated with a particular group. While initiatives such as heritage listings can preserve the physical history of place, little is done to preserve intangible history which has been lost through development and gentrification. To investigate strategies for reasserting cultural memory in urban space, Haining Street in Wellington is engaged as a site. From approximately 1890 to 1960, Haining Street was Wellington’s Chinatown and home to the largest Chinese population in New Zealand. Despite a long, and often controversial history, this legacy has virtually been erased from the contemporary streetscape, creating an area of note only for a vanished past. This thesis proposes that the memory of Haining Street’s Chinese past can be reasserted through an artist in residence scheme, consisting of a gallery, workshop and accommodation. Architectural intervention within spaces where history has been erased can reassert memory of the other, creating an identifiable place by: memorialising the intangible qualities of place, engaging with the legacy of race in the built environment, and creating a sensual experience of place. This research suggests that architecture has the potential to reconcile conflicted recollections of the past through an active engagement with the memory of place.</p>

(Re)covered Memory: Memorialisation, Race, and Architecture

<p>The tendency to record only built memory and significant events in architectural practice means that less tangible cultural memory is prone to erasure. This is prevalent in the memories of the other which often diverge from the majority, and so are not considered for preservation. In this context, cultural memory refers to the intangible qualities and experiences which define place, associated with a particular group. While initiatives such as heritage listings can preserve the physical history of place, little is done to preserve intangible history which has been lost through development and gentrification. To investigate strategies for reasserting cultural memory in urban space, Haining Street in Wellington is engaged as a site. From approximately 1890 to 1960, Haining Street was Wellington’s Chinatown and home to the largest Chinese population in New Zealand. Despite a long, and often controversial history, this legacy has virtually been erased from the contemporary streetscape, creating an area of note only for a vanished past. This thesis proposes that the memory of Haining Street’s Chinese past can be reasserted through an artist in residence scheme, consisting of a gallery, workshop and accommodation. Architectural intervention within spaces where history has been erased can reassert memory of the other, creating an identifiable place by: memorialising the intangible qualities of place, engaging with the legacy of race in the built environment, and creating a sensual experience of place. This research suggests that architecture has the potential to reconcile conflicted recollections of the past through an active engagement with the memory of place.</p>

‘Hard-Boiled’ Detectives in Spain and Mexico: The Ethical Reorientation of a Genre

Hard-boiled’ fiction arose in the early decades of the twentieth century, uncovering connections among crime, wealth and power, and exposing moral fissures within U.S. capitalism. After French publisher Gallimard marketed translations of American crime fiction as noir, international writers started adjusting the ethical framework of the original authors as part of their ‘glocal’ adaptation of a global genre to local circumstances. The present article pushes past ‘glocal’ analysis of noir to propose a ‘transnational’ relationship, adapting Paul Giles’ definition of ‘transnational’ practice in which international authors reflect the genre back upon its American roots in order to illuminate the ‘silences, absences and blindspots’ in the original ethical stance. The ‘misreading’ of noir also permits a ‘misrecognition’ of local circumstances, exposing moral fissures throughout different societies. This article shows how series by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Paco Ignacio Taibo II reveal ethical blindspots in American models by situating the detective within an emotional history of place (Barcelona for Vázquez Montalbán, Mexico City for Taibo II). Although these detectives ultimately cannot determine or perform the role of ethical citizen, their emotional-geographical bonds open up a critique of American ideals and pave the way for a reimagining of the ethical in the twenty-first century.

Bandung dan Pemaknaan Dago dalam Sejarah: Masa Lalu, Masa Kini

This article explores the history of Bandung, in particular the Dago street area, as a history of place. It looks into how Bandung include Dago has been defined, its etymology and the way in which the people that inhabit the place use and place meaning to these urban spaces. The article argues that civic meaning is rooted in the historic creation of place. It also looks into civic design and civic reform going through different governmentality from the colonial up into the present period to see how much the meaning of place is both historical but also politic and strategic to the present needs of the people that inhabit it.

What More Do Bodies Know? Moving with the Gendered Affects of Place

This article focuses on what bodies know yet which cannot be expressed verbally. We started with a problem encountered during conventional interviewing in an ex-mining community in south Wales when some teen girls struggled to speak. This led us to focus on the body, corporeality and movement in improvisational dance workshops. By slowing down and speeding up video footage from the workshops, we notice movement patterns and speculate about how traces of gender body-movement practices developed within mining communities over time become actualised in girls’ habitual movement repertoires. Inspired by the works of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Erin Manning, a series of cameos are presented: room dancing; the hold; the wiggle; the leap and the dance of the not-yet. We speculate about relations between the actual movements we could see, the in-act infused with the history of place, and the virtual potential of movement.

Binding the Void: The Erotics of Place in Antony and Cleopatra

Chapter 4 analyses the erotics of bounded place and of limitless space in Antony and Cleopatra. The chapter begins by exploring Edward Casey’s philosophical history of place and space in order to consider the erotic implications of these two scenes for characters as well as for audiences. Images of bounded place in Antony and Cleopatra get their erotic charge from the language of sexual bondage, more specifically, the formal and temporal features of masochism. Chapter 4 then explores accounts of infinite space from early modern cosmologists such as Francesco Patrizi and Giordano Bruno, who theorized about the void. This chapter argues that Antony and Cleopatra eroticize the infinite void by imposing the sturdy boundaries of place onto vacant space. Binding the void allows the lovers to present this vacancy to one another, enabling pleasurable experiences of self-loss and self-forgetting.

Settler Colonial Disease and Dis-Ease in August: Osage County

Tracy Letts’s screenplay, August: Osage County (2013), and John Wells’s film adaptation (2013) offer a compelling critique of American racism towards Native Americans which demands that viewers consider their own inculcation into ongoing settler-nation colonialism. The film layers the history of place (Oklahoma) with the Cheyenne character Johnna, whose Indigenous heritage is negotiated throughout by liberal academics, conservative rural matriarchs, and Johnna herself. The role is small but essential to the film’s allegorical analysis of settler-colonialism and racism. The Weston family’s secrets, addictions, and dysfunction starkly contrast with Johnna’s health and stability. Through Johnna, the film questions the toll colonialism takes on the mental and physical health of the American people. This paper analyzes the metanarrative association of the Weston family’s dysfunction and racism with ongoing colonialism that results in disease of the settler-colonial space as it emerges in the screenplay and film.

Familiar Places: A History of Place Attachment in a South Sami Community

In contrast to situations in most other countries, Indigenous land rights in Sweden are tied to a specific livelihood—reindeer husbandry. Consequently, Sami culture is intimately connected to it. Currently, Sami who are not involved in reindeer husbandry use genealogy and attachment to place to signal Sami belonging and claim Sami identity. This paper explores the relationship between Sami genealogy and attachment to place before the reindeer grazing laws of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I show that within local Sami communities the land representing home was part of family history and identity while using historical archive material, narratives, and storytelling. State projects in the late 19th century challenged the links between family and land by confining Sami land title to reindeer husbandry, thereby constructing a notion of Sami as reindeer herders. The idea has restricted families and individuals from developing their culture and livelihoods as Sami. The construct continues to cause conflicts between Sami and between Sami and other members of local communities. Nevertheless, Sami today continue to evoke their connections to kinship and place, regardless of livelihood.